Part 4 of six in the series Son of God vs Son of Man: The Two Titles of Christ.

Son of Man is the name Jesus used for Himself more than eighty times, and almost no one else in the New Testament uses it of Him. That asymmetry is worth sitting with. It was His chosen self-designation, and it is the one the crowds found hardest to pin down.

Part of the difficulty is that the phrase carries two histories at once. In the Psalms and in Ezekiel, it simply means a human being, a creature of dust addressed by God. In Daniel 7 it names a figure who comes on the clouds and receives the worship of all nations. Jesus uses both registers, sometimes within the same conversation — "nowhere to sleep" and "authority on earth to forgive sins."

This post covers the linguistic background, the Daniel 7 vision that underlies every subsequent use, and the passages from His earthly ministry. If Son of Man sounds like the humble title, notice how many of these texts assign it prerogatives that belong to God alone — the same pattern documented across the canon in the deity of Christ series. On what it means for God to take up genuine humanity, see Humanity - Imago Dei.