Scriptures: Daniel 7:13-14, Acts 1:9-11, Matthew 16:27, 1 Corinthians 15:45-49
The title that Jesus used most to refer to himself was Son of Man. He is fully human, like us. In Matthew 26:24 Jesus says, “The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him.” Jesus came to fulfill all prophecy written about the Son of Man, the human anointed by God. Jesus said, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life” (Luke 9:22). Why did Jesus, the Son of Man, have to do all those things? Today we’ll take a closer look at what this title tells us about Jesus.
As the Son of Man, Jesus identifies with our pain, having experienced all the things we go through in life. Jesus’ sufferings qualified him to be the new David and assures us we have a sympathetic High Priest interceding for us. In Exodus 4:22 God refers to the nation of Israel as “my firstborn son,” so Jesus’ experiences also mirror the nation of Israel:
- Matthew 2:15 tells us Jesus’ parents fled with him to Egypt because it was written in Hosea 11:1 “Out of Egypt I called my son.” Like the nation of Israel, Jesus came out of Egypt.
- After 40 days of waiting for the scouts to return, the children of Israel abandoned God’s plan to go into the promised land when they heard about the giants in the land. Jesus was led into the wilderness – perhaps that very same wilderness – for 40 days where he was tempted by Satan to abandon God’s plan, yet he overcame the devil. Where Israel failed to obey, Jesus triumphed.
- When the Jews rejected God in favor of false gods, their first temple was destroyed and they were cut off from the land in exile. Daniel 9:26 prophecies that “the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary.” Jesus was rejected by the religious leaders, put to death, and cut off from the land. Jesus appears to have nothing – no throne or physical kingdom on earth – just as the Jews were cut off from the land in exile. He has experienced everything the Jews have as a nation, including exile from the land.
While the title Son of Man seems to declare Jesus’ humanity, those who were familiar with the book of Daniel would recognize that it also hints of his divinity. Jesus said, “For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done” (Matthew 16:27). To understand how Jesus could make such a claim, we turn to Daniel’s vision of the Son of Man. “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed” (Daniel 7:13-14). Jesus describes himself as the Son of Man from Daniel 7. Only God is worshiped in heaven, so the Son of Man must also be the Son of God.
In Daniel’s vision, the Son of Man comes with the clouds of heaven. In Acts 1:9-11, Jesus “was taken up into a cloud while they were watching, and they could no longer see him. 10 As they strained to see him rising into heaven, two white-robed men suddenly stood among them. 11 ‘Men of Galilee,’ they said, ‘why are you standing here staring into heaven? Jesus has been taken from you into heaven, but someday he will return from heaven in the same way you saw him go!’” Jesus being taken up into a cloud and later emerging from a cloud points to the God of Israel who descended on Mount Sinai and spoke from a cloud. The Son of Man will return in a cloud as the visible Word who comes to Israel from the cloud.
Jesus said in Matthew 24:30-31 that all the people of the earth “will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 31 And he will send out his angels with the mighty blast of a trumpet, and they will gather his chosen ones from all over the world – from the farthest ends of the earth and heaven.” When we see Jesus coming in the clouds, the angels will gather us to him with the blast of the trumpet. In Revelation 14:14-16, after the last trumpet has sounded, the Son of Man appears in the clouds and sends his angels to harvest the earth. “Then I saw a white cloud, and seated on the cloud was someone like the Son of Man. He had a gold crown on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand. 15 Then another angel came from the Temple and shouted to the one sitting on the cloud, ‘Swing the sickle, for the time of harvest has come; the crop on earth is ripe.’16 So the one sitting on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth, and the whole earth was harvested.” Paul tells us that at the last trumpet, the dead are raised, we who are alive meet Jesus in the air, and we are given new bodies (1 Corinthians 15:52). The Son of Man comes as the new Adam, and all who are in Christ will be transformed when he returns.
When God calls the prophet Ezekiel “Son of man,” the word translated as man is the Hebrew word “adam.” God named the first man Adam, which means human or mankind. To be a Son of Adam is to be a representative of the human race. God instructed Ezekiel to do certain things as his representative but also as a representative of mankind. Likewise, Jesus was commissioned to do certain things as God’s representative, but also as a representative of mankind. As a Son of Adam, the first man to sin, Jesus perfectly obeyed God, becoming the new Adam who never sinned so that all who are born of the Spirit through Jesus become the offspring of the new Adam. Our spirit has been reborn and joined to God’s Spirit, and when Jesus returns our bodies will be reborn and physically joined with God.
“For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. 22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:21-22). We all inherited a sinful nature that leads to death from Adam and Eve, the first to sin. But now we have inherited eternal life from the new Adam. “The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. 46 The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47 The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. 48 As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. 49 And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man” (1 Corinthians 15:45-49).
Jesus fulfilled his mission as the Son of Adam to reverse the curse of sin that leads to death for all who believe in him. However, we not only inherit eternal life through the Son of Adam, Paul says in verse 49 that “we bear the image of the heavenly man.” What was impossible when we were trapped in our sinful nature becomes possible by God’s Spirit in us. We can now be bearers of the image of Jesus as we follow the Spirit’s leading and obey Jesus’ commands. The Spirit will show us a different way of reacting to the world that comes from heaven, not our flesh, and when we obey his voice we experience transformation. This transformation becomes our testimony of Jesus as others witness the change in us.
Why was it necessary for Jesus to open the way for us to be reborn as spiritual beings who are of heaven? Paul says, “I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable” (1 Corinthians 15:50). Jesus came preaching the kingdom of heaven. To inherit a spiritual kingdom, we must be spiritual beings because the earth and everything in it will pass away so that only what is eternal remains. Jesus tells us to store up treasures in heaven because those things with eternal value – the souls we bring with us – are all that will last forever from this world. However, Jesus didn’t come to destroy the world but to redeem it as the new Adam. “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). He redeemed Israel as God’s obedient Son, he redeemed our bodies as the new Adam who overcame death, and made a way for us to return to God’s glorious vision for humanity to reign with him when he returns in a cloud of God’s glory.
Response:
Lord Jesus, you are beautiful and glorious. You have overcome sin and death so that all who are in Christ are overcomers. I worship you as I wait for you to come with power and glory. Your kingdom is forever. Hallelujah!
(The picture I chose for this post was taken on the Temple Mount looking toward the Mount of Olives, which you see through the arch. This is where Jesus was taken up to heaven in a cloud and where Zechariah 14 says he will return. The mount is now covered in graves because people wanted to be buried where Jesus will return so they can be the first to see him in the resurrection!)
