Jesus, the Son of God

 Gospel: John 1: 29-34

 

The very first Gospel to be written was Mark’s, and its very first lines proclaim: The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  Mark wrote these words in the late 60s just after the very first persecution of Christians in Rome by Nero.  Today we read from John’s Gospel, the last Gospel to be written in the 90s at a time when the first widespread persecution of Christians across the empire is undertaken by the Roman authorities.  And here again John puts this faith in Jesus as Son of God at the very beginning of his Gospel through the witness of John the Baptist.

 

To state that Jesus was Son of God was treasonous: only the emperor himself had this title.  That it was given to a poor carpenter of Nazareth in an insignificant province, to a man executed for treason in the most humiliating way – all of this was appalling to Romans.  To make this declaration of faith in Jesus as the Son of God was to make a bold statement that risked one’s very life as it represented opposition to Roman values and religion. 

 

Jesus stood for everything that the Roman empire did not.  There could not be any greater contrasts than that between Jesus and the Roman emperors.  Jesus persuaded through love; Romans by physical and economic force.  Jesus came to make all people one in the family of God; the Romans ruled through dividing and conquering.  To profess Jesus as Son of God is to profess his values, teaching, and example and to reject that of the empire.  This is as true in our times as it was in those days.