Jesus Christ the 'Son of God' - what does it mean?

Many of our friends ask us about the meaning of this expression and we must say to them right away that we do NOT believe that Jesus is the Son of God in a physical sense, or that God took a wife and had a child!

We use the word ‘Son’ here in a spiritual sense. In order to understand this, we will give some other examples of the word ‘Son’ being used in a non-literal way. For example, we say of the traveller that he is the ‘son of the road’.

We also read in the Injil that Jesus gave the nickname ‘Sons of Thunder’ to two of his disciples, James and John. Does this mean that the thunder has had children? Of course not! Rather, these two disciples had fiery, forceful and explosive characters!

Jesus’ miraculous birth

No man was ever born like this. The angel Gabriel came to the virgin Mary to tell her that she would become pregnant and have a son. Mary was frightened and the angel said to her:

“Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favour with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High...”
“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”
The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the ‘Son of God’.”
(Luke 1:30-35)

Mary became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, and so Christ was born from a virgin, with no human father. His birth came about by God’s power and according to God’s eternal plan and this means that he is more than just a man or even a prophet.

Jesus is the eternal word of God

We read in the beginning of John’s gospel that Jesus is the eternal Word of God who came down to the earth and became a man:

‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it....The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.’ (John 1:1-5 & 14)

The meaning of the expression ‘The Word became flesh’ is that the Word became a man in the person of Jesus Christ. So Jesus is the revelation of God in human form. This is the true understanding of who he is. Just as a human son resembles his father, so Christ resembles his spiritual father, God. This is why Jesus on one occasion said to his disciples: ‘He who has seen me has seen the father.’

The voice of God

It was not Jesus’ followers who gave him the title ‘Son of God’. Rather, it was God Himself who revealed this truth. This happened when Jesus was baptised by Yahya son of Zachariah (John the Baptist).

At that time, Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptised by John in the Jordan. As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” (Mark 1:9-11)

This was not the voice of a man, but the word of God Most High.

We hope that we have given an adequate answer to the questions our friends have about this subject. And we repeat that we are at your service if we can answer any question about the Injil.