We do not know how Jesus came to adopt this title. Its association with the predictions of his coming glory shows that he knew that in him the Daniel vision was to have fulfilment. The predictions of suffering and death, however, are completely foreign to that apocalyptic conception, being akin rather, as Professor Charles has suggested, to the prophecies of the suffering servant in the Book of Isaiah (Book of Enoch, p. 314-317). Moreover, it may not be fanciful to find in his claims to heavenly authority a hint of the thought of the eighth Psalm, "Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet" (see Dalman WJ I. 218). Although the name expresses a consciousness of dignity, vicarious ministry, and authority, similar to thoughts found in Daniel, Isaiah, and the Psalms, it was not deduced from these scriptures by any synthesis of diverse ideas. It rather indicates that Jesus in his own nature realized a synthesis which no amount of study of scripture would ever have suggested. He drew his conception of himself from his own self-knowledge, not from his Messianic meditations. On his lips, then, "the Son of Man" indicates that he knew himself to be the Man whom God had chosen to be Lord over all (compare Dalman as above). The lowly estate which contradicted the Daniel vision prevented Jesus' hearers from recognizing in the title a Messianic claim; for him, however, it was the expression of the very heart of his Messianic consciousness.
If Jesus gave expression to his official consciousness when he used the name "the Son of Man," the title "the Son of God" may be said to express his more personal thought about himself. It is necessary to distinguish between the meaning of this title to the contemporaries of Jesus and his own conception of it. In the popular thought "the Son of God" was the designation of that man whom God would at length raise up and crown with dignity and power for the deliverance of his people. This meaning followed from the Messianic interpretation of the second Psalm, in which the theocratic king is called God's son (Ps. ii. 7). In another psalm, which Jesus himself quotes (John x. 34), magistrates and judges are called "sons of the Most High" (lxxxii. 6). Another Old Testament use casts light on this,--the designation of Israel as God's son, his firstborn (Ex. iv. 22; Hos. i. 10), with which may be compared a remarkable expression in the so-called Psalms of Solomon (xviii. 4), "Thy chastisement was upon us [that is, Israel] as upon a son, firstborn, only begotten." In all these passages that which constitutes a man the son of God is God's choice of him for a special work, while Israel collectively bears the title to suggest God's fatherly love for the people he had taken for his own. The Messianic title, therefore, described not a metaphysical, but an official or ethical, relation to God. It is certainly in this sense that the high-priest asked Jesus "Art thou the Messiah the son of the Blessed?" (Mark xiv. 61), and that the crowd about the cross flung their taunts at him (Matt, xxvii. 43), and the demoniacs proclaimed their knowledge of him (Mark iii. 11; v. 7). The name must be interpreted in this sense also in the confession of Nathanael (John i. 49); moreover, it was not the coupling of the names "Messiah" and "son of the living God" in Peter's confession that gave it its great significance for Jesus. In all of these cases there is no evidence that there has been any advance over the theocratic significance which made the title "the Son of God" fitting for the man chosen by God for the fulfilment of his promises.
The case is different with the name by which Jesus was called at his baptism (Mark i. 11). The difference here, however, arises not from anything in the name as used on this occasion, but from that in Jesus which acknowledged and accepted the title. With Jesus the consciousness that God was his Father preceded the knowledge that as "his Son" he was to undertake the work of the Messiah. The force of the call at the baptism is found in the response which his own soul gave to the word "Thou art my Son." The nature of that response is seen in his habitual reference to God as in a peculiar sense his Father. The name "Father" for God was used by him in all his teaching, and there is no evidence that he or any of his hearers regarded it as a novelty. Psalm ciii. 13 and Isaiah lxiii. 16 indicate that the conception was natural to Jewish thinking. The unique feature in Jesus' usage is his careful distinction between the general references to "your Father" and his constant personal allusions to "my Father." Witness the reply to his mother in the temple (Luke ii. 49); his word to Peter, "Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven" (Matt. xvi. 17), his solemn warning, "Not every one that saith unto me Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven" (Matt. vii. 21), and the promise, "Every one who shall confess me before men ... him will I also confess before my Father" (Matt. x. 32). In the fourth gospel the same intimate reference is common: so, for example, the temple is "my Father's house" (ii. 16), the Sabbath cure is defended because "my Father worketh even until now" (v. 17), the cures are done "in My Father's name" (x. 25), "I am the vine, and my Father is the husbandman" (xv. 1). This mode of expression discloses a consciousness of unique filial relation to God which is independent of, even as it was antecedent to, the consciousness of official relation.
The full name "the Son of God" was seldom applied by Jesus to himself, the only recorded instances being found in the fourth gospel (v. 25; ix. 35?; x. 36; xi. 4). He frequently acquiesced in the use of the title by others in addressing him (for example, John i. 49; Matt. xvi. 16; xxvi. 63f.; Mark xiv. 61f.; Luke xxii. 70); but for himself he preferred the simpler phrase "the Son." This mode of expression occurs often in John, and is found also in the two passages, already noticed, in which the other gospels give clearest expression to the extraordinary self-assertion of Jesus (Matt. xi. 27; Luke x. 22; and Mark xiii. 32). In the first of them his claim to be the only one who can adequately reveal God is founded on the consciousness that the relation between himself and God is so intimate that God alone adequately knows him, whom men were so ready to set at nought, and he alone knows God. This relation, in which he and God stand together in contrast with all other men, is expressed by the unqualified names, "the Father" and "the Son." In the second passage Jesus confessed the limitation of his knowledge, but again in such a way as to set himself and God in contrast not only with men, but also with "the angels in heaven." Such assertions as these indicate that he who, knowing his full humanity, chose the title "the Son of Man" to express his consciousness that he had been appointed by God to be the Messiah, was yet aware in his inner heart that his relation to God was even closer than that in which he stood to men.
There is no word in John which goes beyond the two self-declarations of Jesus which crown the record of the other evangelists, yet in the fourth gospel the same claim to unique relation to God is more frequently and frankly avowed. The most unqualified assertion of intimacy--"I and the Father are one" (x. 30)--states what is clearly implied throughout the gospel (so xiv. 6-11; xvi. 25; and particularly xvii. 21, "that they may be one, even as we are one"). It has often been said, and truly, that this claim to unity with the Father, taken by itself, signifies no more than perfect spiritual and ethical harmony with God. Yet when the words are considered in their connection, and more particularly when the two supreme self-declarations in the synoptic gospels are associated with them, they express a sense of relation to God so utterly unique, so strongly contrasting the Father and the Son with all others, that we cannot conceive of any other man, even the saintliest, taking like words upon his lips.
These titles in which Jesus gave expression to his official and his personal consciousness present clearly the problem which he offers to human thought. Jesus stands before us in the gospels as a man aware of completest kinship with his brethren, yet conscious at the same time of standing nearer to God than he does to men.
It is highly significant that the gospel which records most fully the claim of Jesus to be more closely related to God than he was to men, most fully records also his definite acknowledgment of dependence on his Father, and of that Father's supremacy over him and all others. "The Son can do nothing of himself" (John v. 19), "I speak not from myself" (xiv. 10), "my Father is greater than all" (x. 29), "the Father is greater than I" (xiv. 28),--these confessions join with the common reference to God as "him that sent me" (v. 30 and often) in giving voice to his own spirit of reverence. It appears as clearly in his habitual submission to his Father's will,--"My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to accomplish his work" (John iv. 34); "I am come down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me" (John vi. 38). This submission reached its fulness in the prayer of Gethsemane, recorded in the earlier gospels,--"Father, all things are possible unto thee; remove this cup from me: howbeit not what I will, but what thou wilt" (Mark xiv. 36). Jesus was a man of prayer; not only in Gethsemane, but also throughout his ministry he habitually sought his Father in that communion in which the soul of man finds its light and strength for life's duty. When he was baptized (Luke iii. 21), after the first flush of success in Capernaum (Mark i. 35), before choosing the twelve (Luke vi. 12), before the question at Cæsarea Philippi (Luke ix. 18), at the transfiguration (Luke ix. 29), on the cross (Luke xxiii. 46),--at all the crises of his life he turned to God in prayer. Moreover, prayer was his habit, for it was after a night of prayer which has no connection with any crisis reported for us (Luke xi. 1), that he taught his disciples the Lord's prayer in response to their requests. The prayer beside the grave of Lazarus (John xi. 41, 42) suggests that his miracles were often, if not always (compare Mark ix. 29), preceded by definite prayer to God. His habit of prayer was the natural expression of his trust in God. From the resistance to the temptations in the wilderness to the last cry, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit," his life is an example of childlike faith in God.
Yet throughout his life of obedience and trust Jesus never gave one indication that he felt the need of penitence when he came before God. He perceived as no one else has ever done the searching inwardness of God's law, and demanded of men that they tolerate no lower ambition than to be like God, yet he never breathed a sigh of conscious failure, or gave sign that he blushed when the eternal light shone into his own soul. He was baptized, but without confession of sin. He challenged his enemies to convict him of sin (John viii. 46). Such a challenge might have rested on a man's certainty that his critics did not know his inner life; but hypocrisy has no place in the character of Jesus. The reply to the rich young ruler, "Why callest thou me good?" (Mark x. 18), even if it was a confession that freedom from past sin was still far less than that absolute goodness that God alone possesses, simply sets in stronger light his silence concerning personal failure, and his omission in all his praying to seek forgiveness. It is probable, however, that that reply deals not with the "good" as the "ethically perfect," but as the "supremely beneficent," so that Jesus simply reminded the seeker after life that God alone is the one to be approached as the Gracious and Merciful One by sinful men (see Dalman WJ I. 277). Thus the reply becomes a fresh expression of the reverence of Jesus, and still further emphasizes his failure to confess his sinfulness.
In all this thought about himself Jesus stands before us as a man, conscious of his close kinship with his fellows. Like them he hungered and thirsted and grew weary, like them he longed for friendship and for sympathy, like them he trusted God and prayed to God and learned still to trust when his request was denied. He stands before us also as a man conscious of being anointed by God for the great work which all the prophets had foretold, and of being fully equipped with authority and power and the promise of unapproachable dignity. Of deep religious spirit and great reverence for the scriptures of his people, he yet used these scriptures as a master does his tools, to serve his work rather than to instruct him in it. He drew his knowledge from within and from above, and proclaimed his own fulfilment of the scriptures when he filled them with new meaning. A man always devout, always at prayer, he is never seen, like Isaiah, prostrate before the Most High, crying, "I am undone" (Isa. vi. 5). In his moments of greatest seriousness and most manifest communion with heaven he looked to God as his nearest of kin, and felt himself a stranger on the earth fulfilling his Father's will. He felt heaven to be his home not simply by God's gracious promise, but by the right of previous possession. His kinship with men was a condescension, his natural fellowship was with God.
The miracles with which the gospels have filled the record of Jesus' life have caused perplexity to many, and they belong with other mysterious things recorded for us in the story of the past or occurring under the incredulous observation of our scientific generation. They all pale, however, before the unaccountable exception presented to universal human experience by this Man of Nazareth. It confronts us when we think of the unschooled Jew who, in his thought of God, rose not only above all of his generation, but higher than all who had gone before him, or have come after, one who built on the foundation of the past a superstructure of religion new, and simple, and clearly heavenly. It confronts us when we think of this Man who believed that it was given to him to establish the kingdom that should fill the whole earth, and who had the boldness and the faith to ignore the opposition of all the world's wisdom and of all its enthroned power, and to fulfil his task as the woman does who hides her leaven in the meal, content to wait for years, or millenniums, until his truth shall conquer in the realization of God's will on earth even as it is done in heaven. It confronts us when we consider that the Man who has shown his brethren what obedience means, who has taught them to pray, who has been for all these centuries the Way, the Truth, the Life, by whom they come to God, habitually claimed without shadow of abashment or slightest hint of conscious presumption, a nature, a relation to God, a freedom from sin, that other men according to the measure of their godliness would shun as blasphemy. If the personal claim was true, and not the blind pretence of vanity, the Jesus of the gospels is the exception to the uniform fact of human nature, but he is no longer unaccountable; and if his claim was true, his knowledge of the absolute religion, and his choice of the irresistible propaganda, are no less extraordinary, but they are not unaccountable. Paul, whose life was transformed and his thinking revolutionized by his meeting with the risen Jesus, thought on these things and believed that "the name which, is above every name" was his by right of nature as well as by the reward of obedience (Phil. ii. 5-11). John, who leaned on Jesus' breast during his earthly life, and who meditated on the meaning of that life through a ministry of many decades, came to believe that he whom he had seen with his eyes, heard with his ears, handled with his hands, was, indeed, "the Word made flesh" (John i. 14), through whom the very God revealed his love to men. Through all the perplexities of doubt, amidst all the obscurings of irrelevant speculations, the hearts of men to-day turn to this Jesus of Nazareth as their supreme revelation of God, and find in him "the Master of their thinking and the Lord of their lives."