Luke 20:41-44--Whose Son Is the Christ?

Luke 20:41-44
English Standard Version

Whose Son Is the Christ?
41 But he said to them, “How can they say that the Christ is David's son? 42 For David himself says in the Book of Psalms,

“‘The LORD said to my Lord,
“Sit at my right hand,
43     until I make your enemies your footstool.”’

​44 David thus calls him Lord, so how is he his son?”

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It is unclear who "they" are in this passage, but someone in the crowd, for whatever reason, decides to challenge Jesus with another Bible trivia question.  The people perceived Jesus to be claiming equality with God, meaning that He was eternal, and also knew that He claimed to be the Christ (the Greek word for the Hebrew word Messiah).  So the question then is probably best stated like this.  "If it is true that the Christ is the second person of the Godhead, uncreated, eternal and otherwise co-equal with God in every way, why then do the Scriptures say that the Christ had to be born and would be called the "Son of David," indicating that David was His forefather?"

Jesus quotes from Psalm 110:1 to answer this question.  I've changed the ESV text a bit since this is an Old Testament citation and the Hebrew Old Testament had a covenant name of God that we call Yahweh that is translated as LORD in the Old Testament, but since this word did not exist in Greek, it was translated to be the same Greek word in both cases that translates as "Lord" in our New Testament copies.  The verse makes more sense in the Old Testament as it's a conversation between two of the Father and the Son, not a conversation between Jesus and Himself.

The Father is telling the Son that it's not yet time for Him to assume the throne yet, but it is time for Him to sit at the right hand of the Father (the most favored position, and the position of the crown prince who was heir to the throne).  The Father says to the Son that one day, the Father will make it so that everyone, even those who are the Son's enemies will be subservient to Him (they will be His "footstool").

Jesus focuses though on the fact that these words came from the hand of David and that David is call the Father "LORD" and calling the Son "my Lord."  The one David is calling "my Lord" is the Christ, and it was understood by the Jews that this passage in Psalm 110 was a Messianic prophecy.  Jesus then asks the question that answers the previous question.  How could the Christ be alive for David to call Him, "My Lord" in Psalm 110 if the Messiah didn't exist before His human birth as some were trying to claim?  Jesus has always been God and didn't for some reason become the Christ later.  However, Jesus didn't always have a body of flesh.  He it both eternal and begotten and that is not a contradiction, even though we may not fully be able to comprehend it.

Jesus is both the Son of God who is eternal and the Son of David who was born in Bethlehem.  He had no earthly Father but was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.  The Jews believed in both the Son of God and the Messiah, but they had trouble putting the two together as a single person and how that could work if the Christ was the Son of God (who was eternal) and the Christ was begotten.  This may even make some of your heads hurt, but it is something we must accept by faith, and we have a little better understanding of it because of the New Testament than these Jews did who only had the Old Testament Scriptures.  Jesus is both fully God and fully man and that must be true for Him to be our substitutionary atonement, so it was important for Jesus to answer this question before He went to the cross to help people understand how He was able to die in their place.