Who is the Son of God?

What is the definition of the "Son of God" in Christianity? There is one Lord, Jehovah, who became incarnate in human form, Jesus Christ.  However instead of acknowledging one personal being, among Christians many have falsely divided God into three persons, based on a false assumption that there was a "Son of God" always existing from eternity based on the Nicene Creed that developed 300 years after Jesus Christ. However scripture defines the "Son of God" differently:

THE "SON OF GOD" WAS BORN IN TIME

The phrase "Son of God" is not mentioned until the virgin birth of Jesus, and until that time the term "sons of God" was only occasionally used in reference to angels.  The first mention of the Son of God occurred when the angel Gabriel told the virgin Mary that she would conceive and bear a child. Mary asks how this would happen since she was a virgin, and the angel responded as follows:

The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God. (Luke 1:35)

This passage is significant: Jesus is the Son of God simply from the fact that He was born of a virgin by the Holy Spirit, and this is why Jesus prays to God as "Father."  Luke 1:35 shows that there is no such thing as a Son of God who was born from eternity as stated in creeds of the 4th century A.D.  To be born, not made, from eternity, is a logical oxymoron, which the Nicene Creed invented since the Arian heresy had stated that Jesus Christ was a created being. The Nicene Creed had added those words by modifying the earlier Apostle's Creed, which simply said Jesus was the Son of God by having been born of a virgin by the Holy Spirit.

Luke 1:35 also contains a hidden reference to the Trinity. Note the following three phrases in that verse:

1. The "power of the Most High" 
2. The "holy child" who is the "Son of God"
3. The "Holy Spirit"
   

The reference to the Son of God and Holy Spirit are clear. Right before this passage the angel also makes it clear that the "Most High" is a reference to the Father:

And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High (Luke 1:31-32) 

The title "Most High" as a reference to the Father is again later mentioned in the gospel of Luke:

And when He came out onto the land, He was met by a man from the city who was possessed with demons... Seeing Jesus, he cried out and fell before Him, and said in a loud voice, “What business do we have with each other, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg You, do not torment me.” (Luke 8:27-28, see also Mark 5:2-7)

From this, it can be seen that after the virgin birth, the Most High God essentially became a father to the human form and is thus addressed as "Father" by Jesus Christ.  The event of the virgin birth was foreseen in prophecies, as can be seen in this passage:

I will recount the statute, Jehovah has said to me, You are My Son, today I have begotten You (Ps. 2:7)

The Son of God was begotten in time from the virgin Mary, not existing from eternity. And not only was the Son of God new, but also for Him to personally call God His Father was new. This was also foreseen in the following passage:

I have found David My servant, with the oil of My holiness I have anointed him... He himself shall call to Me, You are my Father (Ps. 89:20, 26)

"David" is a common reference to the Messiah in the Old Testament prophecies, thus Jesus descended from the line of David. The terms "father" and "son" are not two personal beings existing from eternity. Rather, once God descended and became incarnate in human form, in His visible incarnate human form He referenced the invisible Divine as His Father.

JESUS BEFORE THE INCARNATION

The "Son of God" was born in time to the virgin Mary, and contrary to how most Christians have been taught before that time the Lord incarnate, the Son of God did not exist.  However before that time Jesus existed as Jehovah, and appeared as the angel of Jehovah. This Jesus explicitly stated in the following passage:

...the Jews said to Him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I AM.” Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple. (John 8:58-59)

The reason why the Jews wanted to stone Jesus is that according to their view Jesus committed blasphemy: He was essentially stating that before He was born, He was simply known as Jehovah, who called Himself I AM when He first revealed Himself to Moses:

And Moses said to God, Behold, when I come to the children of Israel, and shall say to them, The God of your fathers has sent me to you; and they shall say to me, What is His name? What shall I say to them? And God said to Moses, I AM WHO I AM: and He said, Thus shall you say to the children of Israel, I AM has sent me to you. (Ex. 3:13-14)

There are two aspects to the Divine: Divine Love and Divine Truth. In the Trinity, the former is called the "Father" and the latter is the "Son."  Another name for Divine Truth is the Word as used in the gospel of John:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. (John 1:1-3)

That the Word means Divine Truth is declared later in the gospel of John:

Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth (John 17:17)

And in the process of time, the Word of God descended and became incarnate:

And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:18)

Here the "Word" (Greek logos) is the Divine Truth, for there are two aspects of the Divine: Divine Love and Divine Truth. Thus it is said here Jesus was "full of grace and truth" - where the word "grace" means not only favor but the affection for truth.

It is for this reason that Jesus calls Himself the "light of the world" (John 8:12, 9:5). And He also says that He is Truth itself:

I am the way, and the truth, and the life (John 14:6)

And as Jesus is Divine Truth incarnate, and all are judged by the truth, it is said in scripture that all judgment has been entrusted to Him:

For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son (John 5:22)

The Divine itself is infinite, invisible and unknowable, who reveals Himself to us in human form by which He is known to us, as declared in the gospel of John:

No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him.  (John 1:18)

Here, the "only begotten Son" is the son Jesus born in time to the virgin Mary. John also declares that the only begotten Son was the "Word made flesh" (John 1:14), and before the virgin birth there was no physical human form of God.

So the surprising answer is this: Jesus is called the Son of God based on one fact only: He was born of a virgin.  Before that, the Son of God did not exist, and that is why the Son of God is never mentioned in scripture until the virgin birth.  As Jesus was born of a virgin conceived by the Holy Spirit, so He calls God His Father.  Before that time, there was the Divine itself which is unknowable, which reveals Himself by a lower emanation of the Divine manifesting in human form.  Before the incarnation, this was often called the angel of Jehovah, and after the incarnation, this is now called the Son of God. And Jesus declares that He is not a separate being from the Father:

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him.” Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? “Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works. “Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves. (John 14:6-11)

Jesus always was, and always is, Jehovah.  And that is the true reason why Christians call Him Lord, as He Himself reveals:

You call Me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I AM (John 13:13)

So who is the Son of God? Jehovah, in human form.

 

 

 

Who is the Son of God?

Who is the Son of God? This would seem to be a simple question, but in the New Church a revelation has been given as to who is the Son of God, revealed in Jesus Christ. Among many Christians, the phrase "Son of God" automatically invokes in their mind the second person of the Trinity. However this concept of "second person" did not exist in early Christianity, but rather was invented by men in the fourth century A.D.

The original definition of the Son of God is found in scripture, in the Gospel of Luke. When Mary is told by Gabriel that she will give birth to a son, she then asks a question:

"And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin? And the angel answered her, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy— the Son of God" (Luke 1:35)

So, for the first three centuries of Christianity, the definition of the "Son of God" was that Jesus was born of a virgin. He had no human father, and was conceived by the Holy Spirit. This was the definition of Son of God, pure and simple. This changed in the fourth century A.D., when a council of men invented a Son of God "born from eternity." This is a falsehood. The Son of God is Jesus Christ who was born in time to the virgin Mary. This is declared as a prophecy in the Old Testament:

I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee (Ps. 2:7)

Where "this day" is the day when he was born in time to the virgin Mary. And for this reason Jesus calls God His Father, and this is also predicted in the Psalms:

He shall cry to me, ‘You are my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation.’ And I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth. (Ps. 89:26-27)

This doctrinal concept is the foundation of the New Church which distinguishes it from the older Christian churches that have become corrupted by the Nicene Creed. Once one understands this, the logical inconsistency in Christianity disappears completely. This is set forth by Swedenborg in his work True Christian Religion:

"The Human, by which God sent Himself into the world, is the Son of God. The Lord frequently said that the Father sent Him into the world, and that He was sent by the Father (as Matt. x. 40; xv. 24: John iii. 17, 34; v. 23, 24, 36, 37, 38; vi. 29, 39, 40, 44, 57; vii. 16, 18, 28, 29; viii. 16, 18, 29, 42; ix. 4; and in many other places); and this He says because by being sent into the world is meant to descend and come among men; and this was done through the Human, which He assumed by means of the virgin Mary; and also the Human is actually the Son of God, because it was conceived of Jehovah God as a Father (according to Luke i. 32, 35). He is called the Son of God, the Son of Man, and the Son of Mary; and by the Son of God is meant Jehovah God in His Human; by the Son of Man, the Lord as to the Word; and by the Son of Mary, properly the human which He assumed... As to the Lord, the Divine which He had was from Jehovah, the Father, and the human was from the mother; these two united are the Son of God." (True Christian Religion, n. 92).

So are there three persons? No, there is one person, the Lord, who is Jehovah in human form. And it is Him alone that we should acknowledge and worship. For Jesus is the Father in human form: He is the image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15).