Shortly after his conversion, Paul boldly declared to the Hebrews in Damascus that Jesus is the Son of God. In this sermon, R.C. Sproul discusses the theological implications of this title and encourages Christians to approach the Lord with reverence and devotion.

Immediately he preached the Christ in the synagogues, that He is the Son of God.

Then all who heard were amazed, and said, “Is this not he who destroyed those who called on this name in Jerusalem, and has come here for that purpose, so that he might bring them bound to the chief priests?”

But Saul increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who dwelt in Damascus, proving that this Jesus is the Christ.

Now after many days were past, the Jews plotted to kill him. But their plot became known to Saul. And they watched the gates day and night, to kill him. Then the disciples took him by night and let him down through the wall in a large basket.

And when Saul had come to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples; but they were all afraid of him, and did not believe that he was a disciple. But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles. And he declared to them how he had seen the Lord on the road, and that He had spoken to him, and how he had preached boldly at Damascus in the name of Jesus. So he was with them at Jerusalem, coming in and going out. And he spoke boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus and disputed against the Hellenists, but they attempted to kill him. When the brethren found out, they brought him down to Caesarea and sent him out to Tarsus.

Then the churches throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and were edified. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, they were multiplied.

The Word of God for the people of God. Let us pray.

Father, we thank You for this record of holy boldness by which this new convert, Saul, was used as Your chosen instrument to awaken multitudes of people to Your identity. We pray for that same kind of boldness in our lives, in our preaching, and in our witness in our own day. Speak to us now through this text. For we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Paul’s First Mighty Ministry

So far in our study of Acts, we remember that Saul left Jerusalem on a mission to root out Christians in Damascus with orders from the high priest authorizing him to take Christians from their homes and bring them back to Jerusalem. Saul left the city breathing out threats, accompanied by an entourage, a retinue of mounted soldiers or helpers with him, and he left in strength, but was interrupted on the route to Damascus by the risen Christ intruding into his life.

We examined the episode in which the Apostle Paul was first converted. Though he left Jerusalem in strength, he entered Damascus led by the hand because God struck him blind. He was taken to the street called “Straight,” where Ananias ministered to him and laid hands upon him, the Holy Spirit anointed him, and the scales, like flakes, fell from his eyes, and he was able to see.

We read in the text this morning that Paul, who came blind into the city of Damascus, being led by the hand, became so powerful in such a short period of time that he had to leave the city because there was a conspiracy by the Jews there to kill him. He left by way of being secreted out of a window in the wall of the city and lowered down in a woven basket like dirty laundry.

There was a radical shift in the circumstances and situation of the Apostle from his first leaving Jerusalem in power to his being humbled as he fled Damascus in a basket so that his life might be spared. But in between his entrance into Damascus and departure by basket, he had a mighty ministry.

The Son of God

I want to spend some time looking specifically at the first statement from Luke regarding Paul’s interim period of Apostolic ministry in Damascus: “Immediately he preached the Christ in the synagogues, that He is the Son of God.” I want to stop and focus on that statement. From the moment he began preaching in the synagogues in Damascus, Paul’s message was about Jesus as the Christ, and he declared to the Jewish people that Jesus was the Son of God.

This is the only time in the book of Acts where “Son of God” is used in reference to Jesus. In our overview of the Bible, Dust to Glory, I spent some amount of time talking about the titles given to Jesus in the New Testament, such as Christ and Lord, and I spent a lot of time on the significance of Son of Man, because that was Jesus’ favorite title for Himself.

We see two titles juxtaposed in the New Testament with respect to Jesus. On the one hand, Son of Man; on the other, Son of God. The church’s confession is that Jesus is one person with two natures: a human nature and a divine nature. We reach back into church history to the Council of Chalcedon in the fifth century, where the church confessed her faith concerning Jesus, saying that Christ is vere homo, vere Deus, truly man, truly God, the two natures perfectly united in one person.

That is part of our confession as Christians, but the temptation is to think that when Jesus uses the term Son of Man, that title refers to His human nature, and when He uses the title Son of God, that title refers to His divine nature. But if we draw that conclusion, we are making a serious error.

It is true that when Jesus is called the “Son of Man,” it has something to do with His human nature. But the principle and chief significance of the title Son of Man is that it refers to the Old Testament personage who is a heavenly character, a heavenly person who dwells in the presence of the Ancient of Days and is sent from heaven to descend to earth for a mission (Dan. 7:13–14).

In a sense, the title Son of Man describes more of Jesus’ divine nature than it does His human nature. Likewise, when we see the title Son of God, we would assume that its primary reference is to His deity, but again we make a mistake if we draw that inference without great care.

I want to take some time this morning to look at it because this is how Paul announced Jesus in the beginning of his ministry: “He preached the Christ in the synagogues, that He is the Son of God.” What did he mean?

Obedience to the Father

In the Old Testament, the title Son of God was used in several ways. The angels of heaven are called the sons of God, and the sons of God in that sense are still creatures; they are not divine beings. Then Israel herself, as a nation, is called the son of God. Remember the quotation in the New Testament taken from the Old Testament, “Out of Egypt have I called My Son” (Matt. 2:15; Hos. 11:1). So, in God’s redeeming of the people of Israel, He adopted them into His family and called the whole corporate nation His son. Kings in the Old Testament were also called the sons of God. As the concept of the Messiah developed over time in the Old Testament, the ministry of the Messiah, who would come both as King and Suffering Servant and so on, also became recognized as One who would be known as the Son of God.

In the New Testament, when Jesus was baptized, it marked the beginning of His earthly ministry. At that time, He was anointed by the Holy Spirit, and God spoke audibly from the clouds and announced to those there, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). Later, again God spoke from heaven audibly saying basically the same message: “This is My beloved Son. Hear Him!” (Luke 9:35).

What are we to make of this? In the New Testament, the idea of sonship is inseparably related to obedience. When Jesus had controversies with the Pharisees over their relationship to Abraham, the Pharisees said, “We’re the children of Abraham.” But Jesus said, “You are not.” In John 8, He said: “If you were the children of Abraham, you would do what Abraham did. Abraham rejoiced to see My day, yet you reject me. Before Abraham was, I Am.” He also told them, “You’re not the children of Abraham, but you are of your father the devil.”

It is quite a contrast between being called children of Abraham and being called children of Satan. Why did Jesus say that His opponents in this instance were children of the devil? He answered that question for us, essentially telling them: “You are the children of the one you obey, and you’re obeying Satan, not Abraham, not Moses, not God. Since you obey Satan, it can be said that you are the children of Satan.”

Conversely, the same idea is used to describe sonship with respect to Jesus. You are the child of the one whom you obey. Jesus was uniquely the Son of God in the sense that He, of all people in history, was completely and absolutely obedient to the Father. In His humanity, He was the Son of God. In His humanity, because of His sinlessness and perfect obedience, He warranted the title Son of God.

Begotten of the Father

We could just stop there and say: “The term Son of God has nothing to say about Jesus’ divine nature. It simply refers to His human nature in His perfect obedience.” No, the New Testament, though it clearly talks about His sonship in terms of obedience, nevertheless goes beyond this to the transcendent aspect of Christ’s unique relationship to the Father.

When I preached through the gospel of John, I pointed out that at the end of the prologue, John describes Jesus as the monogenēs, the only begotten of the Father. That is a loaded term. It does not mean the first begotten. Rather, the prefix mono means the uniquely begotten One, the only One who ever had been begotten of the Father, and the only One who ever will be begotten of the Father. There is a unique begotten-ness in view with respect to Jesus.

It was the language of begotten-ness that provoked one of the most serious controversies in all church history, back in the fourth century. An ecumenical council from the vast expanse of Christendom came together in Nicaea to meet in council, out of which came the Nicene Creed. Just a few moments ago, we stood and sang the Gloria Patri. We sang the words:

Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost,
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.

Arius said that Jesus was a human being who was uniquely adopted by the Father for His mission, but He was not divine. He was not eternal. He was not of the same substance or essence as God. He was a creature. The Bible says Jesus was begotten, and the Greek verb, “to beget,” ginomai, means “to be, become, or to happen.” It refers to those incidents and events that indicate the beginning of something in time and space. Arius argued that the text said Jesus was begotten, which would mean He had a beginning; and if He had a beginning, He was not eternal; and if He was not eternal, He was not God. So, according to Arius we ought not to be attributing deity to Christ.

That was what the Council at Nicaea was all about. That was what the Nicene Creed was all about. The Nicene Creed responded with the famous phraseology that Christ was homoousios, of the same substance, the same essence, the same stuff as the Father, declaring to Christendom that Christ is co-substantial and coeternal with the Father. Then it uses the language of begotten-ness, where it says in the creed, “Christ was begotten, not made.”

In other words, the church acknowledged that the Bible speaks of the begotten-ness of Jesus, but that begotten-ness refers to an eternal relationship, an eternal begotten-ness set apart from any other kind of begotten-ness by the term monogenes. Christ is individually, singularly, the only One ever uniquely and eternally begotten of the Father because He is very God of very God. There never was a time when the Son was not.

The church sang her confession, saying, “Glory,” a divine attribute: “Glory be to the Father, and glory be to the Son, and glory be to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, from all eternity, and is still continuing. God is still triune, He was always triune, and He ever more shall be triune. He is now, and evermore shall be, world without end. Amen.”

It is that radical message—and I use the term “radical” carefully, coming from the Latin, radix, which means “root”—it is that root message the Apostle Paul immediately proclaimed. He had before seen Jesus as an enemy to the purity of the Jewish monotheistic religion, now he understood that the Messiah of Israel was nothing less than God incarnate. When Paul preached in the synagogues that Jesus was the Son of God, he used that title in the fullest measure that it could be used and applied it to Christ.

Paul’s New Mission

When Paul made his declaration about Christ being the Son of God, he was met with astonishment and amazement by his hearers. First, because of his drastic turnaround, they said, “Is this not he who destroyed those who called on this name in Jerusalem, and has come here for that purpose, so that he might bring them bound to the chief priests?” The answer to that question, ladies and gentlemen, was yes. Yes, this was the same man. This was the man who came to bind the followers of Jesus and take them back to Jerusalem.

When Paul left Jerusalem, he did not come as a one-man vigilante against Christians. He came with the full authorization of the high priest. He came with a warrant for the arrest of Christians, issued by the highest authority in Israel, the high priest at Jerusalem.

However, something happened between the beginning of that mission and Paul’s arrival in Damascus. What happened simply was this: he met the High Priest. He met the eternal High Priest, who is High Priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, who will never retire, who will never abdicate His office, who will never leave His office by dying as all the lines of high priests in Israel had, one after another. Those high priests’ terms were limited; their duration was finite. But the High Priest changed the orders. He gave Paul a new commission. He overruled and trumped the high priest in Jerusalem and set Paul on an entirely new mission, which he began to carry out, we are told, immediately.

Paul Preaches Boldly

With his new mission, Paul was greeted by amazement, but we are told, “Saul increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who dwelt in Damascus, proving that this Jesus is the Christ.” This went on for just a few days until the astonishment of the local Jewish community turned to rage, and they plotted to kill him. But Paul heard of the plot and escaped their hands by being let down from a window from a house.

In those days, the city walls often included homes built right on the wall that were part of the wall. So, the friends of Paul took him into one of the houses and dropped him by ropes out the window in a basket during the night so he could escape.

We are told, “And when Saul had come to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples; but they were all afraid of him,” because they still did not know what had taken place. But Barnabas, whose name means “son of encouragement,” interceded for Paul. Barnabas vouched for Paul to the disciples who were gathered in Jerusalem and told them how “he had preached boldly at Damascus in the name of Jesus.”

After this, Luke tells us regarding Paul: “He spoke boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus and disputed against the Hellenists, but they attempted to kill him. When the brethren found out, they brought him down to Caesarea and sent him out to Tarsus.” Then this brief interlude: “Then the churches throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and were edified. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, they were multiplied.”

The Son of the Living God

Before we heard of the conversion of Saul, following on the martyrdom of Saint Stephen, we heard some about Peter’s ministry in Jerusalem. Then we had a brief interval where we were introduced to Saul, read of his conversion, his brief ministry in Damascus, and his time back in Jerusalem for a short while until he was sent back to Tarsus. The text goes back, as we will see next week, to focus attention again on Peter and his ministry in Jerusalem. Then it picks up afresh later and takes us along with Paul and his fellow workers on his missionary journeys. But Paul’s ministry began in Damascus.

Paul’s ministry began with his proving that Christ was the Messiah and with Paul proclaiming Jesus in His fullness—in His perfect humanity and perfect deity as the Son of the living God. That is why we are here today and assemble every week: we are persuaded that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. What Paul declared in Damascus is the same thing Peter declared before Jesus at his confession in Caesarea Philippi. When Jesus said, “Who do you say that I am?” Simon said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

God hates bare religion because it is something that humans invent, and religious behavior is something that we conjure up. But Christianity is about devotion to our creed not because it is written down, but because of the substance of the truth contained therein. We are to be people who are persuaded that Jesus is the Christ—that God’s Son, His only begotten Son, came into the world for us and for our salvation—and we come now each Sabbath day to give the sacrifice of praise, honor, worship, and adoration to Him.

Worship the Holy God

Recently, I wrote a Tabletalk article on worship. I was asked to write about how the nature of God should teach us about worship. I thought back to Francis Schaffer who, three-fourths of the way through the twentieth century, wrote a book titled How Should We Then Live? In light of the impact of modernity and post-modernism, Schaffer was musing on this question: How are we going to live as Christians in a strange and foreign land in this day and age? How should we then live?

I think the question now is, How should we then worship? That is the question: How? If you are a journalist writing a story, you must look at certain things as you investigate the facts. You want to know the answers to certain questions like who, what, where, when, how, and so on. The big question today is the “who” question: Who do we worship? Who we worship defines how we worship.

I am distressed when I drive past churches and see on their advertisement outside, “Nine-thirty service, traditional; eleven o’clock service, contemporary.” Or I see on the sign, “Our worship is blended.” That is the language of the contemporary church, and I look at that, and I want to weep. Why would anybody have a stylistically “blended” worship? Why would anybody say: “We’re an ecclesiastical cafeteria. If you want one style, come at nine-thirty; if you want another style, come at eleven”?

The reason want to weep is because I know what is happening. I know what is driving the changes: the church-growth movement that asks the question always and everywhere, “What do the people want?” The reality is that when it comes to worship, God does not care what you want. The issue is what He wants Who is it that we are in church to worship?

The church does not exist to please unbelievers. We can try to reach them in evangelism and during the week, but corporate worship on Sunday morning is for the body of Christ, for believers, and it is for believers to be brought before their living God and to approach Him as One who is holy. The “how” question must always be answered by the “who” question.

It should be true in every aspect of our lives that how we live our Christian lives is determined by who we understand God to be and who Jesus is. We are associated with the Son of God. Though we are called to enter boldly into His presence, and we should not be terrified by Him; and though God is not only transcendent but eminent, meaning that He is close to us and dwells with us; and though He comforts us and says, “Come ye” to us; and though as we get close to Him and He is kind to us such that we can call Him Father, He never stops being holy.

The reality of God’s holiness should be manifested in how we worship Him. The way people worship God speaks louder about their understanding of who He is than any creed or theology they could write. May God grant us to know who He is and who it is we are dealing with when we enter His house with the sacrifice of praise. Let us pray.

Our Father and our God, we have trivialized who You are. We have failed to show reverence and awe before You. We have not regarded the sanctuary as a holy place. We have not regarded You as holy. So, change our souls and our understandings of Thee, that immediately, like Saul, we will regard You as God and Christ as Your son. For we ask it in His name. Amen.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.