4: God the Son
Notes
Transcript
Bookmarks & Needs:
Bookmarks & Needs:
B: Col. 1:15-20
N: Remember that this is Sanctity of Life Sunday
Welcome
Welcome
Welcome
Announcements
Announcements
Business meeting tonight at 5:30 pm here. Need a quorum of 50 church members to conduct business, please plan to be here.
LMCO ($40,327)
Sanctity of Life Sunday: Letter from CareNet from October.
Opening
Opening
Opening info, reminding of the series and why we’re doing it.
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For everything was created by him, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities— all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and by him all things hold together. 18 He is also the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile everything to himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
PRAYER
Focus today is God the Son.
EHBC’s Statement of Faith, Article 4: God the Son
“Christ is the eternal Son of God. In His incarnation as Jesus Christ, He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. … He honored the divine law by His personal obedience, and in His substitutionary death on the cross, He made provision for the redemption of men from sin.”
We need to affirm that God the Son is eternal. The first two things that we said about God the Father last week, that He reigns over everything and that He rules over everyone are true for both the Son and the Spirit as well. However, when it comes to God the Son, there is a special significance to His position as Lord because of the incarnation.
The Person of Jesus Christ, A Theology for the Church, Daniel Akin
To be theologically precise, we can say there was a time when Jesus was not. However, there was never a time when the Son was not. At the incarnation the Son became Jesus; the second person of the triune God became the God-man.
Jesus is God the Son in the flesh. Completely God and perfectly man, having both a human nature and a divine nature, but one Person. The theological term for this is called the hypostatic union: two “hypostases” or natures, combined into the one Person of Jesus, the Christ. And those two natures, once united in the Person of Jesus Christ, can never be separated. God the Son took on flesh and became the man Jesus, and He will never take off that flesh. In our focal passage in Colossians, Paul is expounding on the reality of Jesus being both God and man. Notice that Paul in our focal passage speak of the “is” of Jesus. That He IS the image of the invisible God, He IS before all things, etc.
In this way, He identifies in a different way with His creation because in His human nature, He can identify with having a beginning in time (He was born), with being finite and limited (Jesus needed sleep and food), confined to a certain place (the Person Jesus was not omnipresent while on earth), which is just like us. Jesus knows what it is to be human. And since He knows what it is to be human, He then is our Lord who identifies with us… He is not completely “other than” in the way that the Father is, because He, God the Son, took on flesh.
So we are going to look at three aspects of that identifying Lordship this morning:
1) Jesus is Lord of creation
1) Jesus is Lord of creation
Before He took on flesh and became human, but that doesn’t change His role in creation.
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For everything was created by him, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities— all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and by him all things hold together.
Image: eikon, the perfect image of who God is. He is the invisible God made visible.
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The Son, the Logos, is God, and was with God. So the Father and the Son share the exact same nature, but also are somehow distinct.
Firstborn as statement of position, not time. He is preeminent over all creation positionally. This is not saying that He as the Son was “born first.” In other words, all of creation belongs to Him.
2 He was with God in the beginning.
Before the beginning began, the Son was there with the Father.
Thoughts on all the created things in 16.
3 All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created.
There is nothing that exists that He didn’t make. We just take the stuff He made and rearrange it.
Hebrews 1 ties these concepts together as well as Colossians 1 does.
Hebrews 1:1–3a (CSB)
1 Long ago God spoke to our ancestors by the prophets at different times and in different ways. 2 In these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son. God has appointed him heir of all things and made the universe through him. 3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of his nature, sustaining all things by his powerful word.
Notice all of the prepositions in these passages about creation: all things are “by” Him, “for” Him, and “through” Him.
Transition
2) Jesus is Lord of the church
2) Jesus is Lord of the church
Speak directly to the church on this point. We are to follow Jesus and obey His Word, because we belong to Him.
18 He is also the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.
Thoughts on the church as the body of Christ. At its simplest statement, the church is those who hold to the testimony that Jesus Christ is Lord:
15 “But you,” he asked them, “who do you say that I am?” 16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” 17 Jesus responded, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father in heaven. 18 And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.
Peter is not the rock of the church. The testimony that Peter gave is the rock of the church. The testimony that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, is the foundation of who we are.
“Firstborn from the dead” is that He’s like those who are saved. The first to have defeated death.
42 So it is with the resurrection of the dead: Sown in corruption, raised in incorruption; 43 sown in dishonor, raised in glory; sown in weakness, raised in power; 44 sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 So it is written, The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 Like the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; like the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. 49 And just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.
Thoughts
Transition
3) Jesus is Lord of reconciliation
3) Jesus is Lord of reconciliation
The work of Jesus was a function of His entire Person: as divine, He represents God to us, and as human, He represents us to God. This is what Paul is saying in 19-20.
19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile everything to himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
Mediator of reconciliation.
5 For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all, a testimony at the proper time.
Thoughts
What this means (present the Gospel).
21 Once you were alienated and hostile in your minds as expressed in your evil actions. 22 But now he has reconciled you by his physical body through his death, to present you holy, faultless, and blameless before him—23 if indeed you remain grounded and steadfast in the faith and are not shifted away from the hope of the gospel that you heard. This gospel has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and I, Paul, have become a servant of it.
You might argue that you aren’t “hostile” to God. You’re here and listening, right? There’s no middle ground. We are either “in Christ” or not “in Christ.” If we aren’t for Christ, we are against Him, because we are then owned and controlled. The evidence of our salvation is our continued submission to the message of the Gospel. Not that that submission saves us, but those that are saved show the truth of their salvation through clinging to Jesus. Paul says that those who leave the Gospel never actually believed the Gospel—they were never holy, faultless, and blameless before Him.
Transition to closing
Closing
Closing
3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of his nature, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
Jesus sits now at the right hand of the Father, and He will come back to judge the world according to Scripture. Are we ready for that?
Invitation
PRAYER
Closing Remarks
Closing Remarks
Bible reading: Hosea 1 today.
Instructions for guests
Benediction
Benediction
Philippians 2:12–16a (CSB)
12 Therefore, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, so now, not only in my presence but even more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. 13 For it is God who is working in you both to will and to work according to his good purpose. 14 Do everything without grumbling and arguing, 15 so that you may be blameless and pure, children of God who are faultless in a crooked and perverted generation, among whom you shine like stars in the world, 16 by holding firm to the word of life.