Understanding Divine Sonship (Part 1)

 The bible teaches on divine sonship(sons of God) in different contexts.


By the context & default of creation, angels are called sons of God in their capacity as ministering/serving spirits, serving God who is the Father of spirits and hearkening to his word to do his bidding - Hebrews 1:7, 13-14; Job 1:6; 38:6-7.

The first man Adam is also called the son of God in the context of creation as created in the image of God & after his likeness & set over all that God created upon the earth. See Luke 3:38

The Sonship of Christ to God as the Only begotten Son is eternal, divine Sonship which is exclusive and thus excludes every other context of sonship to God.
It is the Sonship in the Godhead revealing the uncreated, self existent and pre-existent Son by whom God made the worlds, and who has always been with God and in the bosom of the Father....an eternal divine relationship which has always been in the Godhead.

Some assert & teach that Christ was the only begotten Son of God but after his death and resurrection he is now the firstborn Son amongst many brethren.

It is always dangerous for us to make assertions without scriptures to prove them. Assertions not drawn from sufficient reasoning in scriptures always go off the tangent of truth.

The question is where do we then place the sonship of angels and adam whom scripture acknowledges as sons of God and why would Jesus be the called the only begotten Son seeing that before his incarnation both angels and adam were already called the sons of God? 

If the "Only begotten" is not the pre-existent, uncreated one who has always been before creation, before angels were created, before Adam was made, then it must be what he only took up temporarily at incarnation and if it is such then scripture must be wrong to say he is the only begotten son of God even after declaring angels and Adam the sons of God.

This inevitably shows us that the Only begotten Sonship of Christ is not a sonship that can be ranked amongst that of angels and men whom scriptures acknowledge as sons of God by creation.

The context in which scripture thus speaks of Christ as the first begotten is in the context of resurrection/a new creation. It is as a man(the last Adam) & the head of a new race of men, that he is called the firstbegotten.

This does not in anyway tamper with who he is & has always been in the Godhead as the "Only begotten in the bosom of the Father"(the uncreated & eternal Son who is the outraying of God's glory & the very engravement of his substance).

We must be able to correctly divide the word of truth in distinguishing between the divine sonship of Christ(as one who has always been in the Godhead/bosom of the Father & God himself) and his sonship as a man(from the womb of incarnation).

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