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When did Jesus become the Son of God? Before you run to your computer to send a complaint to the editor — how dare he print the words of a heretic! — consider this: Before the first Christians had any ideas about the pre-existence of the Christ, the first Christology was adoptionist. Before John wrote, “In the beginning was the Word,” the first Christians had a story about John baptizing Jesus. Even before Luke wrote his second chapter, the Gospels being written backwards from Easter, the church shared the story of the Spirit descending on Jesus. It's in all four Gospels. Three say God called Jesus “my beloved son” after he was baptized.
It seems the first Christians knew little and cared less about the details of Jesus' origin. Yes, two stories were eventually written about Jesus' birth. The early church was content with two stories of his origin that don't quite mesh, just as the Hebrew ancestors were happy to have two stories of creation that put things in different order. The first gospel proclamation, reported in Acts, began with Jesus' death and resurrection. When the apostles and others began to tell more about Jesus, they started with John the Baptist's ministry. Then they went on to tell how “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power” (Acts 10:38).
That doesn't mean the Spirit wasn't with Jesus before he was baptized. But for the faithful people who gave us the Gospels, it really all began for Jesus when he was baptized. Actually, after the Spirit had driven him through his trials in the desert. Tested and proven, Spirit-filled, he truly was the Son of God.
If we think he was Son of God only, or mostly, because he was somehow begotten, we miss the point. The first Christians called him God's Son after they saw him in action. They didn't wait to work out how he might be God's Son by nature. How his sonship was his unique state of being, proving his divinity. They looked, listened, felt, and confessed with Peter, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16). When the pagan centurion at the cross saw how Jesus died, he called him “a son of God.” “Son of …” used in that way says nothing conclusive about kinship. It's a declaration that so much of God was revealed in Jesus, to see him was to see God. To Jesus' people, a-son-of-a-something was the biggest, best representation of an ideal. The highest mountain was a “son of a mountain.” The biggest rock was a “son of a rock.”
For the first Christians, to say Jesus was “Son of God” was like saying, “To see him is to see God.” In the story of Jesus' baptism, God says, “This is my Son.” Which is to say, “When you see him, you see Me. Or as much of Me as you will ever see close up. Which is a lot!”
The Gospels don't agree, or care (see John and Mark) about the details of Jesus' origin. But all agree that he was baptized and received the Spirit. Then he went to work. Different New Testament communities had different ideas about where Jesus came from and what that meant. All had this in common: Everyone had been baptized, like Jesus. All knew the story of Jesus' introduction to the world.
As they learned the stories of his life, they saw the Son of God in action. They saw the pattern for their lives. And dared to think of themselves as his sisters and brothers. By baptism, God's sons and daughters, too. Set loose in the world in the Spirit's power, so others could see at least a little of God in them.
When did Jesus become the Son of God? Let's look beyond what the church says we're supposed to believe about who he is and how that can be. Listen to the Gospel stories, beginning with his baptism. When the time was right, when the Spirit descended, he began to be God's Son.
And what does baptism make of us?
