Son of God is a name shared by the ‘ firstborn’ with ‘many brethren.’ Yet however much they partake with Him, God’s ‘own Son’ stands im- measurably above both men and angels (Eph 12-4, ete.). We receive the same impression from the peuele « phrases that the Jews received from what Jesus saic of Himself (Jn 5”); not least from the solemn distinction and frequency with which God is named ‘the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ Paul styles Him habitually ‘the Lord,’ ‘the Lord Jesus,’ ‘the Lord Christ,’ ‘the Lord Jesus Christ.’ To minds familiar with the Greek OT, these names, in the formal manner in which they are imple, carried irresistibly the connotation of Godhead. Words of Scripture relating to ‘the LorD’ (Jehovah, but read as Adonai) are freely, as a matter of course, appropriated for Christ. “The title ‘Lord’ denotes Christ’s sovereignty in the Church (e.g. 2Co 45), and through the universe (Ph 2°); He is designated ‘Head’ in Col and Eph in the same twofold way. This Lordship is so lofty and wide as to be inconceivable in one
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less than God (see esp. Col 2* 1, in connexion with 1+”), «The kingdom of the Son of God’s love’ embraces ‘all creation,’ of which He is the ground, means, and relative end (Col 117), while ‘God the Father’ is the fountain and absolute end of ‘all things’ (1 Co 8°). ‘They derived their being from His agency, the Divine power that called them inte existence travelling to its goal through Him... . To believe in Him, to accept Him as our ideal and find our life’s end in doing His will, is to be true to a relation that lies in creation itself, and that expresses the eternal law of our being’ (Somerville, St. Paul’s Conca of Christ, pp. 192, 193). Though Lord in this unlimited sense, Christ is always obedient as a Son, and ‘delivers up the kingdom to the Father’ who sent Him, 25 His task of redemption is complete (1 Co 15%, cf. Ph 2"). Such free subordination of love implies no inequality of nature (ef. 1 Co 11%); it is essential to the Divine unity. Despite his horror of creature-worship, St. Paul addresses prayers to the Lord Jesus side by side with the Father, and this frequently in the two earliest letters; he de- fines Christians as those ‘who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (1Co 17, Ro 10", 2 Ti 933. To St. Paul’s imagination as to that of St. John, the heavenly throne is that ‘of God and of the Lamb.’ There is nothing really surprising if, as seems most probable in both instances, Paul has actually in 9° and Tit 2 given to Christ the predicate ‘God’ (cf. Jn 118, μονογενὴς θεός).
Christ’s Headship over the redeemed Charch rests upon His premundane Lordship (Col 1+). If His present rule is Divine, His prior state must have been Divine; He was not constituted Son of God by His resurrection, but so ‘marked out’ (or ‘instated,’ ὁρισθείς, Ro 1‘). He who at the end of the ages will be confessed as ‘ Lord’ by every tongue, subsisted originally ‘in the form of God ’—év μορφῇ θεοῦ ὑπάρχων (the μορφὴ signifies that which con- stitutes Godhead, Ph 24"), Not of this ‘form’ did Christ ‘empty himself’ in His humiliation, but of the external conditions described by the words τὸ εἶναι ἴσα θεῷ ; the Divine state was surrendered, the Divine essence could not be (Ph 2°: see Gifford, Incarnation; also Bruce, Humiliation of Christ, and Lightfoot, Philippians, ad loc.). Since He was ἜΣ ΈΡΗΣ God, Christ’s renunciation of the Divine condition in His incarnation and crucifixion showed an infinite regard for ‘others,’ that must win un- bounded adoration. The height of His previous ‘riches’ measures the depth of the ‘poverty’ to which He descended (2 Co 8°).
‘The apostle nowhere establishes or teaches the ieee of Christ, but presupposes it as
amiliar to his readers and disputed no one’ (Beyschlag, NT Theology, ii. 78). Baur, Pfleiderer, Beyschlag, Schmiedel, with other able scholars, see in Paul’s pre-incarnate Christ the ideal, celestial man, the archetype and divinely constituted Head of humanity, who in this capacity was primevally (whether im esse or in posse) Lord of the human creation. This explanation starts from 1 Co 15*-47, interpreted according to the Philonian and later Rabbinical distinction between the two Adams of Gn 1” and 2?—the first, the ideal man after God’s image, remaining with God as a heavenly pattern (sometimes identified with the Messiah); the second, the earthy, phenomenal man. But St. Paul reverses this order, and writes in v. as though he would contradict Philo (see Edwards, ad loc.) ; the δεύτερος ἄνθρωπος of 1 Co 15 is ὁ μέλλων Of Ro δ). When he distinguishes the two as ‘from earth,’ ‘from heaven,’ he points to their respective source of being, implying nothing as to previous state of being. ‘The second man’ is, in this context, the risen (not the pre-incarnate) Christ, clothed already, to our knowledge, with His ‘spiritual
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body,’ the ‘house from heaven’ of 2Co 5? and Ph 3” (see Meyer and Heinrici on 1 Co 15%).
The coexistence of the Divine and human in the Lord Jesus is St. Paul’s constant wonder. He puts the two natures in signal contrast (Ro 15 4 9°, Gal 4), but nowhere attempts to define their relations in the one person. ‘Jesus Christ is Lord’ in His redeemed kingdom not as mere Son of God, but under the name of Jesus, who was ‘ found in fashion as a man’ and held concealed beneath the μορφὴ δούλου His original μορφὴ θεοῦ (Ph 2°"). Now the enthroned ‘mediator of God and men,’ He remains evermore ‘man’ (1 Ti 25). His connexion with the race is pre-incarnate; Christ was the source of spiritual blessing to the Jewish fathers (1 Co 104). He is, in truth, the fountain of life to mankind in the spiritual, as Adam in the natural order,—a fact implied in the unfinished parallel of Ro 5%. ‘The head of every man is Christ,’ as ‘the man is head of woman’ (1 Co 115); thus family life and social order rest on His prior authority. Marital love has its model in that of Christ to the Church ( Eph 5%-*, ἀντὶ τούτου. If God has ‘sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts’ and we are to be ‘essentially conformed (συμμόρφους) to the image of his Son’ (Gal 4%, Ro 8539), this implies an aboriginal kinship. The Son of God is the mould in which our nature was cast, the representative and root of our race in the Godhead: so much truth there isin the Baurian doctrine of the Urmensch (see Edwards’ The God- man). ‘We’ especially are ‘through him" and ‘unto him’—‘through whom are all things’ and ‘in whom all things consist’ (1 Co 85, Col 1165). St. Paul looks into the ground-plan of creation when he says that God ‘chose us in him before the foundation of the world,’ and that we ‘were created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God prepared beforehand’ (Eph 1‘ 2°), The Incar- nation and Atonement spring, therefore, out of the fundamental relations an God and man in Christ.