Being the Church: One in Faith. The Lord Jesus Christ

“The incarnation of God’s eternal Son, the Lord Jesus Christ – born of the virgin Mary; truly divine and truly human, yet without sin.” (Article 5 Evangelical Alliance Statement of Faith).

Last time we looked at all that the Bible teaches on Human nature and thought about its implications for human life.

We are all of us made in the image of God and we are to honour all humans as specially created and endowed with great dignity by their Creator and yet to recognise that we are all fallen; all “fall short of the glory of God”(Rom 3:23) and all in need of salvation.

Hence our next series of statements in our basis of faith which are all to do with God’s rescue plan of salvation. So let’s launch into tonight’s!

I. “The incarnation of God’s eternal Son, the Lord Jesus Christ...”

The term “incarnation”, like the term “trinity” does not appear in the Bible but rather reflects what the Bible teaches about the transition of Jesus into the world when the Second Person of the Trinity descended from heaven and became human.

The word “incarnation” means literally, “in flesh” and implies that something that preceded it, is embodied within flesh.

theologically it expresses the truth that in Jesus of Nazareth God took on human flesh and became the divine God-man.

This teaching was really important in the Centuries that followed Christ’s coming to earth.

Heresies emerged that denied either the real human nature of Jesus (Docetism and the influential Gnostic, Marcion who taught that human nature is corrupt and the Divine would not incarnate it.)

Others denied the divine nature of Christ (Arianism - Arian held that the incarnation was total, so that Christ the “Logos” was no longer fully God but at the same time he was not fully human, something God-like or supernaturally human!)

These threats to the Orthodox Church’s teaching about Jesus was formally refuted at the Council of Nicea in AD 325 and subsequent councils of the Church.

The Nicene Creed, further defined with additions by the Council of Constantinople (A.D. 381) outlines the orthodox Christian position...

“We believe...in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made; of the same essence as the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven; he became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary, and was made human...”

So we believe that Jesus is God in human form. Why?

What does the Bible teach about this?

For the sake of time I will reserve comment to:

The Old Testament Angel of the Lord

The Gospels of Matthew & Luke

The Gospel of John

Paul’s teaching.

The Old Testament - alludes on few occasions to the incarnation showing that God could appear in human form with the appearance of “the angel of the Lord” as in Genesis 18; 32:24–30; Josh 5:13–15.

The Gospels of Matthew & Luke - state that

Jesus became flesh through the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary (Matt 1:18–21; Luke 1:30–35).

They also insist that Jesus is the Son of God in a unique sense (see Jn 20:17), not in the way humans are by creation and by virtue of bearing the divine image(so Acts 17:28) but as the “only begotten”(Jn 1:14;John 3:16) - “begotten not made, of the same substance of the father.”

John’s Gospel - makes it clear that:

Jesus is the eternal Word(Logos) of God who became flesh (Jn 1:1);

Jesus is the only begotten of the Father (Jn 1:14); who perfectly declares God to men(Jn 1:18;Jn 6:46; Jn 14:9; see also Heb 1:2-4)

Jesus describes Himself with the Divine title of “I AM”(Jn 8:58 compare with Exod 3:14).

Jesus accepts the worship of His disciples who declare Him as “my Lord and my God”(Jn 20:28).

Paul teaches...

In Philippians 2:6–11, describes Jesus as being equal with God and taking on human form.

Colossians 1:15 says that Jesus is the “image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” (Col 1:15-20).

that Jesus’ is “Lord” a title frequently given to God in the Greek Septuagint version of the OT as well as an implication that Jesus is the “master” whom we obey and serve as our Lord and King. see Phil 2:5-11;Rom 10:9-10.

that Jesus’ is God’s wisdom (1 Cor 1:24, 30) and the agent of creation (1 Cor 8:6; Col 1:15–17) as well as the “rock” that followed the Israelites in the desert (1 Cor 10:4).

All of these examples support the view that Jesus and God are one

And yet the Gospel writers and Paul insists that there is only one God, one Lord, and one Spirit (1 Cor 8:6; 12:4–6; Eph 4:4–6) so concluding that Jesus possessed the fullness of God (Col 1:19)

This explains why they prayed to Jesus (1 Cor 1:2; 16:22; 2 Cor 12:8; 1 Thess 3:11–13; 2 Thess 2:16) and worshiped Him (e.g., 1 Cor 12:3; Joh 20:28).

Question 1 - Why does knowing that Jesus was fully human help our faith and confidence in Him?

II. “...born of the virgin Mary...”

This confirms both the natural and yet miraculous nature of the conception leading to the birth of Christ.

We have two accounts of it in the Gospels in Matthew and Luke.

Matthew shows us that the birth of Jesus becomes the means whereby the divine becomes human in a universal sense (Matt 1:23)

Luke similarly describes Jesus’ birth as the appearance of the promised and pre-existent “Christ the Lord”(Luke 2:11).

Why does Mary have to be a virgin?

1. To fulfill prophecy and establish his divine origin:

Isaiah 7:14 says, “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”

And that child, sent to us by God will be God manifest in flesh as Isaiah 9:6 reveals: ”For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace”

2. To confirm his sinless humanity:

It may be that the virgin birth was required to prevent the transmission of sin, passed on via childbirth (so Augustine identified male semen as the means by which original sin was made heritable, leaving only Jesus Christ, conceived without semen, free of the sin passed down from Adam through the sexual act). Certainly there is a connection betwen childbirth and sin as established in Psalm 51 and If Jesus had a human father, then He would have been a child of Adam and inherited a sinful nature as the rest of us have. The Bible says. “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, . . . thus death spread to all, because all sinned (Romans 5:12). On the contrary the Scripture states that Jesus never sinned. Peter wrote, “Who [Jesus] committed no sin, nor was guile found in his mouth (1 Peter 2:22).

However it may be that the virgin birth simply serves to emphasize the point that Jesus was uniquely and supernaturally conceived to make it clear that God was His father. If Joseph were His true father, then Jesus would be only a human being. He would not be the Son of God as Scripture clearly states. He would have had His beginning in time rather than eternally existing. As the Bible states, In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God (John 1:1).

Question 2 - How does Jesus sinless life challenge us and/or comfort us?

III. “...truly divine and truly human, yet without sin.”

It is clear from the Gospels that Jesus was more than a man

but it is equally clear that he was a real human who grew and learned and hungered and thirsted; felt tired; and crucially in salvific terms, suffered and died.

Now this is the trickiest part of the debate. How do the two natures of Christ relate to one another in the One Person?

Apollinarius (310?–390?) taught that only the body of Jesus was human; his soul was absorbed completely into the divine Logos, so Christ had only One divine nature.

Nestorius (after 381–451) taught that Christ has two natures in one person that must always remain distinct. They functioned together but were separate in his being. This found a new expression in the Kenotic theory of the 17th and 18th Century which taught that Jesus “emptied himself” of deity when He became flesh or at least operated as a man utterly dependent on the Spirit and not exercising an independent use of divine attributes.

The Council of Chalcedon (AD 451) affirmed the unity of the two natures in Jesus, declaring:

“Following, then, the holy Fathers, we all with one voice teach that it is to be confessed that our Lord Jesus Christ is one and the same God, perfect in divinity, and perfect in humanity, true God and true human, with a rational soul and a body, of one substance with the Father in his divinity, and of one substance with us in his humanity, in every way like us, with the only exception of sin, begotten of the Father before all time in his divinity, and also begotten in the latter days, in his humanity, of Mary the virgin bearer of God.”

The fact is that the two natures in Christ as made possible via incarnation means that we must hold that

Jesus became a perfect human being - “yet without sin” - absolutely vital to achieve our salvation. see 1 Pet 2:21-22;Heb 4:14; 1Jn 3:5

Jesus forgave other people’s sins (Matthew 9:2-6; Mark 2:5-10; Luke 5:20-24; Luke 7:47-49) and taught His followers to forgive others and to pray for God’s forgiveness for their own sins. Yet Jesus never said anything about needing forgiveness Himself

“It is highly significant that in one as sensitive morally as was Jesus and who taught His followers to ask for the forgiveness of their sins there is no hint of any need of forgiveness for Himself, no asking of pardon, either from those about Him or of God.” - Kenneth Scott Latourette.

Jesus became a perfect human being so that as God in human flesh, he could suffer the divine penalty for sin as an innocent substitute. - see Romans 3:9-28.

Being both God and a man, Jesus simultaneously revealed God’s will for human life and reconciled sinful people to God through his own perfect life and death.

Because of the incarnation, therefore, those who believe in Christ have peace with God and new life from God.

This is particularly seen in John’s Gospel in which teaching on the incarnation is related tightly to the cross.

The glory of the Son is manifested particularly in his death which is the divine “hour” that Jesus was destined for (Jn 12:23–24; 13:31; cf. 21:19).

The lifting up, of Jesus, corresponds to his descent from heaven, is a lifting up on the cross (Jn 3:14; 12:32–33) only to ascend back to Heaven, via the empty tomb.

The incarnation “in-flesh” language is most striking of all in its emphasis in Jn 6:53–58 that the flesh of the Son of Man must be chewed if it is to result in eternal life. The point of the incarnation is the death of the incarnate one, “the living bread that came from heaven” (Jn 6:51).

Little wonder that John reports that the BIG ISSUE with Jesus that caused the breach with Jewish leaders is the charge against the Jesus, that “you being a man, make yourself God” (John 10:33).

We end with...

C.S. Lewis’ famous “trilemma” -Jesus = Mad Bad or God!

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ...

Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.” (Mere Christianity).

Question 3 - Mad, bad or God? What arguments convinced you that Jesus is God and how might these be used to convince someone who does not believe?