1. Physical and Limited Sonship Disappears:
As the doctrine of Divine fatherhood attains its full spiritual and moral significance in the New Testament, so does the experience and idea of sonship. All traces of physical descent have disappeared. Paul's quotation from a heathen poet: "For we are also his offspring" (Ac 17:28), whatever its original significance, is introduced by the apostle for the purpose of enforcing the idea of the spiritual kinship of God and men. The phrase "Son of God" applied to Christ by the Roman centurion (Mt 27:54; Mr 15:39) may or may not, in his mind, have involved the idea of physical descent, but its utterance was the effect of an impression of similarity to the gods, produced by the exhibition of power attending His death. The idea of creation is assumed in the New Testament, but generally it is not prominent in the idea of sonship. The virgin birth of Jesus, however, may be understood as implying either the creative activity of the Holy Spirit, or the communication of a preexistent Divine being to form a new human personality, but the latter idea also would involve creative activity in the physical realm (compare Lu 3:38: "Adam (son) of God"). The limitations of the Old Testament conception of sonship as national and collective disappear altogether in the New Testament; God is father of all men, and of every man. In potentiality at least every man and all men are sons of God. The essence of sonship consists in a personal experience and moral likeness which places man in the most intimate union and communion with God.
2. As Religious Experience, or Psychological Fact:
(1) Filial Conciousness of Jesus.
Divine sonship was first realized and made manifest in the consciousness of Jesus (Mt 11:27). For Him it meant unbroken personal knowledge of God and communion with Him, and the sense of His love for Him and of His satisfaction and delight in Him (Mt 3:17; 17:5; Mr 1:11; 9:7; Lu 3:22; 9:35). Whether the "voice out of the heavens saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" was objective or not, its message always dwelt in the filial consciousness of Jesus. The Father's love was to Him a source of knowledge and power (Joh 5:20), the reward of His self-sacrifice (Joh 10:17) and the inspiration of His love for men (Joh 15:9).
Sonship meant for Him His Messianic mission (Mt 16:16-17). It involved His dependence on the Father and His obedience to Him (Joh 5:19,30; 8:29), and a resulting confidence in His mission (Joh 5:36; 10:36-37). It filled Him with a sense of dignity, power and glory which the Father gave Him, and would yet give in larger measure (Mt 26:63,14; 16:27; Joh 17:5).
(2) Communicated to Men.
Jesus communicated His own experience of God to men (Joh 14:9) that they also might know the Father's love and dwell in it (Joh 17:26). Through Him and through Him alone can they become children of God in fact and in experience (Joh 1:12; 14:6; Mt 11:27). It is therefore a distinctively Christian experience and always involves a relation of faith in Christ and moral harmony with Him. It differs from His experience in one essential fact, at least in most men. It involves an inner change, a change of feeling and motive, of ideal and attitude, that may be compared to a new birth (Joh 3:3). Man must turn and return from disobedience and alienation through repentance to childlike submission (Lu 15:18-20). It is not the submission of slaves, but the submission of sons, in which they have liberty and confidence before God (Ga 4:6), and a heritage from Him for their possession (Ga 4:6-7; Ro 8:17). It is the liberty of self-realization. As sons they recognize their kinship with God, and share his mind and purpose, so that His commands become their pleasure: "For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous" (1Jo 5:3). They have boldness and access to God (Eph 2:18; 3:12). With this free union of love with God there comes a sense of power, of independence of circumstances, of mastery over the world, and of the possession of all things necessary which become the heirs of God (Mt 6:26,32; 7:11). "For whatsoever is begotten of God overcometh the world" (1Jo 5:4). They learn that the whole course and destiny of creation is for the "revealing of the sons of God" (Ro 8:19,21).
3. As Moral Condition, or Ethical Fact:
Christ's sonship involved His moral harmony with the Father: "I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love" (Joh 15:10; 8:53). He accomplished the work which the Father gave Him to do (Joh 17:4; 5:19), "becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross" (Php 2:8). And sonship makes the same demand upon men. The peacemakers and those who forgive like God are His children (Mt 5:9,45; Lu 6:35). "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these (and these only) are sons of God" (Ro 8:14). God will be Father to the holy (2Co 6:18). The test and mark of the children of God is that they do righteousness and love the brethren (1Jo 3:10). They are blameless and harmless, without blemish, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation (Php 2:15). Therefore their ideal of life is to be "imitators of God" and to walk in love even as Christ did (Eph 5:1). Sonship grows to its consummation as the life grows in the likeness of Christ, and the final destiny of all sons is to be ever like Him (1Jo 3:2).
4. As State of Being, or Ontological Fact:
Sonship is properly and primarily a relation, but it may so dominate and transform the whole of a man's life, thought and conduct as to become his essential being, the most comprehensive category under which all that he is may be summed up.
(1) Essence of Christ's Sonship.
It is so that the New Testament comprehends the person of Christ. Everything that He did, He did as God's son, so that He is the Son, always and ever Son. In the beginning, in the bosom of the Father, He is the ONLY BEGOTTEN (which see) Son (Joh 1:1,18). He is born a Son of God (Lu 1:35). He begins life in the things of His Father (Lu 2:49). His whole life is that of the beloved Son (Mt 3:17; 17:5). As Son of God He dies (Mt 26:63; Lu 22:70; Mt 27:40,43; compare Joh 5:18). In His resurrection He was declared to be the Son of God with power (Ro 1:4); as Jesus the Son of God He is our great high priest in heaven (Heb 4:14), and in the glory of His father He will come to judge in the last day (Mt 16:27).
(2) Men's Sonship.
Unlike Him, men's moral sonship is neither eternal nor universal. Are they therefore sons in any sense always and everywhere? All children are heirs of the kingdom of God and objects of the Father's care (Lu 18:16; Mt 18:10). But men may turn away from the Father and become unworthy to be called His sons (Lu 15:13,19). They may become children of the devil (1Jo 3:10; Joh 8:44), and children of wrath (Eph 2:3). Then they lose the actuality, but not the potentiality, of sonship. They have not the experience or character of sons, but they are still moral and rational beings made in the image of God, open to the appeal and influence of His love, and able to "rise and go to their Father." They are objects of God's love (Joh 15:13; Ro 5:8) and of His gracious search and seeking (Lu 15:4; Joh 11:52). But they are actual sons only when they are led by the Spirit of God (Ro 8:14); and even so their sonship will only be consummated in the resurrection (Ro 8:23; Lu 20:36).
5. As Relation to God, or Theological Fact:
In the relation of father and son, fatherhood is original and creative. That does not necessarily mean priority in time.
(1) Eternal Generation.
Origen's doctrine of the eternal generation of Christ, by which is meant that God and Christ always stood in the relation of Father and Son to one another, is a just interpretation of the New Testament idea that the Son "was in the beginning with God" (pros ton Theon). But Jesus was conscious of His dependence upon the Father and that His sonship was derived from Him (Joh 5:19,36). Still more manifest is it that men derive their sonship from God. He made them for Himself, and whatever in human nature qualifies men to become sons of God is the free gift of God. But men in their sin and disobedience could not come to a knowledge of the Father, had He not "sent forth his Son .... that we might receive the adoption of sons" (Ga 4:4-5): "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God" (1Jo 3:1); "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son" (which see) who gave men "the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name" (Joh 3:16; 1:12). It is not the children of the flesh but the children of the promise who are children of God (Ro 9:4). The mere act of birth does not constitute men into children of God, but His covenant of free grace must be added. God being essentially Father made men and the universe, sent His Son and His Spirit, "for the revealing of the sons of God." But they can only know the Father, and realize their sonship when they respond to His manifestation of fatherly love, by faith in God and obedience to Him.
(2) The Work of Grace.
The question whether sonship is natural and universal or conditional upon grace working through faith, does not admit of a categorical answer. The alternatives are not strict antitheses. God does all things as Father. To endow man with rational and moral nature capable of his becoming a son was an act of love and grace, but its whole purpose can be communicated only in response to faith in Christ. But a natural sonship which is not actual is meaningless. A man's moral condition and his attitude toward God are the most essential elements of his nature, for a man's nature is just the sum total of his thoughts, acts and states. If these are hostile or indifferent to God, there is nothing left that can have the reality or bear the name of son. For if the word son be used of mere creaturehood and potentiality, that is to give it a meaning entirely different from New Testament usage. All men by nature are potential sons, because God has made them for sonship and does all things to win them into their heritage. Men may be sons of God in a very imperfect and elementary manner. The sharp transitions of Pauline and Johannine theology are rather abstract distinctions for thought than actual descriptions of spiritual processes. But Paul and John also contemplate a growth in sonship, "till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Eph 4:13).
See SONS OF GOD.
For lit. and further discussion, see special articles on ADOPTION; GOD; JESUS CHRIST.
T. Rees