page_title: Son of God (Christianity)
section_title: Pauline epistles
hierarchical_section_title: Son of God (Christianity) / New Testament usage / Pauline epistles
caption_attribution_description: Polittico di San Pietro
context_page_description: The terms "son of God" and "son of the LORD" are found in several passages of the Old Testament. In Christianity, the title Son of God refers to the status of Jesus as the divine son of God the Father.
  It derives from several uses in the New Testament and early Christian theology. In mainstream Christianity, it also refers to his status as God the Son, the second divine person or hypostasis of the Trinity, although God the Son cannot be found.
context_section_description: In their own way, John and Paul maintained this distinction. Paul expressed their new relationship with God as taking place through an "adoption" (Gal. 4:5; Rom. 8:15), which makes them "children of God" (Rom. 8:16–17) or, alternatively, "sons of God" (Rom. 8:14; (Rom. 4:6–7). John distinguished between the only Son of God (John 1:14, 18; John 3:16, 18) and all those who through faith can become "children of God" (John 1:12; 11:52; and 1 John 3:1–2,10 1 John 5:2). Paul and John likewise maintained and developed the correlative of all this, Jesus' stress on the fatherhood of God. Over 100 times John's Gospel names God as "Father". Paul's typical greeting to his correspondents runs as follows: "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the/our Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom 1:7; 1 Cor 1:3; 2 Cor 1:2; Gal 1:3; Phil 1:2; 2 Thess 1:2; Philem 3). The greeting names Jesus as "Lord", but the context of "God our Father" implies his sonship.
  Paul therefore distinguished between their graced situation as God's adopted children and that of Jesus as Son of God. In understanding the latter's "natural" divine sonship, Paul firstly spoke of God "sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful nature and to deal with sin" (Rom. 8:3). In a similar passage, Paul says that "when the fullness of time had come God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law" (Gal. 4:4).  If one examines these three passages in some detail, it raises the question whether Paul thinks of an eternally pre-existent Son coming into the world from his Father in heaven to set humanity free from sin and death (Rom. 8:3, 32) and make it God's adopted children (Gal. 4:4–7). The answer will partly depend, first, on the way one interprets other Pauline passages which do not use the title "Son of God" (2 Cor. 8:9; Phil. 2:6–11). These latter passages present a pre-existent Christ taking the initiative, through his "generosity" in "becoming poor" for us and "assuming the form of a slave". The answer will, second, depend on whether one judges 1 Corinthians 8:6 and Colossians 1:16 to imply that as a pre-existent being the Son was active at creation. 1 Corinthians 8:6 without explicitly naming "the Son" as such, runs:
  There is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
  Calling God "the Father" clearly moves one toward talk of "the Son". In the case of Colossians 1:16, the whole hymn (Col. 1:15–20) does not give Jesus any title. However, he has just been referred to (Col. 1:13) as God's "beloved Son".
  Third, it should be observed that the language of "sending" (or, for that matter, "coming" with its stress on personal purpose (Mark 10:45 par.; Luke 12:49, 51 par.) by itself does not necessarily imply pre-existence. Otherwise one would have to ascribe pre-existence to John the Baptist, "a man sent from God", who "came to bear witness to the light" (John 1:6–8; cf.  Matt. 11:10, 18 par.). In the Old Testament, angelic and human messengers, especially prophets, were "sent" by God, but one should add at once that the prophets sent by God were never called God's sons. It makes a difference that in the cited Pauline passages it was God's Son who was sent. Here being "sent" by God means more than merely receiving a divine commission and includes coming from a heavenly pre-existence and enjoying a divine origin. Fourth, in their context, the three Son of God passages here examined (Rom. 8:3, 32; Gal. 4:4) certainly do not focus on the Son's pre-existence, but on his being sent or given up to free human beings from sin and death, to make them God's adopted children, and to let them live (and pray) with the power of the indwelling Spirit. Nevertheless, the Apostle's soteriology presupposes here a Christology that includes divine pre-existence. It is precisely because Christ is the pre-existent Son who comes from the Father that he can turn human beings into God's adopted sons and daughters.
caption: The Ascension, Jesus returning to his Father – by Pietro Perugino (c.1500), Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon.
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