Son of Man – A Messianic Title of Jesus
What This Title Means
It is Jesus's favorite title for himself, and it is the one his followers rarely use.
Search the Gospels, and you will find Son of Man on the lips of Jesus more than eighty times. He reaches for it when he talks about his authority to forgive sins, his lordship over the Sabbath, his coming suffering, his resurrection, and his return in glory. It is the title he uses most consistently and most personally when speaking about himself and his mission.
And yet after the Gospels, the title nearly disappears from the New Testament. Paul never uses it. Peter never uses it. The early church confesses Jesus as Lord, as Christ, as Son of God. Son of Man drops almost entirely out of the vocabulary of Christian confession.
Son of Man was Jesus's chosen self-designation, the title he reached for most instinctively. The church gravitated toward different titles. Understanding why requires understanding what Son of Man actually means, where it comes from, and why Jesus used it the way he did.
The title has two roots, and they pull in seemingly opposite directions. From Ezekiel, Son of Man is the address God uses for the prophet: frail, mortal, fully human, the creature standing before the Creator. From Daniel 7, Son of Man is the cosmic figure coming on the clouds of heaven, receiving an everlasting dominion over all nations from the Ancient of Days. Jesus holds both together: fully human, made of the dust of Ezekiel's prophet, and the cosmic ruler of Daniel's vision. The title that sounds most modest turns out to carry the most expansive claim of all.
The Hebrew and Aramaic Roots
The title draws on two distinct linguistic traditions that together define its meaning.
In Hebrew, ben adam (בֶּן אָדָם) literally means son of Adam, son of man, a human being. BDB defines adam (H120) as man, humankind, with an etymological connection to adamah, the ground or earth, emphasizing the creature's earthly origin and creaturely nature. Ben adam appears nearly one hundred times in Ezekiel as God's address to the prophet: "Son of man, stand up on your feet and I will speak to you" (Ezekiel 2:1). The address highlights Ezekiel's humanity and creatureliness in contrast to the overwhelming divine presence he has just witnessed. He is a mortal, made of earth, standing before the eternal one.
Psalm 8:4 uses the parallel form poetically: "What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?" The ben adam here is humanity in its smallness and fragility, the creature who is astonishingly the object of divine attention.
In Aramaic, bar enash (בַּר אֱנָשׁ) is the equivalent phrase, and it appears in Daniel 7:13 in the most significant Old Testament use of the title: "In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed."
The figure in Daniel 7 is a human-like being, like a son of man, who receives from the Ancient of Days a universal and everlasting kingdom. The contrast in Daniel 7 is between the four beasts, the brutal empires of human history, and this human-like figure who receives the kingdom from above rather than seizing it from below. The Son of Man in Daniel is the one through whom God establishes his own reign over all creation.
Strong's H1121 (ben), H120 (adam), and the Aramaic H1247 (bar) together trace the title from its humble Ezekielian usage to its exalted Danielic vision.
Key Occurrences in Scripture
Ezekiel: The Address to the Prophet
God addresses Ezekiel as ben adam throughout the book, and the effect is consistent: it keeps the prophet in his place. No matter how dramatic the visions, no matter how high the throne room, no matter how overwhelming the glory, Ezekiel is reminded at every turn that he is a son of man, a creature of earth, the mortal standing before the immortal. The title is simultaneously humble and intimate: God speaks to Ezekiel directly and personally, addressing him by what he is rather than by a title of honor.
This dimension of the title, the full humanity of the one it designates, is what Jesus carries forward when he uses it for himself. He is truly and completely human, made of Adam's dust, subject to hunger and thirst and fatigue and grief and death. The Son of Man eats with sinners, weeps at Lazarus's tomb, and sweats blood in Gethsemane.
Daniel 7:13–14
The apocalyptic vision of Daniel 7 is the title's other root, and it is as exalted as the Ezekiel usage is humble. The one like a son of man comes on the clouds of heaven, approaches the Ancient of Days, and receives an everlasting kingdom over all nations. The cloud-riding is specifically the activity of God in the Old Testament: it is Yahweh who rides the clouds (Psalm 68:4, 104:3). To come on the clouds of heaven is to share the divine prerogative.
Jesus quotes Daniel 7:13 at the most critical moment in the Gospels, in his answer to the high priest who has demanded to know if he is the Messiah, the Son of God. Jesus responds: "You have said so. But I say to all of you: from now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven" (Matthew 26:64). The high priest tears his clothes. The response is understood as blasphemy, because claiming to be the Son of Man of Daniel 7 is claiming divine authority.
The Son of Man's Authority on Earth
Jesus uses the title in connection with his present authority in ways that claim more than his listeners expected from a human teacher.
Mark 2:10: "But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins." The scribes have already identified the claim: only God can forgive sins. Jesus agrees with their theology and claims the authority anyway, then demonstrates it by healing the paralytic. The Son of Man on earth has the authority that belongs to God alone.
Mark 2:28: "So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath." The Sabbath was God's gift to Israel, the day belonging to the LORD. The one who is Lord of the Sabbath is claiming authority over what belongs to God.
The Suffering Son of Man
Jesus uses the title consistently when predicting his own passion, death, and resurrection. The Son of Man must suffer. The Son of Man will be betrayed. The Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified. The Son of Man will rise on the third day.
Mark 8:31: "He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again."
The suffering of the Son of Man is a theological necessity, not merely a historical accident. The must is the word of divine purpose. The Son of Man who will come on the clouds must first go to the cross. The Daniel 7 exaltation runs through the Isaiah 53 suffering servant. Jesus holds both in the one title.
The Coming Son of Man
Matthew 24:30 and 26:64 give the title its eschatological force: "At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory."
The coming Son of Man completes the arc that Daniel 7 began. The one who was rejected and crucified will return in the glory of Daniel's vision, and every eye will see what the Sanhedrin refused to believe when they heard it under oath.
Theological Significance
Son of Man holds full humanity and divine authority in one title. No other title Jesus uses carries both dimensions with the same force. Son of God declares his divine nature; Son of David declares his royal lineage. Son of Man declares that the one who bears divine authority is genuinely, fully, and without remainder a human being, born of a woman, subject to death, knowing from the inside what it means to be made of dust. The incarnation is not a visit to human experience. It is complete immersion in it.
Son of Man and the suffering that precedes the glory. The consistent pattern in Jesus's Son of Man sayings is the sequence of suffering, death, and resurrection. The path to Daniel 7's throne runs through Mark 8:31's cross. The glory of the coming Son of Man is inseparable from the humility of the crucified Son of Man. This is the theological reorientation Jesus was pressing on his disciples: the Messiah's path runs through death before it runs through glory.
Son of Man and human dignity. The Son of God became the Son of Man, taking on the full weight of creaturely existence, including its mortality and its suffering. That act of solidarity with the human condition is the ground of the dignity of every human being: humanity has been taken up into the life of the Son of God in the incarnation, and nothing about the human condition is beneath the dignity of the one who has chosen to share it.
Son of Man and the final judgment. John 5:27 gives the most precise statement of why all judgment has been entrusted to the Son: "And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man." The judge of all humanity is one of us, who has lived what we live and died what we die. The one before whom every life will give account is the one who knows human life from the inside.
Son of Man in the Rest of the New Testament
After the Gospels, the title appears only three times outside of a direct quotation from Jesus.
Acts 7:56 is Stephen's vision as he is being stoned: "Look, I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God." The Son of Man is standing, not sitting, the posture perhaps of one who rises in welcome for the first martyr approaching the throne.
Hebrews 2:6 quotes Psalm 8:4 in its discussion of Jesus's humanity: "What is mankind that you are mindful of them, a son of man that you care for him?" The author applies the psalm to Jesus, the true human being who fulfills what humanity was always meant to be, who was made lower than the angels in the incarnation and is now crowned with glory and honor.
Revelation 1:13 and 14:14 use the Danielic imagery directly: John sees "someone like a son of man" among the lampstands, and again on the cloud. The Daniel 7 vision has arrived at its fulfillment: the one like a son of man is the risen and exalted Christ, the one who holds the keys of death and Hades, whose face shines like the sun.
What This Title Means for Christian Faith and Practice
Jesus chose this title for himself above all others, and it is worth asking why.
Son of God declares his divinity. Son of David declares his royal lineage. Messiah declares his anointed office. All of those are true, and Jesus accepts them when others use them. But when he speaks about himself, he reaches for Son of Man: the one who is fully human, who has come to suffer and serve and give his life as a ransom for many, who will rise and return and receive the kingdom that Daniel saw.
The title holds together what we are tempted to separate. The humanity of Jesus and the authority of Jesus. The suffering and the glory. The one who wept at Lazarus's tomb and the one who will come on the clouds of heaven. The carpenter from Nazareth and the ruler of an everlasting kingdom.
He is the Son of Man, which means he knows what you carry from the inside. The fatigue, the grief, the temptation, the weight of mortality: he has been there, not as an observer but as a participant, fully and without remainder.
And he is the Son of Man of Daniel 7, which means the story ends with him receiving a kingdom that will not pass away, a dominion over all nations, a glory that every eye will see.
Both are true at once. The one who shares your dust will sit on the throne. And the one who sits on the throne once shared your dust.
That is the title he chose for himself. It was the right choice.
Sources
Brown, F., Driver, S. R., & Briggs, C. A. A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Entries: בֶּן אָדָם (ben adam); אָדָם (adam).
Strong, J. Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. Entries: H120 (adam); H1121 (ben); H1247 (bar, Aramaic).
Brand, C., Draper, C., & England, A. (Eds.). Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary. Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers, 2003. Entry: "Son of Man."
France, R. T. The Gospel of Mark. New International Greek Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002. See commentary on Mark 2:10 and 8:31.
See Also
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