SAMSON: the son of man


Samson is the complete narrative of the transitory earthly life of “the son of man” beginning from his born again, holy, caterpillar stage and concluding with his butterfly stage. This world is his/our cocoon. Therein, Samson is a composite archetypical representation of all individual Christians beginning from the moment of our salvation, our being born again holy, represented by Samson’s birth as a Nazarite, and forward in our then still predominately carnal sinful nature, a dual-natured, i.e. Jerusalem, holy sinner. The saints of Heaven are being inexorably drawn upward through the clinging womb of this world toward God, while at the same time they are experiencing a lifetime of the throes of the new birth process, the violent spasms, pangs and convulsions of being transformed (Rom 12:2) from “the sons of man” culminating in our final emergence from the womb as the “the Sons of God.” The latter two appellations may function as bookends, by analogy respectively, the heel and the head of the Body of Christ. Each of us has a personal book chronicling our life neatly stacked up within this vast holy library of born again saints, forming as it were a ladder to Heaven (Gen 28:12). Samson's extraordinarily strong carnal nature and physical strength may be readily observed by the sin patterns of his lifeline experiences set forth by the Narrator as signs and symbols for the purposes of our education and enlightenment, whereas the strength of his even more powerful spiritual nature remains unobserved and deeply hidden until the end of his life. Samson's personal pathway to God is a very broad road sided by encompassing extremes, within which each of our own less extreme, more conservative pathways to God may be found. Samson personifies our transformation from "the son of man" into "the Son of God," a birthing process. God is the Father; the Holy Spirit is the midwife; and we are the children of God becoming the mature adult Sons of God - mighty men of valour (Judg 6:12).