Jesus’ title for himself was not Son of God, nor was it Messiah, but he used a rather common phrase from the Old Testament, “Son of Man” found 193 times in the Old Testament. Virtually all of the usages translate literally the phrase from Hebrew “Son of Adam”. Psalm 144:3 is different and translates the Hebrew for “Son of mortal man”. Over 80 times the phrase “Son of man” is used; God’s title for the prophet Ezekiel. In Daniel 7:13 occurs another outlier, where “Son of man” translates the Hebrew “son of a human”. In Daniel’s vision he saw one like a son of man to refer to a human, heavenly being who went to the ancient of days and would come and rule upon the earth. The Old Testament understanding of “son of man”, was that it referred to a man, a human person. Only Daniel 7:13 added an apocalyptic understanding of the term. At the time of Jesus it was not a term in common usage. It is also interesting that the early church did not continue to use the title Son of Man for Jesus as Jesus did but preferred to refer to him as the Son of God. Jesus was the only one to use that title to refer to himself and he used it frequently with several different connotations.
So the question arises why did Jesus use this phrase to refer to himself, when he could have used other titles such as Son of David, Son of God or Messiah? Concerning those alternate titles, Jesus didn’t refer to himself as Messiah or the similar title Son of David, because those terms were so closely tied in the people’s minds with a Davidic warrior king. Although those titles were accurate for Jesus, their connotations would mislead the people into thinking Jesus had come to be a political king like David or a Roman Caesar. During the triumphal entry, the people referred to Jesus as the Son of David, thinking he had come to overthrow the Romans, like the Maccabees had defeated the Greek rulers several hundred years before. The Jewish leaders succeeded in portraying Jesus in this political light before Pilate leading to his execution. Jesus also avoided using the title Son of God, which the early church picked up, probably because it emphasized his divinity. It would also have confused him with the Roman Emperors and other ancient rulers who portrayed themselves as a Son of God. Jesus used the Old Testament term Son of Man as a human man, and Daniel as a human heavenly being and infused new meaning to them. He was a human man who brought the heavenly authority to earth to forgive sins. When he healed the paralytic, he told him that his sins were forgiven. When the religious leaders objected to Jesus declaring sins forgiven, he told them that they would know the Son of Man had authority to forgiven sins, then he commanded the paralytic to take up his mat and walk. The man’s doing so underscored Jesus’ authority, as Son of Man to forgive sins, something that only God could do. Although he had heavenly origins, on earth the Son of Man had no place to lay his head. The Son of Man had come to give his life as a ransom for mankind’s sins, but one day he would come as a heavenly judge. To his disciples he revealed that, yes, he the Son of Man was the Messiah, but a Messiah not as they and their contemporaries expected. By use of the Son of Man, Jesus redefined the disciples understanding of the Messiah.
Jesus’ choice of that title demonstrated his comprehension of his contemporaries as he sought to clarify his human and heavenly role, so that they would not confuse him with their own misunderstanding of the Messiah. The gospels reveal that even the disciples had difficulty understanding Jesus’ duel role as suffering servant and victorious conqueror of sin. Even today, we continue to ponder and debate this person, Jesus, who walked upon the earth, taught men and women such as ourselves, suffered and died so that we might receive forgiveness for our foibles and failures before God and live in fellowship with God and fellow man, rather than in fear and animosity. Even today, Jesus is often misunderstood when cultural definitions of him color and distort how Scripture presents him.
David Freitag 