Heresies 2: Jesus - God & Man

Since joining the staff two years ago, one of the things I have noticed is that there is always a jigsaw puzzle going on in the office. In fact, we even have a table devoted to “the puzzle.” These aren’t easy puzzles. I think the most recent one we finished, a depiction of Noah’s flood from below the boat, was 90% murky blue or aquamarine puzzle pieces. Truth be told, I despaired of working at it.

Jesus’ identity was and remains a puzzle. In his own day, leaders and laypeople, friends and family were divided. People were polarized—a prophet from God, or possessed by a demon. Messiah or madman.

Thankfully, we’re in a position now where we have two advantages over Jesus’ contemporaries. First, we get to consider the question of Jesus identity after the resurrection. Second, we have had hundreds of years of the church reflecting on the nature and character of Jesus’ person.

Now, there are about a million pieces of the puzzle to who Jesus was, and we will never be able to fit them all together. However, throughout the history of the church, two pieces in particular have proven important: first, that Jesus is fully human. Second, that Jesus is fully God.

Now, how to fit those together is a puzzle in itself. Some people despair of the task like I despaired of assembling Noah’s ark in the office. Sometimes we’ve been tempted to say “you know, one of these must not belong.” A group called the docetics said that Jesus only appeared to be human, the gnostics said something similar. On the other hand, a group called the Ebionites and later the Arians denied that Jesus was God. In response to these, we get some of the statements from famous church councils, like the council of Nicaea—

We believe in … one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten of the Father, of the substance of the Father; God of God and Light of Light; true God of true God; begotten, not made, of the same substance as the Father, by whom all things were made, in heaven and on earth

Later, the council of Chalcedon, affirming that Jesus was “perfect in Godhead and in manhood, truly God and truly Man… [having] two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation… concurring in one person and one subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son.”

Today we are going to consider this puzzle, in particular, the piece of Jesus’ divinity or deity, that he was in fact God who dwelt among us. And it is sort of a crazy topic, to say we cannot scratch the surface is not in this case cliché. However, there are two reasons I want to talk about it: first, because I think the Scriptures are clear on this point. And second, it is deeply personal.

When I was a teenager, I had a few intellectual problems with Christianity. One was that Christians said Jesus was the only way to God. But I thought of Jesus on the same level as the other philosophers and religious teachers, who were all used by God in their own time to communicate the same basic truths. Another problem I had was that I didn’t know if Jesus was God. It didn’t seem to make sense. I didn’t realize until later that these two issues are related. That if Jesus is God, he is in fact in a different category than those other figures. And so, when I came to believe that Jesus was God, the second person of the Trinity, it altered my life. I was introduced to a whole new family of faith that stretched through ages.

I said earlier that the Scriptures were pretty clear on this topic. One book in particular will guide this message, and that is the Gospel of John. So if you would, read with me, beginning in the very first verse, of the very first chapter of that Gospel. You may stand if you are able in honor of God’s Word—

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5 That light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it… The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. [You may be seated].

What stands out to you from these words? You know that we are talking about the deity of Jesus, so what stands out to you other than that. Let’s say Jesus’ identity is in the foreground, what’s in the background? To me, it is a statement of human need.

I think we could say that humans have needs that only God can meet: life (verse 4), light (verses 4–5), grace, and truth (verse 14). Instead of life, we have death. Even in life, some of us are mastered by the fear of death—whether our own, or whether we are concerned about others. Or if not fear, then mourning. Being in the midst of loss. One of the blessings of this pandemic, is that it causes us to come to grips with our mortality. We need life.

And we need light. In John’s Gospel, darkness is a symbol of injustice, the powers of evil at work. And just like life and light go together, so do darkness and death, because so much injustice leads to death, and because both can overwhelm our hope, and sometimes almost snuff it out.

In addition to life and light, we need grace and truth. I see this in our society. We seem to be in the middle of a truth crisis and a grace famine. Though writing 2000 years ago, John felt the need for grace and truth perhaps more keenly than we do. He records the last words that Pontius Pilate spoke to Jesus before handing him over to be crucified: “What is truth?” (Some of us don’t think we have these needs. Note: don’t say “we see”).

Now, why is it that only God can meet these needs of life and light and grace and truth? Well, the way that John thought about it, and the way that Jesus preached, these things were part of the new creation. Our present world is locked in death and darkness, devilry and deceit. To be released from these takes an act of Resurrection. Re-Creation. The creation cannot set itself free, it looks to and longs for the Creator to do that. So, we have needs that only God can meet. His fullness is more than a match for our emptiness.

Against this backdrop of human need, consider Jesus’ identity, referred to as “the Word.” In verse 1, the Word is called “God.” Is this “God” like God God? Well, it is “God” like “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” That is the Scripture from the Old Testament, Genesis 1, that echoes in our present text. Somehow, in a way we don’t understand but experience in worship, the Word is both with God and yet God at the same time.

“The Word” appears here as Creator, not as creation. “All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created.” This seems to suggest that Jesus was not made, he was not created, though he entered creation. There was a never a time when he did not exist.

That’s why, in verse 14, it says that the word became flesh. Later in this Gospel, when Jesus is disputing with some religious leaders, he has this mike drop moment when he says, “Before Abraham was, I AM.”

Jesus is fully God. And yet when it says he became flesh, we also see him fully human. How can this be? One picture that has helped me: the Temple (actually comes from verse 14, “he tabernacled”). Was it a human building or a divine building? Well, both. And Jesus is the true temple.

This matters for us because, as we said before, we have needs that only God can meet. We need New Creation, and that means we need the Creator. According to John, God has chosen to meet those needs in Jesus, through Jesus, and as Jesus.

If Jesus is fully God and fully Man, then the life we receive from him is eternal, indestructible. The light he gives will never diminish. His grace is greater than our sin, and his truth is stronger than the most potent mixture of lies. But if Jesus is not God, then life does not conquer death. Light does not outshine darkness. Grace is empty and truth is a lie.

But thankfully it is not so. We see Jesus bringing about New Creation in his lifetime—giving sight to the blind, raising the dead, countering lies. We see him resurrected from the dead after being crucified. We trust him with our future.

The relationship between the Father and the Son, with the Son being fully God and fully Man, enables John to make some pretty amazing claims. Let me leave you with three of them:

First, Because Jesus is fully God and fully Man, if you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus. If you look down a few verses from where we left off, in 1:18, John writes “No one has ever seen God. The one and only Son, who is himself God and is at the Father’s side—he has revealed him.” Jesus said that if you see him, you see the father. This is great news for those of you who aren’t sure what you believe about God yet. You may believe he exists, but what is he like? Jesus is able to reveal this. And at the center of John’s Gospel is the message of a crucified Messiah, sacrifical love. More than anything else, Jesus reveals that God is loving.

Second, Because Jesus is fully God and fully Man, to reject Jesus is to reject God. Just like when you see him, you see God. When you accept him, you accept God. If you deny him, you deny God. So please, don’t linger. Let Thomas’s words at the end of this Gospel be your own—“My Lord and My God.” Accept Jesus as your God, and you will be accepting God as your God.

Here’s the last thing. If Jesus is fully God and fully Man, then his mission is God’s mission. And if we are continuing his mission, than we are continuing God’s mission. Church, we are engaged in God’s work, through the power of God’s spirit, having God’s peace, and ultimately sharing in God’s victory. Our kingdom, like his, is not of this world. The love we are loved with is his love, God’s love. So let us follow him confident that our labor in the Lord is not in vain, because it is the Lord who works in us, through us, and around us.

I know that we haven’t solved the puzzle of Jesus’ identity. We haven’t even solved the puzzle of Jesus’ being at once fully God and fully Man. But I hope we are beginning to pick out some of the edge and corner pieces. We have needs that only God can meet, New Creation needs, and Jesus is able to meet them. Let us be careful how we respond to Jesus, because that is how we are responding to God. And if you need to remember what God is like, look to Jesus.