The Son of Man

Commenting on Jesus' use of the term 'Son of Man' and its dependence on Daniel 7 James Denney writes:

what primarily determined its significance was its contrast to the lion, the bear, the leopard, and the terrible beast with iron teeth. When Jesus defined it and made it His own - when he turned 'one like unto a son of man' into 'the Son of Man,' and used the name almost as a periphrasis for 'I' - He intimated to those who were able to understand it His consciousness of being head of a new, universal, and everlasting kingdom, in which all that was truly and characteristically human should have authority. The wild beasts had had their time; not the hour had come for the dominion of the human; man claimed his sovereignty in Jesus [...] It is one great part of His work, in this very character of the Son of Man, to revolutionise the current idea of sovereignty by exhibiting the true and everlasting one [...] It is not, then , simply nearness to us, brotherly tenderness and sympathy, that the name 'the Son of Man' expresses; it is nearness, brotherly tenderness and sympathy, ministering life and ransoming death, as the essential marks and attributes of the one true King of our race [...]

the point of the name lies in its combination of two things in one person - an entire identification with men, which makes all that is theirs His; and a sovereignty exercised in purest humanity which makes this true brother the Redeemer of His kind.

(italics original, pp. 36-39, Studies in Theology)