JESUS AS SON: PART 2 “ENTRANCE OF THE KING”
“I will tell of the decree:
The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;
today I have begotten you…
Kiss the Son,
lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,
for his wrath is quickly kindled.
Blessed are all who take refuge in him.”
-Psalm 2
It may come as a surprise to some of you reading this series that one of the implications of Jesus’s title as Son is that of royalty. In fact it’s even more peculiar that the 2 Psalm identifies the king as the Anointed, sound familiar? It’s actually at this point that the message of the Gospels comes clear. Jesus is portrayed as the King, that is the ‘Anointed’. Now, there’s a little more to this that’s revealed in the book of Deuteronomy where the role of the king of Israel is revealed.
The king in the book of Deuteronomy is revealed to be the ‘son’ of Yahweh, the one who would serve under him and be taught/instructed by him. This is pivotal to making sense of what’s going on in the Old Testament/Tanakh. There are of course many stories whose implications may not fully be grasped and as such may cause the biblical texts to be misunderstood. But do not worry, we are here to walk through this together. It is possible to gather some understanding through study.
I hope that the full implications of this understanding of Jesus as Son sheds some light on why Herod was so threatened in the Gospels? And why the New Testament’s adamant stance regarding Jesus’ exclusive claims to sonship are unrivalled? It is a difficult thing to compress in blog form but it is my hope that the essence of the meaning is being fully communicated. This is also fundamentally why Jesus’ message-the Good News/Gospel-is that of God’s Kingdom Come.
All the kings of Israel in the Old Testament were evaluated based on their willingness to submit to Yahweh and be taught by him. This is why, whether the kings were successful in building the nation and making it prosperous or not, it did not take away or add to Yahweh’s judgement. The minute they departed from his counsel, they were judged harshly. Now, what does this understanding have to tell us living in today’s world?
There are several implications but I’ll select a few;
a. The King has enlarged his territory over the world, not just geographical Israel as seen in Acts 1.
b. The extension of the kingdom does not exclude the original recipients of the Revelation of Yahweh’s word, i.e. the Jews as seen in Romans 9.
c. The new Israel formed by Yahweh is as wide as the whole world and as far reaching as the periods in time when other followers of Jesus lived as seen in Genesis 12.
d. The new people formed are proof of God’s power invading the world to transform it, “the old has gone, the new has come” as seen in the book of Revelation.
e. The life Jesus lived as submitted to God, yet being fully God is an example set for his followers as seen in Philippians 2.
f. This is why belief in Jesus automatically makes the believer an ‘heir’, or better yet, a ‘co-heir’ with him of the kingdom.
g. The belief in Jesus also automatically makes those called by his name to become the ‘kings and priests/ kingdom of priests’ that the Torah/Law of Moses speaks about. This is evidence of a government structure in the Anointed’s agenda as revealed in the New Testament.