“How Sweet the Name: Son of God” | Matthew 3:13-17
March 13, 2016 | Brian Hedges
Good morning. Thank you, worship team, for leading us in worship this morning. Well, it’s great to see you once again today. And we’re continuing in our series on the names of Jesus. When I began this series it was really just an Advent series, and now it’s taken us all the way through the Lent season and up to Easter. So the plan is to finish on Easter Sunday. And I have to tell you, it’s just been one of the greatest privileges for me in these last number of weeks both in this project and another project just to dive into this whole area of Christology. Just to think about Jesus, perhaps more deeply than I ever have before. And I want to tell you: Jesus is an irresistible figure. And so it’s a great privilege to talk about him to you.
So we’re continuing in this series. Last week we looked at Jesus as the Second Adam. The Last Adam. And part of our focus was on the true humanity of Christ, the true [human] nature of Christ. Today I want to focus on another name of Jesus, the most important of all, Son of God. And we’ll focus in part on his divine nature. And our passage is going to be a familiar one to you: Matthew 3:13-17.
This is the story of Jesus’ baptism. I alluded to this when we were in Mark 1 a couple of weeks ago. But I want to focus in on Matthew 3:13-17. And we’ll bring in some other passages of scripture to give us some insight into what it means when we say that Jesus is the Son of God.
Let’s read this passage.
Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" But Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness." Then he consented. And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matt. 3:13-17)
This is the word of the Lord.
So I want us to look at three things this morning. And we might look at them in this way:
I. Jesus is the Beloved Son.
II. Jesus is the Anointed Son.
III. Jesus is the Obedient Son.
Or another way to look at it (and this isn’t on the screen, but it’s another angle)—we’re going to be thinking about Jesus in his relationship to the Father as the beloved Son. Then we’re going to be thinking about Jesus in his relationship to the Spirit as the anointed Son. Then we’re going to be thinking about Jesus in his relationship to us as the obedient Son. The one who has obeyed in our place. So first of all,
I. Jesus is the Beloved Son
We see this in the Father speaking in verse 17. “And behold, a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.’” So this is giving us an insight into the Father/Son relationship that Jesus has with his Father. He is the beloved Son of the Father. Jesus is eternally loved by the Father. And I think this and other passages yield four really important insights into Jesus’ relationship to the Father.
(1) It is an Eternal Sonship.
Jesus’ Sonship did not begin in the Jordan with the anointing. He was already the Son of God. He was the Son of God when he was born among us incarnate, but he was the Son of God even before that. Jesus is the eternal Son of God, and there’s evidence for this in Scripture. This word from the Father, “my beloved Son,” carries with it a whole eternity of relationship between the Father and the Son.
Let me give you a few texts to back this claim.
Gal. 4:4-5: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” God sent his Son, but he was his Son prior to being sent.
Or take this passage: 1 John 4:8-10: “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
So we see this. Right at the heart of reality is this relationship of love between the Father and the Son. God loved his Son. Then, because God loved us, he sent his Son, his one and only Son, into the world.
One other passage, John 17:24: “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.”
Do you ever wonder what God was doing before the world began? Was he just twiddling his thumbs? Was he bored in eternity, trying to think of something to do? No, not at all! God was enthralled with his Son. He loved his Son eternally.
(2) Equality with the Father.
The second implication of this is the equality of the Son with the Father. Any Hebrew person who would hear Jesus’ claim to be the Son of God, they would immediately think, “He’s claiming equality with the Father.” A grown son, an adult son, would be equal with his father in status in the ancient world. And when Jesus claims this relationship with the Father, that’s how it’s heard.
You can see this in John 5:17-18: “But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.”
To say that Jesus is the Son of the Father is not to imply any kind of inferiority in the Son. It is to say that Jesus is actually equal to the Father. And this is part of our Trinitarian theology. That there are three persons. And so the Son is distinct from the Father in personality, in personhood. Yet he is equal to the Father in being and in deity.
The whole first chapter of Hebrews tells us this. Let me just read you a couple of verses. “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son,” Now listen to how the writer of Hebrews describes his Son, “whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Heb. 1:1-3).
The exact imprint of his nature. The exact replica of the Father. Like the Father, yet distinct from the Father. Distinct in personality, yet like -- the same in essence, in divinity, in power, in deity. All of his attributes equal to the Father. That’s why the writer of Hebrews goes on to contrast the supremacy of the Son over the angels. He says in essence, God never commanded us to worship the angels. The angels are to worship the Son. “Let all the angels of God worship him” (v. 6). The angels don’t share the throne with the Father. But to the Son, he says in verse 8, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. The scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom.” The Son is equal to the Father.
And there’s a third implication:
(3) As the Son, Jesus, therefore, reveals the Father.
As the Son, he reveals the Father. He is the eternal Son of the Father, and he is equal to the Father. And the stunning implication of this is that the Son reveals the Father. Sons characteristically look like their fathers. A son bears the image of the Father.
Sometimes when I put pictures of my children on Facebook, friends—or maybe relatives from Texas that I don’t see very often—they’ll comment and say things like, “He looks just like you. He looks just like you did when you were a kid.” My children bear my likeness. They bear my image. And in the same way, Jesus bears the image of the Father. He bears the likeness of the Father, and so he reveals the Father. Which means this. If you want to see what God looks like, look at Jesus.
John 1:18: “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” Who is this only God who is at the Father’s side? It’s the Word made flesh. It’s the Son of the Father.
Or take John 14, Jesus speaking there to his disciples, and Philip replies when Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”
Now, don’t miss this. This is so important. Sometimes people disbelieve in God and they have an idea of God as some kind of a nebulous figure without really any understanding of who God is. But if you want to know who God is, you have to look at the portrait God has given of Himself. And that portrait is Jesus.
Theologian Thomas Torrance put it this way: “There is in fact no God behind the back of Jesus, no act of God other than the act of Jesus, no God but the God we see and meet in him. Jesus Christ is the open heart of God, the very love and life of God poured out to redeem humankind, the mighty hand and power of God stretched out to heal and save sinners. All things are in God’s hands, but the hands of God and the hands of Jesus, in life and death, are the same.” (Quoted in Michael Reeves, Rejoicing in Christ, IVP, p. 15)
So get rid of any idea you’ve got that there’s some kind of sinister being standing behind Jesus that is different than Jesus. Jesus, who is characterized by his love for sinners, is the face of the Father.
In fact, Torrance tells a story about when he was in World War II serving as an army chaplain in Italy. One day, in the heat of battle, Torrance came across a soldier who was dying. Torrance says, “As I knelt down and bent over him, he said: ‘Padre, is God really like Jesus?’ I assured him that he was – the only God that there is, the God who had come down to us in Jesus, shown his face to us, and poured out his love to us as our Saviour. As I prayed and commended him to the Lord Jesus, he passed away.’” God is like Jesus. Jesus reveals the Father. The Son shows us the Father.
(4) Loved by the Father
And then, fourth and finally, He’s loved by the Father. I’ve already given you the verses. John 17 and 1 John 4:8. But I just want to emphasize this point. The Son is the beloved of the Father. Do you know who in the universe loves the Son the most? The Father. And do you want to know what will make you most like the Father, the most Godly? This is the heart of godliness. The heart of godliness is love for Jesus.
Take it away, John Owen! John Owen is my man. I think I need a “John Owen is my homeboy” t-shirt. This is what John Owen says: “The person of Christ is the principal object of the love of God…Nothing renders us so like unto God as our love unto Jesus Christ, for he is the principal object of his love;—in him doth his soul rest—in him is he always well pleased.”
If you want to be godly, love Jesus. He is the beloved of the Father. This is Trinitarian theology we are dealing with here, and this shows us that right at the heart of reality is not some monochrome, singular personality. But personality in Technicolor! The Triune God in eternal community of relationships where Father, Son, and Spirit in eternal communion with one another existed in unbounded love and delight and joy. And that’s what you’re invited into. That’s what you’re invited to participate in. That’s what Jesus came to save you for. It’s so that you could enter into that relationship. The theologian Herman Bavinck once said, “In the confession of the Trinity we hear the heartbeat of the Christian religion.” And that’s right. But I would say even more. In the confession of the Trinity we hear the heartbeat of the universe itself. The very heart of reality is the triune God. What Lewis called this dance, this drama. And we’re invited to join this dance. To love the beloved Son of the Father. He is the beloved Son.
II. Jesus is the Anointed Son
So if verse 17 shows us the Son’s relationship to the Father, in verse 16 we see the Son’s relationship to the Spirit. Look at verse 16: “And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him.”
The Spirit descends on Jesus visibly. Luke says it was in the bodily shape of the dove, the dove being a symbol not only of gentleness but also a symbol of creation. Remember the dove and the flood waters of Noah, that Old Testament story symbolizing new creation, the Spirit of God hovering over the face of the water like a dove in Genesis 1, creation. So here is the Spirit of God descending in new creation fullness on the Son and coming to rest on him.
Now let me back into this point by referring back to last week. Last week I emphasized very strongly the true humanity of Jesus. Jesus wasn’t just God in a man suit. He wasn’t simply divine being in the form of a human body but he had a real human nature. A divine nature and a human nature. 100% divine. 100% human.
And the reason for this? I alluded to it last week but want to spell it out more now.
The reason is to counter the ancient heresy Apollinarianism. And I know nobody knows that word, but let me explain what this is. Apollinarius was the fourth-century bishop of Bishop of Laodicea in Syria (361–90). He was a friend of the great Athanasius who was a great defender of the deity of Christ against Arianism. But Apollinarius went too far. And in his zeal to defend Christ’s divinity, he went so far as to present a diminished view of the humanity of Christ. He essentially taught that Jesus had a human body but a divine soul, rather than a human soul or a human mind. Christ’s person, for Apollinarius, was the “’co-mixture’ of the Logos and ‘abridged human nature’: ‘a mean between God and man, neither wholly man nor wholly God, but a combination of God and man.”
And Gregory of Nazianzus perceived the error of Apollinarius. In one of his letters he fought it, tooth and nail. He fought it in this letter. And I quoted just a portion of the letter last week. I want to give you a fuller quotation now.
This is Gregory of Nazianzus, one of the Cappadocian Fathers: “If anyone has put his trust in Him as a Man without a human mind, he is really bereft of mind, and quite unworthy of salvation. For that which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved. If only half Adam fell, then that which Christ assumes and saves may be half also; but if the whole of his nature fell, it must be united to the whole nature of Him that was begotten, and so be saved as a whole. Let them not, then, begrudge us our complete salvation, or clothe the Saviour only with bones and nerves and the portraiture of humanity . . .” (In other words, only with a human body, bones and nerves and just the portrait of a human nature.) “But, says such an one, the Godhead took the place of the human intellect. How does this touch me? For Godhead joined to flesh alone is not man, nor to soul alone, nor to both apart from intellect, which is the most essential part of man. Keep then the whole man, and mingle Godhead therewith, that you may benefit me in my completeness.”
And what Gregory is saying is this. I need a complete salvation. It’s not just my body that needs to be redeemed. My mind needs to be redeemed. My soul needs to be redeemed. My whole human nature needs to be redeemed. And the only way my whole human nature can be redeemed is if human nature itself is united to the person of the divine Son so that he heals that which he assumes. He heals our human nature by assuming it to himself.
So that was my emphasis last week: Jesus’ true humanity. Absolutely essential. Now that could be misunderstood. And someone actually asked me afterwards. (I’m so glad you guys do this. I got questions after Sunday school last week. I got a question after the sermon last week. And I’m glad you do that. Please do that. If things aren’t clear, if things sound wrong, if things aren’t coming through and you think, “That doesn’t sound quite right to me,” ask. It gives me a chance to clarify and it pushes me back to the Word. We all need that.) So someone asked me if I was saying that Jesus is fully man with nothing supernatural about him? Because I said that Jesus obeyed, not in the strength of his divine nature, but in the strength of his human nature. So the question is, Wasn’t there a supernatural element in Jesus' life? So, let me answer.
And, of course, the answer is yes. Jesus is both fully God and fully man. And there was never a single millisecond in Jesus’ life, from the moment he was conceived by the Spirit in Mary’s womb, till he breathed his final breath on Golgotha’s cross, there was never a millisecond when Jesus was not 100% God, fully God, fully man. This, you may remember from the definition last week, the definition of Chalcedon: He was “perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man.” That’s the orthodox confession of the church.
My point is that he obeyed the Father in the strength, not of his divinity but the strength of his humanity. So he didn't bypass his humanity by relying on his divine nature. So it wasn’t like he was some sort of Superman, who only looked human, but wasn’t really human. He was fully divine but also fully human. And in his human obedience he obeyed, not in the strength of his divine nature. He obeyed in his human nature. The question is, how? How did he obey? How did he obey his Father? How did he do the miraculous things he did? Clearly Jesus did supernatural, miraculous things. How did he do it?
And here’s the answer—by the Spirit.
He did it by the Spirit. Jesus was the Spirit-filled man, par excellence. Jesus was in every moment of his life led and guided and filled by the Spirit. So that he didn’t rely on the divine nature, he obeyed in his human nature. But he did it in the power of the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit by the way, that is given now to us.
Back to John Owen. You may not realize this, but John Owen wrote eleven books on the Holy Spirit! Yes, eleven!** Together they make up his magnum opus, Pneumatalogia: A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit. And it is the most important thing on the Holy Spirit written in history, I think. And there’s a wonderful little segment in Book 2, where Owen ransacks Old Testament and New Testament to discuss “the work of the Holy Spirit in and on the human nature of Christ.” So let me just give you the outline. It’s beautiful to see when you see it in scripture. These are Owen’s headings. Ten ways the Spirit works in the human nature of Christ.
1. The framing, forming, and miraculous conception of the body of Christ in Mary’s womb. We see that in Luke 1:35: And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.” So, from the moment of conception, the Holy Spirit was involved in the life of Christ.
2. The sanctification of Christ’s human nature from the moment of its conception. The angel also said, that thing which is born in you will be called “holy.” Holy. So, there you have human nature—complete and full human nature—but fully sanctified from the moment of his conception.
3. The exercise of grace in Christ’s entire life and ministry. Jesus perfectly demonstrated the fruit of the Spirit, the graces of the Spirit. Jesus was full of love, and joy and peace and long-suffering and goodness and kindness and self-control—He was full of them all. He perfectly exhibited a Spirit-filled life. The graces of the Spirit. He shows us what a Spirit-filled human being looks like.
4. The anointing of Christ with all the extraordinary powers and gifts necessary to his offices as prophet, priest, and king. You see this in Isaiah 61, which Jesus quotes in Luke 4, at the beginning of his ministry, where he says, “The Spirit of the Lord has anointed me.” And then he goes off into his ministry and he’s preaching as the prophet and he’s healing as the priest and he’s casting out demons as the king who is overthrowing the evil one. He’s doing it in the power of the Spirit.
5. The working of miracles.
6. Guiding, directing, comforting, and supporting Christ in the whole course of his ministry, temptations, obedience, and sufferings. In Luke 4:1, “And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness.” He goes into the wilderness to be tempted. He is the second Adam, but he’s filled by the Spirit, sustained and supported by the Spirit.
7. Christ’s offering himself as a sacrifice to God on the cross. Remember how Hebrews talks about how Christ offered himself by the eternal Spirit to God?
8. The preservation of Christ’s human nature while his body was in the tomb. “The holy one did not see corruption.” His human nature was preserved. His body was preserved.
9. Christ’s bodily resurrection from the dead. “He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father.” “He was raised from the dead and appointed the Son of God in holiness by the Spirit,” Romans 1 tells us. The Holy Spirit, effecting this resurrection of Jesus from the dead, declares publicly that Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus also rose himself from the dead. He said, “I have power to lay my life down and power to take it up again.” And the Father also. So, each person of the Trinity is involved, but the Holy Spirit’s power worked effectively to resurrect the body of Christ.
10. The glorification of Christ’s human nature, thus fitting it to reside at God’s right hand and making it a pattern for the glorification of all who believe.
One more quick quotation. Sinclair Ferguson gives the perfect summary: “From womb to tomb to throne, the Spirit was the constant companion of the Son. As a result, when he comes to Christians to indwell them, he comes as the Spirit of Christ in such a way that to possess him is to possess Christ himself.”
The anointed Son: The Son’s relationship to the Spirit. Now the application of this is simply this: that Jesus is the “bearer and the bestower of the Spirit” (quoting Graham Cole). Jesus shows us what a Spirit-filled human life looks like, and Jesus gives the Spirit to the church in Acts 2. On the day of Pentecost, He’s the one who gives the Spirit to us. So when you’re regenerate, you’re born again, the Holy Spirit invades your heart. The very Spirit of Christ living inside you! So the same way that Jesus obeyed the Father, relying on the Spirit, is how you and I obey the Father. We do it, not in our own strength. We do it by relying on the Spirit.
III. Jesus is the Obedient Son
Finally, point number three, the obedient Son. He is the beloved Son. He is the anointed Son. He is the obedient Son.
We see this in Jesus' action in being baptized. We see this in verses 13-15: “Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.’ Then he consented.”
I explained the baptism of Christ a few weeks ago, so I’m not going to say a whole lot about it now. In summary, Jesus wasn’t being baptized for his own sin. He isn’t being baptized because he needs to repent. John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance, and Jesus doesn’t need to repent. Why is he being baptized? He tells us—to fulfill all righteousness.
In other words, Jesus’ act of baptism is one component of the righteous life that he came to live. He is identifying himself with sinners. He is coming to be baptized in the place of sinners, as the representative of sinners. He is coming to be immersed in the muddy waters of the Jordan in the same way that he will be immersed in the fiery deluge of the wrath of God on the cross. In fact, he says in Luke 12, “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished!” (Luke 12:50). He’s looking forward now to another baptism. He’s looking forward to the baptism of the cross. But it’s his obedience that’s in view. The obedience of the Son. The Son was obedient to the Father, but he was obedient to the Father on our behalf.
Here’s the key text, Hebrews 5:8-9a: “Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him…” Jesus lived the perfect life that you and I should have lived. Then he died the agonizing, painful death under the wrath and judgment of God that you and I should have died. So that that perfect obedience in both his life and his death – what theologians call the active and the passive obedience of Christ in both his perfect life and his sinless death – that obedience counts as yours. His obedience counts as yours. He obeyed in your place. He’s the head of the body. And as the head obeyed, so the body obeyed with him. He obeyed as the husband of the bride, and his obedience counts for the bride. Somebody shared with me another statement from Ferguson, I’d not seen this before. Ferguson in comparing Adam and Christ, said “both Adam and Christ went to a tree because of a woman he loved.” Jesus went to the tree of the cross because of his love for his bride, and he there died for her. Everything he did, it counts as he is the obedient son.
So let me conclude in this way: Jesus is not only the beloved Son of the Father, and the anointed Son, anointed by the Spirit, and the obedient Son, obeying in our place, he’s also what theologians call the Firstborn Son. And so I just want to end in this way. I want us to just think about two applications of the Sonship of Jesus to your life and to mine.
Here’s the first one. As Jesus was the beloved of the Father, accepted by the Father, so you and I are accepted in the Son. Ephesians 1:6: “To the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved” (NKJV).
Calvin draws out the dazzling connections: “The title of Son truly and by nature belongs to Christ alone, yet He was revealed as Son of God in our flesh, that He who alone claimed Him as Father by right, could win Him for us also . . . His fatherly love must flow to us in Christ. The best interpreter of the passage is Paul (Eph. 1.6), where he says that we have obtained grace in the beloved, that we may be loved in God.”
Jesus, the Son of God became one of us, so that we sons of men, could become sons of God. Have all the rights of sonship. “God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Gal. 4:4-6). So the first application is simply this. Because of Jesus’ sonship, you also can relate to God as a son. And as a daughter, but in Scripture the sons were the ones who had rights. The sons had unique kinds of rights. So, just as all of us, male and female, belong to Jesus our bridegroom as the bride, so also all of us, male and female belong to Jesus the firstborn as co-heirs and belong to the Father as sons.
The second application is this. Romans 8:29. Not only are we accepted in the Son, we’re also conformed to the image of the Son. “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.” This is where our sanctification comes in. We’re fully and freely accepted by virtue of the obedience and righteousness of Christ alone. But once you’re accepted, once you’re brought into the family, God undergoes a wonderful, lifelong work of transformation where he is making you more and more like Jesus. He’s conforming you to the image of his Son. He’s remodeling you. He’s tuning you up. He’s fixing and changing and molding and shaping you. So that you become more and more like Christ, all the days of your life. And then, when Jesus returns, when he comes back, Scripture says that “we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). We’ll be fully and finally conformed to him once and for all.
Aren’t you thankful for the Sonship of Jesus?
Father, these are wonders too deep for words. We stretch our minds to try to understand the mystery of the three-in-one God, the three persons in one being, and the mystery of the two natures in Christ, fully human and fully divine, united in one person. And then the mystery of our union with Christ. That we are accepted in Christ, our head. That we are loved in Christ, the Son. That we are changed by the spirit of Christ. Lord, may we press deeper and deeper into this mystery. May we enter into this drama, this dance, and may we find here our soul’s rest, our heart’s content. May we find here the deepest wellspring of joy. Let us not settle for anything less. We pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.
**Actually, Pneumatologia is made up of nine books, not eleven. And then there’s Owen’s book on Communion with God, which includes a significant section on the Holy Spirit.
Brian G. Hedges
