Why Jesus? One like a son of man

Andrew Perriman | 11 Nov 2026

We’ve spent quite a few weeks at Westbourne Grove Church looking at the troubled and changing world in which we now serve the living, creator God. No doubt we will come back to some of those themes, but we now turn to consider the significance of Jesus—and of the New Testament story about him—in all of this. So we ask: Why Jesus?

What follows is not a transcript of the teaching, just a brief overview.

Popular theologising takes it that “Son of God” signifies the divine Jesus, “Son of Man” the human Jesus. That is wrong.

“Son of God” carries the idea of a special relationship with God—the relationship that Israel had in the Old Testament or that the king had. This connotation is present in the Synoptic Gospels, but perhaps more important is the idea that the Son will inherit something from God in the future. The corrupt and incompetent tenants managing the vineyard of Israel decide to kill the son sent to them because they think that they will get his inheritance (Mk. 12:7). As Son of God, Jesus will inherit rule over his people and—beyond the horizon of the Gospels—over the nations:

I will tell of the decree: The LORD said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. (Ps. 2:7-8; cf. Rom. 1:4; Acts 13:33; Heb. 1:5; 5:5)

The “Son of Man” designation gets us to more or less the same place but by a different route.

The motif emerges from the crisis in the early second century BC provoked by external and internal efforts to Hellenise Jewish life and religious practice in Jerusalem and Judea.

The story is told in highly symbolic or apocalyptic form in Daniel 7. The fourth and most dreadful of the beasts that come from the sea and rampage across the earth is Greece. The arrogant and blasphemous little horn on the head of this beast is Antiochus Epiphanes. He makes war against the saints of the Most High.

The crisis is resolved when a heavenly assize is set up on earth, and the Ancient of Days takes his seat. Dominion is taken from the first three beasts, and the fourth beast is destroyed by fire, the little horn still shouting abuse as it burns.

Then Daniel sees “one like a son of man”—another emblematic figure, this time in human form—coming with the clouds of heaven. He is presented before the throne of God, 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” (Dan. 7:13-14).

In the vision this is not a real individual person, I don’t think. He stands for the righteous and faithful in Israel who remained true to the covenant in the face of severe persecution. In the real world, it is the “people of the saints of the Most High” who will receive the kingdom and dominion taken from the great beasts of pagan empire. A new empire will emerge, with Jerusalem as its seat of government, in keeping with older prophetic visions:

It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and it shall be lifted up above the hills; and peoples shall flow to it, and many nations shall come, and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. (Mic 4:1-2; cf. Is. 2:2-4; 56:7; Zech. 8:22-23)

Jesus identifies with this symbolic figure because he knows that his story will be the same: “he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed” (Mark 8:31). He will be the victim of Jewish apostasy and the intrusion of an unclean pagan power.

But he does not expect to suffer alone. Those who choose to follow the Son of Man will have to take up their own crosses and quite possibly lose their lives for his sake and for the sake of the gospel (8:34). But when the vindicated Son of Man comes, having received glory from the Father, within the lifetime of some of them, they too will be vindicated, they will share in his glory, they will sit with him governing the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt. 19:28; Lk. 22:30). In that respect, the Son of Man is still a corporate figure.