DOCTRINAL STUDIES Lesson 5 Identification as the Son of God
This series of Biblical studies is based on notes written by the late Rev. A. Donald Magaw over 50 years of his ministry and were compiled and edited by the late Rev. Donald A. Magaw.
His identification as the Son of God is supported in Scripture by many unquestionable testimonies. Matthew 16:16 in answer to the Lord’s question, Peter responded, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Matthew 3:17 “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” declared the voice from heaven at his baptism, and again at the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:5). “Of a truth, thou art the Son of God,” confessed the disciples when they saw Him still the troubled waves of a stormy sea. (Matthew 13:33). Luke 1:35 clearly states, “That holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God,” announced the angel Gabriel to Mary. John the Baptist testified, “I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God.” (John 1:34). There are many other references to the His divine Sonship. John 3:16-18; John 9:35-38; John 11:27; Mark 1:1; Acts 9:20.
Even the powers of Darkness recognized and obeyed Him. Demons said to Him, “What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? Art thou come hither to torment us before the time?” (Matthew 8:29). “The Father send the Son to be the Savior of the world,” wrote John (I John 4:14,15). “Whosoever shall confess the Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.”
In one sense the Bible teaches that all men are children of God—not in the family sense, but in the sense that God made all mankind. God is the Father of all mankind. He made us, and He also created us; He made the elements out of which He made us. But in the family sense, God is the Father of only those who believe on Jesus Christ, the Son of God. “As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name (John 1:12).
No man ever became a child of God until first he realizes that he is not a child of God, but a sinner. There are only two kinds of people in the world—the children of God, and the children of Satan. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again,” said the Lord to Nicodemus (John 3:6-7). Satan is the god of this world and the lord of the flesh. Jesus told the unbelieving Jews who claimed Abraham as their father “Ye are Abraham’s seed…but…ye are of your father the devil” (John 8:37-44). By this He meant that if they were true children of Abraham—that is, spiritual children of the covenant, those who had entered into the spiritual heritage—they would recognize Him and reverence His Word instead of seeking to kill him. Anyone who does not recognize Jesus Christ as Savior and reverence Him as Lord and the Son of God is a child of the devil. All men are saints or sinners, children of God, or children of the devil; there is no middle ground.
You do not need to die and have some church council declare you a saint. The moment you were born again, you became a saint in the eyes of God. If you are not a saint, you are not a child of God, but a sinner, and hence a child of the devil. Every man is in bondage to one of two forces—the force of sin, or the force of light. Either Christ is your Master, or Satan is your Lord. The Bible makes it very clear that “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other” (Matthew 6:24).
When you are born again, you become a child of God. However, you are not a begotten child of God. Jesus Christ is the “only begotten” of the Father (John 3:16). We are born of the Spirit; He was begotten of the Spirit. When we speak of His identification as the Son of God, we mean something entirely different from what we mean about the rest of mankind—even about those who have been saved. His was indeed a unique Sonship.
Liberalism teaches that Jesus Christ simply realized His divinity and Sonship, and that all we need to do is recognize our sonship and try to live as a child of God. That is a false doctrine. Jesus Christ did not just realize His divinity and Sonship. He knew Who He was. “I and my Father are one,” He emphatically stated. He knew He was Deity. He is the One Who from the beginning as with God (John 1:1-3), who claimed to be God (John 10:30) and who “thought it not robbery to be equal with God” (Philippians 2:6). Some men say, “I think He was just a good man. I do not believe that He was God in any special sense.” If He is not God, He is not a good man, but one of the worst frauds who ever lived. He claimed to be God; and any man who is not what he claims to be is a liar. If Jesus Christ is not, in truth, the Son of God, none of us are, and never can be children of God; for our sonship of the Father depends upon His being the unique Son of God.
If Jesus Christ was just a good man, then we have absolutely nothing to base our religion on. We have no salvation, we have no hope, and we have no redemption. We have absolutely no reason to be in any church.
Beware of men who speak of the divinity of Jesus. Whoever uses that terminology is either a modernist, or one who has come under the influence of modernistic books. And this modernistic approach to Scripture is of Satan, not of God. The correct phrase is “the deity of Christ.” There is a difference. He is not just divine; “He is Very God of Very God, One with God, co-eternal with the Father.”
The body that died on the cross was a human body, yet it was the body wherein Deity was incarnated. God dwelt in that flesh. In Heaven today, Jesus Christ has human body. It is a body that was without sin, but which became sin for us and on the cross of Calvary paid the penalty of our sin. This virgin born Son of God in the flesh is our only hope of salvation and our great assurance of glorification. The fact that there is a body in heaven is all the proof we need that someday we, too, will have a body in heaven. Our vile bodies will be changed like unto His glorious body (Philippians 3:21), “And so shall we ever be with the Lord” (I Thessalonians 4:17).
I John 5:20 sums it up “We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.”
God’s Word speaks; and where God speaks, let all men be liars. We stand with God and upon God’s Word.