In the midst of his earthly ministry, Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” Jesus then asked them, “What about you? Who do you say that I am?” The gospels record that Peter had the answer: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:13-16)
Who is Jesus?
The Bible tells us that Jesus is the son of Mary, a young girl from Galilee, a virgin betrothed to Joseph, who was of the lineage of David. The Bible also tells us the Jesus is the Son of God—that his conception within Mary’s womb was the result of supernatural intervention by the Holy Spirit.
That’s confusing enough right there, for those of us who know about the birds and the bees and genes and chromosomes.
The Bible goes on to identify Jesus as the Word, who was with God, who was God, and who was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
You thought the biological aspects of Jesus’ identity stretched our conventional understanding of things! What about the temporal and physical aspects of Jesus’ identity? He was born 2000 years ago, in Bethlehem, in a stable. And he was there at the dawn of creation, the one by whom and for whom all things were made; he was before creation and he is bigger than creation. Since eternity he has resided in heaven, waited on by angels. On a particular day in history, in a particular town on this earth, Mary gave birth, and the newborn baby was wrapped in strips of cloth and laid in a manger.
Who is Jesus?
People have been trying to make sense of the answer to this question for two millennia. The Bible has a lot to say about who Jesus is…his mother, his Father, his birth in history, and his eternal existence. It took a few centuries, but the church pretty much settled on the key points of how all this fits together when it developed the Nicene Creed (which many of you have probably heard of) and the Definition of Chalcedon (which most of you probably haven’t heard of).
I believe “in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made; who for us men and our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man, and crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried, and the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father; And He shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead; Whose kingdom shall have no end.” (from the Nicene Creed)
Jesus “is of the same reality of God as far as his deity is concerned and of the same reality we are ourselves as far as his humanness is concerned; thus like us in all respects, sin only excepted. Before time began he was begotten of the Father, in respect of his deity, and now in these ‘last days’, for us and on behalf of our salvation, this selfsame one was born of Mary the virgin, who is God-bearer in respect of his humanness. … The distinctiveness of each nature is not nullified by the union.” (from the Definition of Chalcedon)
In other words, Jesus is the Second Person of the Trinity, fully God and fully human. The phrase—Second Person of the Trinity—does not appear anywhere in the Bible, but it is the church’s best understanding of who Jesus is when all that the Bible teaches is brought together.
That’s an important point. The doctrine of the Trinity does not appear, fully developed, anywhere in the Bible. But that doesn’t mean that the church made it up. The Trinity is the church’s best understanding of the one God, who has revealed himself to us as Father, as Son, and as Holy Spirit, when all that the Bible teaches is brought together. The church didn’t make up the idea that Jesus is the Second Person of the Trinity, fully God and fully human, either. That is the church’s best understanding of who Jesus is when all that the Bible teaches is brought together.
Over the centuries, there have been those who have been unsatisfied with this understanding of who Jesus is. Some have decided that it just doesn’t make sense, no matter what the Bible teaches, and they have preferred an explanation that makes more sense to them. Some haven’t been able to comprehend how God could possibly suffer, so they have concluded that Jesus wasn’t really human and didn’t really suffer. Some haven’t been able to comprehend how God could lower himself so far as to become one of his finite, weak creatures, so they have concluded that Jesus wasn’t really God but merely a spirit-filled human. Some have concluded that if they can’t quite get their minds around the three-in-one nature of God, then it must not be so, and they have concluded that Jesus was a divine creature—higher than the angels but lower than God. Some have decided that one being can’t have two natures, so Jesus must have been either human or divine but not both. Some have concluded that if his mother is Mary and his Father is God, then Jesus must be a man-God hybrid—half human, half divine. Some have appealed to a source of revelation other than the Bible, and based on some other, more recent, writing, they have concluded that Jesus is not the fully divine, fully human Second Person of the Trinity.
Over the centuries, the church has examined all of these ideas, and more, and discarded them because they are not true to what the Bible teaches. The church’s best understanding of who Jesus is when all that the Bible teaches is brought together is this: Jesus is the Second Person of the Trinity, fully God and fully human.
Errors haven’t gone away altogether though. Every so often, they turn up in one form or another to confuse and mislead. It’s important to know the truth, because errors can have devastating results. It’s important to know the truth about who Jesus is, because what Jesus does is all wrapped up in who he is.
Jesus is able to be our Savior—the One through whom we are reconciled to God—because he is fully God and fully human. If Jesus is less than fully God, then he cannot bear the weight of all the world’s sin and his death is insufficient to pay the price; if he is not God than he cannot unite us with God. If Jesus is less than fully human, then he cannot stand in as our representative, our Redeemer, and take the weight of humanity’s sin; if Jesus is not human than he cannot reconcile us to God.
There are lots and lots of details about which Christians of good faith can differ. Presbyterians and Methodists and Catholics and Eastern Orthodox and Baptists and Pentecostals and other Christians can differ on the details without questioning one another’s identity as Christians. But there is a boundary. There is a boundary, defined by a few key points. Inside the boundary, there is lots of room for disagreement about the details…how we should baptize, what exactly do the bread and the wine mean, how important are the gifts of the Spirit and how do they work, … When one steps outside of that boundary, however, one steps outside of the bounds of biblical, historical Christianity.
One of those key points that defines this boundary is the identity of Jesus—that he is the Second Person of the Trinity, fully God, fully human.
It’s important to know the truth and have some familiarity with the errors, so that you are not led astray, and so that you can be of assistance should God bring across your path one who is confused or deceived—not so that we can condemn, but so that we can witness to the truth with compassion.
In the rest of this sermon, I will give you a short introduction to some of the most important errors over the centuries. Many of these first appeared more than a thousand years ago, but they continue to reappear. Many modern cults that claim the name of Jesus in one way, shape, or form, but who fall outside of the broad boundary of the Christian faith, have been deceived through a variation of one or more of these errors.
I’m going to be mentioning a lot of terms—the ‘official’ names of these different errors. Don’t worry too much about that. You don’t need to know the names. But it will be helpful, I think, if you are familiar with the basic ideas. You don’t have to remember the name of an error to recognize it when you see it.
One of the distortions of the truth is called docetism. Docetism is the idea that Jesus was divinity taking on human appearance. God came to earth, taking the outward appearance of humanity, but not actually being human.
Another distortion is called monadism. Monadism is the idea that God is a single unit, not a Trinity. Father, Son, and Spirit are not three distinct personalities who dwell in eternal relationship with one another. Instead, Father, Son, and Spirit are seen as simply three different ways that God manifests himself in the world. Sometimes he looks like Father to us. Sometimes he looks like Son to us. Sometimes he looks like Spirit to us.
Another early error was the idea that God took on these three identities in succession. At the beginning of creation, he acted as Father. Then, at the birth of Jesus, God took on the identity of Son. Then, after Christ’s ascension, God took on the identity of Holy Spirit. This is clearly not biblical. Recall the very first page of the Bible where both the Spirit of God and the Word of God have parts to play in bringing about creation.
Another distortion is called modalism. Modalism is the idea that the three persons of the triune God can be identified according to their separate roles, i.e. Father creates, Son redeems, Spirit sustains. This is a tricky distortion, because to some degree it is true. The Father is primarily the One who creates. The Son is the One whom we call Redeemer. The Spirit is the One who dwells within us as our Comforter and Guide. Nevertheless, biblically these roles cannot be entirely separated. The Son and the Spirit were with the Father during creation. It was by the Son and for the Son that creation was made. It was the Spirit who swept over the face of the waters. The three persons of the Trinity shared in the task of creation. Similarly, the Father and the Spirit share with the Son in the task of Redeeming, and the Father and the Son share with the Spirit in the task of Sustaining.
Arianism is named after a man named Arius who lived in the fourth century. Arius asserted that the divine Christ, the Word through whom all things have their existence, was created by God before the beginning of time. He taught that Christ was a divine creature, but nevertheless a creature and subordinate to the Father. The Nicene Creed was written in response to this error. Christ is not a creature, but an eternal member of the triune God. To say otherwise would be to deny that Christ is the full revelation of God. To say otherwise would be to render salvation in Christ impossible because creatures cannot be saved by another creature.
Apollinaris was another early church theologian. He argued that Jesus was human in his physical body but divine in his mind or intellect; that is, Jesus was a merger between humanity and divinity, resulting in something not quite all human and not quite all God either. The church rejected this teaching as in contradiction to the Bible, which teaches that Jesus was not half and half, but all God and all human.
An error which finds new popularity in every generation, it seems, is the idea that Jesus was not divine but was a Spirit-filled human. According to this idea, Jesus is no more divine than the rest of us, he was just really, really in tune with God. This idea does not do justice to all the biblical texts that assert that Jesus Christ is God. Also, if Jesus was no more than a Spirit-filled human than he could not in fact be the revelation of God himself to humankind, which is a central belief within Christianity.
Over the centuries, the church has examined all of these ideas, and more, and discarded them because they are not true to what the Bible teaches. The church’s best understanding of who Jesus is when all that the Bible teaches is brought together is this: Jesus is the Second Person of the Trinity, fully God and fully human.
Jesus is able to be our Savior—the One through whom we are reconciled to God—because he is fully God and fully human. If Jesus is less than fully God, then he cannot bear the weight of all the world’s sin and his death is insufficient to pay the price; if he is not God than he cannot unite us with God. If Jesus is less than fully human, then he cannot stand in as our representative, our Redeemer, and take the weight of humanity’s sin; if Jesus is not human than he cannot reconcile us to God.
Jesus is Immanuel, God-with-us.
