The sonship of Christ

“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.”

Chapter Four

ISRAEL, MY SON

Already, the story has a distinct shape and we are beginning to see where it’s going. With the first prophetic promise of Genesis 3:15 before us, the stage is set for the grand narrative arc of Scripture to unfold. What God does next is not surprising at all, given the key features of the story’s first episode. He proceeds, of course, to take the steps necessary for the fulfillment of the promise.

And how does He do this?

Well, exactly as we would expect now that we are tuned into the story: by establishing a genealogical line through which the promised child, the new Son of God, may be born to the world.

So God calls Abraham and his wife Sarah out of Ur, their Babylonian homeland, and promises to establish a great nation within their genetic line, through which all the nations of the earth will be blessed (Genesis 12). God calls the promise His “covenant” (Genesis 15), and it is clearly an expanded version of the promise given in Genesis 3. Covenant emerges to view as the defining characteristic of the divine operation as the progeny plan moves forward, just as God vowed it would. So we are not at all surprised when Abraham and Sarah eventually give birth to Isaac and he is identified in Scripture as the “son” of “promise” (Genesis 21:1-7; Galatians 4:23).

It is crucial to notice that the story now begins to center on a succession of sons. At this point, the concept of primogeniture emerges in the narrative—the birthright of the “firstborn” son (Genesis 27:19, 32; 43:33; 48:14-18). The firstborn son is the channel through which the covenant promise is to be passed on from generation to generation. But—and this is hugely significant—in a narrative twist that emphasizes the spiritual nature of the plan, we soon see

that the genetic firstborn isn’t always the covenant firstborn.

Isaac is the second born son of Abraham, after Ishmael, but Isaac is the firstborn son of promise.

Isaac then marries Rebekah and the promise passes to their son, Jacob, who is the second born son, after Esau, and yet he occupies the covenant position of the firstborn son.

The underlying goal God is pursuing is the transmission of the covenant promise. God is not fixated on exact birth order, but rather on moving the covenant promise forward. What matters is that a line is established through which the new “Son of God” may enter the human situation and conquer the serpent from the inside, from the strategic position of human nature, thus reversing Adam’s fall in the course of the victory.

The storyline unfolds toward its grand end goal, in brief, like this:

Abraham and Sarah have a firstborn covenant son they name Isaac.

Isaac and Rebekah have a firstborn covenant son they name Jacob.

Jacob’s wives bring forth twelve sons. Jacob’s name is changed to Israel. Then, oddly—or not so oddly within the overarching narrative—Jacob’s twelve sons and all their children become known corporately by the covenant name of their father, Israel. God now has a corporate people, a nation. Israel then goes into Egypt and becomes an enslaved people. God eventually sends Moses to deliver Israel from Egyptian bondage, and—pay attention now—God instructs him to tell Pharaoh something rather specific:

Israel is My son, My firstborn. So I say to you, let My son go that he may serve Me. Exodus 4:22-23

Israel, the nation, is now designated as God’s “firstborn son,” singular. At this point in the story, the progeny language initiated in Genesis 3:15 takes on an expanded application of corporate Sonship with regards to Israel as a nation. In what sense is Israel God’s firstborn son? The answer is evident when we recall the promise to Abraham:

In you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Genesis 12:3

Israel is God’s firstborn nation-son with the intent that, through the witness of Israel, many other nations will become nation-sons of God, as well. Again, we see that the position or role of the “firstborn son” has nothing to do with birth order. It has to do with the conveyance of the covenant to all the nations of the earth. Israel is the spiritual channel through which God intends to incorporate all nations into the Sonship status that was lost by Adam. Isaac, Jacob, and then Israel, were all “firstborn” in a positional sense or in a functional sense, not in a chronological sense.

It is at this point in the biblical narrative—when Israel is designated as God’s firstborn son—that God assumes the role of “Father” in relation to Israel. Rebuking Israel for their unfaithfulness to God, Moses said,

Is He not your Father, who bought you?

Has He not made you and established you? . . .

They provoked Him to jealousy with foreign gods;

With abominations they provoked Him to anger.

They sacrificed to demons, not to God,

To gods they did not know,

To new gods, new arrivals,

That your fathers did not fear.

Of the Rock who begot you, you are unmindful,

And have forgotten the God who fathered you. Deuteronomy 32:6, 16-18

Moses tells Israel:

God is “your Father.”

God “begot you.”

God “fathered you.”

Now, with Israel taking on the role of God’s only begotten son among the nations, God takes on the role of Father to Israel. For the first time in the biblical narrative, God now employs the language of birthing. He “begot” Israel as His chosen people among the nations. Israel, as God’s only begotten son among the nations, is chastised because he has “forgotten the God who fathered” him, a fathering and birthing that occurred when God delivered Israel from Egyptian bondage. Israel was turning to the “gods” of the other nations and thus denying the God who fathered him. As God would later say through Jeremiah, “I am a Father to Israel, and Ephraim is My firstborn” (Jeremiah 31:9). The other nations are under the authority of their demon gods (Deuteronomy 32:17), but Israel is God’s chosen people, called out from among the nations to be God’s only begotten son, through whom all the other nations will be blessed.

As with the Sonship role, the fatherhood of God is grounded in the Old Testament narrative and is tightly connected with Israel’s calling as the people through which the Messiah will enter the world. If we want to understand what the New Testament means when it calls God “Father,” we must allow the story itself to tell us what it means. When we do that—when we think in theological obedience to the narrative of the Bible—it becomes evident that there is a sense in which God is our Father and the Father of Jesus, and there is a sense in which God cannot ultimately be confined to fatherhood, which we will explore later in this study.

A consistent picture is building as we simply follow the biblical narrative where it leads. We’re on the edge of our seats at this point as the implications of Sonship begin to form in our minds. By letting the story itself guide us, we are about to understand the Bible on a whole new level. It only gets more astounding from here, so watch, ever so carefully, what happens next.

“There’s Adam, and there’s Jesus. And these two figures constitute the premise of the entire biblical story.”

Chapter Five

DAVID, MY SON

Israel, God’s “firstborn son,” now liberated from bondage, grows as a nation, generation after generation, until a boy named David is born.

You may have heard David’s story as an isolated inspirational tale with cute lessons about conquering personal “giants” that stand against your professional success (Goliath) with your five personality strengths (your five smooth stones), but it’s more than that. David’s story is, quite profoundly, the seamless continuation of the Bible’s big covenant narrative.

David is, in fact, the next son of God in Scripture’s Sonship saga.

He becomes the chosen king of Israel and, in him, Israel’s corporate identity is now represented. The Sonship identity now takes on a more detailed prophetic significance. The birth order ideal is upset, yet again, because David is not the firstborn son of his father, Jesse, but rather the last-born (1 Samuel 16:10-11).

Again, it is the historical continuance of the covenant that matters, not chronological birth order. With David God reaffirms the covenant promise He made to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Israel, and David then becomes an expanded prototype of the coming Messiah.

Watch this.

In order to convey the idea of succession, Scripture again invokes the language of “son.” In Psalm 2:1-7, David sings of himself being “begotten” as God’s “son,” while simultaneously singing prophetically of the coming Messiah, in whom all God has promised to the world through Israel will be fulfilled:

Why do the nations rage,

and the people plot a vain thing?

The kings of the earth set themselves,

and the rulers take counsel together,

against the Lord and against His Anointed (Messiah in Hebrew) . . .

Yet I have set My King on My holy hill of Zion.

I will declare the decree: the Lord has said to Me,

“You are My Son, today I have begotten You.”

Who is David singing about?

Well, he is singing about himself in the immediate, local historical sense. David is the anointed king of Israel. But he is also singing prophetically about the ultimate, universal anointed king of Israel, namely Jesus Christ. We know this to be the case because the New Testament makes this prophetic connection (Acts 2:25-36; 4:25-28; 13:33; Hebrews 1:5).

In Psalm 89:19-29, David portrays himself as God’s “firstborn” son through whom His “covenant shall stand firm,” while again foretelling the coming of the Messiah:

Then You spoke in a vision to Your holy one,

And said: “I have given help to one who is mighty;

I have exalted one chosen from the people.

“I have found My servant David;

With My holy oil I have anointed him,

With whom My hand shall be established;

Also My arm shall strengthen him.

“The enemy shall not outwit him,

Nor the son of wickedness afflict him.

“I will beat down his foes before his face,

And plague those who hate him.

“But My faithfulness and My mercy shall be with him,

And in My name his horn shall be exalted.

“Also I will set his hand over the sea,

And his right hand over the rivers.

“He shall cry to Me, ‘You are my Father,

My God, and the rock of my salvation.’

“Also I will make him My firstborn,

The highest of the kings of the earth.

“My mercy I will keep for him forever,

And My covenant shall stand firm with him.

“His seed also I will make to endure forever,

And his throne as the days of heaven.”

Again, we naturally ask, of whom is David singing?

Who is the holy one?

Who is the exalted one chosen from the people?

Who is the one who cries out, “You are my Father,” to whom God responds, “I will make him My firstborn”?

Who is the highest king of the earth, in whom God’s covenant will be established forever?

David, of course, and yet more than David!

At this point in our journey, knowing what we know, simply reading these two Psalms of David should flip a light on in our minds. These Old Testament passages are vital for grasping the story as it continues into the New Testament, specifically regarding what the New Testament means when it calls Jesus God’s “firstborn son” and God’s “only begotten son.” These psalms of David are the origin of the terminology, along with the earlier passages we’ve noted regarding Israel’s Sonship. In fact, as we will discover, the New Testament specifically quotes these two Psalms to inform us of the covenant identity of the Messiah.

Therefore—and this is crucial—it is here in the Old Testament narrative that we need to look to interpret the terminology of Sonship when we encounter it in the New Testament.

And we will do just that, shortly.

For now, we simply need to notice, in the interest of our future enlightenment, that David portrays himself, as well as the coming Messiah, as “begotten” by God and as God’s “firstborn son,” not in a literal chronological sense, but in a positional, narrative sense. David is God’s covenant son in a succession of sons, all leading up to the messianic Son who will cry out to God, with a newly realized Sonship fidelity, “You are my Father.” And He is the One who will “endure forever.”

The point is simple, but super important: King David does not step onto the biblical stage in a narrative vacuum. He emerges in the middle of an unfolding saga. Adam, the son of God, forfeited his Sonship position. God promised to get it back by giving the human race a new Genesis with a new Son of God who will succeed where Adam failed. The coming offspring of the woman will faithfully occupy His vocation as the eternal progenitor of God’s image to all future generations.

The internal logic of the biblical narrative is consistent. God is working to restore humanity from the inside, from within our own genetic realm, through a human Son of God who will rectify the fall of Adam. David is one more step in the Sonship succession.

So what’s next?

You guessed it—another son of God.

“The God who made humanity intends to save humanity from the inside, from within our very own genetic realm, from the strategic position of a Son of God who will be born within the Adamic lineage.”

Chapter six

SOLOMON, MY SON

As the story continues to unfold, David has a son, to whom he gives the name Solomon. True to the trajectory of the plan, God transfers to Solomon the unique

position of Sonship:

He shall build a house for My name, and he shall be My son, and I will be his Father; and I will establish the throne of his kingdom over Israel forever. 1 Chronicles 22:10

Note the language carefully, because it re-emerges in the New Testament: “He shall be My son, and I will be his Father.” Not, He is my son, and I am his Father. These are narrative roles that are being occupied for a covenant purpose. Solomon is conscripted into the Sonship position for the continuation of the covenant plan.

Solomon is significant in the lineage because his story, unlike that of his father, David, unfolds without war. David, the son of God, expresses a desire to build a temple for the worship of God, but He explains to him that he cannot be the one to build God’s temple (2 Samuel 7).

Why?

Well, because David is a man of war with blood on his hands (1 Chronicles 17, 22, 28). Within the biblical narrative, God’s character is ultimately incompatible with war (Isaiah 2:1-4), so a man of peace must build God’s temple. That man is Solomon, whose name means peace—peace from war, that is (1 Chronicles 22:9). In this way, as the covenant promise is transferred from David to Solomon, God is projecting forward to the grander purpose He will eventually achieve through Christ. In a penultimate sense, Solomon is God’s peaceful son, pointing forward to Jesus, the ultimate Prince of Peace. He is the One in whom God will “establish the throne of His kingdom over Israel forever,” without war.

So with Solomon, we are one step closer, or one “son of God” closer, to the promised Messiah. The story has a very distinct, obvious shape.

Adam, the son of God, fails in his Sonship role.

God promises to initiate a lineage through which a new Son of God will come to rectify Adam’s fall.

God establishes a people through whom the promise will be fulfilled, and a succession unfolds in the following manner:

Abraham, the son of God, gives way to . . .

Isaac, the son of God, who gives way to . . .

Jacob, the son of God, who gives way to . . .

Israel, the corporate son of God, who gives way to . . .

David, the son of God, who gives way to . . .

Solomon, the son of God.

Clarity is building. Scripture is a seamless narrative. The story is initiated with the creation of the first man and the first woman, Adam and Eve, and then makes its way forward through the call of Abraham, the establishment of Israel, the anointing of David as Israel’s king, then to Solomon, the king of peace, all moving to one grand end:

 the birth of the promised offspring,

 an Adamic replacement who will redeem the Fall,

 a human being who will be “the son of God” with covenantal faithfulness and thus reestablish humanity in right relation to God.

“Human history is fundamentally characterized by covenant breaking. We are a race defined by relational dysfunction and disintegration, a race of victims and victimizers, a race of non-lovers.”

Chapter Seven

COVENANT IDENTITY

Before we cross the bridge from the Old Testament into the New—from shadowy messianic figures to the Messiah Himself—let’s pause to achieve a clear grasp of what

the Bible means by the idea of “covenant,” because this is the theological engine that drives the biblical story forward, as we’ve already noticed.

For its sheer conceptual worth, “covenant” is one of the most meaningful words in Scripture. It is the idea that most fully defines who God is and how God operates. God is a God of covenant, actuated by covenant, only and always living within the dynamic relational flow of covenant.

So what does this heavily freighted word mean?

Speaking through the prophet Hosea, God reveals His heart for Israel and all of humanity in covenant terms:

For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. But like Adam they transgressed the covenant; there they dealt faithlessly with Me. Hosea 6:6-7, ESV

First, notice that the “covenant” entails “steadfast love.” Notice also that the Fall of Adam and, by extension, the fallen state of humanity as a whole, is defined with

the words, “they transgressed the covenant.” Clearly, then, “covenant” encompasses the entire biblical narrative, reaching back to God’s original purpose for humanity, and reaching forward to God’s ultimate “desire” for the world.

Speaking through the prophet Isaiah, God expressed the essence of His covenant like this:

“Though the mountains be shaken

and the hills be removed,

yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken,

nor my covenant of peace be removed,”

says the Lord, who has compassion on you. Isaiah 54:10, NIV

Give ear and come to me;

listen, that you may live.

I will make an everlasting covenant with you,

my faithful love promised to David. Isaiah 55:3, NIV

Wow, so beautiful, and so rich with relational significance!

Here, again, we see that covenant is a relational dynamic that involves:

 steadfast love

 unfailing love

 faithful love

Or we could say it like this: covenant involves living with unbreakable relational integrity. To say that God is a God of covenant, is to say that God is relationally faithful to all others above and before Himself, and at any and all cost to Himself. Covenant is, therefore, a biblical word that communicates God’s core identity, His essential character. To the question, Who is God?, the Bible answers, God is covenantally faithful!

But covenant does not merely reveal who God is, it also reveals what it really means to be human. In the Hosea 6 passage, the God of covenant desires only one thing from human beings: steadfast love or covenantal faithfulness. By logical contrast, covenant breaking defines what it looks like when humans are out of sync with their true identity. Watch how Isaiah articulates the idea:

The earth is also defiled under its inhabitants,

Because they have transgressed the laws,

Changed the ordinance,

Broken the everlasting covenant.

Therefore the curse has devoured the earth,

And those who dwell in it are desolate. Isaiah 24:5-6

Human history is fundamentally characterized by covenant breaking. We are a race defined by relational dysfunction and disintegration, a race of victims and victimizers, a race of non-lovers.

Covenant is a relational word. To live covenantally is to live for all others in faithful love. Covenant breaking occurs when individuals live for self to the hurt of others. According to Isaiah, our covenant breaking has adversely impacted the earth itself. The very ecosystem has been “defiled” and “devoured” by our violation of the earth’s covenant system. In short, everything wrong with the world is due to broken covenant, which is to say, everything wrong with the world is due to broken relationships, or violated love. All God wants for the world is for covenant faithfulness to be restored as our fundamental mode of existing. God only desires that each one would care for the wellbeing of all the other ones.

Covenant, in a nutshell, is omni-directional love: love between God and humans, love between humans and humans, and love between humans and the creation over which they have charge.

But obviously, that’s not what’s going on in the world.

So God became human in order to live out the relational terms of the covenant for us, toward us, in us, and as us.

Through Isaiah, God said to the coming Messiah, “I, the Lord, have called You in righteousness, and will hold Your hand; I will keep You and give You as a covenant to the people, as a light to the Gentiles” (Isaiah 42:6). Then Daniel came along and foretold that the coming Messiah would “confirm the covenant” and be named “the Prince of the covenant” (Daniel 9:27; 11:22, KJV). Finally, Malachi closed the Old Testament by calling the coming Messiah, “the Messenger of the covenant” (Malachi 3:1).