The Doctrine of the Deity of Christ
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QUESTION: Did you know that the doctrine you believe, determines your eternal destiny?
QUESTION: Did you know that the doctrine you believe, determines your eternal destiny?
What you believe is of extreme importance. Doctrine Matters.
It seems that there has been a letting go and letting down, in recent years, of the importance of what you believe.
Some have even gone so far as to teach that sincerity was the most important thing. While sincerity is definitely important, sincerity cannot substitute for the truth.
As Orton Wiley put it, “To believe a falsehood, however sincerely, is disastrous, and the greater the degree of sincerity the more dire are likely to be the consequences. It is only a knowledge of the truth that makes men either free or safe.”
There is a close connection between belief and behavior. An unknown writer put it this way:
“Sow a thought, reap an act;
Sow an act, reap a habit;
Sow a habit, reap a character;
Sow a character, reap a destiny.”
Behaviors repeated, become habits, which evolves into character.
The Bible says, “as a man thinketh in his heart so is he.”
Paul talks about this in an exhortation to Timothy a young preacher. Now I don’t want us to get sidetracked by the fact that Timothy is a preacher - this exhortation is applicable to every single Christian.
I invite you to look with me at 1 Timothy 4:16
Read: 1 Timothy 4:16
Read: 1 Timothy 4:16
16 Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.
Paul is giving two specific directions to the young minister Timothy
1.) Give attention to himself
2.) Give attention to the doctrine he believes & teaches.
Watch, give attention to, scrutinize both his behavior and his beliefs.
Moral and doctrinal rectitude are the inseparable twins of the Christian life. Thomas D. Lea
13 Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine.
Peter admonishes us
15 But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:
Now I can’t give you every answer - but I want to give you a framework with which to work from. I work better with bite size pieces so over the next few Sunday services with the Lord’s help I would like to give you bite size pieces of a systematic approach to some of the most essential doctrines of Christianity that we need to “Take Heed To”
I will use the acronym D.O.C.T.R.I.N.E. while the acronym is not original with me, the Lord has helped me to develop some sermons from it.
Doctrine stands for:
Deity of Christ
Original Sin
Canon
Trinity
Resurrection
Incarnation
New Creation
Eschatology
Today I want to look at that first one The Deity of Christ - an important doctrine to persevere in.
Introduction:
Introduction:
I have heard them, read them, and even thought before that Jesus never made the claim that He was God.
In fact a well known and popular TV Evangelist in the Word of Faith and Charismatic movement tells of a dream/vision he had:
According to Copeland, Christ came to him in a vision and told him:
“Don't be disturbed when people put you down and speak harshly and roughly of you. They spoke that way of Me, should they not speak that way of you? The more you get to be like Me, the more they're going to think that way of you. They crucified Me for claiming that I was God. But I didn't claim I was God; I just claimed I walked with Him and that He was in Me. Hallelujah!”!
(Found in Bird’s Defending the Faith, Bird cites from Hannegraff, Google Search says it was in Copeland’s Believer’s Voice of Victory Magazine Feb. 1987)
But if you will read the Bible and look for them you will fine over 120 times that the Bible expresses the deity of Jesus in some way.
Now I don’t mind either term (Divinity of Christ or Deity of Christ) as long as you mean what the Bible means by them.
Some by the term divinity mean - god like characteristics - I want to show you Biblically and hopefully logically that Jesus was more than “god like”
Dr. Mark Bird states on these 120 verses and passages that “Jesus is either claiming to be God, accepting or demanding worship, claiming to possess attributes that only God can possess, claiming to do things that only God can do (and then doing miracles to prove it), or others are making these claims about Jesus.”
Now, I am not going to go through all 120 verses but I do want to talk seriously about this today:
If Jesus did in fact, claim to be God, He was the only leader of a major world religion to do so.
(Many minor or smaller sects have done this - but Christianity is the worlds largest religions. According to one study 2.382 billion adherents that is 31.11% of the world’s population. )
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_populations
Mohammed never claimed to be God;
Buddha never claimed to be God.
If it is true that Jesus claimed to be God, this would set Christ and Christianity apart from any other major religion. He would be unique. It is a gigantic thing for someone to claim to be the transcendent Creator God.
As I said, I’m not going through all 120 passages, but I do want to look at some of Christ’s own claims this morning -
Now as we look at these - you will need to bear with me - I am working from the presupposition that God’s Word (all of it OT & NT) is inerrant and infallible. If you want more information on that you will have to be here when I talk about the C - Cannon
1. Jesus’ Claims in ministry
1. Jesus’ Claims in ministry
Claimed to be the I Am of the Old Testament
58 Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.
24 I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.
Claimed to be One with the Father
30 I and my Father are one.
The Jews responded by taking up stones to stone him - because “You being a man, make yourself to be God.”
Claimed to possess divine attributes
Omnipresence - “even the Son of man which is in heaven” John 3:13
13 And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.
Eternity:
5 And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.
Claimed power to perform divine acts
To forgive sins (Mark 2) they let the palsied down through the roof - Jesus said:
5 When Jesus saw their faith, he said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.
Then Jesus condemns the religious leader’s reasoning and doubt and does the unthinkable:
10 But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (he saith to the sick of the palsy,) 11 I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house. 12 And immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went forth before them all; insomuch that they were all amazed, and glorified God, saying, We never saw it on this fashion.
To resurrect believers in him
25 Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: 26 And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?
To give eternal life:
28 And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.
2. Christ’s Claims at Trial
2. Christ’s Claims at Trial
Jesus is asked in Mark 14:61 - “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?”
Jesus answers in Mark 14:62 “I AM” and then he makes some more claims
62 And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.
This answer makes some powerful claims:
Jesus claims to be the Messiah
Jesus claims to be the Son of God
Jesus claims to be the Son of Man
The Conviction:
Now Jesus was convicted and condemned - but not for what He did or said He did -
Jesus was convicted for who He said He was!!!
Mark 14:62 “I AM”
63 Then the high priest rent his clothes, and saith, What need we any further witnesses? 64 Ye have heard the blasphemy: what think ye? And they all condemned him to be guilty of death.
3. Claims conclusion -
3. Claims conclusion -
Simply Jesus claimed to be GOD -
Now that we know that Jesus did in fact claim to be God what do we do with that? We are now left with a dilemma
Do we accept this
Do we reject this
Do we ignore this
Eventually we have to ask ourselves “do we believe this claim of Christ?”
I can’t make your mind and heart up for you - but I want to present one of the classic apologetic arguments for the deity of Christ called the Quintilemma
The Quintilemma answers the dilemma between the five possible identities of Jesus:
Legend
Guru
Liar
Lunatic
Lord
Now this can become a complex argument and I can’t make every part of it in a 45 minute to an hour sermon - so you may be left with more questions than answers -
We have seen the evidence - that Jesus, Himself certainly over and over made the claim to be God. Claimed deity.
This would mean he is either a mythical figure (a legend)
I’ve heard and read this argument used to try to do away with Jesus all together - but it doesn’t work.
Why is Jesus not a Legend?
The Historicity of the New Testament - (Again for the details of this you will have to hear the Cannon Study)
It is confirmed by Bibliographical test (The internal and external evidence)
The New Testament gives us an accurate and historical picture of Jesus - what he did and what he said.
Not to mention extrabiblical evidences of his life and death
So no Jesus is not a legend.
Who among his disciples, or among their proselytes, was capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life and character revealed in the Gospels? Certainly not the fishermen of Galilee; as certainly not St. Paul, whose character and idiosyncrasies were of a totally different sort; still less the early Christian writers, in whom nothing is more evident than that the good which was in them was all derived, as they always professed that it was derived, from the higher source.
John Stuart Mill 1
John Stuart Mill John Stuart Mill Quoted in Schaff and Schaff, History of the Christian Church.
Jesus is not a Guru -
Some - to get away from the claims of Jesus make the claim that he was just an Eastern mystic.
Some teach he was a great teacher of wise principles or others say a great moral teacher -
Jesus was not a guru, nor just a wise teacher or moral teacher -
Jesus was raised as a strict Jew
Jews were monotheistic during this time (meaning they only followed the One True God)
If you read the teachings of Jesus you will find they are not the teachings of an Eastern Mystic but that of a Jewish Rabbi who believed in ONE TRANSCENDENT CREATOR.
Jesus couldn't be a guru, neither could he be simply a good moral teacher (this doesn't even rank as one of the 5 options):
C. S. Lewis: “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.”
Jesus is not a liar -
The liar theory doesn’t hold water - because Jesus is universally acknowledged to be the most pure man in history.
“1. Because he has the wrong psychological (profile). He was (unselfish), loving, caring, compassionate, and passionate about teaching (truth) and helping others to truth. Liars lie for (selfish] reasons, like money, fame, pleasure or power. Jesus gave up all worldly goods, and life itself.”
2. Because there is no conceivable (motive) for his lie. It brought him hatred, rejection, misunderstanding, persecution, torture and (death).” Peter Kreeft
Another reason I strongly reject the “liar theory” is because of the Resurrection. Now you may have some questions about the reliability and historicity of the resurrection - I will address that in an upcoming session - but for now I will simply say that Jesus’ tactic was to hinge the truth of everything he said and taught on the resurrection.
Jesus is not a lunatic -
Someone who is mentally unstable could not express the practical wisdom, tough love, and unpredictable creativity.
No Jew could sincerely think he was God. No group in history was less likely to confuse the Creator with a creature than the Jews, the only people who had an absolute, and absolutely clear, distinction between the divine and the human.”
So if Jesus is not a legend
If He is not a Guru
If Jesus is not a Liar
and If Jesus is not a Lunatic
what does that leave us with?
The only reasonable option left is to conclude that JESUS IS LORD!!!
So the only question left this morning is what have you done with this information?
What are you going to do about it?
I think now you have to take what Jesus says very seriously
Is Jesus Lord of your life or are you still calling the shots?
Are you still leading yourself around
Is it still your life, your body, your way?
Why don’t you change seats - why don’t you switch places with Him
Let Him guide your life-