Ash Wednesday was this last week which marked the traditional beginning of Lent. According to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus spent forty days of fasting and preparation in the wilderness before beginning His public ministry. In the wilderness, Jesus was tempted by Satan, but He resisted all temptations. In observance of that time, Lent itself lasts forty day – not including Sundays – and culminates with our celebration of Jesus’ resurrection and triumph over the grave.
The traditional purpose of Lent is the preparation of believers for that most significant moment in the history of the world. We are called to prepare ourselves through prayer, penance, repentance, giving to the poor, and self-denial. It is my intention to add one more form of preparation; that being “preparation through understanding.”
Our Christian religion is both simple and complex – as witnessed by so many differing denominations. Yet, even in its differences, there are certain fundamental truths which all Christian denominations agree on. It is those truths that I intend addressing over the next five Sundays of Lent.
The first – and most important of all truths is that Jesus Christ is God. Yes, that’s right. He was and is the Creator of all things whose fullness existed in the mortal body of the man which historians call Jesus of Nazareth. He was not someone who “became a god” but is, in fact, the one and only eternal God.
As we reflect on that truth, I’ll be presenting some of the facts of Jesus’ life and his own words as evidence. I’ll also be reviewing the witnesses of His disciples and the arguments of other saints through the ages. It’s impossible for me to present all the evidence. There’s just too much. With that being said, the divine nature of God dwelling in the form of a mortal man is still, in the final analysis, a mystery – a divine mystery which requires our faith to accept. Someone once said, “For those who accept Christ, no evidence is needed, and for those who have rejected Him, no evidence is enough.” But evidence is needed to be heard by the many souls who have not discovered or fully realized the Truth of Jesus.
Two preachers were on the roadside with a sign that read, “The End is Near - turn around now before it’s too late.” A passing driver yelled, “Leave us alone you religious nuts!” Then the preachers heard a loud splash. One said to the other, “Do you think we should have just said ‘Bridge Out’?”
The appearance of Jesus was a sign from God that “The End Is Near”. God does not intend to allow this fallen world to go on forever in its dark and broken condition. He created this world to be a paradise which would reflect His love and glory, and He created man and woman to be in harmony with Him in this paradise. But God did not want puppets. So He also gave us freedom – the freedom to make choices. Being deceived, the inhabitants of Paradise rejected Him. The rest of history, then, is the story of God’s plan to bring us back. His plan has three phases: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
Ironically, the title “Son of God” – which actually proclaims Jesus’ deity – has become a stumbling block for some in accepting His deity. The mere mention of someone’s “son” raises the idea of someone with less authority than their father. Professor Alan Ladd, however, writes, “The most important messianic phrase in the study of the self-disclosure of Jesus is ‘the Son of God’.”
This does not lessen the nature of Jesus. Rather, it explains it. The “Son-of- God” is “God-the-Son”. He is the second person of the triune Godhead. While the term “Son of God” did have other implications in Judaism and our own relationship with God, it is the theological implications that are important here.
The theological meaning can be clearly seen in the Gospel of John chapter one: “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 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”
John had no intention of leaving any doubt as to the relationship between God the Father and God the Son. They are one, yet, they appeared to the world as two. This was not because they were separate in their natures, but for our benefit, they fulfilled separate purposes – but only for a brief time. In the Old Testament, God-the-Father is the Creator of life; the giver of the Law; and the “Father-of-Abraham”. He made the Hebrews His Chosen People through whom He would teach His truth to the world.
“God the Son” was the manifestation of God’s love that walked among us;
that taught and healed us; that suffered all sorrow and even died in His flesh so we might receive eternal life. He was the manifestation and fullness of God’s love for us. And thirdly, “God-the-Holy-Spirit” which has always been present, is the manifestation of God’s power to move nations and to transform the hearts of men.
In Scripture, it is clear. Neither Jesus nor His disciples ever intended for us to misunderstand who Jesus is. As C. S. Lewis wrote, “You can say that he was a madman on the same plain as a lunatic, or you can say he was a liar who could not be trusted, or you can acknowledge him as Lord. But what no one can say is that he was simply a ‘good man’. Jesus has not given us that option.” So what happened to our understanding? The Bible tells us in 1 John: “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false teachers have gone out into the world.”
John understood that there is a presence in the world that seeks always to distort and corrupt the truth of God’s love and salvation. Some call him Satan, and he put into the heads of our remote ancestors the notion that they could “be like gods” – could create their own as if they had created themselves; could be their own masters; could invent some sort of happiness for themselves apart from the true God. (C. S. Lewis, “The Case For Christianity”, chp. 3)
But there’s an inherent flaw in their thinking. We are not the creators. We are the created. It is only the seduction of human vanity and hubris that entices us to believe otherwise. Because we are the created of God, we can only find total happiness in God. Because Jesus is God, we can only be complete in Him.
The “Theory of Evolution” can appear to explain many things. When it comes to explaining mankind, however, its theories breakdown. Evolution is also called “Naturalism”; the idea that we are all the product of Nature, and Nature is regarded as a form of God Himself. Naturalism’s major problem, however, lies in explaining how mindless forces give rise to minds, knowledge, and sound reasoning. But every Naturalist wants others to think that his Naturalism is a consequence of his sound reasoning. Howard Marshall writes, “The final refutation of a Naturalistic view of history derives from the fact that, without a God-centered worldview, one cannot make sense of the necessary preconditions for the historical knowledge of anything.”
Our adult Bible study, which is into “The Foundations” series, last week reviewed some of the qualities found in Jesus that reveal who He is. A most significant quality is that Jesus does “what only God can do.”
• He has the power to forgive sins. In Mark 2:1-12, Jesus healed a paralytic with these words, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” Then we read on in verse 6, “Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, 7 ‘Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?’”
The Hebrews believed that only God can forgive the sins of all others. A sin is to “miss the mark” of obedience to God’s perfect Law. Sins can include a thoughtless word that injures; an accidental act which causes sorrow, inten-tional acts of lust with our bodies, and even murderous and greedy acts that cause suffering or death to another. In each case, two were sinned against as the sin also goes against God’s perfect Law.
Think about it. If you injure me, I have the authority or right to forgive you because I am the one who was injured. I do not, however, have the authority to forgive you for injuring someone else. But whenever you sin against another, you are also sinning against God by your violation of his perfect law. While the other person may or may not forgive you, God can forgive you. Jesus exercises that authority because He is God, and also because,
• All judgment is in His hands. In Mark 5:22, it says, “Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son . . . .” The Jews recognized that God alone had the right to judge humanity. In claiming that the Father committed all judgment to Him, Jesus again claimed equality with God.
• Jesus sends the Spirit. We read in John 15:26, “When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me.” The “sending” the “going out” which Jesus refers to here is not like a king sending a servant. It is an extending of Himself – the Holy Spirit, the third part of our Triune God – which proceeds from God as another manifestation of Himself. God is extending His own power to fulfill His own designs in this world. It is like a rainbow in a storm. The storm is not the rainbow. Neither is the rainbow the storm, but they are a part of each other . . . separately identifiable, yet the same. The rainbow cannot be seen until the Sun highlights the rainbow. Just so, God cannot be fully realized until God the Son gives His light to roll back the dark.
• Jesus will raise the dead. John 5:25, “I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live.” Jesus can make this claim for only one reason – He is God, and as God, all life is in Him. Only God can create life, and only God can revive life once it is gone. This is not a surgeon’s resuscitation of a patient. It is the resurrection of one long dead such as we know from the raising of Lazarus.
That desire to be a god is the driving force of some religions. Some claim, like the ancient Gnostic religion which the Apostle Paul struggled against at Colosse, they claimed that through secret knowledge and obedience to the Law of God, you could “work through your own salvation” and become a god. In fact, one particular religion still claims that Jesus himself was once fully human but “worked through his own salvation” and became a god.
The temptation is the allurement of one day being a creator god of your own world. This even smacks of Mary Shelly’s novel, “Frankenstein”; the idea that, by our cunning and intelligence, we can also become creators. It’s been said that, “Pride is the only disease known to man that can make everyone sick – except the one who possesses it.”
Dr. Frankenstein wanted to create a living person using the flesh and bones of corpses. He applied the power of lightening to infuse such a corpse with life. Now THERE’S an irony. He wanted to be the creator, yet he already recognized he could not do it without a force supplied by God. To the misguided doctor, however, he regarded it as a force of Nature – not of God.
Despite a brief time of apparent success, the story ended tragically. Satan toys with us that way. He gives us the illusion of power and happiness – but never the real thing. Just as Shelly’s novel was tragic fiction, so is the illusion that we can find complete fulfillment apart from Jesus Christ.
• Jesus is the Creator. Consider Colossians 1:16, “For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.” It was created “by Him” because he is God. It was created “for Him” so God could reveal His love to His us. This does not say that “all creation or all created things were given to him.” On the contrary, it says that He created them. There is divine logic in this. Loving parents do not cease to love their children if their children make wrong choices. Rather, loving parents strive constantly to bring them back to the truth. So God’s love extends to us – His children – and God is constant.
• Jesus is the sustainer upholding all. In Colossians 1:17, Paul says, “(Jesus) is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” It is in the Will of Christ that all of the so called “coincidences” happen which account for our very existence. Hebrews 1:3-4 adds this, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. 4 So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs.”
God-the-Son is an heir to God’s glory by virtue of being God. The Naturalist cannot accept these conditions because that would mean that he / she is not in control. It does not allow them the prideful attitude that their successes are entirely the result of their own wisdom and cunning. Yet, to accept Jesus Christ as “fully God and fully man” requires us to humble ourselves always before Him; to acknowledge that Jesus, as God and Man, knows fully our thoughts, our joys and our sorrows; that Jesus alone can fill the God-shaped hole in our heart.
Is your humility like the man who wrote the best-selling books, Humility and How I Attained It, and The Ten Most Humble Men in the World and How I Chose The Other Nine? Just how much will you give up to keep your pride in your own self-sufficiency? I ask this because you need to know that, each day you deny the truth of Jesus Christ, you are denying yourself the joy and peace of being one with God – your Creator; the only one who knows you better than you know yourself.
Please join with me in prayer:
