LESSON SEVEN Christ the Son of God

1. Christ acknowledged himself to be the Son of God. John 9:35-37; 10:36; 7:5; 5:23; Matthew 27:41-43.TDOC 20.1

2. Christ assented to the testimony of others that he was the Son of God. Matthew 16:15-17; John 11:27. 1:32-34, 48, 49.TDOC 20.2

3. There are other testimonies to the fact that Christ was the Son of God. Romans 1:14; John 19:7; 20:30, 31; Acts 9:20; 2 Corinthians 1:19; Hebrews 4:14; 2 Peter 1:16, 17; Matthew 3:16, 17; John 10:37, 38; Matthew 26:63, 64.TDOC 20.3

NOTES: A divine Sonship

“Of this essential element of Christ’s person, this other title, Son of God, though not in such frequent and familiar use as the former [the Son of man], is a direct and clear expression. Appropriated by him without the slightest reserve or moral shock, with the utmost freedom and frankness confessed to him, nor he timidly putting it away from him, it is the one title that embodies in the most explicit way the fact of a divine Sonship.”TDOC 20.4

The revelation between Father and Son

“We may conceive the Father existing from eternity and possessing infinite powers, simply because he wills so to exist, without any cause external to himself, eternal and infinite and underived; and of the Son existing with the Father from eternity, and possessing to the full the Father’s infinite powers, but these received from the Father, existing because the Father wills him so to exist, eternal and infinite and derived. This conception will account for the entire language of the New Testament about the Son of God.”TDOC 20.5

“The Son is equal to the Father in everything except that which is conveyed by the terms Father and Son. He is equal to the Father in that he shares to the full the Father’s existence from eternity and his infinite power and wisdom and love. But inasmuch as the Father possesses these divine attributes from himself alone, whereas the Son possesses them as derived from the Father, in this real sense and in this sense only, the Father is greater than the Son.”TDOC 20.6

“Evidently in an eternal Father and an eternal Son the ideas of older and younger can have no place. As we lift up the conception of son ship out of time into eternity, these elements of it, ever present in human fathers and sons, at once disappear. When they fall away, does any conception essential to our idea of son ship remain? Yes; there still remains the chief idea, viz., personal existence and powers derived from another person. And this idea is plainly embodied in John 5:26, and in other express assertions from the lips of Christ describing his own relation to God.”TDOC 20.7