The Apostles’ Creed: God The SonSample

Jesus as Son of God: John 5:18

When we look at how the New Testament talks about Jesus, it becomes clear that he is God’s son in a unique way.

In fact, one of the most emphatic things that we find in the New Testament is that Jesus is the unique Son of God. That he shares in the very essence of who God is. Or another way of putting that is that Jesus is very God of very God. And we are the children of God by relationship, by adoption, but not by essence. Jesus is the eternal Son of God. He has always been the Son of God. – Dr. Tom Schreiner

Jesus’ unique sonship is especially clear in the Gospel of John. For instance, in 1:1-18, we are told that Jesus is the eternal word of God, meaning that he is both God himself, and the only begotten of the Father. We also see it in John 8:18-23, where Jesus said that as the Father’s Son, he had come from above, that he had not originated in this world. And we find it in John 10:30 where Jesus insisted that he and the Father are one.

But perhaps the most obvious place where John made this clear was in John 5:18. Consider what he wrote there:

[Jesus] was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God (John 5:18). 

This passage makes it clear that when Jesus spoke of himself as God’s Son, he meant that he was equal with God the Father. For this reason, Christians have rightly understood that when the Bible says that Jesus is the Son of God, it means that he is both unique and divine.

Jesus’ divine sonship is also mentioned in many other New Testament passages. We find it in Romans 1:3-4, and 8:3 where Paul taught that Jesus was God’s divine Son even before the incarnation. We see in Hebrews 1:1-3 where we are told that as the Son of God, Jesus created the universe and is the exact representation of the Father’s being. In these and many other places, Jesus is identified as God’s Son in a special way that indicates his eternal, divine nature.

Click here to watch The Apostles’ Creed: God the Son, lesson three in the series The Apostles' Creed.