Rose Guide to Discipleship 11

Intro:

Our curriculum which began early this year is about Discipleship. Discipleship is a very wide topic and hence it is not a short course. It’s a lifelong journey.

@@ It involves 3 aspects:

Three Aspects of Discipleship

1. A “learning” part - knowing and believing certain truths

2. A “character” aspect - undergoing genuine transformation from the inside out.

3. A “serving” component - serving God and others.

We’ve touched on all 3 aspects and we are now back at the 1st aspect.

So for this unit, we are focusing on Jesus Christ. In the previous unit, we focus on God the Father.

Who is Jesus Christ? What do we know about Him? What do we need to know and believe about Him in order to follow Him?

What do we know about Him? What do we need to know and believe about Him in order to follow Him?

Before we go into the lesson, let’s look at a Bible verse concerning Him.

Colossians 2:9 KJV 1900

For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.

The word “Godhead” means “Deity”. In the lexical form, this word occurs only once in the NT and this is the place. But this word comes from it’s root “theos” which means “God.”

So whether it is “Godhead” or “Deity” the essential idea is still God. What this verse teaches is that Christ did not abandon His deity when He came to earth. What He left behind is His glory or power.

What does deity mean in this verse then? It means the essential nature of God is in Christ.

So just by studying about Christ we can know the essential nature of God. It is much easier to study Christ because He came to earth and lived among men. And we’ve a record of all His doings and sayings.

Remember, Christ on earth is both God and man.

We are going to see a list of verses showing that Christ is man as well as God. Since most of them are straightforward, we’ll not look into the Bible references. If we need to see the Bible references, please use your smartphone.

@@ Nature of Christ 1.jpeg

@@ Nature of Christ 2.jpeg

A disciple reads these Scripture verses and concludes that Jesus was and is God incarnate—God in the flesh, God embodied, the unique God-Man. This is not to say he is two persons or two identities or two wills in one body. Jesus is not a hybrid being, half God and half man.

A disciple reads these Scripture verses and concludes that Jesus was and is God

incarnate—God in the flesh, God embodied, the unique God-Man. This is not to say he is

two persons or two identities or two wills in one body. Jesus is not a hybrid being, half God

and half man.

Historic, orthodox Christianity teaches that Jesus is one person with two distinct natures—a one-hundred percent divine nature and a one-hundred percent human nature. Theologians refer to this as the “hypostatic union”:

Historic, orthodox Christianity teaches that Jesus is one person with two distinct natures—a

one-hundred percent divine nature and a one-hundred percent human nature. Theologians

@@ Charles Ryrie explains: “The virgin birth was [the] special miracle performed by the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, whereby the Second Person of the Trinity, the eternal Son of God, took to Himself a genuine, though sinless, human nature and was born as a man, without surrendering in any aspect, His deity.”

Charles Ryrie explains: “The virgin birth was [the] special

refer to this as the “hypostatic union”:

miracle performed by the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, whereby the Second

Heresies concerning the nature of Christ:

Person of the Trinity, the eternal Son of God, took to Himself a genuine, though sinless,

@@ Heresies on nature of Christ.jpeg

human nature and was born as a man, without surrendering in any aspect, His deity.”

@@ Arianism:

The central characteristic of Arian thought was that because God is one, Jesus could not have also been truly God. In order to deal with the scriptural testimony to the exalted status of Christ, Arius and his followers proposed that Jesus was the highest created being of God. So although Christ was fully human, he was not fully God. Arius’s teaching was condemned as heretical at the First Ecumenical Council (Nicaea) in a.d. 325.

@@ Ebionism

Ebionites rejected the Pauline epistles, concentrated on the theme of doing good works according to the book of James, saw the Christian life as strict obedience to a moral code and understood Jesus as one who was anointed by God at his baptism because of his perfect obedience to the Mosaic law. Although Ebionism was not officially condemned by the church, it never gained widespread acceptance.

@@ Apollinarianism

The teaching of the fourth-century bishop of Laodicea Apollinarius (c. 310–391), who declared that in his incarnation Christ took on a human body and soul but not a human mind or spirit (nous). Apollinarius argued that to have a human spirit is to have a free will. But where there is free will, there is also sin. Therefore, Apollinarius concluded, Christ operated solely on the basis of a divine mind or nous. The church officially rejected Apollinarianism at the Second Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in a.d. 381.

c. circa

@@ Docetism

In the early church, the teaching that Jesus was fully God but only appeared to be human (taken from the Greek dokeō, “to seem or appear”). Docetist theologians emphasized the qualitative difference between God and humans and therefore downplayed the human elements of Jesus’ life in favor of those that pointed to his deity. The early church rejected docetism as an heretical interpretation of the biblical teaching about Jesus.

@@ Euthychianism

Euthychianism is the doctrine which holds that the incarnate Christ had only a single, divine nature, clad in human flesh. It is called after Eutyches (d. 454), one of its leading defenders. Since the Council of Chalcedon, which confirmed as orthodox the doctrine of two natures, divine and human, Euthychianism has been considered heretical. Its roots probably go back to Apollinaris (ca. 370), who laid tremendous stress on the fusion of the divine and human.

is the doctrine which holds that the incarnate Christ had only a single, divine nature, clad in human flesh. It is sometimes called Eutychianism, after Eutyches (d. 454), one of its leading defenders. Since the Council of Chalcedon, which confirmed as orthodox the doctrine of two natures, divine and human, monophysitism has been considered heretical. Its roots probably go back to Apollinaris (ca. 370), who laid tremendous stress on the fusion of the divine and human

@@ Nestorianism

Condemned by the Council of Ephesus (a.d. 431), the view held by Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, that although Jesus Christ was one person (God and man united), his two natures (one human and one divine) existed side by side and hence were separable. One consequence of this view was that Jesus’ suffering for humankind was seen as an act of Jesus in his humanity but not in his deity.

Rose Guide to Discipleship 11

I. The Nature of Christ

II. The Life of Jesus