The True Son

In the first-century world, titles were never neutral. Empires trained loyalty through public language: “lord,” “savior,” “son of god,” “divine.” In that environment, the Scriptures name Jesus as God’s true Son in a way that both comforts believers and quietly challenges imperial theater. The point is not a quarrel for its own sake, but clarity: Who is Jesus, and what kind of “god” language does Scripture actually use?

This post continues the Scripture-first series on worship and identity, building on earlier studies of God Almighty, Jesus Christ, their relationship, origin, the Holy Spirit, and a close look at John 1:1.

Jesus before all things, God’s first and unique work

Scripture speaks of the Son as existing with God “in the beginning,” and also as the one through whom God brings everything else into being. John’s opening line puts the Word (Logos) at God’s side “in the beginning” (John 1:1 NIV). Paul similarly summarizes Christian confession in a way that keeps God and Jesus distinguishable while still placing Jesus at the center of creation: “yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live” (1 Corinthians 8:6 NIV).

This is why Genesis language matters. When Genesis records God’s creative deliberation, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness” (Genesis 1:26 NIV), Scripture later gives believers a way to hear that “us” without collapsing God into a crowd of rival deities. The Son is with God, and the Son works with God. The New Testament can even use the language of “firstborn” for the Son’s priority in God’s plan: “The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation” (Colossians 1:15). And the risen Jesus calls himself “the beginning of the creation of God” (Revelation 3:14 NASB).

Read together, this is a coherent picture: the Father is the God Almighty, and the Son is God’s true Son, brought forth before all else and commissioned as the agent through whom all else comes to be. That is a positive confession, not a slogan.

Seeing the Father in the Son

Jesus’ unity with the Father is presented first as unity of revelation and mission. When Philip asks to be shown the Father, Jesus answers: “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). He immediately explains what that “seeing” means: the Father’s words and works made visible through the Son’s faithful obedience (John 14:10–11). In other words, the Father is not “hidden behind” Jesus as a second identity, but revealed through him as the One who sent him.

The Son who reveals God

In Scripture, a true representative can bear the authority and message of the one who sent him, without becoming that sender. This is precisely why Jesus repeatedly speaks of being “sent,” of speaking what the Father gives, and of doing the Father’s works by the Father’s power. The result is not confusion, but worship ordered correctly: the Father as the source, the Son as the one who makes the Father known.

“I and the Father are one” as unity of purpose

Jesus says, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30 ). Yet the same passage also records Jesus placing the Father as greater in scope of authority: “My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all” (John 10:29 NIV). The unity Jesus claims is a unity that can be shared, because it is unity of purpose, loyalty, and love.

That is exactly how Jesus prays to the Father for his disciples: “that they may be one as we are…that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.. (John 17:11,21 KJV). The disciples do not become God Almighty. They become one in God’s life, aligned with God’s truth and mission. In the same way, Jesus’ oneness with the Father does not erase the Father and the Son into a single person, it describes shared will, shared work, and shared devotion.

Matthew 28:19, Acts, and the “name” that marks allegiance

Matthew 28:19 is often discussed because it uses the familiar baptismal wording about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Some writers have argued that this wording could reflect later church liturgy, pointing out that Eusebius sometimes cites a shorter form (“in my name”) and that Acts regularly describes baptism “in the name of Jesus Christ” or “in the name of the Lord Jesus.”⁷ However, the surviving manuscript tradition of Matthew carries the wording, and some early Christian sources also reflect it.⁸ So the strongest historical question is not, “Was Matthew 28:19 inserted?” but rather, “How did the earliest communities speak and act when they baptized?”

Acts answers that question repeatedly by centering baptism on Jesus’ name (Acts 2:38; 8:16; 10:48; 19:5). This does not need to be turned into a rivalry of formulas. In Scripture, a “name” is authority and belonging.¹ In an imperial world, public life was stamped with Caesar’s names and titles. Baptism “in the name of Jesus” functions as a transfer of allegiance: the believer is marked as belonging to the crucified and risen Lord, the true Son of God, not to any empire that manufactures sonship for itself.

“Before Abraham was born, I am” and the Son’s pre-existence

Jesus’ claim to pre-existence comes into sharp focus in John 8. He says, “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” (John 8:58). Some readers connect this directly to Exodus 3:14, but careful reading is still needed, especially across languages and contexts.

One important observation is grammatical: Koine Greek can use the present tense in a way that reaches back into the past and continues into the present (often called “present of past action still in progress”). That makes it possible, in certain contexts, to express a sense like “I have been,” emphasizing continuing existence rather than a sudden claim to be the one speaking in Exodus.² Either way, the center of Jesus’ statement is clear: he claims real existence before Abraham, which coheres with the wider New Testament portrayal of the Son’s life with God “in the beginning.”

And John’s Gospel also shows that conflict in Jerusalem is not triggered by one isolated sentence. The hostility has been building: Jesus says earlier that some are already seeking to kill him (John 8:37, 40). The narrative is describing a tightening clash between Jesus’ identity and the powers that police religious and social order.

“Godhead” language and what it does (and does not) mean

The King James Version uses the English word “Godhead” (Acts 17:29; Romans 1:20; Colossians 2:9 KJV). In older English, “godhead” would simply mean “godhood,” the quality or nature associated with deity, not a multi-head.³ Also, in the New Testament the KJV’s single English term is translating different Greek words, which many modern translations render with more specific phrases like “divine being,” “divine nature,” or “deity.”⁴

The true Son of God versus the empire’s counterfeit “sons of god”

In the Roman world, emperors were praised with titles that blurred politics and worship. Augustus Caesar was publicly styled divi filius, “son of a god,” a claim stamped into public life through inscriptions and coinage.⁵ Later rulers could inherit and extend this sacred aura in civic space, including major cities of Asia Minor.⁶

Against that backdrop, the Gospel’s confession is quietly revolutionary. Jesus is not “son of god” because an empire votes him divine, prints it on metal, or sings it in stadiums. He is Son because the one true God sends him, brings him forth before all things, entrusts him with the work of creation, and then vindicates him. The empire manufactures “sons of gods” to secure obedience. God gives the true Son to free humanity into worship, truth, and love.

That contrast also helps Scripture’s flexible use of the word “god.” Psalm 82 can speak of “gods” as powerful beings under judgment (Psalm 82:6), and John records Jesus citing that text when accused of blasphemy (John 10:34–36). In a world overflowing with claimed divinities, Scripture teaches discernment: not every “god” is God Almighty, and not every “son of god” is the true Son. Rome can crown many “divine” rulers. Scripture calls believers back to the one God, the Father, and to the one Lord appointed by Him, Jesus Christ.

Read Next – Creeds under Empire

Footnotes

1. Walter Bauer, Frederick W. Danker, William F. Arndt, and F. Wilbur Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), s.v. “ὄνομα.” ↩
   
2. Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996), 519–20. ↩
   
3. “godhede, n.(1),” Middle English Dictionary, University of Michigan, accessed January 2, 2026, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary/MED18979; see also “godhead, n.,” Oxford English Dictionary, accessed January 2, 2026, https://www.oed.com/dictionary/godhead_n. ↩
   
4. Bauer, Danker, Arndt, and Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon, s.v. “θεῖος,” “θειότης,” and “θεότης.” ↩
   
5. British Museum, “Coin (Augustus), inscription: IMP CAESAR DIVI F COS VI,” museum no. 1995,0401.1, accessed January 2, 2026, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/C_1995-0401-1; see also S. R. F. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). ↩
   
6. Sardis Expedition, “Bilingual Building Inscription Honoring Emperor Tiberius,” artifact M14.414, accessed January 2, 2026, https://sardisexpedition.org/en/artifacts/m14-414.↩
   
7. Francis C. Conybeare, “The Eusebian Form of the Text of Mt. 28:19,” Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 2 (1901): 275–288; and Eusebius, Demonstratio Evangelica, where a shorter citation (“in my name”) appears in some places. ↩
   
8. For the stability of the wording in the manuscript tradition and its early reception, see Codex Sinaiticus (Matthew 28:19); Didache 7.1; and Tertullian, On Baptism. ↩