What does ‘Son of God’ mean? Is it different from ‘Son of Man’?

Question 3012.

Son of Man is the title Jesus used of Himself more often than any other in the Gospels, and it is also the one most commonly misunderstood among ordinary readers today. Many assume it simply balances “Son of God” by emphasising His humanity, as though the two titles divided His two natures neatly between them, one label for each nature, as though the arrangement were a matter of simple bookkeeping between two otherwise unrelated categories of biblical description rather than two complementary, overlapping windows opening onto one and the very same staggering reality.

That reading gets things backward. Son of Man is actually the more exalted title of the two in its Old Testament background, and understanding why changes how you hear it every single time you meet it in the four Gospels.

The Old Testament background to ‘Son of God’

The phrase “son of God” or “sons of God” appears in several Old Testament contexts without automatically implying deity. Angels are called sons of God in Job 1:6 and 38:7. Israel as a nation is called God’s son in Exodus 4:22, “Thus says the LORD, Israel is my firstborn son.” The Davidic king is promised a father son relationship with God in 2 Samuel 7:14.

So the title by itself does not always signal full deity in every Old Testament usage. Its meaning depends heavily on context, which is exactly why we need to look carefully at how it functions when applied specifically to Jesus.

Why ‘Son of God’ means something unique when applied to Jesus

At Jesus’ baptism, the Father’s voice declares, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). The Greek word for beloved, agapetos, signals a unique, one of a kind relationship rather than a title shared broadly the way it was applied to Israel or to David’s line.

John makes the uniqueness explicit: Jesus is “the only Son from the Father” (John 1:14), and when Jesus called God His own Father, His hearers understood Him to be “making himself equal with God” (John 5:18). Applied to Jesus, Son of God asserts a shared divine nature with the Father, not simply a covenant relationship like Israel’s or David’s.

Daniel’s vision behind ‘Son of Man’

“Son of Man” carries far greater theological weight than a simple statement about humanity. Its key background is Daniel 7:13-14, where Daniel sees “one like a son of man” coming with the clouds of heaven, approaching the Ancient of Days, and receiving “dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him,” an everlasting dominion that will never be destroyed. The dispensational ministry Ariel Ministries has written helpfully on how this vision fits the wider pattern of Messianic prophecy in the Hebrew Scriptures.

This is not a picture of an ordinary human being. It is a picture of a heavenly, glorious figure receiving universal and eternal authority directly from God. When Jesus took this title as His favourite self designation, He was deliberately claiming Daniel’s exalted vision for Himself.

Jesus’ own use of ‘Son of Man’ as a claim to authority

Jesus uses Son of Man to claim precisely the kind of authority Daniel describes. “The Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (Mark 2:10). “The Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:28). Before the high priest, when directly asked if He is the Christ, the Son of the Blessed, Jesus answers, “I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:62), a direct and unmistakable quotation of Daniel 7, and the same claim to full deity I set out when asking whether Jesus is God.

The high priest tore his robes on the spot, recognising the claim as blasphemy unless it were true, which tells us how clearly Jesus’ contemporaries understood what Son of Man actually meant, whatever some modern readers assume about it.

Both titles held together in the person of Jesus

Son of God and Son of Man are not a tidy division of Jesus’ two natures into two separate labels. Both titles carry claims to deity, understood rightly, while both also connect Jesus to genuine humanity, since the Son of God became flesh (John 1:14) and the Son of Man is nonetheless the heavenly figure of Daniel’s vision receiving an everlasting kingdom.

Rather than splitting His identity between them, the two titles approach the same staggering truth from different angles: the eternal Son who is one with the Father, and the exalted, divine figure who has also genuinely entered human history to redeem it, exactly as I describe when asking simply who Jesus is.

How the earliest hearers reacted to these titles

It helps to picture how first century listeners actually responded when Jesus used this exalted self designation. The reaction at His trial was not confusion but immediate, furious recognition. The high priest did not ask for clarification. He tore his robes, the traditional response to hearing blasphemy, because he understood exactly what claim had just been made and regarded it as either true beyond dispute or criminally false.

Ordinary crowds, too, responded with a mixture of awe and unease that only makes sense if they grasped the weight of what they were hearing. When Jesus healed a paralysed man and pronounced forgiveness of his sins on the authority of this title, Matthew records that the crowds “were afraid, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to men” (Matthew 9:8), an ambiguous but clearly astonished response to an authority claim they recognised as extraordinary.

Why these titles still matter for how we approach Jesus

I think there is a tendency in casual modern Christianity to soften both titles into gentle, almost sentimental language, Son of God as a warm description of closeness, Son of Man as a nod to His relatability. Both instincts contain a partial truth, but both fall well short of what the Gospel writers intended their original readers to hear. These are titles of immense authority and cosmic significance, drawn from the highest moments of Old Testament revelation.

Approaching Jesus through either title rightly understood should produce the same response Daniel’s original vision was always meant to provoke: reverent astonishment before a figure who receives worship from every nation, not comfortable familiarity with a domesticated teacher. Both titles call for worship, not simply warm regard.

A brief note on gender language in these titles

It is worth a short word on why Scripture consistently uses masculine language for both titles under discussion here, since the question sometimes arises. This is not a comment on the general dignity of women, which Scripture affirms robustly elsewhere, but a matter of the specific historical and covenantal roles these titles describe. The promised royal heir of David’s line was always envisaged as a son (2 Samuel 7:12), and the heavenly figure of Daniel’s vision is specifically described as a son of man, both rooted in ancient Near Eastern patterns of covenant kingship rather than reflecting any devaluation of women.

Jesus fulfils these specific, historically rooted expectations exactly as they were given, and changing the language to something gender neutral would obscure rather than clarify the fulfilment being described. None of this diminishes the fact that the salvation Christ accomplished, and the honour of belonging to His kingdom, extends equally and without distinction to men and women alike (Galatians 3:28). Precise historical language about the promised King and the fulfilment of Daniel’s vision sits comfortably alongside the full, equal inclusion of every believer, male and female, within the kingdom that King now rules. Getting the historical detail right and affirming the equal dignity of every believer are not competing concerns. They sit together perfectly well once each is given its proper place in the text, and I would encourage readers not to let a fair concern about inclusion lead them to soften language Scripture itself has chosen deliberately, since the historical specificity is part of what makes the fulfilment so remarkable in the first place.

So, now what?

So, now what? Next time you read “Son of Man” in the Gospels, resist the urge to hear it as the lesser, simply human half of Jesus’ identity. Hear Daniel’s vision behind it instead, an everlasting kingdom given to a glorious figure who receives worship from every nation.

That is who you are following, and that is the King whose kingdom, Scripture assures us, will never end. Let both titles together draw you into deeper worship rather than settling for a smaller, more manageable picture of Him.

“I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.”

Daniel 7:13-14, ESV