Son of Man

Hey Everybody,

As we move into John 5, Jesus heals the man at the pool.  The man had been an invalid for 38 years.  Shortly after Jesus heals him, Jesus appears to him again, and tells him to "Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you."  My first thought about this is what could happen to the man that would be worse than being an invalid for 38 years, but the answer to that question is in Jesus' statement.  If the man doesn't let go of his sin, he may spend an eternity in hell.

Any way, Jesus has this great healing.  Awesome.  Of course, Jesus does this great healing on the Sabbath, and so the this gets the Jewish leaders all stirred up against him.  This leads to a very interesting conversation between the Jewish leaders and Jesus recorded in John 5:16 and following.  Jesus makes some amazing claims in this passage including: He claims the power to give life (v. 21),  he claims that God had given him the right to judge all people (v. 22).  In all of this he is claiming to be the Son of God.  These are some very bold claims if you think about it. 

The one claim that I want to focus in on today though is from verse 27, where Jesus claims to be the Son of Man.  I had never understood why Jesus referred to himself this way.  Son of God made sense to me, Son of Man did not.  So I did a little research.  It turns out that that name, Son of Man, comes from Daniel 7:13-14:

"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.  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."

Clearly the Ancient of Days is God the Father.  And in claiming to be the Son of Man Jesus is claiming all authority, all glory, and sovereign power.  He is claiming that all people will worship him (see Philippians 2:9).  He is claiming that his kingdom will be eternal.  In essence he is telling them that he is the son of God.  (In Matt. 26:64 he refers to himself again as the Son of Man and throws in the part about coming on the clouds of heaven just like in Daniel 7.)       

Back in the 1930s, a famous baseball player named Dizzy Dean was quoted as saying "It ain't braggin', if you can do it."  Today, hearing someone talk like this, we would probably consider him delusional. But Jesus was not delusional, all of these things were absolutely true.  It's not delusional, if you can do it. 

Tom