Eternal Sonship

Beginning the fourth group of witnesses to Christ's deity — names and titles of deity given to Him — Pastor Martin takes up the title Son of God. After establishing that names in biblical thought are revelatory of character, he traces the frequency of this title from Christ's conception through His ministry and apostolic testimony, then defines its meaning from John 5 and John 10, where Jesus' claim that God is His own Father and that He and the Father are one asserts an interpenetration of divine essence — He is God the Son. He applies the doctrine as essential for life, overcoming the world, and right confession, climaxing with Romans 8:32, 'He that spared not his own Son.'

Pastor Martin begins to unfold the nature of adoption by first carefully distinguishing the fatherhood peculiar to adoption from three other biblical senses of divine fatherhood: the eternal Father-Son relationship within the Godhead, the general fatherhood of creation and providence, and the theocratic fatherhood God sustained to the nation of Israel. Only the fatherhood revealed in Ephesians 1:5 and Galatians 4:4-6 — dependent on the Father's predestination, the Son's redemption, and the Spirit's attestation — is the fatherhood of adopting grace. He closes by urging unbelievers to renounce the family of the devil and pleads for the Spirit of adoption to light up these privileges in believers' hearts.