Why is Jesus called the Son of God?

"Son of God" is easy to misunderstand. It does not mean God had a wife and a baby, and it does not mean Jesus is a created being who ranks below God. In the Bible the phrase carries a much richer meaning - and for Jesus it points to full deity, not less.

In the Old Testament, "son of God" could describe Israel or the anointed king - those chosen to represent God. So at one level it is a messianic, royal title: Jesus is the promised king from David's line. But the New Testament pushes it further. When Jesus called God his own Father, his opponents understood him to be "making himself equal with God" (John 5:18) - and they were right about what he meant. This is not the sonship of a creature; it is a claim to share the Father's own nature.

Historic Christianity captured this with careful language: the Son is "eternally begotten of the Father," or in the words of the Nicene Creed, "begotten, not made." That distinction is the whole point. To be begotten, in this sense, is to share the same nature - as a human son shares his father's humanity - while to be made is to be created out of nothing. The Son is not made; he has always existed, of one being with the Father. There was never a time when the Son was not.

This guards against two errors. It rules out the idea that Jesus is a high creature, an angel, or a god beneath God - the Son is fully divine. And it preserves the distinction of persons - the Son is not the Father, but relates to him as Son to Father, eternally.

So when Christians call Jesus the Son of God, they are not demoting him to something less than God. They are naming the eternal relationship within the one God: the Father and the Son (and the Spirit), three persons, one divine being. "Son" speaks of that relationship and of Jesus as the promised King - not of a beginning, and not of a lesser rank.