Jesus’ Calling God His “Father”
Jesus characteristically spoke of God as his “Father” in a way that no merely human messiah could have.11 It is probable that Jesus used the Aramaic word Abba (Mark 14:36). The fact that Jesus addressed God as Abba made an impression on the first disciples and the very Aramaic word was treasured by the early church. This form of divine address, having limited parallels in Judaism, captures the heart of Jesus’ unique relationship to God.12 Jesus’ distinctive application of the term in prayer to God bespeaks a daring degree of filial intimacy with God indicative of his self-consciousness as God’s unique Son. It is true that Jesus also taught his disciples to call God “Father.” At first, this may seem to compromise the uniqueness of his relationship to the Father, but on further reflection it does not. He spoke of “my Father” and of “your Father” when speaking to the disciples, but never of “our Father” in a way that would include himself along with the disciples. Jesus spoke of his unique relationship with the Father (“no one knows the Father except the Son”) and went on to add that as the unique Son he mediates that filial relationship to others (“and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” [Matt 11:27 || Luke 10:22]). God is Jesus’ Father in a special way distinct from the way in which he is the disciples’ Father. The Jewish leaders understood that by calling God “his own Father” (patera idion) in that special sense, he was making himself equal with God (John 5:18).
The Jewish Charge of Blasphemy
Jesus’ claim to be the Son of God could not have been a mere messianic claim, since it was so provocative that it elicited the charge of blasphemy on the part of the Jewish leaders. This point receives particular emphasis in the Gospel of John:
• John 5:18: “This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.”
• John 8:58–59: “Before Abraham was, I am.” So they picked up stones to throw at him.
• John 10:30–36: “I and the Father are one.” The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. Verse 33: “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.” Verse 36: “Do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?”
• John 19:7: “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has made himself the Son of God.”
Many scholars regard these statements in the Gospel of John as retrojections of the later conflict between the synagogue and the church leading to the parting of the ways. But the charge of blasphemy is not only found in the Gospel of John. It is also recorded in all three Synoptic Gospels in two separate but highly significant pericopes:
• Matt 9:3 || Mark 2:7 || Luke 5:21: “This man is blaspheming” (because he forgave the sins of the paralytic and only God can forgive sins).13
• Matt 26:63–66 || Mark 14:61–64 || Luke 22:67–71: “He has uttered blasphemy . . . he deserves death” (because he claimed that he was the Son of God, that he will be exalted at God’s right hand in fulfillment of Ps 110:1 and Dan 7:13, and that he will come in the clouds of heaven to judge his judges).14
In the Jewish context of Jesus’ day, claiming to be the messiah would not have provoked the charge of blasphemy worthy of death. Simon bar Kosiba was a false messianic claimant (AD 131–135), but rather than being charged with blasphemy, one rabbi accepted his claims and the other rabbis simply mocked him without calling for his death.15 Apparently, there was something about Jesus’ claim to being “the Son of God” that was regarded as much worse than being a false messiah, something blasphemous that urgently demanded his execution. As the Gospel of John explains the reaction of the Jewish leadership, they thought he deserved death “because he has made himself the Son of God” (John 19:7). It is also likely that the worship of Jesus as divine was one of the concerns that prompted Saul the Pharisee to be actively engaged in zealous and violent persecution of the first Christians.16
Jesus as the Revealer or Image of the Father
Jesus as God’s Son is far more than a functional agent sent by the Father. He is, in his own person, the perfect revelation of the Father. He is this because only he knows the Father perfectly, just as the Father knows him; he is therefore uniquely qualified to reveal the Father (Matt 11:27 || Luke 10:22). If Jesus is a mere creature, how could he know the Father perfectly? God himself is incomprehensible to the creature. When Philip asked him, “Lord, show us the Father,” Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?” (John 14:9–10). Jesus said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).
The self-consciousness of Jesus as God’s Son who knows and reveals the Father leads the New Testament authors to speak of Jesus in exalted terms. Paul hailed Jesus as “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15; cp. 2 Cor 4:4). The author of Hebrews confessed that “he is the radiance (apaugasma) of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Heb 1:3). It is no wonder that the church fathers took up this theme and made it one of their key arguments for the deity of Christ. Basil the Great wrote, “The whole nature of the Father is manifest in the Son as in a seal . . . . In himself he reveals the Father in his entirety.”17 Contrast the biblical teaching with that of James D. G. Dunn, who wrote that Jesus “was as full an expression of God’s creative and redemptive concern and action as was possible in flesh . . . . There was much more to God than could be seen in and through Jesus.”18 The New Testament writers would never speak that way. Paul did not say that some aspects of God could be seen in Jesus, but that “in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Col 1:19; cp. 2:9). He is the perfect revelation of the Father. To see the Son is to see the Father.
Preexistence and Incarnation
We have seen that Jesus’ most fundamental identity is that he is the Son of God. We have surveyed the arguments for viewing his identity as Son not in a merely functional/messianic sense, but in a sense that goes much deeper, approaching something ontological in terms of his unique relationship with the Father, a relationship that was so scandalous it provoked the Jewish leadership to charge Jesus with blasphemy. In this section, I now argue that the Sonship of Christ is not something that began at some point in his earthly existence but in fact goes back to his pre-incarnate state. In other words, the New Testament teaches that before Jesus’ earthly career as a man, he existed as the