“I will beat down his foes before his face,
And plague those who hate him.
“But My faithfulness and My mercy shall be with him,
And in My name his horn shall be exalted.
“Also I will set his hand over the sea,
And his right hand over the rivers.
“He shall cry to Me, ‘You are my Father,
My God, and the rock of my salvation.’
“Also I will make him My firstborn,
The highest of the kings of the earth.
“My mercy I will keep for him forever,
And My covenant shall stand firm with him.
“His seed also I will make to endure forever,
And his throne as the days of heaven.”
Again, we naturally ask, of whom is David singing?
Who is the holy one?
Who is the exalted one chosen from the people?
Who is the one who cries out, “You are my Father,” to whom God responds, “I will make him My firstborn”?
Who is the highest king of the earth, in whom God’s covenant will be established forever?
David, of course, and yet more than David!
At this point in our journey, knowing what we know, simply reading these two Psalms of David should flip a light on in our minds. These Old Testament passages are vital for grasping the story as it continues into the New Testament, specifically regarding what the New Testament means when it calls Jesus God’s “firstborn son” and God’s “only begotten son.” These psalms of David are the origin of the terminology, along with the earlier passages we’ve noted regarding Israel’s Sonship. In fact, as we will discover, the New Testament specifically quotes these two Psalms to inform us of the covenant identity of the Messiah.
Therefore—and this is crucial—it is here in the Old Testament narrative that we need to look to interpret the terminology of Sonship when we encounter it in the New Testament.
And we will do just that, shortly.
For now, we simply need to notice, in the interest of our future enlightenment, that David portrays himself, as well as the coming Messiah, as “begotten” by God and as God’s “firstborn son,” not in a literal chronological sense, but in a positional, narrative sense. David is God’s covenant son in a succession of sons, all leading up to the messianic Son who will cry out to God, with a newly realized Sonship fidelity, “You are my Father.” And He is the One who will “endure forever.”
The point is simple, but super important: King David does not step onto the biblical stage in a narrative vacuum. He emerges in the middle of an unfolding saga. Adam, the son of God, forfeited his Sonship position. God promised to get it back by giving the human race a new Genesis with a new Son of God who will succeed where Adam failed. The coming offspring of the woman will faithfully occupy His vocation as the eternal progenitor of God’s image to all future generations.
The internal logic of the biblical narrative is consistent. God is working to restore humanity from the inside, from within our own genetic realm, through a human Son of God who will rectify the fall of Adam. David is one more step in the Sonship succession.
So what’s next?
You guessed it—another son of God.
“The God who made humanity intends to save humanity from the inside, from within our very own genetic realm, from the strategic position of a Son of God who will be born within the Adamic lineage.”
Chapter six
SOLOMON, MY SON
As the story continues to unfold, David has a son, to whom he gives the name Solomon. True to the trajectory of the plan, God transfers to Solomon the unique
position of Sonship:
He shall build a house for My name, and he shall be My son, and I will be his Father; and I will establish the throne of his kingdom over Israel forever. 1 Chronicles 22:10
Note the language carefully, because it re-emerges in the New Testament: “He shall be My son, and I will be his Father.” Not, He is my son, and I am his Father. These are narrative roles that are being occupied for a covenant purpose. Solomon is conscripted into the Sonship position for the continuation of the covenant plan.
Solomon is significant in the lineage because his story, unlike that of his father, David, unfolds without war. David, the son of God, expresses a desire to build a temple for the worship of God, but He explains to him that he cannot be the one to build God’s temple (2 Samuel 7).
Why?
Well, because David is a man of war with blood on his hands (1 Chronicles 17, 22, 28). Within the biblical narrative, God’s character is ultimately incompatible with war (Isaiah 2:1-4), so a man of peace must build God’s temple. That man is Solomon, whose name means peace—peace from war, that is (1 Chronicles 22:9). In this way, as the covenant promise is transferred from David to Solomon, God is projecting forward to the grander purpose He will eventually achieve through Christ. In a penultimate sense, Solomon is God’s peaceful son, pointing forward to Jesus, the ultimate Prince of Peace. He is the One in whom God will “establish the throne of His kingdom over Israel forever,” without war.
So with Solomon, we are one step closer, or one “son of God” closer, to the promised Messiah. The story has a very distinct, obvious shape.
Adam, the son of God, fails in his Sonship role.
God promises to initiate a lineage through which a new Son of God will come to rectify Adam’s fall.
God establishes a people through whom the promise will be fulfilled, and a succession unfolds in the following manner:
Abraham, the son of God, gives way to . . .
Isaac, the son of God, who gives way to . . .
Jacob, the son of God, who gives way to . . .
Israel, the corporate son of God, who gives way to . . .
David, the son of God, who gives way to . . .
Solomon, the son of God.
Clarity is building. Scripture is a seamless narrative. The story is initiated with the creation of the first man and the first woman, Adam and Eve, and then makes its way forward through the call of Abraham, the establishment of Israel, the anointing of David as Israel’s king, then to Solomon, the king of peace, all moving to one grand end:
the birth of the promised offspring,
an Adamic replacement who will redeem the Fall,
a human being who will be “the son of God” with covenantal faithfulness and thus reestablish humanity in right relation to God.
“Human history is fundamentally characterized by covenant breaking. We are a race defined by relational dysfunction and disintegration, a race of victims and victimizers, a race of non-lovers.”
Chapter Seven
COVENANT IDENTITY
Before we cross the bridge from the Old Testament into the New—from shadowy messianic figures to the Messiah Himself—let’s pause to achieve a clear grasp of what
the Bible means by the idea of “covenant,” because this is the theological engine that drives the biblical story forward, as we’ve already noticed.
For its sheer conceptual worth, “covenant” is one of the most meaningful words in Scripture. It is the idea that most fully defines who God is and how God operates. God is a God of covenant, actuated by covenant,