Chapter 9
What
is Messiah?
Jewish Messiah or Christian God?
Many Christians do not understand that the major difference between
Christian and Jew is not a question of WHO Messiah is, rather it is a
question of WHAT Messiah is. When a Jew is asked to “accept Jesus”, it is not
a request to accept the Jewish Messiah, rather it is asking him to
accept the Christian God.
Aime Palliere in his book
The Unknown Sanctuary quotes M.
Loyson as saying:
The chief reason why the Jews do not accept Christianity is that the latter
departed from its origins in creating a God of secondary importance, as
Justin Martyr said. And little by little after having made Jesus equal to
the Heavenly Father, have we not practically substituted him for the
Heavenly Father?
How can believing that Jesus is God be “departing from our origins?” Isn’t
that what the founders of Christianity believed?
In his book This Hebrew Lord,
John Shelby Spong writes:
The simplistic suggestion that Jesus is God is nowhere made in the biblical
story. Nowhere!
How can THAT be? If the first followers of Yeshua (who were all Jewish) did
not believe that the Messiah was God, what DID they believe? And why is it
that Christian and Jew have such different views on WHAT Messiah is?
If this is the fundamental difference between us, it would make sense to
explore the Jewish concept of Messiah, and discover WHEN and WHY the
view of the divinity of the Messiah became different in Christianity. Again, we must
ask the question: did the original believers have the same concept of the
Messiah as do modern Christians?
The Jewish Perspective
The Shema is sometimes called the “Jewish Profession of Faith” because it
begins with the most basic of Jewish concepts: “Hear O Israel, The LORD our
God the LORD is One.” In Judaism, Messiah is never confused with God, and is NEVER
believed to be God.
In the New Testament accounts of the first believers, you will find much
disagreement over the question of the association and conversion of
Gentiles. You will find discussion of and disagreements over many other
issues. However, there is no debate over the deity of Yeshua. Why?
The reason for this obvious absence of discussion on the topic, is this was
not yet the view held by early believers. Had the belief of the early
followers included the deity of Yeshua, the pages of the New Testament would
be filled with the stories of conflict over such beliefs. The early
followers historically did not take the position that the Messiah was God.
If that is the case, WHAT is Messiah?
The Meaning of “Messiah”
The Hebrew word "Mashiach" means "anointed one" (or chosen
one).
| HEBREW |
GREEK |
ENGLISH |
| Mashiach
(Messiah) |
Christos
(Christ) |
Anointed |
This title applies to the High Priest, to the Kings of Israel, and even to
Israel itself.
In his book Early Judaism,
Martin Jaffee writes:
The English word “Messiah” renders the Hebrew “mashiakh.” In it’s simplest
meaning, it denotes “one who is anointed with oil.” More expansively, it
identifies a person consecrated to a divinely appointed task. In the Torah
of Moses, particularly in the book of Leviticus, this term is used
frequently to describe Aaron, the officiating priest charged with conducting
the sacrificial service in the Tent of Meeting.
In the priestly sense, the Messiah is the priest whose sacrificial service
in accordance with Torah sustains the covenantal relationship between God
and Israel. Messiah also refers to one anointed to serve as king over the
Israelite people in its Land. The original anointee was Saul, the first man
appointed as king over Israel.
1 Samuel 24:5
5 And it came to pass afterward, that David's heart smote him, because he
had cut off Saul's skirt.
6 And he said unto his men, The LORD forbid that I should do this thing unto
my master, the LORD'S anointed, to stretch forth mine hand against him,
seeing he is the anointed of the LORD.
7 So David stayed his servants with these words, and suffered them not to
rise against Saul. But Saul rose up out of the cave, and went on his way.
Here we read of David referring to Saul as
למשיח יהוה
(or the "Messiah of the LORD"). So, there can be a number of different
individuals identified throughout history as a messiah (anointed). However,
when you talk of THE Messiah you would be referring to
Messiah ben David,
the ruler at the end of the age at the time of the Third Temple.
The Divine Connection
When answering the question WHO or WHAT is the Messiah, it is helpful to
read what God tells Moses about the divine connection to Messiah.
In Deuteronomy 18:18 God tells Moses:
18 I will raise up a prophet
from among their countrymen like you,
and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all
that I command him. And it shall come about that whosoever will not listen
to My words which he shall speak in My name, I Myself will require it of
him.
As we can see, the Messiah was to be “from among their countrymen” like
Moses. The connection to the divine is that God’s WORDS are put in Messiah’s
mouth. It is important to realize that at no time in history did Judaism
ever assign deity to the Messiah himself.
James D.G. Dunn in his book
Christology in the Making writes:
…there is little or no good evidence from the period prior to Christianity’s
beginnings that the Ancient Near East seriously entertained the idea of a
god or son of god descending from heaven to become a human being in order to
bring men salvation, except perhaps at the level of popular pagan
superstition. [p22]
Why then did Christianity view Messiah as God?
The Gentile Factor
Remember that after 70CE (AD) the leadership within the “Christian” movement
became dominated by Gentiles, who had formerly worshiped other gods.
Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia (vol.6 / Christianity)
The Beginnings of the Church
An important source of the alienation of Christianity from its Jewish roots
was the change in the membership of the church that took place by the end of
the 2nd century (just when, and how, is uncertain). At some point,
Christians with Gentile backgrounds began to outnumber Jewish Christians.
The Gentile or Greek culture was centered around philosophy and mythology.
Their entire perspective was that of having multiple gods. To them the most
natural assumption was that messiah was a god.
This, however, was NOT
the perspective that the first century JEWISH population had (which included
ALL of Yeshua's disciples).
But what about all of the passages like John 1 that also say Jesus is God?
Remember, that much of our interpretation of scripture is from the
perspective of those early “church fathers” who by the 2nd century were
comprised of mostly Gentiles well educated in Greek philosophy.
In A History of God,
Karen Armstrong writes:
Like the divine Wisdom, the “Word” symbolized God’s original plan for
creation. When Paul and John spoke about Jesus as though he had some kind of
preexistent life, they were not suggesting that he was a second divine
“person” in the later Trinitarian sense. They were indicating that Jesus had
transcended temporal and individual modes of existence. Because the “power” and “wisdom” that he represented were activities that
derived from God, he had in some way expressed “what was there from the
beginning.” These ideas were comprehensible in a strictly Jewish context,
though later Christians with Greek background would interpret them
differently. In the Acts of the Apostles, written as late as 100 CE, we can
see that the first Christians still had an entirely Jewish conception of
God.
Again, Martin Jaffee writes:
The canonical book of Proverbs portrays wisdom as being God’s companion from
the beginning of time. The image was refracted throughout the worlds of
ancient Judaism. It informed many of Philo’s descriptions of Torah as a
divine logos (word, principle) through which Being conceived the world into
existence.
All that exists is as it should be because the world’s structure is undergirded by divine thought, Torah.
By the second century the leadership of Christianity had shifted from a
Jewish majority (well educated in the Torah), to a Greek majority (well
educated in Greek culture, philosophy and mythology).
As the Jewish sect began to be more dominated by a Greek membership,
however, the Greek polytheistic perspective of God also became a more
accepted view.
The Encyclopedia Britannica says:
The Trinitarians and the Unitarians continued to confront each other, the
latter at the beginning of the third century still forming the large
majority.
In the
course of time, those who believed that Messiah was God changed the
intentions of it's original founders and alienated all Jewish participation.
As Rabbi Yakov Fogelman writes:
Had the followers of Christ not
insisted on his divinity, then the Jews might indeed have embraced Jesus as
a Jewish revolutionary, who fought to remove Rome's oppressive hand from his
people, and was murdered by Pontius Pilate for his act of rebellion against
the mighty and intolerant authority of Rome. Jews might have embraced Jesus
as another learned teacher who offered beautiful and stirring ethical
lessons. They might have embraced Jesus as the man, who not only did not
abrogate the Torah, but, said in Matthew, that anyone that gives up even a
single letter of the law of Moses would be the least in the kingdom of
heaven. But what the Jews could not, dare not, and indeed never will, accept
is that Jesus was anything more than a mortal man.
A Change of Text
If we look at
how the text of John 1:1 has changed over the years we can get a sense of how
"clarifying" the text has helped to institutionalize the orthodox Christian
doctrines.
First let's
take a look at the Tyndale Bible of 1525
"In
the beginnynge was that worde, and that worde was with God: and God was
that worde. The same was in the beginnynge with God. All thinges were
made by it, and without it, was made nothinge, that made was. In it was
lyfe; And lyfe was the lyght of men ..."
As you can
see, the Tyndale Bible of 1525 translates the word not as a person, but as God's
speaking the world into existence. The word "word" (or worde) is not
capitalized and it is referred to as an "it" and not a "he". Within a
hundred years, however, the standard interpretation had changed.
We read the
same passage in the King James Version (originally translated in 1611)
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing
made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of
men."
This version
of the Christian Bible "clarified" John 1:1. "Word" is now capitalized and
referred to as a "he" instead of an "it". As future versions were written,
more "clarifications" were made.
The 1971
Living Bible reads as follows:
"Before anything else existed, there was Christ with God. He has always
been alive and is himself God. He created everything there is --
nothing exists that he didn't make. Eternal life is in him, and this
life gives light to all mankind." (40 million sold by 1997)
Corruption of Scripture
The
altering of texts did not begin, however, in the 1500's.
St. Faustus,
a 5th century Bishop writes:
"Many things have been inserted by
our ancestors into the speeches of our Lord which, though put forth under
his name, agree not with his faith; especially since, as already it has been
often proved - these things were written not by Christ, nor [by] his
apostles, but a long while after their deaths"
As church orthodoxy began to develop through the second and
third centuries the documents which would make up the New Testament were
revised in order to establish the orthodox view. It was the Christological
debates of the second and third centuries that finally led to the formation
of the doctrine of the Trinity.
Bart Ehrman documents
many of these revisions in his book "The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture".
Ehrman writes:
Orthodox scribes not infrequently altered
texts that might be taken to suggest that Jesus became the Son of God
only at his baptism (Luke 3:22; Acts 10:37, 38; John 1:34), or at his
resurrection (Rom 1:4), or at some unspecified moment (e.g., Luke 9:35;
1John 5:18). Correspondingly they changed other passages so as to
highlight their view that Jesus was already the Son of God before his
baptism (Mark 1:1) or even before his coming into the world (Matt 1:18).
By far the most common anti-adoptionist
corruptions simply designate Christ as "God."
Here are a few examples of changes that were
made to the text:
|
Corrupt Text |
Original Text |
Matthew 1:18
Now the birth
of Jesus Christ happened this way: |
Matthew 1:18
Now the beginning
of Jesus Christ happened this way: |
Luke 2:33
And
Joseph and his mother
marveled at those things which were spoken of him. |
Luke 2:33
And
his father and mother
marveled at those things which were spoken of him. |
Luke 9:35
And there came a voice out of the cloud, saying,
This is my
beloved Son: hear him. |
Luke 9:35
And there came a voice out of the cloud, saying,
This is my
son, the one who is chosen:
hear him. |
John 1:34
And I saw, and bare record that this is the
Son of God. |
John 1:34
And I saw, and bare record that this is the
chosen of
God. |
1 Timothy 3:16
And without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness:
God was
manifest in the flesh, |
1 Timothy 3:16
And without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness:
Who was
manifest in the flesh, |
Ehrman goes on to say:
Finally, the orthodox emphasis on Jesus'
divinity occasionally led to a de-emphasis on his humanity. So far as we
can judge, scribes never eliminated the notion that Jesus was fully
human. This would have embroiled them in a different set of problems,
for then the text could be taken to support docetic Christologies that
the proto-orthodox opposed on another front.
But scribes did modify texts that
could implicate Christ in human weaknesses and frailties that were not
appropriate to one understood to be divine, occasionally changing
passages that suggest that Christ was not all-knowing (Matt 24:36) or
spiritually perfect (Luke 2:40), and passages that suggest that he was
purely mortal (John 19:5) or susceptible to human temptations and sin
(Heb 2:18; 10:29).
The "Antichrist"
As
time went on, the leadership of "the Way" became almost entirely Greek.
Those who were Jewish or Hebraic were marginalized and labeled as heretics. As
opposition to the Greek viewpoint diminished, there was a tremendous effort by the early
Gentile “church fathers” to establish Jesus as God,
and by the time his last living disciple,
John, was in his old age (around 90CE) the idea of Yeshua as a divine being had
already begun to become accepted among many Greek "Christians".
This is a doctrine that John calls "not
messiah" or "Antichrist".
1 John 4:1
1 Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether
they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.
2 Hereby know you the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses
that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God:
3 And every spirit that confesses not that Yeshua Messiah is come in
the flesh is not of God: and this is that [spirit] of antichrist, whereof
you have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.
By making messiah into a god, the Greeks were
effectively making messiah into the opposite of what he was suppose to be.
John warned the people of his time not to turn from their Jewish
roots. Not to make Yeshua into God.
2 John 1:6
6 And this is love, that we walk after his commandments. This is
the commandment, That, as you have heard from the beginning, you should
walk in it.
7 For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not
that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.
8 Look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have
wrought, but that we receive a full reward.
The role of messiah is one who brings Israel OUT of idolatry and
back to the worship of the One God. In essence, the belief in “Jesus” (the
mainstream Christian view of who and what he was) is a belief that goes AGAINST
what the role of messiah is. It is an anti-messiah (or antichrist) belief.
Yet John saw this belief grow stronger
1 John 2:18
18 Little children, it is the last time: and as you have heard that
antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we
know that it is the last time...
21 I have not written to you because you know not the truth, but
because you know it, and that no lie is of the truth.
In Jewish belief, the “son of God” is NOT “God the son”. Messiah
has never been confused with God. He has NEVER been considered a deity.
John believed that Jesus was the messiah.
22 Who is a liar but he that denies that Jesus is the
Messiah?
However, he believed that by making Jesus into a god (and not
distinguishing between God and Messiah), those who did such a thing
were proposing a belief that was an insult to Jewish concept and tradition
of what messiah was to be.
He is
antichrist, that denies the Father and the Son.
23 Whosoever denies the Son, the same has not the Father:
[(but) he
that acknowledges the Son has the Father also].
John then appeals to his followers to abide by the Jewish
traditions that they had heard “from the beginning”.
24 Let that therefore abide in you, which you have heard from the
beginning. If that which you have heard from the beginning shall remain in you,
you also shall continue in the Son, and in the Father.
25 And this is the promise that he has promised us, [even] eternal
life.
John anticipated the messianic age, the resurrection of the dead,
and the “world to come” were all at the doorstep. He was unaware that there was to be two thousand years to
follow.
In time, what had been the majority view became the minority view.
Eventually, through creeds, various church councils, and the formation of
Christianity as a state religion, the divinity of Messiah became the
official church doctrine.
Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia (vol.6 / Christianity)
Councils and Creeds
Early creeds began the process of specifying the divine in Christ, both in
relation to the divine in the Father and in
relation to the human in Christ. The definitive formulations of
these relations came in a series of official church councils during
the 4th and 5th centuries – notably the one at Nicaea in 325 and the
one at Chalcedon in 451 – which stated the doctrines of the Trinity
and of the two natures of Christ in the form still accepted by most
Christians.
To arrive at these formulations, Christianity had to refine its thought and
language, creating in the process a philosophical theology, both in Greek
and in Latin, that was to be the dominant intellectual system of Europe for
more than a thousand years.
Belief in a triune Godhead became the only
accepted view of the nature of God. Anyone who believed otherwise would be
put to death. Although there have been those throughout history that have
not viewed the orthodox Trinitarian position as correct. In his article
Cosmic Codebreaker, Pious Heretic,
about Sir Isaac Newton (for Christian History Magazine), Karl Giberson
writes:
Newton began a sustained reflection on the Christian doctrines and decided
that the Anglican status quo was a thorough corruption of the true, original
Christianity.
These considerations led him to write over a million words on theology and
biblical studies – more than he wrote on any other subject.
Newton’s theological investigations convinced him that the doctrine of the
Trinity was bogus, a successful deception by St. Athanasius in the fourth
century. Newton argued that the Scriptures had been altered and early
Christian writers had been misquoted to make it appear that Trinitarianism
had been the original faith.
Newton believed that the scriptures had been altered. This was not just a statement of desperation.
Rather, there was substance to his claims.
Giberson continues:
He [Newton] became repelled by what he perceived as the false religion that
surrounded him – an idolatrous faith that worshiped Christ as God, when he
was but a mediator between God and man.
Newton was forced to keep his views at least partially veiled. The Unitarian
position, (belief in the One God), however, began to make certain advances
in the American colonies. Such notable people as Benjamin Franklin and
Thomas Jefferson were Unitarian. Jefferson, himself, refers to Trinity as:
“…an unintelligible proposition of Platonic mysticism that three are one,
and one is three; and yet one is not three and three are not one.” “I never
had sense enough to comprehend the Trinity, and it appeared to me that
comprehension must precede assent.”
Jefferson further believes that the “One God” movement would sweep the
nation if it was given the religious freedom the founding fathers
envisioned. In a letter written to James Smith, December 8, 1822 he says:
The pure and simple unity of the Creator of the universe, is now all but
ascendant in the Eastern States; it is dawning in the West and advancing
toward the South; and I confidently expect that the present generation will
see Unitarianism become the general religion of the United States.
The doctrine of the trinity, however, was much too entrenched to be easily
dismissed, and those who did not accept the belief were labeled as
non-Christian.
The Early Concepts
In Exploring Church History,
Howard Vos writes:
One of the earliest errors was Ebionism. Appearing in
fully developed
form in the second century, it was in reality only a continuation
of the Judaistic opposition to the apostle Paul. Some groups seem to have
been quite clear on the essentials of salvation but insisted on law keeping
as a way of life. Most appear to have denied the deity of Christ. These
views they held in an effort to retain a true monotheism. They put
much stress on the law in general and on circumcision and Sabbath keeping in
particular. Ebionism practically disappeared by the fifth century. It had
little if any lasting effect on the church.
Who were these Ebionites?
The Encyclopedia Britannica (11th edition) states:
Epiphanius with his customary confusion makes two separate sects,
Ebionites and Nazarenes. Both names, however, refer to the same
people, the latter going back to the designation of apostolic times
(Acts 24:5)
5 For we have found this man a pestilent fellow, and a mover of sedition
among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the
Nazarenes.
And the former being the term usually applied to them in the ecclesiastical
literature of the 2nd and 3rd centuries. The origin of the Nazarenes or
Ebionites as a distinct sect is very obscure, but may be dated with much
likelihood from the edict
of Hadrian which in 135 finally scattered the old church of Jerusalem.
As mentioned earlier, there was a distinct disagreement between Paul and
these believers from Jerusalem who are often referred to in the New
Testament as “of the circumcision” or “Judaizers.” It is important,
however, to note that the dispute was over the application of the law. It
was NEVER over the deity of Yeshua. Why? Because Paul’s perspective
on the subject did not differ from theirs. Most of the dispute over
the deity of Yeshua came long after Paul’s death.
If these early followers did not believe that Yeshua was God, what did they
believe?
In The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture,
Bart Ehrman writes:
According to orthodox sources, the Ebionites
self-consciously traced their lineage back to the apostolic times, and like
the earliest followers of Jesus worked to preserve their Jewish identity and
customs, including the practices of circumcision and kashrut.
They are most commonly portrayed as
adoptionists who reject both the notion of Jesus’ pre-existence and the
doctrine of his virgin birth, maintaining instead that Jesus was a “normal”
human being, born of natural generation. God chose him to be his Son at his
baptism and gave him his messianic mission. This he fulfilled by dying on the cross,
after which God raised him from the dead and exalted him to heaven.
Sources agree that the Ebionites accepted
the binding authority of the Old Testament (and therefore the continuing
validity of the Law) but rejected the authority of the apostate apostle,
Paul.
The sources do not agree about the character
and contours of the gospel used by the Ebionites. Most of
the
fathers from the early second century (Papias) to the late fourth (Jerome) claim that it
comprised a truncated form of Matthew (outwardly the most Jewish of the
four) written in Hebrew, one that lacked it’s opening chapters, that is, the
narrative of Jesus’ miraculous birth.
Why was this early Hebrew text different
from the Greek? The natural assumption is that the Ebionites
simply deleted the text that they disagreed with. However, there is no
historic evidence that this group was in the practice of altering or
deleting text to conform to their particular beliefs.
The evidence, however,
is overwhelming that those who espoused the doctrine concerning the deity of
Jesus not only altered and added to the text, they did so frequently and as
a matter of course.
This was not generally done to mislead or deceive, but
in a sincere effort to “clarify” the text. The result, however, is thousands
of verifiably corrupted documents that were used in the compiling of various
texts we now call the New Testament.
The Development of
“Christology”
Additional “clarification” efforts brought
about the formation of various “Christologies” which were a natural
progression of attempts to justify the Hebraic scriptures through a Greek
philosophy perspective.
In time
four Christologies developed.
Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia
(vol.6/ Christology)
In the New Testament
The earliest Christians expressed their
explicit Christology with titles and mythological patterns borrowed from the
religious environment of 1st century Palestine, where both Hebraic and
Hellenistic Greek conceptions of God, history, and destiny were at work.
Especially important in a consideration of New Testament Christology is the
pervasive eschatological consciousness of the period; many modern scholars
think that Jesus himself shared in this consciousness of living at the end
of time.
Four early patterns of christological
thinking can be discerned within the New Testament. The earliest of
these has two focuses – looking backward to Jesus’ earthly life as that of
an eschatological prophet and servant of God and forward to Christ’s coming
again as the Messiah, the Son of man.
In a second two-stage christological
formulation the earthly Jesus was also seen as the prophet-servant of the
last days, but at the same time he was declared to have become Lord, Christ,
and Son of God at his resurrection and exaltation.
In the third pattern, these post
resurrection titles were applied retrospectively to Jesus in his earthy
period in order to articulate the intrinsic connection between Jesus’ earthy
ministry and his role as savior. A “sending formula” developed, with
God as subject, his Son as object, and a statement of saving purpose, as in
John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that
whoever believes in him should not parish but have eternal life” (also Gal.
4:4).
... In the fourth pattern, expressed in
the christological hymns of the Hellenistic-Jewish church, Jesus was
identified with the Divine Wisdom, or Logos. Philosophical
Hellenistic Judaism had conceived of the Logos as the personified agent of
the divine being, the agent of creation, revelation, and redemptive action.
The earthy Jesus was now seen as the
incarnation of this preexistent wisdom or Logos.
... Consequently, “Son of God” and “Son,” which
were originally terms expressive of Jesus’ role in salvation history,
acquire a metaphysical import and come to denote his divine being.
The Son of God
Many of the Hebraic phrases and abstract
concepts were foreign to the new Gentile leaders. Much of the confusion over
the divinity of Yeshua began with the first century messianic title, “Son of
God.” The Gentiles understood this phrase to mean, “God the Son.” Again,
this was not an effort to deceive anyone. It was simply the most natural
interpretation for someone in the Greek culture to have.
In The Doctrine of the Trinity Sir
Anthony Buzzard and Charles Hunting write:
Responsible historians, both secular and
religious, agree that the Jews of Jesus’ time held firmly to a faith in a
unipersonal God.
Church history shows that the concept of
even two equal persons in the Godhead – the Father and Son – did not receive
formal approval in the Christian community until three hundred years after
the ministry of Jesus, at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD.
This is not to ignore the controversy that
came about as a result of Jesus’ claim to be the “Son of God.” But that
claim should not be confused with the much later assertion by the Church
that he was “God, the Son.” [pp 29, 6, 37]
The first century was a
time of expectation. There were many people who were "looking" for the
Messiah.
John 1:40
40 One of the two, which heard John, and followed him, was Andrew, Simon
Peter’s brother.
41 He, first found his own brother Simon, and said to him, We have found the
Messiah.
42 And he brought him to Yeshua. And when Yeshua saw him, he said, You are
Simon, the son of Jona: you shall be called Cephas, which means: a stone.
43 The following day, Yeshua went to Galilee, and found Philip, and said to
him, Follow me.
44 Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter.
45 Philip finds Nathanael and says to him,
We have found him, of whom
Moses in the law, and the prophets wrote. Yeshua of Nazareth, the son of
Joseph.
46 And Nathanael said to him, Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Philip
said to him, Come and see.
47 Yeshua saw Nathanael coming to him, and said,
Look an Israelite indeed,
in whom is no guile!
48 Nathanael said to him, How do you know me? Yeshua answered and said to
him, Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.
49 Nathanael answered, and said to him, Rabbi, you are
the Son of God,
you are the king of Israel.
Were John and Nathanael proclaiming that
Yeshua was God?
No, the title, “Son of God,” is a
Messianic title. They WERE claiming that
they believed that Yeshua was the Messiah, they were NOT saying that he was God.
Let’s explore other places where we see references to the son(s) of God. In
the book of Exodus we see the children of Israel called God’s son.
Exodus 4:22
22 And you shall say to Pharaoh, Thus says
the LORD, Israel is my son, my firstborn.
23 And I say to you, Let my son go, that he may serve me: and if you
refuse to let him go, I will slay your son, your firstborn
The phrase, “son of God,” is found 46
times in the Bible (only once in the Tanakh / Old Testament). The phrase “sons
of God” (plural) is found 11 times in the Bible (five times in the
Tanakh / Old Testament)
The one place in the Old Testament where the
phrase, “son of God,” is used is in Daniel 3:25. This is often used as a
“proof” of Yeshua’s pre-existence. Since Yeshua is called the “Son of God”
in the New Testament, it is reasoned
that this Old Testament reference must refer to him
also. Is that what is being talked about here?
Daniel 3:25
25 He answered and said, Lo, I see four men
loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form
of the fourth is like the son of God.
In Jewish tradition this fourth man walking
in the fire is an angel of God. The places in the Old Testament where
the phrase “sons of God” is found, especially those in the book of
Job (1:16, 2:1, and 38:7), are also thought to be a reference to angelic
beings. The phrase, however, can also mean followers
or chosen of God. Certainly most all of
the places you see in the New Testament would be read this way.
John 1:12
12 But as many as receive him, to them he
gave power to become the sons of God, to them that believe on his
name.
Romans 8:14
14 For as many as are lead by the spirit of
God, they are the sons of God.
Philippians 2:15
15 That you may be blameless and harmless,
the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and
perverse nation, among whom you shine as lights in the world,
1 John 3:1,2
1 Behold, what manner of love the Father has
bestowed on us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knows us not, because
it knew him not.
2 Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it does not yet appear
what we shall be; but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like
him; for we shall see him as he is.
Paul tells us (Romans 8:14) that anyone who
is led by the spirit is a “son of God”; and John tells us (1 John 3:1-2)
that “we” are “now” the “sons of God.” Paul and John were certainly not
suggesting that WE are God.
Who Am I?
Sometimes it is helpful to look at more than
one testimony of the same event to fully see what is being said. When Yeshua
asked his talmidim (disciples) who they believed he was, we see that Mark, Luke, and Matthew each
have a slightly different version of the event.
Mark 8:29
29 And he said to them, But whom do you say
I am? And Peter answered and said to him, You are the Messiah.
Luke 9:20
20 And he said to them, But whom do you say
I am? Peter answering said, The Messiah (or the anointed) of God.
Matthew 16:15
15 He said to them, But Whom do you say I
am?
16 And Simon Peter answered and said, You are the Messiah, the
son
of the living God.
Here Peter is proclaiming that
he believes Yeshua is the
Messiah; However, what does he mean by saying that he was the "son of the
living God"?
The Return of the Exiles
There in one other place in scripture where we find the
phrase, “son(s) of the living God”. It is found in the first chapter of the
book of Hosea. Hosea was a prophet to Israel (the northern kingdom) during
the time of the divided kingdom.
Hosea 1:10
10 Yet the number of the children of Israel
shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered; and
it shall come to pass, in the place where it was said to them, You are not
my people, there it shall be said to them, you are the sons of the living
God.
11 Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered
together, and appoint themselves one head, and they shall come up out of
the land; for great shall be the day of Jezreel.
In this passage we see the northern kingdom
(the House of Israel), who lost their identity because they would not follow
God’s instructions, brought back from exile at the end of the age, and will be reunited with the
southern kingdom (Judah).
The redemption of the northern kingdom of
Israel is a pivotal point in future prophetic events. After this happens
is when the messianic age is ushered in. Paul
refers to this Romans 8.
Romans 8:19
19 For the earnest expectation of the creation waits for the manifestation
of the sons of God.
But what
does THAT have to do with Jesus (Yeshua)?
next
chapter