TWO
Man/Son of man
Part Three
There is a natural progression from men to the children of men. It lies in the fact that the children are an upgrade of what came before them. Men see their children as a brighter future, but that future may be a little daunting; it might be better if the past did not have to linger. There is, along with the natural progression, a natural antagonism between the old school and the new school.
I say ‘school’ because the bone of contention is not found in the basic functions of life: earning a living, providing for one’s dependents, or any of the other pillars of normal existence. The bone of contention lies within the higher mental areas of politics, philosophy, personal/national faith, and spiritual interpretation.
If the old school could cease to exist once it engendered the new, all would be well. But all is not well: it is made to linger, made to maintain its place in all things, made to defend its strength and its power. The new school is nothing less than a threat.
All of that may be seen in the next verse, but there is even more than that to be seen in Mark 9:31, “For He taught His disciples, and said unto them, The Son of man is delivered into the hands of men, and they shall kill Him; and after that He is killed, He shall rise the third day.”
This may well reference Hosea 6:2, but please note Christ’s own words. He aligns Himself with the camp of the children of men, in opposition to the camp of men. He assigns Himself as the upgrade: the son of mankind. Our thoughts place Christ as the son of God. This section showcases the other side of that coin. He was also called the son of man, and men often called Him a man. Christ’s own reference of Himself was as ‘man’ and ‘son of man’.
My thoughts, here, are that Jesus had taken on the mantle of ‘leading by example’. In being an example, the epithet of ‘son of man’ was more a reference of those to whom He was a leader. The language takes a forward step: ‘children of men’ becomes ‘sons of men’. In that context, when Christ says the son of man will be delivered, He is also saying the sons of men will be delivered.
Note the connection in Luke 9:44, “Let these sayings sink down into your ears: for the Son of man shall be delivered into the hands of men.”
Let us look sideways at the language of the Bible. Try this exercise in the following verse: replace ‘firstborn’ with ‘example’ and replace ‘spirits’ with ‘minds’. Hebrews 12:23, “To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect.”
Let us remember two things for later: one, the term ‘just men’, for Jesus was called a just man, and two, John 3:27, “John answered and said, A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven.”
We have broached the topic of the children of men, the son of mankind being the upgraded version of man. The two extremes, of course, are these: that the first is corporeal and the second is spiritual. It is as if we walk a fence. When it is shaken, which side will you fall on? It is that dual nature thing again. It is that God realizing Himself by reverse engineering thing again.
But I am putting forth nothing new. Men of old (or should I say, the children of men of old?) have considered these very things. See 1 Corinthians 15:47, “The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven.”
The difference between version 1.01 and version 1.02 is this: just a bit more unction. There are grades within grades; there are levels within levels. One may look down, and note with glee, that he stands on the shoulders of former giants; and then he looks up to realize that the one standing on his shoulders makes him feel somewhat smaller.
Tell me where you stand in Psalms 31:19, “Oh how great is Thy goodness, which Thou hast laid up for them that fear Thee; which Thou hast wrought for them that trust in Thee before the sons of men!”
There can be stars even in a white sky. Trust is neither a physical action nor an emotional inclination. It is a choice: an action of mentality that falls within the category of understanding. The same teacher that taught our ‘firstborn’ speaks to us as well.
Listen to Proverbs 8:4-5, “Unto you, O men, I call; and my voice is to the sons of man. O ye simple, understand wisdom: and, ye fools, be ye of an understanding heart (mind).”
We may say that Christ was an example of a spiritual God realized in a corporeal man. God, in order that He may inhabit man, must first reverse engineer the corporeal to achieve a compatible habitat. Jesus is the pattern for future habitats. There were two coexistent states, and in the person of Jesus, the spiritual and the corporeal were no longer mutually exclusive. However, friends, neighbors, family, and disciples only saw the physical man. They saw Him glow; they saw Him walk on water; they saw Him ascend and many other things as well, but it was the man they saw. They were men, and Christ strove to reach their higher natures: to get them to open their minds to higher possibilities.
See John 3:3 & 5, “Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God . . . Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”
Did Jesus align Himself with the born again?
In speaking to Nicodemus, Jesus was telling him things that he was already supposed to know. That point is all too easily seen, but Jesus went on to say in verse 11, “We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness.”
Indeed, it seems that Jesus did include Himself with the born again. Perhaps such meat will cause discomfort to some, but I ask this - is not the divinity of Jesus the Spirit inhabiting the flesh?
He told Nicodemus in verse 6, “that which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.”
Yet, He stood before Nicodemus as both; as one firstborn “of water and of the spirit.” It follows
that if we, being born again, are remade after the example of Jesus, then Jesus could have been that
first star in a sky of white - or: ‘son of man’ version 1.02.
Jesus was a man the people knew. They knew His family, His history, His hometown. They considered, spoke to, and spoke about Him both before and during His ministry. The man was His appearance. Some people judged Him to be only a man (for the question had been raised), but one has to ignore certain facts, or align oneself with philosophies of some other camp, to judge only by the appearance.
See John 7:24-27, “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment. Then said some of them of Jerusalem, Is not this He, whom they seek to kill? But, lo, He speaketh boldly, and they say nothing unto Him. Do the rulers know indeed that this is the very Christ? Howbeit we know this man whence He is: but when Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence He is.”
Isn’t it the spirit’s coming and going that cannot be determined? That is, at least, what Jesus told Nicodemus. There was, it seems, a general misunderstanding about the coming of Christ that even believers had a hard time getting around. And all the while, Christ remained a man in their eyes.
Look at John 7:28-31, “But I know Him: for I am from Him, and He hath sent Me. Then they sought to take Him: but no man laid hands on Him, because His hour was not yet come. And many of the people believed on Him, and said, When Christ cometh, will He do more miracles than these which this man hath done?”
So Jesus was thought of as a man. Many of the people in His day were unaware of His history, or else they lumped all His past into the current locality of Galilee. The movement stemmed from that region. Anyone who reasoned beyond the basic nuts and bolts of accepted argumentation was considered a case for either pride or insanity. But, even in the concession that Jesus might be a prophet, He was still considered only a man.
See John 7:50-52, “Nicodemus saith unto them, (he that came to Jesus by night, being one of them,) Doth our law judge any man, before it hear him, and know what he doeth? They answered and said unto him, Art thou also of Galilee? Search, and look: for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet.”
The problem is that there has never been one standard interpretation of Christhood or divinity. Both involve the person of corporeal man. To men, the children of men seem no more than themselves. It is a historical certainty that men saw Christ as a man. Even the higher thoughts of the divinity of Jesus were usually colored by the fact that He was a man.
See Acts 10:38 and 1 Timothy 2:5, “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”
In the verse from Acts, the ‘anointing’ seems similar to that of the apostles. Read Luke 24:49 and John 20:22. “And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.”
Even as He died on the cross for the sins of the world, humanity thought of Him as a man. Matthew 27:47 puts it this way, “Some of them that stood there, when they heard that, said, This man calleth for Elias.”
As I said earlier, even believers have a hard time getting their heads around deeply ingrained dogma. Is Jesus the son of man or the son of God? Scripture indicates that early writers had little difficulty with the integrated concept of a man being the son of God.
For shades of grey see Mark 15:39, “And when the centurion, which stood over against Him, saw that He so cried out, and gave up the ghost, he said, Truly this man was the Son of God.”
A canon of our faith is that God created through the agency of His Son: see Colossians 1:13-17, “Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins: Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. ”
He is the potter, we are the clay. He is the builder, we each a house. That tenet is plainly displayed in Hebrews 3:3, “For this man was counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as He who hath builded the house hath more honour than the house.”
Still, in all, the writer of this pivotal book counts Jesus a man comparable to Moses. Why do I point to such texts? I point to an underlying truth that contemporary thought must digest. It is not the easy milk of established dogma, it is the actual meat and gristle of the word. A hard truth disturbs the smooth skin of acceptable Christian preconception. That underlying truth is that corporeality and spirituality are not mutually exclusive.
Man is a beast with a keen interest in the spiritual. Man examines his spirit, but his eyes see only flesh. The issue has never been if there is spirituality in man, but where, precisely, the connection lies. That connection is mentality. I assert that the human brain is a corporeal engine that facilitates the spiritual intrusion of thought. We think, we dream, we hope. If these things were flesh, we would see them, but they are invisible; they are spiritual intrusions.
Remember the earlier assertion that the two trees in Eden were points of spiritual intrusion? Here is another of my wild rants - which, as it turns out, is a vague and very tame connection: the human brain, along with the spinal column, and its tree-likeness.
Note the rustling of mental branches in the following verse; a rustling that seemed all too real to the one being swayed. Note that Jesus is again called a man. Matthew 27:19, “When he was set down on the judgment seat, his wife sent unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of Him.”
Just as the wife of the Governor suffered a spiritual event in her sleeping body, the ‘centurion’ had a spiritual response to an event that was all too physical. The writers of the New Testament may seem a bit slow in their deification of the man Jesus: they retain Him in the writings as a ‘man’, as a ‘just man’, as a ‘righteous man’. Would they retain the flesh of the Son of God if the flesh was a real obstacle to His deity?
Luke 23:47, “Now when the centurion saw what was done, he glorified God, saying, Certainly this was a righteous man.”
Again, note the writers of the New Testament portraying Jesus as a man, albeit a man of spiritual capability, in Acts 2:22, “Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by Him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know.”
I point to the spiritual within the body of a man. Above, the centurion glorified God. If God is glorified merely in the recognition of a “righteous man,” I ask, does that lessen Christ or elevate His adherents?
The faithful look to the deity of Christ, thinking that only by the piety and absolute sinlessness of the Son of God may the blood offered be effectual in the remission of sins. But the early writers must not have thought that spirituality and corporeality were mutually exclusive.
Our Redeemer was portrayed as a man: THE MAN through Whom forgiveness of sins was offered. See Acts 13:38, “Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins.”
It is the case that, over the span of centuries, certain romanticized notions have sprung up and taken root. The early writings, however, painted reality with fewer rose-colored tints. They, in fact, offer an image the contemporary Christian finds offensive. They show us a corporeal man whose miracles flowed from an internal spring: the spirit.
They painted a portrait that did not diminish the physical nature of the Son of God. This picture of
Christ, furthermore, received the endorsement of some early scholars and experts.
Nicodemus said this in John 3:2, “The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto Him, Rabbi, we know that Thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that Thou doest, except God be with Him.”
Is it possible to recognize God in a man? Of course, it is. When men are aware of a godly man, does that man’s corporeality cease? No. Many people looked right at the flesh of Jesus, recognized His divinity, and still called Him a man. One centurion compared Jesus to himself, suggesting that the position of Christ was neither at the top nor the bottom of the chain of command, but that His power and authority were both above and below.
For Christ as a man set under authority see Luke 7:6-8, “Then Jesus went with them. And when He was now not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to Him, saying unto Him, Lord, trouble not Thyself: for I am not worthy that Thou shouldest enter under my roof: Wherefore neither thought I myself worthy to come unto Thee: but say in a word, and my servant shall be healed. For I also am a man set under authority, having under me soldiers, and I say unto one, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.”
The word sent by the centurion was the opinion of a working stiff; the opinion of a regular guy. He was not a great thinker, an expert in laws of religion, or an especially learned man. He was not even of the Hebrew persuasion or mindset. His interpretations were based in the things he already knew. But he recognized the power and authority in the man he had sent for. He was, in all likelihood, the type of man that ‘called a spade a spade’. But, if the witness of experts and common men is not good enough, let us turn to the witness of Jesus, Himself.
See John 9:4, “I must work the works of Him that sent Me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.”
If this verse does not convince you that the very Christ considered Himself a man, then we resort to
a verse where He actually says ‘I am a man’. See John 8:40, “But now ye seek to kill Me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God.”
Christ associated Himself with the human condition. That is what lay behind the expression ‘Son of man’. It referred to the better man; it referred to the spiritually inclined man. The expression not only pointed a finger in the direction of Ezekiel but by extension, it pointed toward the children of men as potential Ezekiels: corporeal men filled with the spirit of God, in communication with God, dedicated in service to the will of God.
The Son of man offered Himself as example of all that the children of men could be. When Christ used the term ‘Son of man’, the sons of men were referenced inclusively. With that in mind, read Mark 2:27-28, “And He said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.”
You may have noticed the tremendous amount of conceptual overlap. In all, it is a process of realization. ‘B’ is changing ‘A’ into ‘B’ while ‘C’ is changing ‘B’ into ‘C’. We might properly say that we are exploring an entity with many faces. I put this thought forward only in the spirit of preparation for further thinking: ‘man’ is ‘children of men’ is ‘sons of men’ is ‘son of man’ is ‘angel’ is ‘son of God’.
I have asserted that man may indeed be attached to an angelic other. If we can consider that man may have within himself the makings of a more nearly spiritual being, might we not also be able to ask this question: can a ‘Son of Man’ be an ‘angel’?
In our language, a word is associated with another word. Two examples: we associate ‘Messiah’ with ‘Son of Man’; we associate ‘Prince’ with ‘angel’, or perhaps more precisely with ‘archangel’. The progressions are easy and comfortable due to familiarity. Jesus is the ‘son of man’, the ‘son of God’, the ‘savior’, the ‘Christ’, the ‘messiah’. But, how is it that angels are called Princes? Where is it? We find angelic appellations such as the ‘prince of the host’ (of heaven), ‘Michael one of the chief princes’, ‘Michael your prince’, ‘Michael the great prince’, in the book of Daniel.
Angels have a hierarchy as do men. Perhaps we learned it from the angels. ‘Principalities and powers’. The fallen angel, Lucifer, is also called a prince. Princes, traditionally, have been the elite, just under kings. Rulers come from the ranks of princes. Joseph was one of the twelve princes of Israel. He ruled in Egypt. Daniel was a prince of Judah; he was set up to rule just under the king of the Medes and Persians. ‘Prince of princes’ is found in the book of Daniel; ‘prince of peace’, in the book of Isaiah. Jesus, the son of man is called the ‘prince of the kings of the earth’ in the New Testament.
Could Christ have been an angel? It is possible. Could the spirit of God within the physical Jesus have been His angelic other? The connection is quick and painless. Daniel 9:25, “Messiah the Prince.”
If we, the children of men, are to become like our example, Christ, then what are we to become? What is the nature of Christ? Was Christ’s work bent toward the rejection of corporeality, or the formation of a ‘spiritual corporeality’? Is our Lord a man, a spirit, or both?
Read Ephesians 4:13, “Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto ( a formative verb ) a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”
What is the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ? Is it the ‘perfect man’? These are not light
and frivolous questions we ask. If our ‘savior’ is a perfect man (and I must add for the contemporary
Christians: ‘only a perfect man’), what does that say about God?
Read Hosea 13:4, “Yet I am the Lord thy God from the land of Egypt, and thou shalt know no god but Me: for there is no saviour beside Me.”
We know that the ‘Son of God’ was a man of flesh and blood. Nothing new there. We know it was intentional that He was corporeal. Again, nothing new. But the mind wants to see that purpose and immediately pop back to the spiritual deity of Christ, rejecting the connection to His body. When one really stops on this point for any length of time, the realization begins to sink in that the purpose was not about a dissociated spirit inhabiting a body for the duration of the work, and then taking a cab home, but as part of the work, the purpose insisted that a spiritual savior be a flesh and blood man.
If otherwise, the death would not have been death but only the appearance of death; the resurrection would not have been resurrection but only the appearance of resurrection. A dissociated spirit inhabiting a body would have suffered nothing, would have sacrificed nothing. One must believe that the existence of a spiritual/corporeal sacrifice was intended for nothing short of a spiritual/corporeal salvation.
See Romans 8:3, “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.”
Let us return to the great reflection, that Alice in Wonderland Mirror we’ve been studying. Man, we have determined, is the image and glory of God, and no one more so than His own son, Jesus. We tend to see the body as a thing in and of itself. When people mourn the dead, they mourn the spiritless body. Indeed, it is dead for that singular reason. Our living existence is a physical and spiritual collaboration.
When we look at a physical (that is, a visible) man, there is a whole half to him we cannot see, but that unseen half is comprehended in and by those parts we do see, for that half that is visible to the eye is the mirror image of the invisible. Christ, Himself, fell into this category. The Jesus that walked this earth was a reflection of the Son of God.
See that reflection in Romans 8:29, “For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He (the image) might be the firstborn among many brethren.”
This points very clearly to a plan where the many should become like the first. That was the mindset of the New Testament authors: that man should become more angelic in nature - corporeal beings fully reflecting the spirit within. Like us, Jesus was a man attached to His angelic other, though more
perfectly aligned.
That reflection is not so much a physical one, rather it is seen in the unseen things to do with each of us: If God is the mind of an angel, and that mind was fully realized in Christ, then it was by His mentality that He communicated the image to others. Within those others were the stirrings of a dual nature in balance: the spirit filled man. The New Testament authors wrote of common knowledge.
See Matthew 9:8, “But when the multitudes saw it, they marvelled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.”
Now, we know the players, but we seek to peer behind the masks. We look for new ways to understand. Thus, we climb ever higher, seeking a zenith from which we may have the broadest overview. We chisel away at the old stone dogmas. But, that we blunt our bronze blades: we shall soon trade them in for iron, and we shall make dull the keen edges of many more such tools.
Yet, in our dawning iron age of spiritual investigation, we may learn a tactic tailor-made for the seekers of truth, and that is from Proverbs 27:17 “Iron sharpeneth iron.”
Mark 8:38 says, “Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of Me and of My words (spiritual/mental communications) in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when He cometh in the glory of His Father (the spirit within) with the holy angels (sons of men, perhaps?) .”
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