It is mentioned eighty-five times in the Gospels that Yeshua referred to himself as the Son of Man.
In Hebrew, son of man is a term used to separate the divinity of God from a mere human.
Christ was calling himself a human, and actually rebutted the idea that he was even similar to God.
In Matthew 19:16, one came and said unto him, “Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?”
And Christ answered, “why are you calling me good? There is none good but one, that is God.”
Again, Christ distinguished himself from God during his final gathering with his disciples when he said in John 14:28, “…for my Father is greater than I.”
Later, he goes on to say that if you have seen me, then you have seen the Father.
This is where the confusion occurs, because Christ is now speaking in spiritual terms, not literal ones.
In John 6:63 Christ said, “it is the spirit that quickens; the flesh profits nothing: the words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.”
When Yeshua said that they had seen the Father when they had seen him, he was referring to the spiritual unity of himself and the Father.
The definition of unity is: being at one with someone or something. Christ was one with the Spirit of God.
About a year ago, God showed me that this concept can be illustrated by using musical notes .
When the grand conductor (God) has a tuning fork and strikes it, the device resonates a perfect “A” note.
If a stringed instrument (human) is perfectly tuned, and an “A” cord is plucked, the sounds from the tuning fork and the instrument combine.
The sound vibrations will join perfectly together and become one sound wave. One cannot distinguish between the two, because they are now both one perfect “A” note.
Christ was precisely tuned to the Spirit of God, and spiritually, they were one.
The Son of Man is our example that it is possible as a human to tune our instruments to the Spirit of God, and Yeshua showed us the way—through his teachings.
It is mentioned forty-seven times in the gospels that Christ was a teacher, was teaching, did teach, and taught.
And, twenty-four times in the Gospels, Christ admonished his followers to listen to his sayings, his words, his commandments; and not only to listen, but to do them.
Yeshua is the one who is spoken about in the first few verses of Isaiah 42. (Hebrew Bible, JPS version)
This is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight. I have put my spirit upon him. He shall teach the true way to the nations. He shall not cry out or shout aloud or make his voice heard in the streets. He shall not even break a bruised reed or snuff out even a dim wick till he has established the true way on earth; and the coastlands shall await his teaching.
This passage is clearly talking about Christ as the teacher, the servant of God, being sent to teach us the true way. Isaiah is writing about a human.
And, as prophesied by Isaiah, the Gospels verify that Christ did not cry out in the streets as was typical for prophets to do.
Other Hebrew prophets, who came before Christ, would stand at the gates of the city and loudly announce the words that God had given them, but not Yeshua.
He patiently taught the people, and demonstrated the Kingdom of God by healing those who were afflicted.
As a teacher, he tried to reason with the ones who were bound up in their religious doctrine.
And, even though no other man had ever given sight to one born blind or had healed a leper from among one of their citizens, they refused to see that Yeshua was that prophet of God of whom they had been promised.
Just like they had done to Isaiah and Jeremiah, they murdered Yeshua.
The Son of Man was a servant of God, sent to teach the true way, and was the long-awaited Messiah about whom the prophets and even Moses had written.
It was religion that blinded the Jewish religious leaders. It was religion that distorted the truth about the son of man and came up with the virgin birth story, where God overshadowed Mary to impregnate her. That was Roman theology making its way into the Bible.
And, how convenient that the birth story of Christ was placed at the beginning of the Gospels.
That was to guarantee that it would be in the face of every reader, first and foremost, to sway the reader to believe that Christ was the literal biological son of God. Therefore, making him an actual God. It was exactly what Roman religion taught.
By elevating Christ to the godhead, it set him up to be worshipped like some kind of an idol, and his teachings were forgotten.
Strangely, Christ never taught that he was born of a virgin, and if this story is true, then it will have to stand up to the test of the prophet, Nathan.
According to 1 Chronicles chapter 17 in the Hebrew Bible (JPS version), David was feeling guilty about not having built a temple in which to house the Ark of the Covenant. That is when the prophet Nathan came to David and said,
“I declare to you; the Lord will build a house for you. When your days are done and you follow your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, one of your own sons, and I will establish his kingship.
He shall build a house for Me, and I will establish his thrown forever. I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to Me, but I will never withdraw my favor from him as I withdrew it from your predecessor.
I will install him in my house and in my kingship forever, and his throne shall be established forever.”
Nathan is clearly prophesying that Yeshua would be one of David’s biological sons, and it would be Yeshua who would build the house for God and sit on David’s spiritual throne forever.
Yeshua said that Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but my words will never pass away.
It is through his words that we can find the true way to achieve unity with our Father, God, and become just like Yeshua, the son of man.