Christ is Called the Son of God

Driving home: The names of God become the vehicles by which God shows us who He is.

Jacob means 'supplanter' or 'deceiver'; when God changes his character He changes his name to Israel, 'prince of God.' Old Testament names are not labels — they reveal character.

The name Jacob means supplanter or deceiver. When God changes his character he changes his name into Israel which means prince of God. There was a place called Luz, L-U-Z. But when Jacob meets God there he changes the name to Bethel which means house of God.

6:24 - 6:45 Read in full sermon

Driving home: The names of God become the vehicles by which God shows us who He is.

The third commandment forbids taking the name of the Lord in vain — because in biblical thought to prostitute the name is to prostitute the person who bears it.

So close is the being of God identified with his name that to prostitute the name is to prostitute the person who bears that name. Or again in the Psalms and we have so many references. Again I can only just give you one under each of these categories of thought. And trust that it will be the clue and the key that will open up the significance of many others.

8:23 - 8:49 Read in full sermon

The point: Read Scripture in light of its cultural and religious setting — names and titles will leap into life when you stop assuming they are mere labels.

Martin gently corrects the well-meaning believer who refuses to study the cultural setting — the Bible says what it means, but in a cultural context that is not ours.

Ah, but someone says, Pastor Martin, I'm just a humble believer. I take the Bible as it stands. I believe it says what it means, and I believe it means what it says. Ah, but my friend, that's precisely the issue at hand.

12:23 - 12:36 Read in full sermon

Gabriel doesn't merely tell Mary she will have an unusual son — the title 'Son of the Most High' would land on her ear with full divine weight.

Now remember, see, the significance of a name is not simply saying, now Mary, you're going to have a supernatural conception and bring forth an unusual personage. And let's see now, what are we going to call? We've got to give him a name. Maybe a name.

19:47 - 19:59 Read in full sermon

Christ at twelve answers Mary, 'Knew ye not that I must be in my Father's house?' That little phrase 'my Father' was already pregnant with deity for any Jewish ear.

Behold, thy father and I sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? Knew ye not that I must be in my father's house? in the marginal reading in the 1901 is a much better rendering of the original.

21:22 - 21:40 Read in full sermon

Christ defends Sabbath healing by claiming He works as His Father works — the Jews understood Him perfectly and sought to kill Him for making Himself equal with God.

You see what our Lord did? He says, you accuse me of breaking the Sabbath, the Sabbath given to you by Jehovah through the instrumentality of Moses and the angel there upon Mount Simeon. But it's impossible that I should break the Sabbath because my Father works. He continually carries out His own purposes of providential preservation of His creation throughout every Sabbath.

31:41 - 32:11 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Son of God points primarily to this inter-Trinitarian relationship.

In John 10:30 Jesus says 'I and the Father are one' using the Greek neuter — not 'one person' but 'one thing,' one essence, one being. The grammar matters.

Even the gender is profound in its significance. There is a neuter used, I and the Father are one thing. I and the Father are one essence, one being. so that there is no confusion in the persons.

38:23 - 38:42 Read in full sermon

The point: Examine your confession: do you confess Christ as Son of God in the inter-Trinitarian sense, or only as a Jehovah's Witness 'lesser god'?

Martin asks the listener to picture (without daring to illustrate) the bonds of pure, holy, mysterious affection between the Father and the eternal Son — and then 'He spared not His own Son.'

Who can imagine the bonds that exist between the Father and the Son in the pure and holy, albeit mysterious bonds of inter-Trinitarian love and affection? Who can fathom that? But can we not at least look in the direction of that bright light and say It must have been a glorious thing The affection that existed between the Father and the Son The text says He that spared not his own Son He that spared not his own Son

49:52 - 50:40 Read in full sermon

The point: Let Romans 8:32 break upon you afresh — He spared not His own Son, the One co-essential with Him from eternity, for you.

The Father never treated any irrational soul with greater wrath than He treated His own Son when the wrath of God broke upon Him on the cross. The bonds were not suspended; they made the cross more wonderful, not less.

And yet may I say it reverently, the Father never treated with greater vengeance an irrational soul under heaven, with greater measures of pure and holy wrath, than when that wrath was poured out unmixed upon his own beloved Son.

52:37 - 52:56 Read in full sermon