The Son of God

The Serpent

John 8:18 (LSB)

¹⁸“I am He who bears witness about Myself, and the Father who sent Me bears witness about Me.”

The Lord Jesus Christ needs the testimony of no man. His testimony, as demonstrated by His Words, His miracles, and His compassion, are all the testimonies of the Holy Spirit in Him.¹ His qualification as the Son of God is that He, in fact, is the Son of God. His exclusive claim to being the Messiah² coupled with the above-mentioned proofs demonstrate that His nature and Person is the eternal Son, the Messiah prophesied of in the Old Testament.

And, yet, few ever believed Him. He spent about three and a half years in the region of the land of Israel, walking up and down the land in order to proclaim the arrival of the Kingdom of God.³ The Kingdom had been invaded by sin and death ⁴ due to the deception of the Serpent in the Garden of Eden. That serpent, also known as Satan, planted weeds into the field of the world, a world which was created for the Son and His brethren.⁵ Having done that, leading the man into sin, death ensued, as Yahweh had promised, and death spread, being passed on to all men making them sinners.⁶ The effect of this condition, a new condition of the soul of the man and woman, is that all men are born dead to God ⁷, alienated from God, and enemies of God. The net result is that man and God are at war with each other. God is avenging His righteousness upon the world. This is known as “wrath”⁸. And, man, for his part, is assuming the posture of trying to kill God, or at least cut off His presence in the world ⁹.

The World

The result of this horrible situation is that, unless there might be a reconciliation, all men, even the elect, would be punished in the eternal Lake of Fire. That is the extent of God’s holiness and glory. And, if that should happen, God would not have accomplished His eternal purpose in Christ. But, this hypothetical is never a good way to express what God is doing since God cannot fail to accomplish His purpose.

The world, then, is the location of all that God is doing for the Son. The heavens initiate the purpose of God. But, the earth is the panorama of God’s perfect purpose. It is the glorious stage of God’s redemption, the wonderful and powerful expression of God’s love and honor for the Son, and the Son for the Father.

But, the world is also a stage for the work of the Devil, too. He is at work. His work is far from redemption. Jesus said, “He (The devil) was a murderer from the beginning…”¹⁰ The reference Jesus had in mind is clear from the phrase “the beginning.” It is a reference to the Garden of Eden and the work of the devil in that Garden. His intent, and his effect, was to murder the Son and Daughter of God, Adam and Eve. He did that, and by the hand of God, no less. What I mean to say is that Yahweh had warned Adam that if he should eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, then God would take his life.

“Genesis 2:16–17 (LSB)

16 And Yahweh God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may surely eat;

17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat from it; for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”

In that moment, that fateful event, the devil wanted Adam dead. Diabolically, he used God’s own glorious nature, holy, singular, and righteous, to accomplish Adam’s death. This death, says the Apostle Paul, spread to all men through Adam’s sin, and so all men die. ¹¹ This death is the returning of the man back to dust, the dust from which he came. This would be the future of all the sons and daughters of God, if it were not for the redemption of Jesus Christ.

Redemption

The eternal plan of God, according to the record we have available to us in Psalm 2:6-8, runs as follows:

Psalm 2:6–8 (LSB)

6“But as for Me, I have installed My King Upon Zion, My holy mountain.”

7“I will surely tell of the decree of Yahweh: He said to Me, ‘You are My Son, Today I have begotten You.

8‘Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Your inheritance, And the ends of the earth as Your possession.

There are auxiliary data to enhance, and support, the core of God’s eternal purpose, which our passage above records for us. But, this is the heart of it all. It is on the back of this transcription of that eternal conversation from the Father to the Son that all of God’s plan rests. It tells us everything and it is the spinal cord of the neural network of all of God’s revelation in Scripture. Without a proper understanding of this passage, we are left in the dark as to our understanding.

Redemption is the act of returning something back to its original owner upon payment of a ransom.¹² It is in essence the bondage of a person or a thing that is removed when a price is relinquished on that person’s behalf for their release. Although there are many examples of God redeeming nations and people in the Bible, a couple to represent the spectrum will suffice. He “redeemed” Israel from forced labor in Egypt in 1446 B.C.¹³ And, He also “redeemed” the church after the death of Christ.¹⁴ These events represent the power of God, to justly, and authoritatively rescue what rightly belongs to Himself from the death that Satan established upon them.¹⁵

The result of this rescue, then, is the salvation of the elect from death penalty, which we rightly deserve,¹⁶ back to the life that we are promised from the promise of Psalm 2:8a. The Son was promised to receive the nations, or “peoples,” and the earth. Those two categories are the summary parts of His “inheritance.” The Son, the Anointed,¹⁷ will be King from Mt. Zion, the same location as His death. He will rule and reign over the earth forever. When that earth comes, a new one,¹⁸ the curse will be removed, Satan will be judged in the Lake of Fire, and the lawless ministers of the devil will also be condemned forever.¹⁹

The accomplishment of all God’s eternal plan will be perfectly executed and experienced by Him, and ourselves, forever! What an unspeakable future we have!

1. See Isaiah 61:1-2; cp. Luke 4:18ff ↩
2. John 18:37 ↩
3. Matthew 4:17, 23 et al ↩
4. Genesis 3:1-5 ↩
5. Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43. ↩
6. Romans 5:12-19 ↩
7. Ephesians 4:18 ↩
8. Romans 1:18ff ↩
9. Psalm 2:1-3 ↩
10. John 8:44 ↩
11. Romans 5:12-18 ↩
12. λυτρόω, -ῶ (<λύτρον, q.v.), in LXX chiefly for פּדה, גּאל; to release on receipt of ransom; mid., to release by paying ransom, to redeem:
    G. Abbott-Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1922), 273. ↩
    
13. Exodus 6:6 ↩
14. Titus 2:14 ↩
15. Hebrews 2:9-14 ↩
16. Ephesians 2:1-3 ↩
17. Psalm 2:2 ↩
18. Revelation 21:1 ↩
19. Revelation 20:15 ↩