Before I attempt to sketch the biblical case for the deity of Christ, I need to explain more carefully what I mean by it. The terms “deity” or “divine” can be used in different senses. When the founder of Rome died, he was hailed as “the divine Romulus”2, but the ancient Romans did not view Romulus as an eternally preexistent, divine being. He was regarded as an ordinary man who, because of his greatness as the founder of Rome, was taken up into heaven to join the pantheon of the gods after his death—a strictly postmortem affair called apotheosis. But this is not at all what the church means when it confesses the deity of Christ. Indeed, the church could not mean that without abandoning monotheism. Rather, the church confesses that Jesus Christ is eternally divine and belongs on the divine side of the Creator-creature distinction. He is not a man who became a god, but the Son of God who became man.
It is important to set the ontological deity of Christ within a broader web of doctrines defined with increasing precision by the church in the first four ecumenical councils. The following statement encapsulates the church’s historic understanding of the person of Christ:
The Son of God, the second person in the Trinity, being very and eternal God, of one substance and equal with the Father, did, when the fullness of time was come, take upon him man’s nature, with all the essential properties, and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin (The Westminster Confession of Faith VIII.2).
The historic Christian doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation are interconnected and inseparable. I will be focusing on just one (extremely important) part of the web. By “the ontological deity of Christ” I mean that his career has three stages. First, he is the eternally preexistent Son of God, possessing the same divine nature as the Father; there never was a time when he did not exist as the divine Son.3 Second, he became man (“took upon him man’s nature”) when he was born of the Virgin Mary, and so in his earthly ministry he was the Son of God incarnate, both divine and human. Third, after he completed his redeeming work as the incarnate Son and Messiah, God exalted him at his right hand and gave him divine honor fitting for one who is eternally divine. I believe this is what the New Testament teaches, and that is what I will try to show in what follows.
Jesus is the Son of God
The apostles confessed and proclaimed that Jesus is the Son of God. Next to “Christ” and “Lord,” it is one of the most common christological titles in the New Testament. It occurs in various forms: “my Son,” “the Son,” “the Son of God,” “his Son,” and so on. Some variant of the title appears twenty-two times in Matthew, eleven times in Mark, fourteen times in Luke, twenty-seven times in John, seventeen times in Paul’s epistles, twelve times in Hebrews, and twenty-four times in the epistles of John. The designation occurs in every New Testament author except James and Jude. We cannot examine all of these instances, but as seen in Table 1, there are five key moments in the earthly life of Jesus as recorded in the Synoptic Gospels where the declaration of Jesus’ status as God’s Son is made. Actually, only Matthew has the “Son of God” title in all five, but even Mark and Luke record these five events even if they use the explicit title less consistently.
Table 1. Five Significant “Son of God” Moments in the Synoptic Gospels4
| Matthew | Mark | Luke | |
| The Baptism of Jesus | 3:17 | 1:11 | 3:22 |
| Peter’s Confession | 16:16 | [8:29] | [9:20] |
| The Transfiguration of Jesus | 17:5 | 9:7 | 9:35 |
| Jesus before Caiaphas | 26:62–66 | 14:61–64 | 22:67–71 |
| The Centurion at the Crucifixion | 27:54 | 15:39 | [23:47] |
Whether it is the voice of God the Father from heaven saying, “This is my beloved Son” at Jesus’ baptism and transfiguration, or Peter confessing, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” or Jesus before the high priest Caiaphas being charged with blasphemy and condemned to death because he claimed to be the Son of God, or the centurion at the scene of the crucifixion confessing, “Truly this was the Son of God!”—in all five key moments, the declaration of Jesus’ divine Sonship has the aura of being utterly significant and decisive.
But it was not limited to what others said of him. Jesus understood himself to be “the Son of God” as well. There are three passages in the Synoptic Gospels that make this extremely likely from a historical point of view. The first is the one where Jesus is reported as praying to the Father: “All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matt 11:27 || Luke 10:22).5 The second is Jesus’ implicit self-reference in the parable of the wicked tenants: “He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son’” (Mark 12:6 || Matt 21:37 || Luke 20:13). The third is the statement in the eschatological discourse of Jesus, “But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Mark 13:32 || Matt 24:36). Even scholars who do not accept the authenticity of Jesus’ more explicit claims to divine Sonship in the Gospel of John are prepared to accept the authenticity of these three sayings in the Synoptic Gospels.6
“Son of God” Much More Than “Messiah”
“Son of God” has a fair claim to being central to Jesus’ identity, both in his own self-consciousness and in the apostolic proclamation concerning Jesus. But what does it mean? Does it mean that a man named Jesus was God’s “Son” in a functional sense, i.e., that he was a merely human, Davidic messiah? This is a plausible interpretation of the title, given that it was part of the biblical (2 Sam 7:14; Ps 2:7; 89:26–27) and early Jewish (4Q174; 4Q246) expectation that the messiah would be called God’s Son.7 Many New Testament scholars interpret the “Son of God” title in that functional or messianic sense. But there are others who have mounted compelling arguments for taking “Son of God” as meaning something far more than that he is the hoped-for human king from the line of David. Let us review the most compelling arguments.
Distinction Between “Messiah” and “Son of God”
The “Son of God” title cannot be reduced to “Son of David” or “Messiah” because it is used to explain what kind of Messiah he is. The phrase “the Christ, the Son of God” occurs six times in the Gospels (Matt 16:16; 26:63; Mark 1:1; 14:61; John 11:27; 20:31). The way the two titles, “the Christ” and “the Son of God,” are juxtaposed can be interpreted in different ways. It might mean that the two titles are synonyms. But another way of interpreting the juxtaposition is to take the second title as adding precision and definition to the first title. “The second title, ‘the Son of God,’ far from being a synonym for ‘the Messiah,’ indicates what sort of messianic expectation is in view: not the Messiah-Son-of-David, nor the Messiah as the son of any other human being, but rather the Messiah-Son-of-God.”8
Further evidence that the two titles, “Son of God” and “Messiah,” are not equivalent can be found in the account of the baptism of Jesus. At the beginning of his public ministry, immediately after being baptized by John, the voice from heaven declared: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11; cp. Matt 3:17 || Luke 3:22). The baptism of Jesus is widely recognized as the moment when he was anointed by the Spirit in order to undertake his office as the Messiah. But according to the heavenly voice, he was already God’s beloved Son and pleasing to the Father before he was chosen and appointed to be the Messiah. Therefore, “sonship and messianic status are not synonymous. Rather, sonship . . . is antecedent to messiahship.”9