Does ‘Son of God’ Mean Jesus Is Not Divine?

A recent video published by a Christadelphian teacher tackles a question at the very heart of the Christian faith: Is Jesus truly divine? Or, more specifically, Is he only the ‘Son of God’ in a way that rules out him being ‘God the Son’?

For many Christadelphians, the answer is already settled. Their statement of faith insists that Jesus is the Son of God but not divine in the same sense as the Father, not eternal before Bethlehem, and not part of a Trinity. Instead, Jesus is understood to be fully human, uniquely begotten by the power of the Spirit, and exalted to divine authority after his death and resurrection.

I know from my own background how deeply and sincerely these beliefs are held. I also know how easy it is to feel that words like Trinity or God the Son must be suspect simply because they do not appear verbatim on the page. But the real test is not whether a phrase appears in Scripture – it is whether the truth that phrase points to does.

So let’s set slogans aside and follow the whole biblical story. Does Son of God really mean Jesus cannot be divine in the fullest sense? What do the actual words of Jesus, the prophets, and the apostles reveal?

Why the Absence of a Phrase Does Not Prove the Absence of a Truth

The video’s opening point is repeated so often in Christadelphian circles that it feels almost irrefutable: “Nowhere in the Bible do we find the phrase ‘God the Son.’” And that is true – those exact three words, arranged in that order, are not there. But this same logic would dismiss other plain biblical truths simply because a convenient shorthand did not exist yet.

We do not find the word Bible in the Bible. We do not find Millennium, yet Christadelphians will speak of the thousand-year reign of Christ. Even free will is not a biblical phrase. The real question is whether the Scriptures teach that Jesus shares fully in the divine identity, not whether the Apostles were compelled to coin the exact term God the Son.

What matters is whether the Apostles worshipped him as God, trusted him as God, and described him in ways reserved for God alone. This is where the Christadelphian case begins to come apart.

When the Son of God Is Called ‘God’

If we read the New Testament without the filter of a Christadelphian lens, we find something striking: the early Christians speak of Jesus in words that would be blasphemous if he were merely a sinless man.

John opens his Gospel with words that echo the first line of Genesis: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1) These words have been softened or retranslated by every anti-Trinitarian sect for centuries – but the Greek is plain: the Word was God. This Word, John goes on to say, became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14).

It is no wonder that Thomas, after seeing the risen Jesus face to face, exclaimed, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28).

Christadelphian teachers often argue that Thomas could not have meant this directly about Jesus himself. Some suggest Thomas was so overcome he called out to God in heaven, not to the man standing before him. Others say Thomas simply recognised that Jesus perfectly represents God’s character, not that he is God in the flesh.

But this explanation does not fit the plain sense of the text. Thomas is speaking directly to Jesus, the one who stands before him with nail marks in his hands. Jesus does not correct him – he accepts this confession and blesses it: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:29)

If Thomas were mistaken – if calling Jesus God were a step too far – Jesus would surely have set him straight, just as he always corrected misunderstandings about his mission and identity. Instead, Jesus receives Thomas’s words as the right response to the truth of his resurrection.

John closes this scene by saying, “These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” (John 20:31) For John, there is no contradiction in calling Jesus both the Christ, the Son of God, and my God. That is precisely the mystery the Gospels reveal – not a man who merely points to God, but the Word who was with God and was God, now standing among us, risen and reigning.

Does ‘Son of God’ Mean Created Being?

Another part of the Christadelphian argument is that Son must imply creation – that if Jesus is the Son of God, then he must have come into existence at some point. But in the Bible, Son language is not always about physical origin. It is about shared nature and unique relationship.

When the New Testament calls Jesus the only begotten Son, it does not mean he was brought into existence like a creature. John’s Gospel says: “No one has ever seen God; the only begotten God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” (John 1:18, literal translation). The Son uniquely reveals the Father because he shares the Father’s own divine nature – he is the Word who was with God and was God from the beginning.

This is why the Nicene Fathers later spoke of the Son as begotten, not made. The Bible draws that line long before Nicea: Jesus is not created from nothing like the world, but eternally from the Father – a distinction Christadelphians collapse entirely.

Does Prophecy Prove He Did Not Exist Before?

The video repeats another common Christadelphian point: the Old Testament promises a child who would be born in the future – so Jesus could not have existed beforehand. It is true the prophets spoke of the coming Messiah in language of promise and future birth. But they also spoke of him as one whose “origin is from of old, from ancient days” (Micah 5:2).

This is not a poetic flourish. The same prophet who says the ruler will come from Bethlehem insists his origin reaches back beyond time.

Jesus himself speaks plainly about this pre-existence. In John 17, he prays, “Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world existed.” (John 17:5).

This point is often explained away by saying the glory was only a plan in God’s mind. But Jesus does not say, “the glory you planned for me.” He says, “the glory I had with you.” This is not a metaphor – it is a clear claim to conscious pre-existence.

He says in John 8:58, “Before Abraham was, I AM.” Those listening understood this perfectly: he was using God’s covenant name from Exodus 3:14. That’s why they picked up stones. They didn’t misunderstand him. They understood him too well.

What About the Prayers, Obedience and Distinctions?

The conclusion is often that Jesus cannot be God because he prayed, obeyed, and spoke of the Father as greater. But this confuses the beauty of the incarnation with a contradiction.

Orthodox Christians do not say the Son is the Father. They believe the Son is eternally distinct from the Father, which is why he can speak to the Father, obey the Father, and submit to the Father in his earthly mission.

Paul explains this paradox clearly: “Though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.” (Philippians 2:6–7). Jesus did not lose his divine nature. He clothed it in human weakness, so he could do what Adam failed to do – obey the Father perfectly as true man.

Some say all this was added centuries later – a Greek idea, not apostolic truth. But the earliest Christians tell a different story.

No Greek Philosophy: Just the Apostles Defending the Gospel

The claim that belief in Jesus’ divinity emerged later – borrowed from Greek philosophy or invented by church councils centuries after the apostles – is a conviction deeply rooted in the Christadelphian story. It’s repeated so often that it can feel settled beyond question: the early church must have drifted away from the Bible, adding layers of pagan thinking that turned the simple Gospel into something foreign.

But history does not agree with that version. The early Christian writings outside the New Testament – letters and confessions from the generation who learned directly from the apostles – show that the first believers worshipped Jesus as Lord and God from the beginning, not centuries later.

One of the clearest voices is Ignatius of Antioch, who lived from about AD 35 to 107 – overlapping the final decades of the apostle John’s life. Ignatius was no detached philosopher. He was a pastor, a bishop, and a man who would die as a martyr for his confession of Jesus. On his way to Rome to face execution, he wrote letters to encourage the churches to hold firm to the faith handed down by the Apostles.

In those letters, Ignatius repeatedly calls Jesus “our God” without hesitation. To the Ephesians, he writes: “There is one Physician, who is both flesh and spirit, born and unborn, God in man, true Life in death, both from Mary and from God, first passible and then impassible, Jesus Christ our Lord.”
(Letter to the Ephesians, 7.2)

To the Romans, he calls Jesus plainly: “Our God, Jesus Christ.” (Letter to the Romans, Introduction)

This is not the language of a Greek thinker trying to fit Jesus into a pagan system – it is the straightforward echo of what John wrote in his Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word… and the Word was God… and the Word became flesh.”

And Ignatius was not alone. Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna – another direct disciple of the Apostle John – in his final prayer before his own martyrdom, worships Jesus together with the Father as eternal God. In the writings of Justin Martyr, only decades later, we see the same pattern: the Son is confessed as the eternal Word who was with God and is God, fully divine yet distinct from the Father.

When we read these earliest voices, we see no sign that the church invented Jesus’ divinity to please Greek thinkers. The truth is simpler: they were defending what they received from the Apostles themselves – the same Apostles who fell at Jesus’ feet and called him Lord and God, who wrote “In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.”

These were men who gave their lives not for a vague moral teacher, but for the living, risen Son of God – the eternal Word made flesh, the One who alone can save.

So when someone says, “The Trinity is the great apostasy,” it’s worth asking: where is the evidence that the earliest Christians ever thought this was a betrayal?

The evidence points the other way: from the first generations, believers worshipped Jesus as more than a perfect man – they worshipped him as their Lord and their God, because they were convinced this is who the Scriptures revealed him to be.

The Real Stakes

For a Christadelphian, rejecting the Trinity often feels like defending the Bible against centuries of human tradition. Many are taught from their youth that the Trinity is not just an error, but the very “falling away” – the great apostasy Paul warns of – that corrupted the pure faith after the apostles died. It is no small thing: to accept the Trinity, in this view, is to risk turning from the one true God and therefore to put one’s salvation in peril.

I understand that instinct deeply. I know the fear of embracing something “man-made” when you long to stand firmly on the Bible alone. But when we step back and read the whole sweep of Scripture, we find that the real danger is not believing too much about Christ, but far too little.

The real tragedy is not a Church that has insisted Jesus is fully God; the tragedy would be to reduce him to something less than the Gospels declare him to be. The Apostles did not invent the Son’s divinity because they drifted from truth. They defended it because they witnessed it with their own eyes and worshipped him as their Lord and their God.

If Jesus is only a sinless man – even the best and most faithful man ever to live – then we have no Saviour strong enough to bear the weight of the world’s sin. He might stand in for one, but the Bible says he died once for all. His sacrifice has eternal power because the one who offered it is the eternal Word who became flesh.

The resurrection, then, is not just the rescue of a faithful servant – it is the vindication of the everlasting Word who could lay down his life and take it up again by his own authority.

If Jesus is indeed the Word made flesh – truly God with us – then the cross is not merely a tragedy or a display of human faithfulness. It is God himself stepping into our story to carry us home. The empty tomb is not just proof that a righteous man was vindicated – it is the promise that the eternal Son, who conquered sin and death as one of us, will share that victory with all who trust him.

The greatest danger to our salvation is not believing Jesus is too divine. The real danger is refusing to trust him as fully who he is: Son of God, Son of Man, and truly God the Son – the only Saviour who can bring us to the Father.

A Final Invitation

If you’ve watched that video and felt reassured that Son of God must mean not divine, I’d encourage you to open your Bible again. Read John’s Gospel from start to finish without skipping the uncomfortable bits that do not fit the Christadelphian framework.

Pay special attention to the claims Jesus makes about himself – not just his miracles or moral teaching, but his origin, his authority, and his unique relationship with the Father.

And weigh carefully the testimony of those who fell at his feet and called him Lord and God.

I share this not to win an argument, but because the deeper truth is this: we are not saved by perfectly grasping divine mysteries – we’re saved by trusting the One who holds them. And only when we see Jesus as he truly is – the eternal Son who became one of us – do we glimpse the depth of what he’s done to rescue us and lead us home.

If you’d like to explore this more deeply, you can read my full piece: An Argument for the Trinity.