It's interesting to note that Jesus usually referred to himself as the son of man. Demons, however, always referred to him as the son of God. So, which was he? Of course, the obvious answer would seem to be that he was both. But, I believe there is a deeper truth, and a reason Jesus referred to himself as the son of man.

John 3:16 tells us that God loved the world so much that He gave his only son to redeem us. We committed that verse to memory when we were small children and, I would venture a guess that most of us are so used to saying it by rote, that we don't really understand all that this gift entails.

God giving up His son was the reciprocal act for Abraham giving up his son, Isaac. God was looking for a man he could cut a covenant with. Someone who would be willing to sacrifice on the same level that God himself was willing to sacrifice; someone who would obey without question; someone who would believe in God so strongly, and so faithfully, that he would ignore appearances and stand firm in the belief that God was true to His word.

God had promised to make Abraham a father of many nations. 25 years after the promise, Isaac was born. Then, God asked Abraham to offer him up as a sacrifice. A man of weaker faith would have hesitated; he would have hedged his bet and taken along a suitable sacrifice. Not Abraham, the father of faith. He took his son, the son of the promise, and journeyed to what was probably Golgotha, the same location that the other son of promise would be offered as a sacrificial lamb two thousand years later.

They journeyed for three days. Basically, for three days, Isaac was dead in the mind of Abraham, for all intents and purposes, just as the other son of promise would be dead for three days in the heart of the earth. Yet, Abraham knew that his God would provide. He believed that even if he killed his son and offered him up as a sacrifice, that God would raise him from the dead, because Isaac was the promised son, the one through whom nations would be born; the one through whom the savior would come.

How many of us would have been willing to "risk" the life of our own child and the only visible avenue of our future success as Abraham did? Yet, God's sacrifice of his son, Jesus, was just as astounding.

God didn't just send Jesus to die on the cross for us. He wasn't sent just to atone for our sins. When Jesus came into the earth, he entered the earth as a man, as the son of man. He came into the earth without godly powers. He had to. If he had come into the earth as God, his sacrifice would have meant nothing. Of course God could live a sinless life. No, he entered the world as a man. He was tempted in all the same ways that we are tempted. Yet, he remained sinless. But, what if...

You see, God risked more than His son's mortal life in sending him to the world to atone for our sins. He risked his eternal being. Jesus could have failed. Does that shock you? Of course, it has to be true. If failure was not a possibility, then again, the sacrifice would have been meaningless. Jesus was the last Adam. He lived the sinless life that the first Adam was created for, and meant to live. If Jesus had failed in his mission, then all of mankind would have been forever damned. If there hadn't been the possibility of failure, of sin, then there wouldn't have been any possibility of redemption