Son of God
Christian: Jesus, who, as God’s Son, is seen to have a uniquely intimate relationship with God in which nothing of God’s is held back from him.
ACIM: The true Identity of every living thing; Who we really are. This term is meant as a correction of the traditional meaning of “Son of God” (thus replacing it with “Daughter of God” or “Child of God” would defeat its teaching purpose). The Course has transformed this from an exclusive term that refers only to Jesus, to an inclusive one that denotes a single universal Self Who encompasses all beings, male and female (see he, him), human and non-human, and Whose relationship with God is compared to the perfect father-son relationship. A son is an extension, a continuation, of his father, who completes his father and is his father’s joy. Therefore he receives his father’s name and all of his father’s love, inherits all that his father has and is like his father in all ways. As God’s extension, we complete Him and are His treasure, His joy. We receive all of His Love, all that He has, all of Himself. We receive His Name, His Identity, and are like Him in all ways. In return, He is our Father, our Source, our one devotion and only Love. The Son of God is a fairly elastic term and can be used in several different ways:
- The Christ, the collective Self of all Sons of God (used with an upper case “He”).
- An “individual” Son of God, either asleep and apparently separated or (more rarely) awake in Heaven (lower case “he”). There are an infinite number of these “individual” parts; hence, the frequent term, “Sons of God.”
- Occasionally refers to the collectivity of all the sleeping Sons (lower case “he”).