We have just started a new series of studies in Mark’s gospel. I was due to preach but found myself sick so somebody else delivered my sermon instead.
The key point Mark makes at the start of his gospel is that Jesus is the Son of God. I tried to make the slightly technical point that Mark is not quite saying by ‘son of God’ that Jesus is God (even though he is, Mark clearly thinks this and there are inferences we can make). The title Son of God doesn’t necessarily equate to ‘God’.
To that point, I thought it might be worth highlighting a couple a points made in Don Carson’s little book, Jesus the Son of God. Below is what he says:
1. Not All Uses of “Son of God” Are the Same
Owing not least to the Trinitarian confessionalism that we have inherited from the fourth century, “Son of God” as a christological confession is in many Christian minds primarily associated with the second person of the Godhead. It has become a fixed datum. This is not so much wrong as too narrowly focused – or, better put, some New Testament passages use Son of God terminology to ascribe to Jesus the attributes that were so important in third and fourth-century christological debates, but many New Testament passages use Son of God terminology in rather different ways. Sometimes it functions much as it did when it referred to Israel as God’s Son, only now, in effect, Jesus is the ultimate Israel. Sometimes “Son of God” is associated with Jesus’s status as the anointed Davidic king, the Messiah, with particular emphasis on his kingly authority. Sometimes the expression focuses on his earthly ministry; sometimes it presupposes his origins in eternity past.
In short, in the New Testament “Son of God” is not a terminus technicus, as the Latins say – a technical term that always carries the same associations. It always presupposes some sense of deriving from God, or of acting like God, or both, but the domains of such acting are pretty diverse. Bible readers should exercise special pains not to succumb either to unjustified reductionism, in which one particular usage is read into every occurrence, or to “illegitimate totality transfer,” in which the entire semantic range of the expression is read into every occurrence. Context must decide.
2. Biblical Trajectories Are Important If We Are to Understand How “Son of God” Commonly “Works”
This should not surprise us. In various ways, New Testament writers are constantly drawing lines between, on the one hand, Old Testament persons, institutions, and events, and, on the other hand, Jesus. Thus Jesus is the true Manna, the bread from heaven; he is the Passover Lamb; he is the True Vine; when he is “lifted up” to die, this recalls the lifting up of the serpent in the wilderness; he is the ultimate High Priest; he himself is the Temple of God. So it should not come as a surprise that Jesus is declared to be the ultimate Davidic King, and thus the Son of God (as each Davidic king was declared Son of God in turn).
Yet this Davidic trajectory is subtle. We have observed how 2 Samuel 7:14, Psalm 2:7, and Psalm 45:6-7 are applied to Jesus, even though the first certainly applies to Solomon, not Jesus, the second probably applies first of all to David and his immediate successors, and the third certainly applies, initially, to kings who had heirs who replaced their fathers, not to Jesus. Yet in all three cases the context drops hints of a fulfillment that outstrips local petty monarchs. Once these passages are nestled into the complex matrix of the Davidic typology, the many passages that anticipate an heir of David who is declared to be God and whose reign embraces the entire earth and even the heavens, the connection to Jesus is all but inevitable. If these trajectories are not identified and understood, however, we will be at a loss to understand how the Old Testament texts that are said to be fulfilled in Jesus actually “work.” Many is the Christian who has thumbed through Old Testament pages to find the passage that has been quoted by the New Testament and applied to Jesus, only to feel let down by the fact that the connection is at best obscure, and in some cases seems to be talking about something radically different. It takes some hard work to uncover how these trajectories, these typologies, actually work. But when we take the time and effort to examine them, we are hushed in awe at the wisdom of God in weaving together intricate patterns that are simultaneously so well hidden in their development and so magnificently obvious in their fulfillment.