Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 22:88 (Oct 1865)
Article: The Son Of God
Author: William S. Tyler

BSac 22:88 (Oct 1865) p. 620

The Son Of God

Rev. W. S. Tyler

It has been well said, that there are only two great subjects of human thought and inquiry. One of these is man, and the other is God. These two subjects meet in Christ, who was both God and man united in one person.

Ellicott has remarked in his Life of Christ, that in the portraiture of our Lord, the first Gospel presents him to us mainly as the Messiah; the second, chiefly as the God-man; the third, as the Redeemer; and the fourth, as the only-begotten Son of God. This distinction may, perhaps, be just, if it is not too rigidly applied. Certainly it is very interesting to a curious mind, and not a little encouraging also to the faith of the believer, to remark the different points of view from which the several evangelists observe and contemplate Christ, and yet how manifestly they all describe the same person; how wonderfully some of them diverge from others in the general track which they pursue, and, at the same time, how certainly, whenever they come together, they do not come in collision, but harmonize in their representations.

The express design of the apostle John in writing his Gospel, as stated by himself (20:31), is that his readers might believe that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God. And in this Gospel he is called the Son of God more fre-

BSac 22:88 (Oct 1865) p. 621

quently than in the others. Indeed in Matthew, Mark, and Luke the Redeemer never calls himself directly by this name, but it is chiefly in the testimony which the dispossessed demons and the wondering spectators are constrained to bear that he is spoken of as the Son of God; whereas in John he calls himself the Son of God and, in abbreviated but no less definite terms, the Son more frequently than by any other title. But in Mark also he is announced as the Son of God in the very first verse, as if the author meant to have it understood at the outset that this was the theme of his Gospel. And Matthew and Luke both record those words of Jesus touching his intimate knowledge of the Father, so strikingly similar in style1 as well as in sentiment to many passages in John’s Gospel, that the hearer can hardly persuade himself that he is not listening to the words of that evangelist: “All things are delivered unto me of my Father; and no man knoweth the Son but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him ‘‘(Matt. 11:27; Luke 10:22; cf. Isa. 1:18; 3:25; 6...