Luke 6:1-5 in my commentary writing has been killing me. I’ve been working on these five verses for four months. I got stuck on deuteroproto in Luke 6:1 for three months, and then for the past month of so, I’ve been studying up on the title “son of man” in Luke 6:5. I have finally come to a conclusion, tentative as it may be. Here is what I concluded:
When Jesus speaks of “the son of man,” he is referring not only to himself, but to all humanity as well. A theologically-guided dynamic equivalent translation of “the son of man” could be “I, and all humanity with me.”
I have posted my brief explanation over in the Grace Commentary Dictionary, and would appreciate your feedback.
So, reading through Mark today, I began to recognize how often Christ, when foretelling His death, would refer to Himself as the “Son of Man”. So that made me think about this post. When I read it originally, I didn’t necessarily give it a lot of thought, sort of like I stepped into a conversation half way through.
But, just in thinking about it, if Christ did mean “I Myself, and all of humanity with Me”…what in the world does that mean as far as the resurrection? I read it placing that type of terminology in its place. Like in Mark 9:31,
So, I guess I just couldn’t help but think about the resurrection in terms of us. He mentions it all 3 times that He foretells of His death in Mark, each time saying Son of Man, and each time mentioning, of course, 3 days and then resurrection. What do you think?
haha, I tried to be fancy with HTML, it failed.
The only thing missing from my comment is simply Mark 9:31:
“The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise.”
I fixed your comment. Hope you don’t mind.
Great question. First off, I must say that my article is a bit of a hypothesis. I tried to test it out on several ‘son of man’ passages, and it seems to work, but it might not work well on all of them.
Anyway, regarding the death and resurrection of Jesus, it can definitely be said that when Jesus died and rose again, it was for all humanity. Paul talks about this in Romans 5, 1 Cor 15:45-49, and it is also in other passages. In these passages, Paul even refers to Jesus as “the last Adam” or “the second Adam” which is very close to the “son of man” in the Hebrew (ben Adam).
None of this means that all are justified or that all have eternal life. That is a different issue.
What do you think?
No worries on the fix, I appreciate it.
I read in your Bible commentary post of the “ben Adam” stuff. Of course, this came after my post, but it definitely helped just to filter some of my thoughts. None of my thoughts went towards the “all have eternal life” direction, but I can see how some may veer, probably a little comfortably, that way.
I see the point of Christ’s fulfillment of humanity by His death and resurrection. That makes my mind turn a little slower, helping me to remember that God is very mysterious and all too awesomely complex for me to fully understand.
(This next part is just my thought process as it came to me)
How cool is it to think that Christ embodied a part of us that dealt with our connection to God, a part of each and every one of us! And thinking along the lines of Christ carrying humanity to the cross with Him…it’s definitely interesting to think in terms of sin. Meaning that Christ obviously died for our sins, and as we all are sinners because of the choices of Adam and Eve, He carried humanity’s sin to the cross, correcting the wrong of the “first Adam”. Just reiterating what you said before.
Now granted, I’m far from educated on any of this (just thinking aloud), that leads me to think instead of Christ becoming sin on the cross…He was in fact carrying our sin His whole life? (to be completely honest I struggle with understanding Christ becoming sin, altogether)
I’m not sure if I’m stepping over theological boundaries with that, or not. Such an interesting topic! Your thoughts?
(Sorry for the thought-vomit)
Thought-vomits are my favorite kind. I’m like a dog. I just can’t stay away from it.
Okay, enough with that picture.
I would say you are definitely thinking on the right track. I am not fully sure what it means for Christ to become sin for us either, and I would be a little nervous about any scholar that was sure. I don’t think I would want to say that he carried our sin His whole life. It think that whatever it means for him to become sin, it only happened on the cross.
But you’ve raised an interesting question I have never thought of before. I will chew the cud…so to speak (I had to fit in another vomit picture).
Jeremy,
This is an intriguing hypothesis. The idea that Christ was trying to picture something more than just his humanity, but rather his embodiement of the “hope of all humanity”. I think there is a lot of development of this idea, but it does fit with the idea of being the “second-first” the second Adam. As adam carried with him the potential for all of mankind to be condemned, Christ carried with Him the potential for the reconcilliation of all mankind. I will follow this as you develop it further.
FedEx,
President,
Men of Praise Motorcycle Ministry
Jeremy, you mentioned the, Grace Commentary Dictionary. I was not able to access that page. Something about cookies. What do I need to do to access you thoughts on Luke 6:5?
Thanks for noticing this. I had upgraded my site’s PHP version to 5.3.X last night, and apparently, that version of vBulletin doesn’t like 5.3.X. So, I reverted back. The link should be working now.
Regarding Luke 6:5…it’s not posted yet.