Category: Theology: Thinking Deeply About God and His Relation to the World

Who is God? What is He like? What has He done?

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Explaining the Mystery of Who Jesus Is and Why It Matters

It no doubt seems strange to us today to talk about a human being as also being God, and yet that is what we celebrate at Christmas time. We must also remember that this might not have seemed strange to the people of Jesus’ time and day. They believed that human beings were gods or became gods or were appearances of the gods (see Acts 14:8–20 for an example).

The problem for the early Christians was that they believed that there was only one God, so Jesus could not be a sort of lesser god that appeared in human form. The early Christians emphatically rejected that possibility at the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325. Its conclusion was that Jesus was “begotten from the Father before all ages, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made; of the same essence as the Father.”

One possibility, then, was that Jesus was the appearance of God in a different role, just as I am a son, a father, and a brother. The problem is that the Bible clearly presented Jesus as interacting with the Father as another person and as sending the Spirit as another person. So, they rejected the idea that there was only one person in God. In the words of the ancient Athanasian Creed, “we worship one God in trinity and the trinity in unity, neither blending their persons nor dividing their essence. For the person of the Father is a distinct person, the person of the Son is another, and that of the Holy Spirit still another. But the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one, their glory equal, their majesty coeternal.”

With that cleared up, the question became: how are the human and divine united in Jesus? One possibility was that there were two persons in Jesus. The trouble with this is that the Bible clearly teaches that the eternal Son of God became a human being. Jesus is a “He” not a “they.” So, there is one person in Jesus, the second person of the Trinity.

By the end of the 4th century, there was little dispute that Jesus had a divine nature, but what about his human nature? Was it a real human nature? Did it become a sort of mixture of divine and human when Jesus became incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary?

The early Christians saw that it was necessary that Jesus be a real human in order to represent us, sympathize with us, and carry out our salvation. They also knew that Jesus had ate, slept, wept, walked, and talked as a real human being. So, they insisted that Jesus had a real and full human nature, body and soul.

At the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451, the leaders of the church adopted this explanation of the incarnation as capturing the fullness of the biblical testimony. Jesus was “recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ.”

The Church gradually gained clarity on the truths we confess today that Jesus Christ is the second person of the Trinity, the eternal Son of God, who became a real human being in order to bring us to eternal salvation.

What is the significance of all this? Charles Hodge says it well in his Systematic Theology:

Although the divine nature is immutable and impassible, and therefore neither the obedience nor the suffering of Christ was the obedience or suffering of the divine nature, yet they were none the less the obedience and suffering of a divine person. The soul of man cannot be wounded or burnt, but when the body is injured it is the man who suffers. In like manner the obedience of Christ was the righteousness of God, and the blood of Christ was the blood of God. It is to this fact that the infinite merit and efficiency of his work are due. This is distinctly asserted in the Scriptures. It is impossible, says the Apostle, that the blood of bulls and of goats could take away sin. It was because Christ was possessed of an eternal Spirit that He by the one offering of Himself hath perfected forever them who are sanctified. This is the reason given why the sacrifice of Christ need never be repeated, and why it is infinitely more efficacious than those of the old dispensation. This truth has been graven on the hearts of believers in all ages. Every such believer says from his heart, “Jesus, my God, thy blood alone has power sufficient to atone.”

Martin Luther explains the same point from a slightly different angle:

We Christians must know that if God is not also in the balance and gives the weight, we sink to the bottom with our scale. By this I mean: If it were not to be said, God has died for us, but only a man, we should be lost. But if “God’s death” and “God died” lie in the scale of the balance, then He sinks down, and we rise up as a light, empty scale. But, indeed, He can also rise again or leap out of the scale; yet He could not sit in the scale unless He became a man like us.

The point is that Christ’s humanity enables Him to take our place and suffer in our place and His divinity gives Him the power and merit to overcome what our sin deserved.

When properly understood, the implications of Jesus’ incarnation are wonderful beyond compare. It calls us to understand that God wants to connect with us. It also warns us that our sin and separation from God is no small problem, since it required the God-man to solve it. But it also assures us that since the God-man is the solution to our problem, then the solution is complete. We have a full and complete restoration and salvation that we merely need to receive by faith.

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Accepting the Most Important Relationship You’ll Ever Have

At Christmas time, we celebrate the greatest gift that God has ever given: His own Son. But what does that gift have to do with us? We need to receive that gift. What does it mean to receive the gift of Jesus?

First, to receive Jesus means that we accept the claims Jesus makes about Himself. He claims to be the Savior of the world. Do we believe that this is true? That’s not an easy decision. It’s something we have to think about deeply.

Why would anyone believe that this Man is the Creator and Savior of the world? One of the most powerful arguments is from the fact that so many agree that Jesus is a good and valuable teacher of humanity. It would be easy to put him alongside all of the teachers of humanity and say that He is just another great one.

The trouble is that Jesus has not left that option open to us. As C.S. Lewis, himself an atheist who eventually received Jesus, said:

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 one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of thing Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on a 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.

How can we put together His astounding influence and the positive good that He brings with the seemingly wild claims about His own power, authority, and divinity? I would encourage you to consider this for yourself.

Second, to receive Jesus means that we want Jesus to save us. We believe that He is the source of light, life, forgiveness, and eternal blessing. We accept Him as the one who will give that to us.

John describes this in a variety of ways to help us understand it. For example, he quotes Jesus as saying, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35). Again, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). Jesus also said, “I am the gate for the sheep, whoever enters through me will be saved” (John 10:9). All these are ways of saying that we have to receive Jesus and commit ourselves to Him by an act of faith.

Third, to receive Jesus means to accept His leadership. In John 8:12 He says, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” In the days in which Jesus was on earth, people would follow Jesus around and listen to Him. We cannot literally do that now, but we can accept His guidance and teaching through His Word together with His people. That’s what it means to receive Jesus.

Accepting Jesus is about accepting Him in all that He is. One of those things is the Lord of the Universe. When we receive Jesus, we are saying that we accept that leadership.

That’s what believers mean when they say that we receive Jesus. In many ways, it’s a very simple act that anyone can do at any time. At the same time, the implications of receiving Him are staggering and life-changing.

Wherever you are in your journey, I hope that you will consider Jesus’ claims this year and the hope that He provides that we remember in the Christmas season.

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Jesus as Logos (the Word)

When the early Christians tried to reflect on the man Jesus, they knew they could not describe Him as a mere man. They believed that this man born of a woman had existed long before He came into the world. At the same time, there were not polytheists. So, how could they think and explain what Jesus was? When John, a close associate and follower of Jesus, thought about it, he found a word ready at hand “logos” or “the word” (used interchangeably in this article).

Logos is a Greek word that was commonly used in the ancient world to describe the principle of existence or most basic form of reality. The Greek word can refer simply to a “word,” but it was also used as a specialized philosophical term. According to D.A. Carson, the Stoics, as one example, “understood logos to be the rational principle by which everything exists, and which is of the essence of the rational human soul. As far as they were concerned, there is no other god than logos . . .” (The Gospel According to John [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1991], 114). This is similar to what other philosophers taught throughout the Mediterranean world.

At the same time, this use of “word” is not alien to the biblical revelation either. Reflecting on the beginning of the world as described in Genesis, we have God speaking the world into existence. His word makes the world. As the Psalmist describes it, “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth” (Psalm 33:6).

Another possible reference of logos is found in the wisdom literature of the Bible. In Proverbs 8, wisdom is personified as being present with God at the beginning of the world: “I was there . . . when he marked out the foundations of the earth. Then I was constantly at his side” (Prov. 8:29-30, NIV).

So, this word was in use by Greeks and Jews to describe the basic principle of the world and the means by which creation came into existence. Commentator Albert Barnes concluded based on this: “The term was therefore extensively in use among the Jews and Gentiles before John wrote his Gospel, and it was certain that it would be applied to the Second Person of the Trinity by Christians. whether converted from Judaism or Paganism.”

One thing that is significant about the choice of this term is that John had no problem taking a term used by pagan philosophy to explain who Jesus was. For the many in his day who were familiar with the idea of the logos, the use of this word would have had a rich connotation indeed.

At the same time, John did not feel bound to use the term in the exact way used by the philosophical schools. In his use of the word logos, he went on to explain what he meant by the term.

He said that the logos was with God in the beginning. Lest someone think that the logos was something distinct from God or created by God, he immediately adds, “The Word was God,” or, in the order of the Greek: “God was the Word.”

John emphasized the divine nature of the Word in what He said next. The Word created all things. All things were made by Him, and, without Him, nothing was made that was made. Every created thing is made by the Word.

The Word also did not simply create and then leave the world. “In Him was life, and the life was the light of human beings” (in terminology very familiar to Greek philosophy). He is not only the Creator, He is also the Sustainer of all life.

This is an astonishing claim. What John is saying is that Jesus who came as a human being is the very God of the universe who created all things and sustains all things. Even if a person had not met Jesus as a man, they are aware of Him because He created them and is the source of their life.

For those who did know Jesus as a man, they could take comfort in the fact that He was already at work in all places. Every good thing they encountered in the world was the result of Jesus as Creator and Sustainer of human life. “In Him was life, and that life was the light of human beings.”

The words of John are deep and profound. They challenge believer and unbeliever alike to consider the challenge and wonder of Jesus. When John used the word Logos to describe Jesus, His listeners would have leaned in with curiosity. It can still make us do the same, if we have ears to listen.

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Pinecone Podcast: Reformation Day & Justification by Faith Alone

I’ve started doing a podcast with two great people, Art Stump and Lacie Shingleton. In this week’s episode, we talk about Reformation Day and the doctrine of justification by faith alone. In this podcast, we discuss what justification by faith alone means, how Luther re-discovered it, why it is so important, and how this fits with Christians doing good works. Listen to it by clicking here.

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We Will Be Immortal

The New Testament is a book written in the context of the world of Greeks and Romans. For the Greeks and Romans, there were two types of “people” (or rational beings) in the universe. There were the mortals and the immortals.

The immortals were those who could not die and possessed great power and abilities. Mortals were human beings on earth. The line dividing mortals and immortals was porous. Those who did great deeds or possessed exceptional beauty or skills on earth could become immortal. For example, the Roman Senate usually “deified” the Emperors, which meant that they were recognized as now having a life with the immortal gods.

In his letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul wrote, “For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.” I have no doubt that the Corinthians would have thought of the distinction between mortals and immortals when the leaders of the church read this letter to them.

So, when the Apostle Paul said, “I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable” (1 Cor. 15:50), this would have made complete sense to the Corinthian Gentiles. It did not mean that the physical body was bad. It meant that the kingdom of God was a place for those who were changed into immortals.

In the movie Thor, Oden casts Thor out of Asgaard, and Thor becomes a mortal in a flash, in a twinkling of the eye. The Apostle Paul envisions something like this but in reverse when he contemplates our destiny: “We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet” (51b-52a). This would have made sense to the Corinthians as well.

In spite of the similarities between the conceptions of Greek culture and Paul’s description of the end time event, there were significant differences as well.

First, in the Greek view, humans became immortal at death. In Paul’s view, immortality begins with Jesus. Jesus was not declared immortal or a god upon His death. He rose from the dead. He obtained immortality by conquering death (note, by the way, that the word Paul uses for conquering death is the word, “victory” [Greek: nikos (or in the feminine, nike!]).

Second, people become immortal at the end of the time. Jesus raises those who are dead or changes those who are living to be like Him in His glorious immorality. It occurs at what Paul calls “the last trumpet.”

Third, it is not only the great leaders or kings who become immortal, it is all people who believe in Jesus. “For as in Adam all die, so all in Christ shall be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:22). It is not our great deeds that bring about our immortality but the great deeds of Jesus Christ.

At the same time, like the Greek heroes, the Christian’s immortality follows upon labor. This should encourage us that no matter how difficult things may be or how little results we may see, the result of the Christian life is eternal glory. “Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain” (1 Cor. 15:58). The glory of immortality awaits!

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