Untitled Sermon (2)

Ethos “Adoptionism”

The false doctrine of “Adoptionism” was deemed a heresy in the second century. The people who held this view denied the eternal preexistence of Christ and, therefore, His deity. Adoptionists taught that Jesus was tested by God, and contingent upon passing this test, He was baptized, granted supernatural powers by God, and adopted as the Son. Jesus was rewarded for this great accomplishment and for His perfect character by being raised from the dead and adopted into the Godhead. Adoptionism denies Christ’s deity, but affirms His Humanity. Christ relation to the Father is not based on a shared essence, but on a shared position based upon God’s favor.

This error arose out of an attempt by people to understand the two natures of Jesus. In the metaphysical sense, a nature constitutes the essential properties and causes of things. For example, by its nature, a human being is considered a rational animal. What distinguishes man from the beast is his capacity to rationalize and make reasoned decisions. There is a clear distinction between the nature of man and the nature of God. How two natures coexist in one person is a mystery, but just because something cannot be completely comprehended does not mean it cannot be apprehended. The Scriptures are clear that Christ possess two natures; a divine and a human nature. In , Paul states, “For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form.” The dual nature of Christ is explicated by the hypostatic union which declares that Jesus is One Hundred percent man and One Hundred percent God.

According to sources, The New Testament is said to contain two different Christologies, namely a "low" or adoptionist Christology, and a "high" or "incarnation Christology." The "low Christology" or "adoptionist Christology" is the belief "that God exalted Jesus to be his Son by raising him from the dead, thereby raising Him to divine status.” The other early Christology is "high Christology," which is "the view that Jesus was a pre-existent divine being who added a human nature when He incarnated, who did the Father’s will on earth, and then ascended into heaven whence he had originally come. The latter view is most consistent with perennial Christian orthodoxy.

Adherents to the “low adoptionist Christology” argue that the early Gospel of Mark manuscripts did not contain accounts of the birth of Jesus or the epithet “Son of God,” suggesting that the concept of the Virgin Birth had not been developed or elucidated at the time Mark was written. They believe that the “high” Christological view developed over time as the timeline shifted from His exaltation the baptism, then at His birth, and subsequently to the idea of his eternal existence, as witnessed in the Gospel of John. In other words, within the successive Gospel accounts, Mark attested that the moment of when Jesus became God’s Son was at His baptism, then Matthew and Luke shifted the deification back to the moment of the divine conception, and finally John declared that Jesus had been with God from the beginning: "In the beginning was the Word." (This view is based on the belief that Mark’s Gospel was written first and John’s Gospel was written much later, hence the “high” Christology)

The major problem with adoptionism. If Jesus was not God before the incarnation it would contradict what He said about Himself in John chapter 8 – As Jesus was being accosted by the Jewish authorities Jesus retorts and explains, “truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham, I am. So they picked up stones to throw at Him, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple.” Why would they resort to stoning Him if what He was saying did not refer to Him being deity? And clearly, a thirty-year man in the first century cannot come before a man who lived millennia before Him. In another passage, after seeing Jesus coming to him, John the Baptist declared, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is He on behalf of whom I said, ‘after me comes a Man who has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.” How is it that John states that Jesus existed before him if He was born after him?

The Second member of the Trinity added a human nature to his divine nature and the two natures are present, without mixture, in one Person, Jesus Christ. Jesus did not begin as merely a man and have a divine nature added to Him via being adopted by the Father. Ponder this for a moment: If a person could live a sinless life, and in a sense become God, why did Jesus need to Suffer and die for our sins? And if Jesus was not eternally part of the Godhead, how would the sacrifice of a mere man propitiate the wrath of God for all who believe?