Romans 1:3 Commentary and Bible Study

God has entered into time, he has come into the world he created. We are taught in the Scripture that there are three persons in the Godhead – this is a great mystery – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, equally eternal, and God, and yet three distinct persons. One in every sense, and yet distinct. Why is he called the Son? To our feeble minds the term ‘Son’ could imply that he is inferior or subordinate, or that he was born in order to become the Son. But that is not the purpose of his being the Son. Paul goes on to say in this very epistle, several times over, and particularly strongly in chapter 9, that Christ is absolutely equal with the Father. It is meant in this sense: if I have a son, then that son is like me, a mortal human being; he has a rational mind like his parents. He has the same bodily features as his parents, the same human capacities. But when God has a Son, it means that that Son is like himself, Almighty God, infinite, eternal. He is just like his father.In ancient times, kings very often – the Assyrians, the Jews, all did this – would have a son, and the son would grow up, and when he became an adult, he would be co-ruler with his father. This is highly significant when it comes to the chronology of the Bible. Chronological data makes sense only when you realize that kings and their sons overlapped, and until the old king died they reigned together. The son would be the kind of executive king, the heir, and the father would be the chairman, as it were, of the whole enterprise. So the ancient world was used to the idea of father and son being equals, in authority, and kingship, and rule, apportioning things to each other. We are less familiar with that today. Christ is the Son of his Father in that sense. He is the eternal Son. He was never born. He has always been equally God, equal with the Father, and yet they have this Father-king, Regent-to-be relationship. Christ is the one, the Scripture tells us, through whom all the worlds were made, and he is the one who entered into the world and took upon him human flesh to be our Saviour. So he is the Son of God, the everlasting glorious Son of the Father. But of course, in order to enter into this world, he did literally become a son because he was born into human flesh and grew up. He was God and he was man. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, but born to a woman, a descendant of David, King David. By virtue of being conceived by the Spirit. He did not have a fallen, human, sinful nature; he was pure and holy. He was truly God and truly man, and it defies human reasoning to grasp that fully, but that is the revelation of the Bible concerning ‘his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh’. Why not the seed of Adam? Because of course the prophecies by which Christ was promised particularly focus on his being descended from David, according to promises made to the human race and to David. Prophecy here, Paul hints, means that Christ would come. It was always planned; it was always intended so by God. He would be God-man. He would have a divine personality and a human personality. But he would come in line with the most detailed of Scriptures, even those made especially to David.The prophecies said that the Messiah, when he came, would come from the line of David. Mary, his mother was a descendant of King David. So was Joseph, his legal father, though Joseph of course was not his true father because he was conceived by the Holy Spirit, so that he should not be contaminated with fallen human nature from his father. He was the Son of God, conceived by the Holy Ghost. But his legal father and certainly his mother were both of David’s line. So the Scripture was fulfilled and the prophecy was kept. But he was God and yet he was man, and he wore both natures, blended together in a mysterious way.