In order to appreciate how Paul came to understand Jesus as the eternal Son of God in terms of the Davidic kingship, we must briefly examine several key moments from the biblical story itself—including the role of the historical Jesus in the story. The concern here is to point out the presuppositions Paul would have brought to his understanding of Jesus as the long-awaited Jewish Messiah, and we do so because this is the background that is regularly assumed by the Apostle as common ground between himself and his (now mostly gentile) readers.
Jesus as the Davidic Son of God
In the story of the exodus, Yahweh instructs Moses to tell the ruler of Egypt, “This is what the LORD [= Yahweh] says: Israel is my firstborn son, and I told you, ‘Let my son go, so he may worship me.’ But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son” (Exod. 4:22–23). Here Yahweh uses a play on words to describe what would happen to the Egyptians: Israel as a people are designated both as God’s “son” and God’s “firstborn,” thus anticipating the death of all of Egypt’s firstborn males. This theme is picked up much later by the prophet Hosea, who quotes Yahweh: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son” (Hosea 11:1).
In time, this designation of “son” was applied to Israel’s king, who was understood both as God’s representative to Israel and especially as standing in for the people before God. As the story progresses the king is regularly designated as God’s son, including at a crucial turning point in the story: the Davidic covenant, where Yahweh declares to King David, “I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, . . . and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son” (2 Sam. 7:12–14).
In response to this promise we are told that “King David went in and sat before the LORD and said: ‘Who am I, Sovereign LORD, and what is my family, that you have loved me in this way?’” (2 Sam. 7:18 LXX). Thus in the Davidic covenant, David’s progeny are called “God’s sons,” while David himself responds that lying behind this promise is God’s love for him.
The theme of the king as God’s “son” is especially prominent in the Psalter, serving to frame the so-called Davidic Psalter (books 1 and 2; Pss. 1–41 and 42–72), which signs off with a note from the collector: “This concludes the prayers of David son of Jesse” (Ps. 72:20). Significantly, this is the first instance in the Old Testament where the “kingly son” is also called the Lord’s “anointed,” which in the Septuagint is translated ho Christos, meaning Yahweh’s “anointed one.”
In Psalm 2, which introduces Israel’s king as the one who stands in for the people with laments and praises to God, the psalmist declares that the king is both “God’s Christos” and “God’s son,” and that the nations (= gentiles) will become his inheritance: “The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the LORD and against his anointed [Gk. Christos]” (2:2). “He said to me: ‘You are my son; today I have become your father. Ask me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession’” (2:7–8).
Similarly, and with apparent thoughtfulness, the collector of the Psalter used a psalm of Solomon as the bookend of the first two books. The theme of sonship appears again in the opening words of Psalm 72, and thus as the framing device for the initial Davidic Psalter: “Endow the king with your justice, O God, the royal son with your righteousness” (72:1).
Finally, it was the “eternal” nature of the Davidic covenant that elicited Ethan the Ezrahite’s plaintive cry in Psalm 89:26–27 (88:27–28 in the LXX). This psalm was composed during the exile in light of the apparent demise of both the king and Jerusalem. As the psalmist recites the promises of God’s covenant with David (vv. 20–38), he reminds God of the eternal One’s own declaration, which begins: “I have found David my servant; with my sacred oil I have anointed him. My hand will sustain him; surely my arm will strengthen him” (vv. 20–21). In so doing Ethan was reflecting the reality that the king stood in for the people, the original “firstborn son” (Exod. 4:22–23), who as “son” is also God’s “anointed one” (Christos).
As this abbreviated review indicates, as Paul studied the Scriptures his Lord both was present at key moments in the first unfolding of the story and is the central feature of its current eschatological unfolding. It is therefore no surprise that Christ plays the major role in the crucial fifth and sixth elements of the story, which serve as the foundation for Paul’s Christology.
The Story of Jesus in the Gospels
Israel’s narrative eventually brings us to Jesus himself, who, according to the Synoptic tradition (Matthew, Mark, Luke), presented himself to Israel as its long-expected messianic king and thus took unto himself all the Davidic titles except “firstborn.” Indeed, the primary themes are already put in place at his baptism with the voice from heaven—“You are my Son, whom I love” (Luke 3:22; cf. Ps. 2:7)—and is reinforced by Jesus’s use of two passages from Deuteronomy to respond to the tempter in the wilderness: “Man shall not live on bread alone” (Luke 4:4; cf. Deut. 8:3) and “Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only” (Luke 4:8; cf. Deut. 6:13). In these back-to-back stories from the beginning of Jesus’s ministry, Jesus steps into the role of Israel as God’s Son, passing through the waters and spending forty days in the wilderness—but succeeding precisely at the points where Israel failed when they were tested forty years in the wilderness. And these stories are followed immediately in the Gospel narratives with Jesus going forth to pronounce the advent of the kingdom of God (see Luke 4:14–21).
Jesus’s baptism and temptation took place with few to no outside observers. So how do the Gospel writers know about these events where Jesus steps into the role of Israel as God’s son and by implication into the messianic role of Israel’s king as God’s son? There are two possible answers: (1) that this is the creation of the later church, which had come to believe this about him, or (2) that Jesus himself had disclosed it to the inner circle. While we affirm the latter alternative, the relevant point here is simply that this narrative is quite in keeping with what Paul had come to believe about Christ some years before the Gospels had been written. And since Paul, by his own testimony, had little association with the early Aramaic-speaking followers of Jesus, he can hardly be accused of creating this view of the historical Jesus.
Likewise, the series of conflict stories between Jesus and the Jewish leaders, as they appear in the Synoptic Gospels, presents the picture that emerges in Paul’s writing. This comes out especially in the way these narratives were arranged in Mark’s Gospel (12:1–37 // Matt. 21:33–22:46 // Luke 21:9–47), where one can scarcely miss the nature of the disclosure. The center section of this series of five pericopes offers three kinds of conflicts between Jesus and the Jewish leaders: on paying the imperial tax to Caesar (Mark 12:13–17); on the question of the resurrection of the dead (vv. 18–27); and on the question of the greatest commandment (vv. 28–34). These conflicts are framed by two stories in which Jesus takes the initiative. The first, the parable of the tenants in the vineyard, openly asserts a Son of God Christology, where God’s final envoy to Israel is his beloved Son. This parable also embeds a reference to a messianic Psalm regarding “the stone the builders rejected” (Mark 12:10–11; cf. Ps. 118:22–23). Equally significant is the way the series of five pericopes concludes with an exalted Lord Christology, where Jesus’s point is that he is more than merely a son of David. According to Jesus, the Son of God is none other than the exalted Lord who is to assume the high honor of sitting at Yahweh’s right hand, as affirmed at the beginning of what both postexilic Jews and early Christians understood to be a messianic Psalm: “The Lord said to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet’” (Mark 12:36; cf. Ps. 110:1).
Thus, according to the Gospel accounts, Son of God Christology finds its beginnings in Israel’s narrative. And as with the early Synoptic Gospels and later Gospel of John, so it is also with Paul. Son of God Christology therefore simply cannot be, as some have mistakenly argued, the creation of the later church as the story gets reinterpreted in light of Greek modes of thought. That the Messiah is God’s Son is a biblical notion at its very core. What surprises everyone is that the messianic king of Israel, God’s true Son, is not simply one more in the line of David but turns out to be the incarnate Son, who in his incarnation reveals true sonship and true kingship. This in turn is also what makes the crucifixion both a radical moment of Roman injustice and the ultimate outpouring of divine love for one and all.
Jesus as the Eschatological King and Son of God
While Paul’s writings present the theme of Davidic sonship less overtly than the Gospels, arguably such an understanding of the Jewish Messiah—and of Jesus as that Messiah—lies behind the telling moments when Paul does momentarily lift the veil. Indeed, at the outset of Romans, the letter whose ultimate concern is Jew and gentile together as the one eschatological people of God, Paul offers an elaborate introduction that includes the words “promised,” “Son,” and “David” (Rom. 1:2–3).
Later in the letter, at the beginning of a long narration of God’s faithfulness to Israel, Paul’s litany of anguish reads:
I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs is the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah [Gk. Christos], who is God over all, forever praised! Amen. (Rom. 9:3–5)
Here Paul specifically identifies Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, as the NIV translators have rightly rendered it. To be sure, this is the same word that elsewhere is consistently rendered “Christ,” but such a translation at this point would miss what Paul is asserting. This is the one sure place in his letters where the Apostle’s use of Christos clearly functions as a title, not a name. Paul thus reinforces the picture presented in the Gospels that Jesus is the Christ, or Messiah, of Israel.
At some early point in Paul’s letters, this title became the Savior’s primary name, “Christ.” Indeed, in his extant letters the Apostle uses this name considerably more often than what had now become the primary title, “the Lord.” A similar transition can be seen in Paul’s use of “Son of God” language. This language is rooted in Jewish messianism, but because of the Apostle’s conviction of the Son’s preexistence, it is also used to refer to the pre-incarnate divine Son. For Paul, Son of God Christology does not begin in eternity; it begins with the Old Testament narrative of God’s dealings with Israel. Nonetheless, this language has meaning for him far beyond its historical messianic origins. This shift in perspective can be seen most clearly in three places in Paul’s letters where the relationship between Christ as the kingly, and thus messianic, Son of God merges with the greater reality that the kingly (messianic) Son is in fact the eternal Son of God—sent into the world in order to re-create us as God’s true children.
ROMANS 1:1–4
Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God—the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.
In the prologue of Romans, the Apostle states that the gospel he preaches was promised beforehand through the prophets and that the now-fulfilled promise is about God’s Son, who in his earthly life was a descendant of David. But he is now to be known as the “Son of God in power” (Rom. 1:4), predicated on his having been raised from the dead. Although probably not intended as such, here is the one certain place in Paul’s letters where Davidic Son and eternal Son merge. Based on this passage alone, one might be tempted to settle for an adoptionist Christology, where Jesus becomes the “eternal” Son at his resurrection and subsequent exaltation. But the rest of the letter forbids such a view. The last phrases in this remarkable preamble to the letter should be understood as the vindication by both the Father and the Spirit of the eternal Son, who had previously been sent by the Father “in the likeness of sinful flesh” (8:3) so as to be the divine sin offering—which is the starting point of our becoming children of God as well.
Early on in the narrative of his own calling with which he begins his letter to the Galatians, Paul states that God was pleased to reveal his Son in Paul himself (Gal. 1:16). Paul is not thinking of the Son’s origins as the heir to the Davidic throne but is expressing eternal realities. God’s Son is not simply the messianic king, sent by the Father to deliver Israel from bondage; he is the one whom the Father sent to earth to redeem God’s people and give them adoption as “sons” so that they too may become full heirs—not now of a strip of land on the eastern Mediterranean shore but of eternity itself. Indeed, as Paul urges in Romans 8, the redeemed are joint heirs with the “firstborn” into whose image they are being re-created (vv. 17 and 29).
1 CORINTHIANS 15:23–27
But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For he “has put everything under his feet.”
In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul again blends Jesus as the kingly Messiah with Jesus as the eternal Son, but in this case he does so in a quite different and remarkable way. In the second phase of his argument with the believers in Corinth as to the certainty of their own future bodily resurrection, he asserts that with the coming of Christ himself, “the end will come, when [Christ] hands over the kingdom to God the Father” (v. 24).
The thrust of the passage has to do with the eschaton, the end, when the Son turns over his rule to the Father. Paul affirms that everything is already under his rule; indeed, he continues, the heavenly Messiah must rule until all his enemies are subdued, including especially the final enemy, death. In so arguing, Paul merges two texts that had long been understood as messianic. The exalted Messiah must reign on high until all his enemies are “a footstool for [his] feet” (Ps. 110:1), and this is because, as the Apostle quotes language of an earlier Psalm, God “has put everything under [the Son’s] feet” (Ps. 8:6). Thus when the currently reigning messianic Son has—by resurrection to new life—destroyed the final enemy, death itself, that marks the end of the Son’s messianic functions. With that Christ returns to his prior “role” as eternal Son.
COLOSSIANS 1:13–17
For [God] has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things and in him all things hold together.
We turn, finally, to one of the Apostle’s finest moments, the thanksgiving-turned-narrative at the beginning of his letter to the believers in Colossae. In this grand affirmation, Paul refers to the One who had redeemed these believers as “the Son [God] loves” and to their redemption as being brought into “the kingdom of the Son” (Col. 1:13). It is easy to see that much of this language has its roots in Israel’s story: redemption into a kingdom ruled by God’s Son. But when we come to the end of this brief narrative, even though Paul is still echoing Old Testament language about the Son’s relationship to the Father, his concern now moves far beyond the Old Testament story to eternal verities. This Son preexisted with the Father, whose image he bears; this Son has the rights of primogeniture with regard to the whole created order, and that is because this Son is both the agent and the goal of the whole created order. Moreover, this Son is the head over all powers for the sake of his body (the redeemed ones), of whom he is also the head from which all the forces of life are drawn. The Son is thus both redeemer and creator of the new creation.
Conclusion
As we have seen in this chapter, Paul was able to hold both dimensions of his Son of God Christology in tension. First, Paul holds that the eternal Son entered our history in the role of the messianic Son, becoming incarnate so as to redeem us. This view in turn leads to the second—and, for Paul, the ultimate—dimension of what it means for Jesus to be the Jewish Messiah: Jesus is none other than the eternal Son of God, who became incarnate not only to redeem fallen, broken humanity but also (especially) to reveal the eternal One, to reveal God’s person and character. We take up this second dimension of Jewish messianism more fully in the next chapter.