From our human perspective, we look to Jesus as our Savior. From God’s perspective, we confess Jesus as His Son. When we acknowledge Him to be the Son of God, we are in step with the witness of Scripture. For example the Gospel of Mark opens with the declaration, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1). When Gabriel visited Mary to announce she was chosen to be the mother of Jesus, the angel’s words to her were, “Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son and shall call His name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Highest” (Luke 1:31–32).
The ‘Highest’
The term “Highest” was a restrained or reverent way of referring to God. Hence the phrase “Son of the Highest” was a way of saying Son of God. When Gabriel announced to Mary the forthcoming conception of a son, she asked the practical question, “How will this be since I am a virgin?” The explanation given to her was, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called ‘holy’ — ‘the Son of God.’”
Tempting Jesus
On the opposite end of the spectrum from an angel of the Lord, the devil also accurately referred to Jesus as God’s Son. When tempting Jesus in the wilderness, the devil approached Him two of the three times with the introductory phrase, “If You are the Son of God” (Matt. 4:3, 6). The construction of this phrase in the Greek of the New Testament was not a hesitant expression of doubt but was an accepted fact of truth. It would be accurately construed as, “Since you are the Son of God.” The fact that Jesus had the authority as God’s Son to turn stones to bread or to leap from the highest point of the temple without injury was what fueled the devil’s attack. Had Jesus not possessed the power to do these things, the suggestion that He do them would have been no temptation at all. Acknowledgement that Jesus was on earth as the Son of God also was heard in the words of a demon spirit that inhabited and controlled a man from Gedara. When confronted by Jesus amid the tombs in Mark 5:7, the unclean spirit cried with a loud voice, “What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?”
Voice from heaven
Greater than the confessions of humans and of the devil are the confessions heard from heaven. When Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River a voice was heard from heaven which said, “You are My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11). Later when Jesus was transfigured on the mountain in the presence of three of His disciples, a cloud overshadowed them and a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is My beloved Son” (Mark 9:7).
Lying behind the witness of Scripture that Jesus is indeed the Son of God are the truths of a miraculous conception enabled by the Holy Spirit and resulting in a virgin birth. The truth that attaches to such a conception and birth is that Jesus possessed a divine nature as the Son of God. Furthermore this fact made it possible for people of faith to understand that as the Son of God, Jesus is the second person of the Trinity, along with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Share with others: