Jesus, Son of God

The Embodiment of God

 Domine Iesu Christe, Filii Dei, miserere mei, peccatoris.

Lately, I have noticed that the Jesus Prayer has been spontaneously popping out of my mouth. I don't even notice that it is happening until it is happening.

It has become so common to refer to Jesus as the Son of God that I think most of us have never stopped to consider what it means.

McLaren suggests that the phrase "Son of God" is the same as saying "Embodying God (80)," or "Embodying the Essence of God (80)." But it is almost as important to ask what the word God means before we can discover the meaning of "Son of God."

Rabbi David A. Cooper found the most brilliant way I have ever seen to discuss God:

"The closest we can come to thinking about God is as a process rather than a being. We can think of it as 'be-ing,' as verb rather than noun. Perhaps we would understand this concept better if we renamed God. We might call It God-ing... [Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi] suggests that God-ing is a mutually interactive verb, one which entails an interdependency between two subjects, each the object of the other (God is a Verb, 69).

When we begin to think about God in this way, then what does that mean about Jesus as Son of God. If "Son of God" means "Embodying God," then Jesus is the embodiment of this mutually interactive being. or as McLaren puts it:

God is "a unified, eternal, mysterious, relational community/family/society/entity of saving Love (85)."

If we look at Jesus, his life and his teachings, it is plain and easy to see that he is the embodiment of this God. Nothing can ever be more clear.