The Sonship of Christ

Exploring the Covenant Identity of God and Man

Copyright © 2018 by Ty Gibson

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Back cover photograph by Shawn Brace

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Unless otherwise noted all Scriptures are from The Holy Bible,

New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.

NIV indicates The Holy Bible: New International Version.

Copyright © 1978 by The New York International Bible Society.

Phi indicates Phillips New Testament in Modern English.

Copyright © by Macmillan Publishing Company.

KJV indicates King James Version.

All italics and words in parenthesis within quotations are supplied.

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ISBN: 978-84-7208-861-0

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For Sue

Every beautiful thing I believe is informed by you

And for Jason, My Only Begotten Son

Being your father is always fun and sometimes dangerous

Endorsements

This is a fresh, new approach to the Sonship of Christ. Much original thinking, yet perfectly true to Scripture. The title is accurate, but understated. The Sonship of Christ is the central organizing point that lays the foundation for the book, but the implications of Christ’s Sonship amount to a comprehensive treatment suitable for a college or Seminary textbook. Yet despite the depth and breadth of the subject, the book is written in a relaxed, easy style that is eminently readable.

Jerry Moon, Emeritus Professor of Church History, Andrews University

Wow! It’s like those optical illusions that are impossible to see until you see it, and then it’s impossible not to see. It just seems so obvious that it is astounding that it has not been outlined before.

Paul Geelan, Vice President for Administration,

North New South Wales Conference, Australia

The book is brilliant. Simply brilliant. Ty Gibson offers an insightful and illuminating treatment of The Sonship of Christ, carefully unfolding Scripture’s teachings with consistent attention to the overarching, covenantal, story of the Bible. In so doing, Gibson paints a gripping and stirring picture of Christ’s Sonship and why it matters, which corrects a great many misunderstandings and brings to the surface many gems that are often overlooked.

John Peckham, Professor of Theology and Christian Philosophy, Andrews University

Amazing! In typical Ty Gibson style, The Sonship of Christ paints a big, beautiful picture of God. This book is brilliant!

Brendan Pratt, Ministerial Association Secretary,

Australian Union Conference, Australia

This book is absolutely phenomenal.

It is a work of first-rate theology.

My soul is stirred.

Pastor Nathan Renner

Amazing! This makes SO much sense. Not only does it bring clarity to this theological issue, it makes the gospel that much more beautiful!

Pastor Manny Arteaga

The Sonship of Christ is very, very good

and needs to be published around the world.

Woodrow Whidden, Retired Professor of Theology,

Andrews University

Breathtaking! Groundbreaking! Beautiful!

Every person on planet earth must read this.

Pastor James Rafferty

AMAZING! Seriously, this is one of the most amazing books I have ever read period. Everyone who believes in Jesus needs to read this book. It is so good, I don’t even want to put words to it for fear of cheapening what’s currently happening in my heart. This thing right here is “wow.” Every single chapter is rich. The entire narrative of Scripture comes to life. The Trinity debate is placed on entirely new ground. In fact, I feel this book changes the debate altogether. Trinitarian vs anti-trinitarian debates always take place on the metaphysical battlefield and consequently end up nowhere. You have changed the location of the battlefield and consequently changed the battle. It is nothing short of brilliant. This book is one virtuoso performance of theological and meta-narrative bliss.

Pastor Marcos Torres

In the debate about the Trinity, we need The Sonship of Christ. Instead of compiling proof-texts, this book traces the significance of the Son through the books of the Bible, illuminating the rich troves of meaning in texts we often skim over. Reading it will draw you past the noisy debates and will deepen your appreciation of the gospel. I highly recommend this book as a work of biblical theology.

Pastor Kessia Reyne

Finally! We have a book on the nature of God that appeals to the head AND THE HEART! Reading this work educated me theologically while simultaneously inspiring me personally. If you want a deeper revelation on the beauty of the character of God, READ THIS BOOK NOW!

Pastor Myron Edmonds

In his book The Sonship of Christ Ty Gibson takes a fresh, yet biblically sound approach, of deriving a fundamental understanding of the Godhead as the narratives of Scripture reveal it; specifically the role of Jesus as humanity’s Second Adam and Son of God. The result is one of the most beautiful and coherent presentations of the character, ministry and love of the Godhead that I have read in a long time. Please read this book! It will open your heart to a deeper appreciation of our God—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Pastor Jonathan Walter

This book is a fine example of how deeply biblical and theological reflection may help answer important questions regarding the person and identity of Jesus Christ. Written in a lively and accessible style, Gibson makes a clear case for Christ’s full, co-equal, and co-eternal deity, by examining biblical evidence on the meaning and theology of Christ’s sonship. Gibson’s book comes at a time when interest in the doctrine of Christ is rising. His book is an important contribution and should receive the widest exposure possible.

Darius Jankiewicz, Chair, Department of Theology & Christian Philosophy, Andrews University

Once I began reading, I couldn’t put The Sonship of Christ down. WOW! This book is truly stunning. Ty has unearthed an undeniable truth regarding the eternal nature of Christ and His covenant-son relationship with the Father. If you have ever asked how Jesus could possess underived life and still be called God’s “Son,” you will find the crystal-clear answer from Scripture in this amazing book. Without doubt, the exposure of this truth will have a profound impact on Christendom.

Shelley J. Quinn, Author, Speaker, and 3ABN Program Development Manager

I simply cannot contain my enthusiasm for the message of this book. Ty’s approach to the ancient question of the simultaneous Divinity and Sonship of Jesus Christ is refreshing, biblical, and, to me, entirely persuasive. I pray this book gets the widespread attention and affirmation it deserves. The Sonship of Christ is, above all, a joyous exploration and celebration of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. Thank you, Ty!”

Pastor David Asscherick

“Daughters of Eve, after all you’ve been through, I want you to know you were in my thoughts every sentence along the way.”
preface
KIDS KNOW STUFF

This book was written purely by accident.

No kidding.

It seems to have written itself. Yes, I was involved in the process, painfully so at times. But my next book was going to be about something else. In midstream, I got diverted, then obsessed, then overwhelmed by an unexpected vision of God’s beauty, and I had to follow the light wherever it might lead. There were so many people asking the same basic question—people in Germany and Australia, Spain and California, and at the Village Market in Collegedale, Tennessee—that I started composing notes and answering emails, until, next thing I knew, this book popped out of my computer.

So here it is.

The Sonship of Christ

Exploring the Covenant Identity of God and Man

Admittedly, it’s not a super catchy title, but it is very specific to the content of the book. So I’m hoping the title, and the subtitle, will become extremely meaningful to you before our journey’s end. As I chased the thread woven through the pages ahead, before I knew it more than 100,000 words had been written. “Yikes! Stop already,” I said to myself. So I stopped, and I edited. I didn’t want to bury or bore you, so I cut the thing down to 43,459 words. That’s manageable. In fact, at an average reading speed of 200 words per minute, you can get through this little volume in about three and a half hours. No sweat. That’s a lazy Sunday afternoon, and I am confident it will be well worth your time.

Another thing about the title: yes, I am aware, extremely so, that “Sonship” is a boy word.

Daughters of Eve, after all you’ve been through, I want you to know you were in my thoughts every sentence along the way. Please keep in mind throughout this exploration that everything of which we speak regarding sons is equally applicable to daughters. Throughout the biblical narrative, Sonship is a covenant mechanism for tracing the lineage of Christ. Point is, my dear sisters, you are not excluded from any of the glorious implications of the biblical Sonship theme any more than men are excluded from the biblical portrayals of God’s church as a woman and ultimately as a bride. Men along with women are represented by the bride, and women as well as men are represented by Sonship.

I’m so excited about The Sonship of Christ that I can’t wait for you to read it. Please email me at hello@thesonshipofchrist.com and let me know what you think. I am praying, just so you know, that the

ideas you are about to encounter will blow your mind and take you to a whole new level of biblical comprehension.

Finally, since books are expected to have introductions, here’s mine:

Children tend to know more than adults—not more in mass, but more in meaning. As we grow older and “smarter” we tend to forget profound things nobody ever had to tell us. So this book is a wink and a nod to a little boy who intuitively sensed the essential make up of reality when he asked the rather brilliant question, “If we was created, well, that must mean God was alone before we was here, so how could God be nice way back then if there weren’t nobody to be nice to? Maybe God weren’t never alone.”

Precisely, little guy.

Contents

endorsements 7

preface: kids know stuff 12

contents 17

TWO IDENTITIES 18

READING SCRIPTURE ON ITS OWN TERMS 24

A PROPHECY OF PROGENY 30

ISRAEL, MY SON 38

DAVID, MY SON 46

SOLOMON, MY SON 54

COVENANT IDENTITY 60

THE GRAND REENACTMENT 68

MATTHEW’S GOSPEL—SON OF ABRAHAM 76

LUKE’S GOSPEL—SON OF ADAM 88

JOHN’S GOSPEL—ONLY BEGOTTEN SON 96

ROMANS—GOD’S FIRSTBORN SON 112

HEBREWS—OUR ETERNAL BROTHER 128

SON OF MAN 138

THE LAST ADAM 158

ETERNAL COVENANT PLEDGE 180

THE TRANSCENDENCE OF GOD 192

THE GENIUS OF THREE 202

CUTTING DEEP INTO GOD 218

THE UNFORCER 234

A COVENANT STORY 260

“The Son of God cannot be God in the same eternal sense that the Father is God, we reason, or else He would not be called the Son.”
Chapter One
TWO IDENTITIES

What does the Bible mean when it calls Jesus “the Son of God”?

Oh, no! Is this gonna be one those boring, hairsplitting theological exercises?

Actually, no.

In fact, if you will take this little journey with me to its end, I assure you the rewards will be rich. You may even find yourself deeply moved by the beauty of God’s character and awestruck by the utter genius of the biblical narrative. Even if you find the above question boring at first glance, I promise you our time together will not be boring in the least.

First of all, you should be aware that this question has challenged Bible students for nearly two thousand years. It’s not an easy nut to crack. Scholars have been endlessly intrigued and baffled by the topic. And it’s easy to see why. On the rather compelling premise that Scripture calls Christ “the Son of God,” various groups have arisen throughout church history insisting that He could not, while bearing a title like that, preexist without a point of beginning, nor could He eternally coexist alongside the God whose “Son” He is. Logic, they insist, precludes a

son from chronologically coexisting concurrent with a father.

You can hardly blame them.

Our normal understanding of “son” includes the idea of birth, and Jesus is said in Scripture to be “begotten” or birthed. Naturally, then, to be a “son” suggests a point

of origin and a point of beginning. Since Jesus is called God’s “Son,” doesn’t it follow that He must have been generated from God and, therefore, had a starting point

as a distinct person from the Father?

Certainly, there is logic to the perspective.

So I want to say to those who take this view, you will find no disrespectful or dismissive attitude from me. I affirm you for being studious and for using your brain. As Galileo once said, “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.” You have simply attempted to be logical and consistent, and I commend you for that.

But on the premise of your honesty and logic, I am asking that you take a serious look at what we will explore on the topic, because I think you will find the perspective in this book to be profoundly convincing. I will make the bold claim, in fact, that what we are about to discover is so obviously the truth regarding the Sonship of Christ, that once you see it, you won’t be able to unsee it. I realize this is a lot for this little book to live up to, but please allow me to give it my best shot by taking the journey with me to the last page. And whatever you do, do not jump ahead. Take the material in its order, because, in our treatment of the topic, one piece of the picture is vital to the next,

and the next, and so on, to the end.

No matter who you are or what position you have taken on the Sonship of Christ, you have no doubt felt the tension and complexity involved in trying to make sense out of two apparently contradictory claims in Scripture.

On the one hand, the Bible calls Jesus God’s “only begotten Son” (John 3:16) and describes Him as occupying a subordinate position under the Father (John 14:28;

1 Corinthians 15:27-28).

On the other hand, Scripture also states that Jesus is “in very nature God,” insisting that He shares “equality with God” (Philippians 2:5-6) and that He is the One who “made” all things that are “made,” placing Him, by contrast, in the unmade category (John 1:1-3). He is even called “the everlasting Father” (Isaiah 9:6, KJV), the eternal “I AM” (Exodus 3:14; John 8:58), and “the Almighty” (Revelation 1:8).

The tension between the two identities is immediately apparent.

The solution needs to be consistent with both of these claims . . .

and worthy of our wonder.

“Most Christians have been taught to handle Scripture as a doctrinal textbook, with the assumption that it basically operates like an encyclopedia from which to compose a collection of theological propositions.”
Chapter Two
READING SCRIPTURE ON ITS OWN TERMS

I’m going to suggest that the reason we struggle to make sense of the Sonship of Christ is due to a selective and narrow reading of Scripture that ignores the overall storyline of the book. Not that anyone intends to read the Bible selectively or with a narrow focus. It’s just that most Christians have been taught to handle Scripture as a doctrinal textbook, with the assumption that it basically operates like an encyclopedia from which to compose a collection of theological propositions. So we don’t really read the Bible, per se, but rather we tend to comb its pages searching for verses, sentences, even partial sentences and isolated words, and we then assemble the disjointed mass of “verses” into topical categories from which we compose “beliefs.”

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.

“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.”
Chapter Three
A PROPHECY OF PROGENY

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.

The promise of deliverance is set forth in the language of progeny or offspring. Two groups of people will be at odds down through history. A spiritual lineage will issue forth from Satan, waging war against God and His people, while a spiritual lineage will issue forth from the woman, through which a special “offspring” will one day be born to conquer Satan and reverse the effects of the Fall. Adam, “the son of God,” failed in the face of temptation, in his encounter with Satan. But a new Son will be born to the fallen race, and He will crush the serpent rather than yield to him. A second “Adam,” a new “Son of God,” will take the stage of human history and succeed where the first Adam failed.

We see, then, that from the outset of the story God is addressing the sin problem in terms of family succession, promising the eventual birth of a child. 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 Adam’s lineage in order to redeem Adam’s fall.

Once we have this initial piece of the biblical storyline clearly established in our minds, everything else along the way begins to make sense with profound clarity.

This is about to get really good. I’ll be waiting for you in the next chapter.

“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).

The Messiah is:

 God’s covenant to the people in personified form

 God’s steadfast love moving in all relational directions with perfect integrity

 God’s covenantal faithfulness to the human race “confirmed”

In brief, Scripture is the story of God living in covenantal love toward us with the aim of restoring covenantal love in us. The plan of salvation is the historical process through which God keeps on loving us at any and all cost to Himself, reproducing the image of God in humanity by means of self-sacrifice (John 12:23-32). Jesus envisioned the final form of redeemed humanity in precisely these terms. He prayed “that the love with which You (Father) loved Me (the Son) may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:26). God’s desire is that human beings would be reincorporated into the very love that flows freely between the Father and His only faithful covenant Son, Jesus Christ.

There is a core purpose embedded within the biblical narrative, and it is this:

God is seeking to complete the relational loop of covenantal faithfulness between Himself and the human race, to restore relational integrity within humanity so that the love flowing from Him to us might finally flow back to Him from us and outward to one another. Jesus is the Son of God through whom this purpose is created and procreated, actualized and then transmitted, achieved and then disseminated, produced and then reproduced.

If we understand this single idea, we understand the basic internal logic of the entire Bible. Every promise and prophecy, every story and song, every poem and parable of the book serves this grand narrative arc.

With that, we are now ready to step into the New Testament. Let’s start with the big picture by taking in a brief sweeping glance, and then we will circle back around for more detailed considerations.

“Covenant, in a nutshell, is omnidirectional love: love between God and humans, love between humans and humans, and love between humans and the creation over which they have charge.”
Chapter Eight
THE GRAND REENACTMENT

A covenant was made, to which God was faithful and Israel was not. As the Son of God, the life of Jesus was a complete and faithful reenactment of Israel’s history. It would not be an exaggeration to say that this is the whole point of the Bible.

Christ passed over the same experiential ground Israel traversed, but He was true to the covenant in place of Israel’s failure. The parallels between the two stories are deliberate and striking, although most of us have never been taught to read Scripture in a manner that would allow us to notice the intentional narrative linkage between the Old Testament and the New. Some branches of Christianity have gone so far as to completely negate the Old Testament and discourage people from reading it. It is even popular to print the New Testament alone, placing in millions of people’s hands only half of the book, thus making it virtually impossible for the reader to gain an accurate view of who Jesus was and why He came to our world.

Let’s take a different approach. Let’s pan way out and observe the seamless connection between the Old Testament and the New. In this chapter, let’s take in the inspired artistry of the Bible by summarizing its story in the most minimalistic fashion we can.

In the Old Testament, a young man named Joseph had dreams and was sent into Egypt to preserve his family, followed by Israel, the nation, relocating to Egypt to escape certain death (Genesis 42; 45:5). In the New Testament, another Joseph had dreams and then fled with His family into Egypt to escape the certain death of Israel, now reborn in the Christ child (Matthew 2:13-15).

When Israel came out of Egypt, God called the nation, “my son” (Exodus 4:22). When Jesus came out of Egypt, God said, “Out of Egypt have I called my son” (Matthew 2:15), forging an intentional parallel between the story of ancient Israel and the story of Jesus as God’s new Israelite son.

God’s son, Israel, passed through the Red Sea as they fled from the Egyptian army (Exodus 14:10-13). The apostle Paul says they were thus “baptized unto Moses . . . in the sea” (1 Corinthians 10:2, KJV). Directly after being baptized as Israel’s new corporate representative, Jesus was introduced to the world by God with the words, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:13-17). Jesus is relaunching Israel’s history, this time to please God with covenantal faithfulness.

Israel wandered in the wilderness for 40 years on its way to the Promised Land, yielding to temptation over and over again, finally entering into Canaan under the leadership of a leader bearing the name, “Joshua,” which means, Yahweh Saves (Exodus 16; Numbers 13). Christ spent 40 days in the wilderness being tempted by the devil without ever yielding, before He began His earthly ministry to lead humanity into the heavenly Promised Land under the name “Jesus,” which means Yahweh Saves, the Greek equivalent of Joshua (Matthew 1:21; 4:1-11).

Moses went up Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments from God and then delivered them to Israel (Exodus 19-20). Jesus positioned Himself at another mountain in Israel, announcing that He had now come to “fulfill” the law, magnifying its relational significance, and pronouncing His blessings, or beatitudes, upon the people (Matthew 5-7).

Ancient Israel was composed of the twelve sons of Jacob and their posterity (Genesis 35:22-26). Jesus deliberately followed this narrative pattern by calling twelve apostles, from which emerged a spiritual posterity that would become the continuation of Israel, called the church, now composed of all nations (Matthew 10:1-4; Galatians 3:29; Ephesians 2:19-22).

Israel was called by God to be “a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation,” for the purpose of being a light to all nations, the intent being to incorporate into Israel every people group of the world (Exodus 19:6; Deuteronomy 4:5-8, 40, KJV). The church Jesus founded was the new Israel, called to be “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people” (1 Peter 2:9, KJV), composed of people from every nation (Revelation 7), and given the mission of bringing the light of God’s love to the whole world (Matthew 24:14; 28:18-20; Revelation 14:6).

Wow, so all of that is there in the Bible, isn’t it?

Yes, it sure is.

The sheer literary art of the narrative is so breathtaking that it simply cannot be a coincidental production. The chances of more than forty authors, writing over a span of fifteen hundred years, composing a seamless story of such pure genius, without the guidance of a single Super Mind, are so remote as to be impossible. But that’s not even the most astounding part of it. The truly remarkable thing is that this story invites us to believe the very thing we secretly hope in our inmost hearts to be true—namely, that we are the objects of a faithful love that would rather die than let us go. One of the reasons we can know the story of Scripture is true is because it is true to our deepest longings for a quality of love that finds no perfectly satisfying match in this covenant-breaking world of ours. Jesus embodies what we intuitively know we are made for—perfect relational integrity.

And yet most Christians are never taught to even notice the deliberate narrative connection between the Old Testament and the New, let alone grasp what it means for the restoration of God’s love in human relations. Our focus has largely been directed to egocentric concerns for personal salvation. The theological vision of Christianity became so thoroughly saturated in Greek thought by the medieval church, that the distinctly Hebrew orientation toward covenant relationship is almost unknown to modern Christianity.

The Bible is telling us a story. The goal of the story is that covenantal love would be restored to the human race. Jesus is the central, towering figure of the story. He is the one in whom the entire covenant enterprise is finally and fully achieved. In Christ, we witness the grand reenactment of Israel’s history, this time with covenant faithfulness. In Him, everything God envisioned for Israel, and for the whole human race, has come true. In every act of His life, to the point of giving His life for his enemies as the climactic act of covenantal faithfulness, Jesus lived out God’s love, and, in so doing, He fulfilled the entire Old Testament narrative with all of its covenant ideals and relational imperatives. Paul clearly understood this when he summarized the whole Bible in a single sentence:

For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us. 2 Corinthians 1:20

The grand narrative arc of Scripture lands with colorful bursts of light and life in the person of Christ. Everything God promised to the world through Israel, God’s unfaithful son, was now brought to pass in God’s faithful Son, Jesus Christ. The story of Jesus is a microcosm of Israel’s history, only this time the story is beautiful with unfailing love. This, then, is the sense in which the New Testament calls Jesus, “the Son of God.”

Let’s unpack the New Testament details now.

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