269.  The full name “the Son of God” was seldom applied by Jesus to himself, the only recorded instances being found in the fourth gospel (v. 25; ix. 35?; x. 36; xi. 4).  He frequently acquiesced in the use of the title by others in addressing him (for example, John i. 49; Matt. xvi. 16; xxvi. 63f.; Mark xiv. 61f.; Luke xxii. 70); but for himself he preferred the simpler phrase “the Son.”  This mode of expression occurs often in John, and is found also in the two passages, already noticed, in which the other gospels give clearest expression to the extraordinary self-assertion of Jesus (Matt. xi. 27; Luke x. 22; and Mark xiii. 32).  In the first of them his claim to be the only one who can adequately reveal God is founded on the consciousness that the relation between himself and God is so intimate that God alone adequately knows him, whom men were so ready to set at nought, and he alone knows God.  This relation, in which he and God stand together in contrast with all other men, is expressed by the unqualified names, “the Father” and “the Son.”  In the second passage Jesus confessed the limitation of his knowledge, but again in such a way as to set himself and God in contrast not only with men, but also with “the angels in heaven.”  Such assertions as these indicate that he who, knowing his full humanity, chose the title “the Son of Man” to express his consciousness that he had been appointed by God to be the Messiah, was yet aware in his inner heart that his relation to God was even closer than that in which he stood to men.

270.  There is no word in John which goes beyond the two self-declarations of Jesus which crown the record of the other evangelists, yet in the fourth gospel the same claim to unique relation to God is more frequently and frankly avowed.  The most unqualified assertion of intimacy—­“I and the Father are one” (x. 30)—­states what is clearly implied throughout the gospel (so xiv. 6-11; xvi. 25; and particularly xvii. 21, “that they may be one, even as we are one").  It has often been said, and truly, that this claim to unity with the Father, taken by itself, signifies no more than perfect spiritual and ethical harmony with God.  Yet when the words are considered in their connection, and more particularly when the two supreme self-declarations in the synoptic gospels are associated with them, they express a sense of relation to God so utterly unique, so strongly contrasting the Father and the Son with all others, that we cannot conceive of any other man, even the saintliest, taking like words upon his lips.

271.  These titles in which Jesus gave expression to his official and his personal consciousness present clearly the problem which he offers to human thought.  Jesus stands before us in the gospels as a man aware of completest kinship with his brethren, yet conscious at the same time of standing nearer to God than he does to men.