What does it mean that Jesus is the Son of God?

Being the Eternal Life, the Lord had no beginning, therefore He was from all eternity with the Father. "That the Eternal Life was with the Father," proves that the Father was the Father then, and, if the Father was the Father then, the Son of God was the Son of God then. "That Eternal Life," "the Word" (John 1:1), "the Son of God"—one blessed Person—is distinguishable as such under these titles and relationships from all eternity.

If His Sonship be a relationship that pertains to His Person and nature as divine, and His peculiar characteristic in the Godhead, distinguishing Him, in an intimate relative glory, from the Father and the Spirit, it manifestly follows that the relationship is eternal, and was introduced of Him, into His holy manhood, when He, as Son, became Man. He did not, when making Himself of no reputation, become the Word, (John 1:1), nor did He then become the Son, (John 15:21-24). He was both Word and Son before time and creation began, (John 1:1-3, Col. 1:16-17, Heb. 1:2, 11:3). As Word, and as Son, He is above, and outside of, time and everything temporary, the mighty and ever-glorious Creator of all, apart from Whose wisdom and originating power, no created thing has ever received state or form or being.

Jesus, the Son of God, was “In the beginning,” eternal in His being, and yet distinct in Person, for “The Word was with God.” The fulness of Godhead was His, for “The Word was God,” and the distinctness of His Person was not only in time, but in eternity, for “He was in the beginning with God” (John 1:2). Moreover, the creation is attributed to the Son, as it is also in Colossians 1 and Hebrews 1. How the Spirit of God delights to safeguard the divine glory of the Son who has become Man.

In the bosom of the Father He was. There lay the eternal life with the Father; God, and yet with God. In counsel He was then set up ere the highest part of the dust of the earth was made. Then, He was the Creator of all things in their first order and beauty; afterwards, in their state of mischief and ruin, the Reconciler of all things; and by-and-by, in their regathering, He will be the Heir of all things. By faith we see Him thus, and thus speak of Him. We say, He was in the everlasting counsels, in the virgin's womb, in the sorrows of the world, in the resurrection from the dead, in the honour and glory of a crown in heaven, and with all authority and praise in the heirship and lordship of all things.

By acknowledging the first, he declared his belief that He was the promised Messiah, the anointed One, whom all the prophets had spoken of, and whose coming at that period the saints of that day, such as Simeon, Anna, and those who were looking for redemption in Jerusalem; were anxiously expecting (Luke 2:26; Luke 2:36,38). By the second he acknowledged that Jesus was not only the Christ, the expected, long-looked-for Messiah, but the true, actual, and real Son of God. It is evident from the confession of Peter, of Nathanael (John 1:49), and of Martha (John 11:27), as well as from the adjuration of the high priest (Matthew 26:63), and the preaching of Paul in the synagogues (Acts 9:20); that the Jews in our Lord’s time identified the Christ, the promised Messiah, with the Son of God. It was most evidently the faith of the Jewish church, that the Messiah was no less than God’s own Son. The question, then, with them was not whether the Christ, the promised Messiah, was the true and proper Son of God or not, but whether Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ; for if He were the Christ they knew He must be the Son of God, and that in His divine nature. And what other idea could they attach to the Christ being the Son of God than that He was His real and actual Son? If not wholly impossible, it was most improbable that such ideas could have been entertained by them as that He was the Son of God by virtue of the covenant, or of His complex Person, or any of those evasions of the simplicity of truth whereby His real and proper Sonship is now denied. To understand, then, this testimony from the mouth of Peter a little more clearly, we offer the following considerations. The blessed Lord had sought, so to speak, to bring His disciples to a clear and decided recognition of His divine Sonship by asking them two pointed questions:

Jesus was the promised Messiah of Israel, the One in whom all the promises of God to Israel were to be fulfilled, but He was in His own Person the Son of the living God. In earlier days, such outstanding men as Moses, Joshua, David, Hezekiah, Jeremiah and others had spoken of Israel's God as the living God, in contrast to the gods of the nations in which there was no life, a God who intervened for the help of His people; but none of them had known of the Son of the living God, the One who had come into Manhood to accomplish all that lay in the counsels and will of God.

The apostle, by this quotation, established the identity of "this Man," Whom he was announcing, with Jehovah's Son, foretold by the Spirit. The One Whom God "raised up" to fulfil His promise had been personally indicated in this prophecy. The Jesus of the Gospels is the Son of the Second Psalm. Jesus, "of the seed of David according to the flesh," was the Son of Jehovah in His own proper, personal, and underived nature, to Whom Jehovah said, "Thou art My Son."

There are different aspects of the Sonship of Christ in the Holy Scriptures, each one implying the relationship in which He was, and ever had been, with His God and Father. As born in this world the Son of God brought into Manhood the relationship that was His in eternity with the Father, the relationship remaining the same though taken up in new conditions. The Second Psalm predicted the coming of the Son into the world, presenting Him as God’s anointed, God’s King, and foretelling the rejection of Him who was so dear to God. Other Scriptures, notably Isaiah 9:6, Daniel 3:25, and Proverbs 30:4, indicate the relationship of the Son to God in one way or other.

Jesus was not only in eternal relationship with His Father as His Son, but in a peculiar relationship as Son to the Father in Manhood. As born in to the world this same relationship is also seen, as prophesied in Psalm 2, and as mentioned by the angel in Luke 1:32. Whether in eternity, at His birth, at His baptism, as in testimony for God in grace, in resurrection, in His present place on high, in His coming kingdom, or in the coming eternity, Jesus is made known to us as Son in relationship with His Father. John does not write of Jesus as born into the world, but of the Word become flesh, and as having become flesh His glory is seen in His mission of grace and truth.

Having come into Manhood the Son of God entered into His new conditions in the relationship that was ever His as Son with His God and Father, so that He was now God’s Son as Man, in the place of dependence and subjection that belonged to men. It was not a new relationship for the Son, but He entered into the relationship in a new way, and as no man previously had ever known it. This had been foretold in Psalm 2, where the Lord said, “The Lord has said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten Thee” (verse 7). This prophetic word was fulfilled at the coming of Jesus into the world, the angel saying to Mary, “That holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35).