How Many Sons Of God Are There?

Q

You have written that ‘Like Jesus, Adam is called the son of God (Luke 3:38)’. I know you are not saying that Adam is God but why can Adam even be called the son of God? Adam was a created being and John 3:16 says that God gave his one and only son. Jesus is not a created being but God himself. If Adam can be called the son of God and Jesus IS the son of God then what exactly does the title son of God mean when given to Adam and what does it mean when given to Jesus?

A

In the Greek language John 3:16 calls Jesus God’s only begotten son, meaning there’s no other like Him. He was born of a woman without the aid of a man, the only one of His kind. But for Jesus, being the Son of God is a title as well as a biological fact, since Jesus is God in human form.

Adam was a direct creation of God and therefore had no father or mother in the biological sense, so he was not begotten the way Jesus was. Luke called Adam the son of God because God was responsible for bringing him into the world. Following the letter of the Law the both Adam and Jesus can claim God as their direct father.

When Paul called Jesus the last Adam (1 Cor. 15:45) he was referring to Him in the human sense as appearing on Earth in human form after Adam did. Paul was educated as a rabbi. He was using a rabbinical argument to justify the redemptive work of Jesus with Leviticus 25 as his source. God’s law as stated there requires that if a man falls into debt or loses his property, a next of kin must redeem what he’s lost. Therefore Jesus had to become human and Adam’s next of kin to redeem Adam’s progeny (us) and planet Earth.