Ty Gibson - The sonship of Christ

The Bible writers themselves seem to know nothing of this topical framing of truth. It is apparently foreign to the ancient Hebrew way of processing reality. They, by contrast, see and convey the truth in the form of poetry and song, symbol and story—mostly story, since even the poems, songs, and symbols are enlisted to tell the story.

When the Bible is studied in a prooftext manner that overlooks context, it is possible, of course, to harness its many “verses” to formulate just about any “doctrine” a person is inclined to believe. Bible study, with this approach, is a rather subjective exercise in which I look for “verses” to support a premise that I usually bring to the Bible—and, no surprise, I find the support I’m looking for.

Using the prooftext approach to Scripture, we can easily, and with good intention, take hold of the word “son” as it occurs in reference to Jesus and then proceed to reason, quite apart from the biblical narrative, that He must have emerged from God sometime, long, long ago. The “Son of God” cannot be God in the same eternal sense that the “Father” is, we reason, or else He would not be called “the Son.”

Then, in order to deal with the other “verses” that present Jesus as God, we are obliged to venture into more philosophical, abstract explanations that Scripture itself does not offer. We say things along the line of, “Yes, Jesus always existed in the Father before He was brought forth from the Father, so He wasn’t created by the Father, but rather emerged from the Father.” And we feel like we’ve said something meaningful and deep, although we don’t really have any idea what we’ve said and we know the Bible, of course, says no such thing. But when we use a prooftext method that is not careful to notice context, we have no choice but to fill in the gaps with speculations that are not inherent to the text. In other words, we have to make stuff up.

Of course, we can’t blame people for trying to make sense of difficult language. Operating within the prooftext methodology, focusing on a few trees while failing to see the whole forest, it really is quite challenging to make heads or tails out of “God” being “begotten” as “God’s Son.” So we either downplay or over interpret the verses that don’t fit. Those who take the opposing view generally respond by assembling their own list of verses and offering their own strained interpretations. So we end up stranded on a prooftext impasse, my chosen texts against yours and yours against mine.

But there is a solution, and it is very clearly seen to be the solution once we engage with it and see where it leads:

Read the Bible.

The whole thing.

On its own terms.

When we read the Bible as an unfolding narrative—as the big story it actually is—with key characters played out in an overarching, intentional plot line, the meaning of the Sonship of Christ becomes unmistakably evident. In other

words, if we really want to understand the sense in which Jesus is the Son of God, we need to pan out from our selected verses to take in the grand historical tale the prophets are telling.

When in doubt, pan out.

And when we do that—wow!—a whole new world of biblical understanding opens before us, and there is no need for strained interpretations. We just see it. The story tells us the truth in ways that micromanaging individual verses never can.

So let’s do just that. Let’s read the Bible on its own terms and see where it leads.

This is going to be exciting.

The biblical story opens with God creating Adam and Eve.

They are the first human beings.

All other humans come from them.

There is an immediately evident pattern to the narrative: creation, procreation.

God created Adam and Eve in God’s “own image” and then Adam, with no small amount of help from Eve, “begot a son in his own likeness, after his image” (Genesis 1:27; Genesis 5:3).

And this Adam fella, well, he is the first “son of God”

in the biblical narrative, and he’s the initial character in

the story that gives meaning to the Sonship identity that is woven throughout the rest of the Bible. When we skip forward in the narrative to the New Testament, the deliberate intent of the “son” theme becomes evident. In Luke’s genealogy of Jesus, each person in the lineage is called the “son” of some human father, until we get all the way back to Adam, the first man, who is distinguished from all the others like this:

. . . Adam, the son of God. Luke 3:38

Do you see what just happened? The New Testament deliberately loops all the way back to the opening of the biblical story in order to tell us who Jesus is, and it does so by telling us who Adam was. There’s Adam, and there’s Jesus. And these two figures constitute the premise of the entire biblical story, as we will see with greater and greater clarity as we proceed.

From the outset of the story, God has a “son,” and his name is Adam. God has a daughter, too, and she forms a vital thread of the story, as well, which will soon become evident. For now, we are interested in tracing the biblical thread of “son” in order to comprehend the Sonship of Jesus.

According to Luke, Adam is the “the son of God” in a more foundational sense than any of the human beings that follow him.

Why?

Well, quite simply because he is the first of his kind, the first human, from whom all others will emerge and receive their identity.

Adam and Eve were created.

Everyone else was procreated.

That’s how the biblical story begins.

Adam was the head of the human race, from whom all of humanity would receive their “likeness.” Beginning with him, the “image” of God was to be passed on from generation to generation, creating an ever-widening circle of human beings with the capacity to love like God loves, living in God’s “image” or “likeness.” That was the divine plan in humanity’s creation. There was to be a succession of sons and daughters who would pass on God’s image. Again, for clarity:

God created Adam and Eve in God’s “own image” (Genesis 1:27).

Then Adam “begot a son in his own likeness, after his image” (Genesis 5:3).

What a wonderful plan!

But right here the story makes a tragic shift. An interruption was imposed upon the plan:

an interruption we call the Fall of humanity

an interruption in which the fallen angel, Lucifer, deceived humanity into believing God is arbitrary, restrictive, untrustworthy, and self-serving (Genesis 3:1-5)

an interruption that nearly effaced the “image” of God from “the son of God,” thus disrupting the capacity of God’s son to transmit God’s image from generation to generation

And because there was an interruption, an intervention was needed:

an intervention that would have to happen from the inside of the human situation

an intervention that would offer a new way forward with a new starting point

an intervention that would come in the form of a new “Son of God” to replace Adam, a new head of the human race who would reestablish God’s “image” in humanity

Directly after the Fall, the Creator issued a prophecy in the form of a threat to Satan and a promise to humanity:

I will put enmity between you (Satan) and the woman (Eve and her progeny), and between your offspring and hers; He (the coming offspring) will crush your head, and you will strike His heel. Genesis 3:15, NIV

Don’t miss the point.