Continued from Bernard:
"The Purposes For The Son
Since the role of the Son of God is temporary and not eternal, why did God choose to reveal Himself through the Son? Why did He beget the Son? The primary purpose of the Son is to be our Savior. The work of salvation required many roles that only a human being could fulfill, including the roles of sacrifice, propitiation, substitute, kinsman-redeemer reconciler, mediator, advocate, high priest, second Adam, and example. These terms overlap in many ways, but each represents an important aspect of the work of salvation that, according to the plan of God, could only be done by a human being.
According to God's plan, the shedding of blood was necessary for the remission of man's sins (Hebrews 9:22). The blood of animals could not take away man's sin because animals are inferior to man (Hebrews 10:4). No other human could purchase redemption for someone else because all had sinned and so deserved the penalty of death for themselves (Romans 3:23; 6:23). Only God was sinless, but He did not have flesh and blood. Therefore, God prepared a body for Himself (Hebrews 10:5), that He might live a sinless life in flesh and shed innocent blood to save mankind. He became flesh and blood so that He could through death defeat the devil and deliver mankind (Hebrews 2:14-15). In this way Christ is our propitiation - the means by which we obtain forgiveness, the satisfaction of God's justice, the appeasement of God's holy wrath (Romans 3:25). The sacrifice of Christ is the means by which God pardons our sin without compromising His righteousness. We are saved today through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ - through the offering of the Son of God (Hebrews 10:10-20; John 3:16). Thus the Son is the sacrifice and propitiation for our sins.
When the Son of God became a sacrifice, He also became a substitute for us. He died in our place, bore our sins, and paid the penalty of death for our sins (Isaiah 53:5-6; I Peter 2:24). He was more than a martyr; He actually took our place. He tasted death for every man (Hebrews 2:9). Of course, the only way Jesus could be our substitute and die in our place was by coming in flesh.
Christ's role as our kinsman-redeemer is also made possible by the Sonship. In the Old Testament, if a man sold his property or sold himself into slavery, a close relative had the right to buy back that man's property or freedom for him (Leviticus 25:25, 47-49). By coming in flesh, Jesus became our brother (Hebrews 2:11-12). Thus, He qualified Himself to be our kinsman-redeemer. The Bible describes Him as our redeemer (Romans 3:24; Revelation 5:9).
Through His humanity, Jesus Christ is able to mediate, that is, to go between man and God and represent man to God. As a mediator, Jesus reconciles man to God; He brings man back into fellowship with God (II Corinthians 5:18-19). The gap between a holy God and sinful man was bridged by the sinless man Jesus Christ: "For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (I Timothy 2:5). We should notice how carefully Paul maintained the oneness of God in this verse. There is no distinction in God, but a distinction between God and the man Christ Jesus. There are not two personalities in God; the duality is in Jesus as God and Jesus as man. It is not God who mediates between God and man; nor is it "God the Son" who does so. Rather it is the man Jesus who mediates; only a sinless man could approach a holy God on behalf of mankind.
Closely associated with Christ's role as mediator is His role as high priest (Hebrews 2:16-18; 4:14-16). In His humanity, Jesus was tempted just as we are; it is because of His human experience that He can help us as a compassionate high priest. He entered the heavenly tabernacle, went behind the veil into the most holy place, and there offered His own blood (Hebrews 6:19; 9:11-12). Through His sacrifice and atonement, we have direct access to the throne of God (Hebrews 4:16; 6:20). The Son is our high priest through whom we can boldly approach God.
Similarly, the Sonship allows Christ to be our advocate, one called alongside to help (I John 2:1). If we sin even after conversion, we have someone who will plead our case for mercy before God. Again, it is the role of the Son that accomplished this, for when we confess our sins the blood of Christ is applied to those sins, making His advocacy for us successful.
Through His humanity Jesus is the second Adam (I Corinthians 15:45-47). He came to conquer and condemn sin in the flesh and to defeat death itself (Romans 8:3; I Corinthians 15:55-57). He came as a man so that He could replace Adam as the representative of the human race. By so doing, He reversed all the consequences of Adam's fall for those who believe on Him (Romans 5:12-21). Everything that mankind lost because of Adam's sin, Jesus won it back as the second Adam, the new representative of the human race.
There is another aspect of Christ's victory over sin in the flesh. Not only did Jesus come in the flesh to die but He also came to give us an example of an overcoming life so that we could follow in His footsteps (I Peter 2:21). He showed us how to live victoriously over sin in the flesh. He became the Word of God enacted in flesh (John 1:1). He became the living Word so that we could understand clearly what God wanted us to be like. Of course, He also gives us power to follow His example. Just as we are reconciled by His death, we are saved by His life (Romans 5:10). His Spirit gives us the power to live the righteous life that He wants us to live (Acts 1:8; Romans 8:4). The Son not only represents man to God, but He also represents God to man. He is an apostle, one chosen by God and sent by God for a specific purpose (Hebrews 3:1). He is a prophet, representing God to man and revealing God's Word to man (Acts 3:20-23; Hebrews 1:1-2). His humanity is crucial in this regard, because God used the humanity of the Son to reach man on man's level.
In addition to proclaiming God's Word, the Son revealed God's nature to man. Through the Son, God communicated His great love for man and displayed His great power in a way that man could understand. As explained in Chapter 2 - THE NATURE OF GOD and Chapter 3 - THE NAMES AND TITLES OF GOD, God used the name of Jesus as the culminated revelation of His nature and the person of Jesus as the prophetic culmination of the Old Testament theophanies. This purpose of the Sonship is expressed by many verses of Scripture that teach the manifestation of God in flesh. John 1:18 describes this purpose of the Son: "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." Isaiah prophesied that this revelation would come: "And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together" (Isaiah 40:5). Paul wrote that this indeed came to pass in Christ: "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (II Corinthians 4:6). In other words, the Son of God became the means by which the invisible, incomprehensible God revealed Himself to man.
Another purpose of the Son is to provide a fulfillment of many promises in the Old Testament to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the nation of Israel, and David. Jesus Christ will fulfill completely the promises relating to the descendants of these men, and He will do it in the millennial kingdom on earth (Revelation 20:4). He will be literally the King of Israel and of all the earth (Zechariah 14:16-17; John 1:49). God promised David that his house and throne would be established for ever (II Samuel 7:16). Jesus will fulfill this literally in Himself, being of the actual bloodline of David through Mary (Luke 3) and being the heir to the throne of David through His legal father Joseph (Matthew 1).
The Sonship also allows God to judge man. God is just and fair. He is also merciful. In His justice and mercy He decided not to judge man until He actually had experienced all the temptations and problems of humanity and until He had demonstrated that it is possible to live righteously in the flesh (with divine power, of course, but with the same power He has made available to us). The Bible specifically states that the Father will judge no one; only the Son will judge (John 5:22, 27). God will judge through Jesus Christ (Romans 2:16). In other words, God (Jesus) will judge the world in the role of One who lived in the flesh, who overcame sin in the flesh, and who made the same overcoming power available to all humanity.
In summary, there are many purposes for the Son. In God's plan the Son was necessary to bring salvation to the world. This includes the roles of (1) sacrifice, (2) substitute, (3) kinsman-redeemer, (4) reconciler, (5) mediator, (6) high priest, (7) advocate, (8) second Adam, and (9) an example of righteousness. The Sonship also made it possible for Christ to be (10) apostle, (11) prophet, (12) revealer of God's nature, (13) king, and (14) judge. All of these roles required a human to fulfill them; from them we can see why God came to the world in flesh as the Son.
After studying the purposes of the Sonship, it is easy to see why the Son came into existence at a point in time instead of being in existence from all eternity. God simply awaited the fulness of time when all these purposes could be put into action best (Galatians 4:4). Thus the Son did not have substantial existence until the conception of Christ in Mary's womb.
After the millennial reign and the last judgment, the purposes for the Sonship will be fulfilled and the reign of the Son will end. When we view the purposes for the Son, we can understand that the Sonship is temporary and not eternal; in the Bible we are told when the Sonship began and when the ministry of the Sonship will end.
In order to review and further explain a number of concepts about the Son, we can explore Hebrews 1, which contains a number of interesting references to the Son. Verse 3 describes the Son as the brightness of the glory of God and the express image of His person The Greek word hypostasis, translated as "person" in the KJV; means substance, nature, or being. The NIV translates verse 3 as follows: "The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being." In a similar passage, Colossians 1:15 says the Son is the image of the invisible God. Once again, we see that the Son is a visible manifestation of the Father in flesh. The Son is an exact representation or image of God with all the glory of God. In other words, the invisible God (Father) manifested Himself in visible flesh as the Son so that men could behold God's glory and could understand what God is truly like.
Hebrews 1 can be viewed as a restatement of John 1 in that God the Father was made flesh. Hebrews 1:2 says that God has spoken to us by His Son; John 1:14 says the Word was made flesh, and John 1:18 says the Son has declared God the Father. From these verses we understand that the Son is not distinct from the Father in personality, but is the mode by which the Father revealed Himself to man.
...continued next post...