The sonship of Christ

Exploring the Covenant Identity of God and Man

Ty Gibson

• Publisher: Editorial Safeliz
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9788472088610
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Why is Christ called "the Son of God"? Discover an answer so simple you'll wonder why you never saw it before, and so beautiful it'll take your breath away. 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.

“As we give ourselves over to the personal internal communion of the Holy Spirit, we are gradually, incrementally cultivated toward responsible self-governance until, at last, love alone defines every free act we perform.”

chapter twenty

THE UNFORCER

In Christ, the covenant sacrifice was made. God’s faithful love was proven true. Within the realm of human nature, as the offspring of the woman, Christ became the new corporate head of the race. By this astonishing and incomprehensible act, God entered into eternal solidarity with humanity. Complete relational integrity was achieved as an objective, historical reality. The covenant of love was confirmed.

And this is where the Holy Spirit figures into the biblical narrative.

In the interest of achieving maximum clarity, I’ll approach the exciting work of the Holy Spirit with a series of repeat-and-enlarge formulations. This will be super fun and enlightening, so give your whole mind and heart to the journey.

First, let’s pan way out.

As we’ve already discovered, there are essentially two primary causal events that occur on the biblical stage. These two events define human history:

• the creation and the fall of the first Adam
• and the incarnation and redeeming work of the last Adam

In the largest of brush strokes, the creation account of the Old Testament is recapitulated in the redemption account of the New Testament.

In the Old Testament, God created mankind in His own image—to love like God loves, as a social community of relational integrity, to live in covenantal faithfulness toward God, toward one another, and toward the earth. The fall of humanity was essentially constituted in the breaking of the covenant of love.

In the New Testament, humanity has been and is being remade in the image of God, first in our new covenant head, Jesus Christ, and then in the new covenant community called the church.

This is what’s going on in the story of Scripture.

This is the plot, the scheme, the point of the book. This is the grand narrative into which all the prophecies and stories feed. Therefore, we can expect that the narrative features that define the first creation will naturally show up in the re-creation. Sure enough, this is exactly what we do find to be the case. And the Holy Spirit is conspicuously present in both accounts, as we are about to discover.

Now let’s pan in a little closer.

The Old Testament opens with the words, “In the beginning,” followed by various narrative elements.

The New Testament, in John’s telling, opens with the same words, “In the beginning,” followed by the same narrative elements we find in Genesis.

The parallel is deliberate. One of the striking features of John’s Gospel is that it is a redemptive retelling of the Creation story. By opening with the words, “In the beginning,” John is triggering the old story in order for us to be in the right frame of reference to make sense of the new story. Let’s notice how the comparisons line up.

In Genesis:

• “Darkness” covers the earth.
• “The Spirit of God” hovers or sweeps like wind “over the face of the waters.”
• “Then God said . . . Then God said . . . Then God said . . .” The word of God is the active agent in the Creation event.
• “Light” illuminates the darkness by the active word.
• On the sixth day, mankind is created of “dust” (or flesh) and receives the divine “breath of life.”
• Adam and Eve are given dominion over the earth.
• Adam and Eve are given power to procreate others in their image.
• The creation process is called “work” and God “finished His work” and “rested” on the “seventh day.”

In John’s Gospel:

• “Darkness” covers humanity.
• The “Word” of God is the active agent.
• “Light” overcomes the “darkness.”
• The “Word” becomes “flesh” and receives “the Holy Spirit” at His baptism, as Adam was made of “dust” and received the “breath of life” at Creation.
• Jesus proceeds to demonstrate that He has “dominion” over creation, as the first Adam was meant to have, by commanding nature and engaging in a series of healing acts that indicate the reversal of the curse that was imposed upon the world by the fall of the first Adam.
• Jesus gives other human beings the “power to become the sons of God” in His image, taking up Adam’s failed role to procreate children in his image.
• The process of redemption is called “work” and Christ “finished” the work on the sixth day when He died on the cross, and then rested on the seventh day in the tomb.

Wow!

All that’s there, isn’t it?

Yes, it is.

And unless we begin reading the Bible on its own terms—for what the Bible itself intends to convey in its own unfolding narrative—we will continue to prooftext ourselves into theological contradictions. But if we simply let the Bible have its way with us, we won’t have to do a whole lot of interpreting, because the story will tell us what it wants us to know and will leave us with mystery in areas that are beyond the scope of the story and beyond our finite human grasp.

So far what we’ve seen is that Jesus is the Adamic “Son of God” reconstituted. In the gospel story, we are witnessing nothing less than the re-creation of the world through the redemptive work of Christ. Let’s pan in closer now to observe more specifically the part the Holy Spirit plays in the story.

In the Creation account of Genesis, the Holy Spirit moves like wind on the waters, and the created world emerges from the waters:

The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Genesis 1:2

In the re-creation account of John, again the Holy Spirit is associated with water and wind, and the new creation emerges from the water:

Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” John 3:5-8

When Jesus insists that human beings must be “born of water and the Spirit,” He is invoking the Genesis account of Creation and the role the Holy Spirit played in it. The original Creation came forth from the water by the movings of the Holy Spirit and speaking of the Word, and now the new creation will be brought forth from the water under the movings of the Holy Spirit and the speaking of the Word. Jesus is conscious of His identity as the new beginning of a new creation. He knows He is the new Adamic Son of God who will now engage in a procreative process of birthing many other children of God. It is also clear that Jesus...