In his book the Problem of Pain, CS Lewis sums up what I think many would agree with: “There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power. But it has the full support of Scripture and, specially, of our Lord’s own words; it has always been held by Christendom; and it has the support of reason.”
We’re fine with the idea of a loving God, but we’re less accepting of a God who judges.
With the idea of hell, It can seem unfair. We can feel tempted to justify why hell doesn’t exist. Or maybe we think that hell is really just for people who are really, really bad.
Jesus said “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.” It’s noteworthy that in the Bible, the person who has the most to say about hell is…Jesus. To reject Jesus is to reject his gospel. It’s to reject his grace.
And ultimately there is no excuse in the Bible for this rejection. God displays his glory and grandeur in nature as Romans 1:18-20 says
FOR THE WRATH OF GOD IS REVEALED FROM HEAVEN AGAINST ALL UNGODLINESS AND UNRIGHTEOUSNESS OF MEN, WHO BY THEIR UNRIGHTEOUSNESS SUPPRESS THE TRUTH. FOR WHAT CAN BE KNOWN ABOUT GOD IS PLAIN TO THEM, BECAUSE GOD HAS SHOWN IT TO THEM. FOR HIS INVISIBLE ATTRIBUTES, NAMELY, HIS ETERNAL POWER AND DIVINE NATURE, HAVE BEEN CLEARLY PERCEIVED, EVER SINCE THE CREATION OF THE WORLD, IN THE THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN MADE. SO THEY ARE WITHOUT EXCUSE.
-ROMANS 1:18-20
People who want to reject hell or who question how a holy God can judge are showing the sinfulness of their hearts.
I was watching a video recently. It was a back and forth between an atheist college student and Christian apologist Frank Turek. In the video, the student said she didn’t believe in God, or in the resurrection of Christ, but she believed that if there were a heaven, she should be able to go there.
But why? Why would you get to be with God when you don’t believe in him?
Why would God MAKE YOU be with him when you lived your entire life without any desire to know him? God extends grace freely. He extends the offer of salvation to all who will accept it.
But what’s not an option is saying no. What’s not an option is trying to earn our way to God. The vanity of thinking that we can make ourselves worthy. The vanity of opposing God, of rejecting him and thinking that you should still get to be with him.
WE THINK WE’RE GOOD PEOPLE. BUT THE GREATEST SIN WE CAN COMMIT IS REJECTING THE GOD WHO MADE US.
God honors the choice a person makes to reject him and to reject heaven. But what he will not allow is for us to approach him on our terms.
Hell is the logical conclusion of wanting to live this life without God. If a person doesn’t want God now, then why would they want him in eternity? D.A. Carson says, “Hell is not filled with people who are now holy. It’s filled with people who still love their sin and will not bend the knee. And receive the punishment for that sin, in an ongoing cycle, world without end. And that’s what the gospel saves us from.”
I think that’s important to understand. God isn’t rejecting people who have a desire to know him. People who come to him, knowing their unworthiness, knowing their sinfulness.
God is just. His judgments are just.
People aren’t condemned because they didn’t have enough time. They aren’t cast away from God because they didn’t have an opportunity.
God isn’t vindictive. He’s not losing his temper. But he is righteous. He’s perfect. And heaven is a perfect place. God is overwhelmingly glorious.
The gospel isn’t: well no one is perfect so just try to be decent.
Some liberal churches undermine the necessity of believing in Jesus. Or reduce him to someone to a good teacher. And the best possible roe model for how you could live your life, but not really as being THE way, THE truth, and the life.
But that cheapens the work of Christ. Because he didn’t come just to give some good moral lessons.
Undermining the doctrine of hell might seem like a convenient solution to something you don’t want to think about, but it introduces the infinitely greater problem of making Jesus a liar.
The point of the gospel isn’t saying that you want God because you’re afraid of hell. It’s about wanting to be WITH God.
In the Bible, so much of the marriage language about weddings, brides, and grooms is discussing the relationship between God and his people. In the Bible, in spite of humanity’s sin, turning away from God, the Lord is depicted as a faithful groom.
In the New Testament, the church is depicted as the bride and Christ is the groom. That’s part of the reason why our passage said “husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”
Jesus has a sacrificial love for the church. In Ephesians 5, the Apostle Paul says: “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:32).”
What Paul is saying is that marriage itself is a picture of the love that Jesus has for his church. The gospel gives a picture of what marriage is supposed to be.
Marriage is about faithfulness. God is faithful to his people. He is faithful to his promises.
Marriage is about forgiving. Because we sin. And the closer a person is to us, the deeper the wounds we can afflict. And nowhere is that truer than in marriage.
Marriage is about grace. You are to love your spouse unconditionally. They don’t earn your love or approval. We can’t earn God’s love. God freely offers the love that we could never earn.
Marriage is about love. Because “God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).
THE BIBLE SAYS THAT “LOVE IS PATIENT AND KIND; LOVE DOES NOT ENVY OR BOAST; IT IS NOT ARROGANT OR RUDE. IT DOES NOT INSIST ON ITS OWN WAY; IT IS NOT IRRITABLE OR RESENTFUL; IT DOES NOT REJOICE AT WRONGDOING, BUT REJOICES WITH THE TRUTH. LOVE BEARS ALL THINGS, BELIEVES ALL THINGS, HOPES ALL THINGS, ENDURES ALL THINGS (1 CORINTHIANS 13:4-7).”
The gospel gives marriage its greater meaning. Jesus is the groom who sacrificed everything for his bride.
Despite all of our imperfections, our mistakes, our times of selfishness, the worst things we’ve ever done, in spite of that, God offers to love freely and unconditionally. God loves us at our worst. God does not love us because of what we have done, or how we make him feel. He loves us because he loves us. And all we have to do to receive that love is to accept it. To know there is grace.
When marriage is done right, there aren’t many things better than that in the whole world. Two people who love each other who have fun with each other, who bring out the best in each other.
Originally published January 4, 2019
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Our era has twisted the meaning of love. The culture acts as though real love is accepting whatever someone wants to do. No matter if it’s sinful. No matter if it’s harmful. We call that love. I call it apathy. Love is a righteous God who would forgive people and give them heaven, and spare them hell, even though they are unrighteous and unholy.
John 3:16 is perhaps the greatest verses in the Bible. It’s the most well-known to our culture. But with a Bible verse that’s so well-known, I think we can sometimes become tone deaf to it.
It’s a great verse because it tells the gospel as succinctly as any verse in the entire Bible.
God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
It points us to the love of God. But because of passages like this one, I think it’s easy for us as Christians to take the love of God for granted. The idea of a loving God is not universal to world religions.
In many religious systems, their gods are not loving, they’re not personal, they’re not perfect, and humanity basically has to do what it can to appease them. In most religions, the pressure is put on man to live up to a certain standard.
I’ve heard people argue that “all religions are basically the same.”
I think that’s something that Americans say who have generally never studied other religions and who are basically making an arrogant assumption that all other religions have a similar worldview to Christianity. Not the case.
Because here in America, no matter if someone is a Christian or the most ardent atheist, we are influenced by Christian teachings and beliefs. It’s at the core of our nation’s founding. It influences our ethics, laws, literature. It influences our understanding of a seven day week, it influences how we see the world. Because it’s so fundamental to America, it’s easy take certain Biblical teachings as self-evident assumptions.
It’s kind of like how when you grow up, there’s often a certain assumption in the normality of how you’re raised. It’s what you know. But you get older, and sometimes you realize that things that were always part of your life and which you always took for granted were actually not what everyone else experienced.
And in America, that happens with Christianity. And it happens with the idea of a loving God. We hear a phrase like “God so loved the world” and are tempted to think “well…yeah.”
Because we think we’re pretty good. Pretty loveable. Why wouldn’t God love us?
Why would God love you?
A perfect and holy God. He can have whatever he wants. He is totally self-sufficient, self-sustained. He doesn’t need any favors. He isn’t bored or lonely. Why would he love you?
Who’s your dream person to meet? That’s a frequent ice breaker question to ask. If you could meet any person and I’ll say it can’t be a relative. And it can’t be someone from the Bible. Who’s your dream person to meet? Maybe it’s a famous pastor, or an athlete, a movie star, a writer, a musician, a president. Whoever it is. Imagine you actually got to meet that person. That would be a pretty big deal. Right? Just to meet them. Because it’s someone famous, someone influential, someone people know, someone the world loves.
You wouldn’t expect them to know you. You certainly wouldn’t expect them to love you. And those are just people. We have such a habit of putting our celebrities up on a pedestal. Finite, fallible, fallen people. But then you compare that to the infinite and almighty God. A God who spoke the universe into being by the power of his word. The God who sustains all of creation. And he knows you.
Little ole you.
He’s righteous. Meanwhile, you don’t even live up to your own standards. You don’t even live as good a life as you know you could. And you certainly don’t live up to God’s standards.
We sin so much that become numb to it and often don’t realize it. The times where we act selfishly or manipulate someone. We have a justification for it. The times we lie. The bad things we think about others. The times we disregard God. The times where we know what we should do, and actively decide not to.
But that God knows you. And he loves you. God created humanity and he knew would sin. He made us anyway.
God made a covenant with Abraham and made a promise that he knew we would not deserve. He gave it anyway. God sent his son into the world. Jesus was perfect, without sin, came to spread light in a dark world, and God knew the world would kill him. He sent him anyway. God knew that you would be a sinner. But God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. He forgave you anyway.
Through Jesus and what he did on the cross. Nothing about this passage lifts up the goodness of man. This is entirely the goodness and love of God.
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22 “Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. 23 And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. 24 I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
Prayer
Almighty and eternal God,
You are the beginning and the end. You take our sins away as far as the east is from the west. A thousand years to you is like a day.
We once again come to you in a time of worship. And may we rejoice in the freedom that we have to praise you and to celebrate the good news of the gospel is that though we were dead in sin, you show your love in the gift of everlasting life through your Son who has taken on the weight of our sin.
Lord, it’s grieving this week to learn of the suffering and persecution which people are facing in many parts of the world: Christians suffering in Nigeria. Churches being cracked down on in China.
Lord, may we remember those people in our prayers. May they be light in spite of the terrible darkness which surrounds them. May your gospel go forward and overcome the best efforts of men to quell your truth.
Lord, we pray for our community and nation as well. There is one hope and that is the gospel. It’s not economics, or politics, or laws, or courts, where our ultimate hope lies but in Christ crucified. The Son of God, the Word made flesh, the firstborn of all creation who came into our world.
Lord, we pray for our virtual Vacation Bible School this week. We pray both for kids who do the activities and watch the videos, but we also pray for parents or babysitters or grandparents who might watch along and we pray that gospel and Biblical truths can impact them as well. Lord, we pray that you would use this.
Lord, we continue to pray for this church. We thank you for the people that we have. We thank you that in spite of this virus, you have preserved us. And we continue to ask for your protection. We also pray for your wisdom and guidance – not just with this situation – but with everything that we do as a church, O Lord.
We pray for our time in your world. May we be enlightened, encouraged, and edified. To the glory of God. In Jesus’ name, amen.
We’re continuing this morning in our summer series The Forensics of Faith.
Last week, we talked about justification. And just as a reminder, justification is right legal standing before God.
Today, we talk about the Doctrine of Regeneration. Regeneration refers to new spiritual life which God gives a person. The new regenerative life is what brings a person from spiritual death to spiritual life.
While justification is a matter of faith in what Christ has done.
Regeneration is a work of the Spirit.
And if you recall from earlier in our time in John’s Gospel, another term for regeneration is found in John 3. Born again.
In much of Christendom, it’s easy to overlook the Holy Spirit.
J.I. Packer, who was one of the great theologians of the last 50 years. Packer passed into glory at the age of 93 last week and so I’ve been going through his classic book Knowing God. One of the things that he says in that book that’s sadly all too true in much of modern Christianity is that we overlook the Holy Spirit.
We consider God and we focus on the relationship with Jesus. But as Packer says, the Holy Spirit is the Cinderella of Christian doctrines. Just off in the corner, forgotten about.
But the Holy Spirit is immensely important in the work of the salvation of souls and in the work of God’s church. In Ezekiel 36, the prophet points to a future time of washing and renewal.
So in our passage from Ezekiel, we’re going to look at three stages of Spiritual regeneration which the Lord brings.
First, the Spirit brings renewal
Ezekiel 36:25: I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.
Ezekiel is in the Old Testament and he’s looking forward to a future time of cleansing that God would bring by means of the Holy Spirit.
We live in that time now. When we are regenerated, it is a Spiritual cleansing which the Lord brings.
With the water, it’s easy to draw parallels to baptism. And in fact, the filling of the Holy Spirit is referred to as a baptism.
John 1:33. John the Baptist is speaking about Jesus and says: He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.
It is a privilege which all Christians share, as we see in 1 Corinthians 12:13: For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body
All believers in the gospel of Christ are filled with the Spirit. There’s no such thing as a Christian who does not have the Spirit.
Romans 8:9-10 is a great passage which communicates this idea: 9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
So we are baptized into the Holy Spirit.
Water baptism then is a symbol of the regeneration and cleansing which comes through the Holy Spirit.
Baptism does not bring salvation in itself. It’s an important and powerful outward symbol of an inward work which the Lord has done.
I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.
What a powerful picture of God’s grace and renewal.
In Shakespear’s great play, MacBeth, there’s a scene where Lady MacBeth is overcome with grief and guilt for her murderous greed and ambition and she desperately tries to wash a blood stain off of her hands.
There’s no actual blood stain. It’s in her mind.
But that’s the brilliance of the scene.
Because we all have a stain of sin upon our hearts and lives that we cannot wash away on our own. It is God who brings the cleansing and renewal.
In Psalm 51, David too is ravaged by guilt and grief over a terrible sin he’s committed. His affair with Bathsheeba and him sending her husband Uriah to the frontlines in battle where he was killed.
David pleads with God: Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!
And I return to John 3. A passage we preached from last fall.
After Jesus has said in John 3:3: Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God
He will then talk of the cleansing which accompanies regeneration.
John 3:5-6: 5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Water and Spirit.
To have faith is to have the Spirit and to have the Spirit is to be cleansed.
You have all sorts of rituals in the Old Testament. Washing is a powerful symbol of purity throughout various cultures and religions.
The washing that God gives through the Spirit is a cleansing of the human soul.
We see the language of this renewal again in Titus 3:
Titus 3:4-5: when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit
It is because of the mercy of God that we are made morally clean through the work of the Holy Spirit.
So through regeneration, God cleanses us.
Through being born again, God cleanses us.
When Jesus says, “you must be born again,” that’s another fantastic metaphor for regeneration.
Because it is a new birth. You’re a new person in Christ.
Also, the metaphors matters because we are regenerated as a one time event.
Jesus said that we must be born again. He did not say that we must be born again…and again and again.
It’s not that we are saved today, then we lose that, then we do better and we’re saved tomorrow. Many Christians believe that. It’s not a Biblical idea.
And this is why systematic theology is important in considering the connection between various Bible teachings and how they work together.
I’ll again call to mind justification which was our topic last week. Justification, simply put, is right legal standing before God. You cannot be justified without being regenerated. And to be regenerated is to be justified.
So when we’re regenerated and given the Holy Spirit, and we’re justified in Christ and forgiven our sins, it’s something that only needs to happen once. You can only be born again once and the good news is that true salvation cannot be lost.
We’re sealed with the Holy Spirit as a guarantor of our salvation.
Ephesians 1:13-14: In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.
Second, the Spirit gives us a new heart
Returning to our passage in Ezekiel: I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
Once again, what an incredible metaphor that the Bible uses. I assume it’s because of the Bible that the heart has become such a powerful symbol in our culture. Think about it for just a moment.
Someone who’s very kind if referred to as tender-hearted.
Someone who’s unkind and unfeeling is called cold-hearted. When we’re really sincere, we say something is from the bottom of our heart. When we see an impressive athletic display, we say they played their heart out. Really difficult situations are seen as heartbreaking.
And there are lots more little phrases like that. It’s a powerful symbol in our culture that we see as being the seat of our emotions. Because of regeneration, God gives us a new heart. Thousands of Americans wait on donor lists in need of heart transplants.
Heart disease is annually the leading cause of death in America with more than 1 in 5 deaths coming from heart disease.
Our hearts don’t last forever. And certainly, the heart is important in the Bible. Love the Lord your God with all your…What comes first? Heart.
Quoting again from David in Psalm 51:10, he asks God: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me
Jeremiah 17:9-10 says: 9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? 10 “I the Lord search the heart and test the mind,
We cannot make our hearts pure. But the good news is that through regeneration, God does a heart transplant in us.
He gives us a new heart and a new Spirit. So the Spirit brings renewal through cleansing, it is through the Spirit that we are given a new heart.
Third, the Spirit enables us to follow God’s law
The gospel changes lives.
When we’re born again, that doesn’t mean that we never struggle, it doesn’t mean we’ll never sin. But we are forgiven.
We aren’t perfect but we’re declared righteous because of the righteousness of Christ. But true recognition of sin, true faith in Christ, that changes a person. And it’s often especially noticed when an adult comes to faith.
If you have a child who’s grown up in the church and always had faith as part of their life, that’s an incredible blessing. And there certainly is a moment when faith becomes more real to a person, where their trust truly is in the gospel.
But when you have someone who’s an adult and gone years of living their own way, pursuing their own interests and desires, and Jesus comes into their life, there should be fruit of that.
Not all at once. It’s not saying a person suddenly never has any areas where they struggle. It’s a process. We’ll talk more about that next week. But when the light of the gospel truly takes root in a person’s heart, it causes a change.
It’s like you suddenly see the world through a different set of eyes. It’s like in the Wizard of Oz where the story goes from sepia to color. And the reason why there are changes and sudden changes is again due to the Holy Spirit and the process of conversion.
The Spirit enables us to follow God.
We certainly see that idea in our primary passage today. Consider Ezekiel 36:27: And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules
It is theSpirit of God working in us which enables us to follow the will of God.
When God works in a person’s life, and transforms a person to love him and love him and enables a person to follow his commands, that is miraculous.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. (Genesis 1:1-2)
That same Spirit who was in the beginning, part of creation, and who hovered over the waters dwells every single person who is a Christian and who believes in the Good News of Jesus Christ.
How amazing is that!
And it’s not because of us. It’s because our God is a good God.
Consider Ezekiel 36:22: Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came.
God’s works of grace are not because we were deserving. God ultimately makes grace available because of his character, because of his goodness, because of his faithfulness to the promises he had made, and for the sake of displaying his own divine glory and greatness.
Yes, God loves us.
But it’s not because we’re lovable but because God is loving.
And so through the gospel, through the work of Christ on the cross, we are forgiven and justified.
But what separates real faith, what separates the believers from the pretenders is regeneration.
In his systematic theology, Louis Berkhoff says:
Regeneration consists in the implanting of the principle of the new spiritual life in man, in a radical change of the governing disposition of the soul, which, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, gives birth to a life that moves in a Godward direction.
Numerous passages in the New Testament talk about the work that God does in the life of a believer.
1 Corinthians 2:14-16: The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 16 “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
Consider Ezekiel again: I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules
God works through us. We don’t regenerate ourselves. We don’t cause our own Spiritual growth. We participate in the work which God is doing in us but we don’t cause it. I hope that makes sense.
I realize that’s a somewhat complicated idea.
Think of the metaphor of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5. I know some of us are farmers, some of us garden.
You’re working to help provide the conditions for the crops or for the fruit to grow. You have a role in that. But you’re not the one who’s actually causing the growth.
Yes, it’s important to walk with God, to pursue God, to pray to God, to spend time in his word, to serve his people, to serve his church.
And God can and does use that for our Spiritual growth and enrichment and sanctification. But it is God who produces the fruit through the mediation of the Holy Spirit.
We don’t produce our own fruit.
We don’t make ourselves joyful. God does through the Spirit. We don’t make ourselves peaceful and at peace, we can’t just will that in our own lives. God does that through the Spirit.
But the Spirit transforms.
The Spirit causes Spiritual growth and because of that true faith results in a life that is changed by the gospel.
In Philippians 2:13, Paul puts says: it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
God works in us. New birth, being born again changes a person.
While it is through Christ that we are forgiven, justified, and given eternal life; we see that the Spirit is involved in bringing new life – specifically through cleansing us, through indwelling us, through causing a change in our heart, and by enabling us to live for God.
We have a good God who has made a way for sinful people to be forgiven. We must believe in his Son, Jesus Christ as Lord and savior.
Throughout the Gospel of John, Jesus refers to God as his Father.
In the Old Testament, there were appropriate forms in which to address God and Father was not one of them. The first Jewish person to refer to God as their “father” was Jesus. There are a few texts which refer to God as being the father of Israel. But that’s not how individuals addressed God.
Today, it’s so much a part of our vernacular. It’s so ingrained in our thinking of God as our heavenly father that it can be easy to lose sight of how radical a statement that Jesus is making to the Pharisees. Jesus refers to the God of creation as his father.
But Jesus was making a radical claim and a theologically loaded statement.
But what does it mean? Jesus is uncreated and eternal. He’s God and has always been God. John 1:1 tells us: in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. How does Jesus have a father?
Let’s consider several aspects of fatherhood and what that means.
D.A. Carson brings up that when we think of fatherhood, we tend to just think of it biologically. A man and a woman procreate and have an offspring, and the man is the father of the child. I’m influenced on this subject by Carson, Michael Horton, and Louis Berkhof among others.
I want to give five reasons for how Jesus is the Son of God.
Incarnationally
In one sense, the fatherhood of God and sonship of Christ relates to the incarnation where the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus is eternal and uncreated. But he was not eternally a man. In the union of Christ’s humanity and divinity, he was born.
Luke 1:31-32, where the angel Gabriel is telling Mary of the son whom she is to bear.
behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David
And Jesus was indeed born, as we learn in Luke 2:7: unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord
In his humanity, Jesus was born of a virgin, conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit through the will of God.In the beginning was the Word. Jesus always was, but he was not always human.
How can an eternal being be born and fully man is a divine mystery that we cannot fully understand. But he was born, and in that sense, he is the Son of God.
The word became flesh. That’s not saying Jesus simply took on a human body like he was in the driver’s seat of a vehicle, but that he became flesh. He became a man.
So he’s the son of God, incarnationally. But that’s not the only sense in which Jesus is the Son of God.
Ethically
You also have sonship in a moral sense in the Bible. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says:
love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High (Luke 16:35).
In that usage, he’s saying that, in one sense, it is acting like God which makes us like a son.
Follow me for a second.
Again borrowing from Carson. Prior to the industrial revolution, most people went into the same vocation as your parents. If your father was a farmer, you were a farmer. If your father was a fisherman, you were a fisherman. If you father was a blacksmith, you were a blacksmith.
You did what your father did. You were trained by your father. Some people still go into their parent’s line of work now, and that’s all well and good, but it’s not culturally assumed today that everyone will just follow in their father’s and mother’s footsteps.
But our heavenly father is perfect and righteous. We are not. But Jesus ties acting like our father in heaven to sonship. He does the same thing in the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 5:9: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called Sons of God.
And that goes both ways. In Acts 13:10, Paul calls a magician named Elymas a “son of the devil.” Now Jesus is the one who truly is perfect. In his ministry in the world, he truly lived as God because he is himself divine. Fully man, fully divine, and without sin and he is morally the Son of God.
Royalty
Jesus is the royal Son of God.
In the Old Testament, the kings of Israel in the Davidic dynasty are sometimes referred to as God’s son. The king didn’t refer to God as his father. But he is proclaimed to be God’s Son. We see that in Psalm 2. Psalm 2 talks of the kings of the earth and their opposition to God. But then talks of a king whom God has called his son.
Psalm 2:7: I will tell of the decree: The Lord said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you.
In the Old Testament, this is applied to the Davidic kings. We see this language in 2 Samuel 7 when the temple is dedicated.
2 Samuel 7:13-14. 13 He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14 I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son.
But the kings are still ultimately sinful in their leading of the people. In Jesus, he is the true royal son who came into the world and preached of the kingdom of God.
Israel
Israel collectively is referred to as God’s son.
Jeremiah 31:9, God calls them his firstborn: for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.
Reminder that Ephraim refers to Northern Israel. Exodus 4:22-23, Moses has been sent by God to command Pharoah to free the Israelites.
Moses is told: you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the LORD, Israel is my firstborn son, and I say to you, “Let my son go that he may serve me.
With Israel, they had the law and failed to keep it. Jesus kept it perfectly. Moses gave them the law on a mountain. Jesus gave the new law in the Sermon on the Mount.
They were in the wilderness and sinned. Jesus was tempted in the wilderness and did not sin.
The Book of Hosea refers to Israel when it says “out of Egypt, I called my son.” That same verse will be applied to Christ in the Gospel of Matthew.
He is the greater Israel.
Image of God
Jesus is the Son of God in the sense that he is the image of God. The image of God goes back to creation.
Genesis 1:26: Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.
Goes on to say in verse 27: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
It’s not until the New Testament that Adam is referred to as a son of God. We see that in the genealogy of Christ in Luke 3:38. Man is created in the image of God. But humanity is also sinful and fallen.
Romans 5:10 says: if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.
We don’t have time to quote the whole passage, but Paul is building an argument.
In verse 12, he says: just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned
Then he says in verse 17: because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.
So what Paul is saying is that sin entered the world through Adam and that Jesus is a new Adam who is without sin and comes bringing grace. Jesus is the greater Adam and the truest example of the image of God.
Colossians 1:15 says: He is the image of the invisible God
Hebrew 1:2-3 says: in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. 3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature
In that sense, Jesus is the true son. I’m giving all of these examples, because Jesus as the Son of God means something. It’s not a haphazardly chosen title.
It points us to the gospel
The sonship of Christ and the fatherhood of God points us to the gospel.
We are God’s children, created in his image who had forsaken God through our sin.
Jesus is the perfect Son of God who was forsaken so we could be forgiven for our sins.
As radical as it is that Jesus addressed God as his father, he invited us to do the same when he taught the disciples how to pray in the Sermon on the Mount.
your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. (Matthew 6:9)
The Apostle Paul says in the opening salutations of all of his letters: grace and peace to you from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The fatherhood of God is bestowed upon the people of God because Jesus is the true Son of God.
Jesus is the son of God who allows us to be adopted as God’s children and to approach God as our own father.
John 1:12 says: to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God
The adoption language is used by Paul at the beginning of his letter to the Ephesians.
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ. (Ephesians 1:3-5)
That’s the Good News of the Gospel. The Son of God allows us to call God our father.
