Chapter 19: Son of God—God Himself

Let us hold on to a truth we must never lose as we think about the incarnation: the character and attributes of God do not change. When the Word became flesh, God did not shrink into a body and cease to fill heaven and earth. He remained what He had always been. Even as He walked the roads of Galilee in a human body, He was still omnipresent, still upholding the universe, still everywhere—because God is Spirit, and the Spirit is not confined. He was in heaven and on earth at once.²³⁹

With a physical body and a living soul like any other human being, He was called the Son of God—born of God, and not of man. In His own wisdom, God chose that this part of Him—the true human body He created for Himself, joined to a living soul—should be called the Son of God. So Jesus is the Son of God because He now bears a created human body, a body He fashioned for Himself and entered.

During His earthly life—before His death, resurrection, and ascension—Jesus in that body was truly localized: He could be in only one place at a time, as any man is. Yet His Spirit, the Spirit of God, remained all-knowing and everywhere present. The Gospels give us glimpses of this again and again: the human body walked one road, while the divine knowledge reached far beyond it.

Consider Nathanael. When Philip brought him to Jesus, Nathanael was skeptical—until Jesus revealed that He had seen him where no human eye could have followed:

Nathanael saith unto him, Whence knowest thou me? Jesus answered and said unto him, Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee (John 1:48).

Nathanael was amazed—and no wonder. Here was a man who saw what He had no natural way of seeing. His body was in one place; His knowledge was not bound by His body.

Consider the colt at Bethphage. Jesus sent two disciples ahead with details He had no ordinary way of knowing—a specific animal, in a specific place, and the very words its owners would say:

Go ye into the village over against you; in the which at your entering ye shall find a colt tied, whereon yet never man sat: loose him, and bring him hither. And if any man ask you, Why do ye loose him? thus shall ye say unto him, Because the Lord hath need of him. And they that were sent went their way, and found even as he had said unto them (Luke 19:30–34).

And consider the upper room. Jesus told Peter and John exactly whom they would meet and where—a man carrying a jar of water, a certain house, a large furnished room—and they found everything just as He had said:

Behold, when ye are entered into the city, there shall a man meet you, bearing a pitcher of water; follow him into the house where he entereth in… And they went, and found as he had said unto them: and they made ready the passover (Luke 22:10–13).

In each case the pattern is the same: the man Jesus stood in one place, but the Spirit of God in Him knew all things and was present everywhere. His humanity was real and limited; His deity was undiminished. Both were fully true of the one Person. As we said, God in His wisdom chose that His own created human body, with its living soul, should be called the Son of God.

Called the Son of God

The Scriptures declare this title over and over. He is Jesus, the Son of God:

• “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us… the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

• At His baptism, “a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17).

• At His transfiguration, “a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son… hear ye him” (Matthew 17:5; Mark 9:7).

• “Herein is love… that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10).

• “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life… he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (John 3:16–18).

• “The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live” (John 5:25).

• “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1).

• “These are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name” (John 20:31).

• At the cross, the centurion confessed, “Truly this man was the Son of God” (Mark 15:39).

From heaven the Father owns Him; the demons tremble before Him; the apostles preach Him; and even a Roman soldier at the foot of the cross is brought to confess Him—Jesus, the Son of God.

When He Spoke, the King Was Speaking

Watch how Jesus taught, and you will see God speaking. The prophets of old always said, “Thus saith the LORD”—they spoke on another’s authority. But Jesus said, “I say unto you,” setting His own word above the traditions of the ages. In the Sermon on the Mount He said it again and again:

Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time… but I say unto you… (Matthew 5:27–44).

“But I say unto you.” No mere teacher could speak so; “for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes” (Matthew 7:29). When He spoke, the King Himself was speaking—the Lawgiver who had thundered from Sinai now teaching on a Galilean hillside.

He forgave sins—which, as His enemies rightly observed, God alone can do. To a woman and to a paralyzed man alike He simply said, “Thy sins are forgiven” (Luke 7:48; Matthew 9:2; Luke 5:20). He did not ask God to forgive; He forgave, on His own authority, as the One offended by all sin and able to pardon it.

And when He commanded and when He judged, it was God commanding and judging. He called a dead man out of the tomb—“Lazarus, come forth!” (John 11:43)—and the dead obeyed, for He is the source of life. He rebuked the wind and the sea—“Peace, be still”—and the storm fell silent at His word (Mark 4:39), for the Maker of the sea is its Master. And to the accusers of a guilty woman He said, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her” (John 8:7)—the Judge of all the earth, doing right, and full of mercy.

Forgiving sins, commanding nature, raising the dead, judging the heart—these are the works of God, and Jesus did them as naturally as breathing. He is God Himself, in the flesh, called the Son of God—Jesus.