Deity of Christ
Christianity 101
CCCAG June 22nd, 2019
Commentary on video (St Patrick's Bad Analogies- Youtube)- I’ve probably tried to explain the trinity using every one of those heresy’s mentioned.
When I first got into the ministry, I made it a goal to try to easily explain everything in the Bible in ways that everyone could understand it. The more I studied and the further I went and Bible school the more I understood that this goal is impossible.
What I have found is that any attempt to fully explain an infinite God using finite language will always fall short, and especially when we speak of His triune nature as revealed in the bible.
What I had to do is embrace the concept of mystery. A mystery is a phenomenon or an occurrence that cannot be explained.
Mystery as part of our faith- Think about this idea for a moment-
If God was small enough for our minds, He wouldn’t be God.
So I've learned to be comfortable with mystery and in many ways it gives me a sense of peace because I don't have to know everything because I trust in a God that does know everything and if I need to know it he will reveal it and if I don't need to know it then it's not important.
It sounds like a really strange way to begin a bible lesson doesn’t it?
I admit- I’ll need a lot of help this morning, so let’s let God bless us as we delve into some deep waters this morning
Prayer
We will start this morning briefly touching on the trinity. Here is A little historical background as to the doctrine of the Trinity
In the early 300’s AD, the Christian church came out from under the intense persecution of the Roman Empire with the conversion of Emperor Constantine. Prior to this, within this church that no exists in what we today call Europe, Asia, and Africa there was no agreed upon bible, or theology agreed upon by the church as a whole because they couldn’t risk their leaders all meeting together to hash all of this out.
These leaders wrote letters to churches trying to help them understand the deep things of the faith, but it was still fragmented and not cohesive for the entire church to operate like that, so you had little pockets of Christianity that were believing things that were not in line with the revealed truth of scripture.
The first major meeting of the church leaders took place in 325AD in Nicaea, a city in what is now modern Turkey. (Iznik.) This council was called specifically to address a belief held by the Eastern Orthodox church called Arianism that held that Jesus was not eternal but was a created being. This doctrine was rejected, and the council created the Nicene Creed that spelled out the nature of the triune God. In Lutheran confirmation class, we were required to memorize this along with the apostle’s creed.
In the video, they also mentioned the Athanasian Creed. I’m going to focus on one part here- Christians worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding (or confusing) the Persons, nor dividing the Essence.
Refer to the diagram for visual learners- Human language is limited in it’s ability to properly describe this truth, and it has to be taken as a matter of mystery in faith. There is a criticism of this doctrine- the word trinity doesn’t appear in the bible.
That is true- While the word trinity does not appear in the bible, the concept is unmistakable and the best way to understand the nature of the God we worship.
For years I've tried to explain the trinity to people an always fallen back into one of those heresies that were discussed in the video so I'm going to take the advice of a very wise man named Forrest Gump who once said, “That’s all I’m gonna say about that!”
So we know from last message in this series that God the father is God- we can all agree on that. This week we will briefly speak on the Holy Spirit being God as the Holy Spirit gets His own message in a few weeks.
Just to give you a few scriptural references about the triune God that might help you if a JW or Mormon comes to the door-
The doctrine of the trinity is first seen in the first sentences of the bible in Genesis 1. I’m going to read it, and say the name of God as stated in the original texts-
“In the Beginning, Elohim created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep. And Rauch Elohim was hovering over the face of the waters”
Elohim- Hebrew for God in singular plurality. It sounds contradictory to say that, but it means a singular God expressed in different forms. Before your brain delves into a wrong path- remember we are in first verse of the bible, and the concept of the trinity gets more defined the further we go.
Rauch Elohim – Spirit of Gods
We see the first two members of the trinity here.
Tie that in with Colossians 1
(Col 1:15) He (Jesus) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
(Col 1:16) For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.
(Col 1:17) And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
So you see all three members of the trinity were involved in creation.
When we spoke about the One True God a few weeks ago, we mentioned the Hebrew statement of faith, the SHEMA in Deut 6:4-5 also speaks of God in trinity-
Here O Israel, the LORD your God, the LORD is one!
Hebrew- Sh'ma Yisra'el, YHWH 'eloheinu, YHWH 'e?ad.
ELOHIM (pronounced in adjective form eloheinu- root is Elohim)– plurality of singular form in the Hebrew
ECHAD – many as one.
So in the Shema, that Jewish people say every morning as part of their prayers, they don't realize they're actually proclaiming the Trinity that Christians believe in. It's one of those great ironies in the faith.
Finally, just to point out the deity of the Holy Spirit and that he is worthy of worship is found in the baptismal formula as given to us by no other than Jesus HIMself-
(Mat 28:18-19) And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit
The first point is that Jesus said all authority in heaven and earth is given to him which points out his divinity .
The second point is that he tells us to baptize people in the name of every member of the Trinity.
If the father and the son and the Holy Spirit were not co-equal members of the same Godhead, then Jesus is committing blasphemy against himself. And that's just dumb.
So that's all I'm going to say about the Trinity today.
If you have any other questions about this or anything else we will look at today, write them down on the back your bulletin and we will address them at the end of this lesson or if you're listening by podcast you can email me at pastorjohnoscar@gmail.com.
Now we're going to switch and speak to specifically the deity of Christ, and why that is important for us to believe as Christians.
To answer that question we have to go back and ask another question-“What was God’s original intent with creating you and me?”
To find out that we again have to go back to the beginning in Genesis chapter one
(Gen 1:26) Then God said, “Let us (example of God’s triune nature) make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
(Gen 1:27) So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
(Gen 1:28) And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
So God created the heavens and earth, and then finally humanity and then turned over rulership of his creation to Adam and Eve.
In essence, God named them “regents” over His creation
You would see this a lot in ancient cultures where a monarch would have this regent who would oversee the day-to-day aspects of the Kingdom which would free up the monarch from the day to day grind of rulership.
The Bible has an example of that later in Genesis with Joseph and the Pharaoh of Egypt. Joseph interprets a dream that the pharaoh was having that there were 7 years of famine coming after 7 years of plenty and this famine would destroy Egypt.
Pharaoh makes an executive decision that he doesn't want to deal with all that so he makes Joseph his Regent to rule in his place so he doesn't have to worry about it.
This is a similar example from the bible of what God was doing in creating Adam and Eve.
Part of God's nature is that of a creator and the highest creation that God could make is something that was on par with himself.
Now I want to be careful in saying that when God created Adam and Eve he did not make them gods but what He did give them is what is most central to his being which is a spirit.
That spirit that exists within you and I is the very thing that gives us are higher mental faculties in comparison with every other creature on earth.
Job 32:8 puts it this way- “It is the spirit in a person, the breath of the almighty, that gives them understanding”
The theological term for this is called Imago Dei- the image of God that is intrinsic to all humanity.
Part of that understanding, part of that higher mental faculty, and part of that image of God stamped upon each one of us is the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions.
In other words, you and I have free will to choose to do what we want to do.
In the innocence of creation Adam and Eve initially only chose to do that which was God's will. They did not know how to do or that they could even do anything else other than what God instructed them to do.
Those instructions were very simple- don’t eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and if you do you will die.
A former cherubim named Lucifer, who the bible generally refers to as satan came along and told Eve that God was lying.
Eve and then Adam believed the lie and chose poorly and rebelled against God’s sovereign command and followed satan instead.
Because our God is holy and just, he must punish failure to follow his commands.
The punishment for all sin is eternal death found in a place called hell. Hell is simply the absence of loving fellowship with your creator God.
Since part of the image of God that was placed in each one of us is completely dependent upon a close intimate relationship with the creator God, we cannot exist apart from HIM. We cannot experience his presence and all that comes with His presence- happiness, joy, peace, fulfillment, prosperity or protection.
In essence, the absence of all of that is what hell is.
When God gave Adam and Eve Dominion over the earth he told them that if they step outside of his commands that they would die. He was not talking about a physical death in so much as he was talking about a spiritual death. And that's key to understanding how God relates with us in any point, or even how the plan of salvation works.
When God is speaking to you and I he is speaking to a spirit not a body. This body is just a shell our spirit resides in so that you and I can interface with this planet.
However Adam and eve's failure did not catch God by surprise. He knew that by giving them free will and free choice that eventually they would choose wrongly.
But because of his great love for us and as the Bible says God does not desire that any should perish but all should come into repentance. God, who sees the end from the beginning knew that this burden of free will would result in humanity choosing poorly, and therefore as part of the Divine plan and creation, God created an escape plan for us that allowed for both free will and for a way that God’s holy and just nature could be satisfied.
How do I know this was part of the creation plan?
The Apostle John in Revelation 13:8 tells us that the lamb of God was slain before the creation of the world
The apostle Peter echoes that in
1 Peter 1:18-20 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. 20 He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.
God knew we would fail. So God created a way for us to escape what his moral character demands in that all sin must be punished. Since there is only one punishment from sin and that is eternal separation from God, God himself had to make a way.
Enter Jesus the second person of the triune God.
This was 1 of my greatest tripping points when it came to understanding Christianity growing up in the Lutheran Church. and this was probably totally my fault not the Lutheran churches so don't think I'm bashing them I’m not. I did not understand why Jesus had to die on the cross because I did not understand the holy nature of God and that he always requires justice for wrongdoing.
Since God declares a divine edict that the soul that sins must die and because of the limitations found in humans being created beings, no human could ever satisfy divine justice.
No human could ever hope to live a completely perfect life and take upon himself the weight of all the sin of all the other humans because he is limited by being created.
You needed the infinite God to take upon himself all of that sin.
For a human being, by themselves to try to do that would be like using a small wading pool to hold the water volume of one of the Great Lakes.
It just can't happen it's it's not constructed in such a way to hold that much water just like that you and I are not created with the ability to take upon ourselves all that sin.
That is why God himself took it upon himself to satisfy his own divine justice and make that way for us to experience fellowship with him in heaven forever.
God the eternal son, by the power of the Holy Spirit impregnated a human female named Mary and became God in the flesh.
That way, Jesus being God fully identified with you and I, yet because of his divine and boundless nature was able to bear the weight of all of our sin.
You see that in Jesus’ words on the cross. The 4th saying from the cross was “My God, My God, why have your forsaken me?”
It was the humanity of Jesus crying out when God the father turned his back on God the son. This was a fulfillment of the Old Testament practice of the scapegoat.
According to the Old Testament Law given by Moses they would choose 2 animals. The first animal would be the sacrificial animal. The leaders of the nation and priesthood would all lay their hands upon this animal and symbolically transfer the sin of the nation on to it. That animal would then be killed an placed on the altar as a burnt offering . This was called the sin offering.
That law was fulfilled completely in the 2nd person of the trinity taking our sin upon himself, and dying in our place.
They would do the same thing with the second animal- symbolically transferring the sin of the people to it, but instead of killing it, they sent it out into the desert and then turn their backs on it symbolizing God turning his back on humanity because of unrepentant sin.
When you look at all that ceremony all that detail and all of those sacrifices an rituals that take place an Exodus Leviticus Numbers and Deuteronomy it was all the point to the cross and the one who was nailed on it.
God the son taking upon himself the sin of the entire world and suffering the punishment that you and I deserved.
This is why the deity of Jesus Christ is so important to the Christian faith.
If Jesus was just the Archangel Michael, You and I are dead in our sins because there was no identification with humanity with God coming down and taking human flesh.
If you try to relegate Jesus to just being a good man who said good things then you are dead in your sins because a good man would not repeatedly lie to the people in calling himself God and saying that he and the father are one.
If you try to say that Jesus was just a man who by living a good and moral life became a God and that you and I can follow that same path, then you have left the reservation of biblical Christianity, and are dead in your sin.
The deity of Jesus Christ is the sine qua noon, or absolute essential belief of Christianity, because without it, the rest of biblical truth and faith falls completely apart.
So I ask you this morning- do you believe in the correct Jesus?
Jesus Himself warned us that many would come in HIS name and lead people down the wrong paths. This message is meant to show you the right Jesus, so that your faith is certain and your destiny sure.
Because if you believe in any of those other so called Jesus’, you’re doomed, and your faith is of your own imagination.
Jesus is God, and only this God can save you from your rebellion and sin. You have to understand all the complexities of the faith- but you do have to believe in the only name that was given to men by which they must be saved- and that name is Jesus.
Prayer
Altar call
