Incarnation Series. Jesus is God

Transcription

1 Jesus is God The doctrine of the incarnation is about putting together two characteristics of Jesus Christ: Jesus is divine, and Jesus is also human. The Bible clearly tells us that Jesus is both God and a man. This leaves us with a puzzle about how a person can be both, but we ll save that for another day. Before we grapple with that, there is something more practical to tackle: we need to think about how Jesus divinity and humanity invite us into relating to him, trusting him, and understanding his life. Today we ll start with his divinity, looking at some of what the Bible says about Jesus, and thinking through what his divinity means for us. The Word is God The Bible plainly states that Jesus is God. One of the most striking statements comes at the beginning of John, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John directs us to the point before anything else, before time, space, or creation when all there was, was God and tells us that there we find the Word. In a few verses time John reveals that the Word being talked about is none other than the person his contemporaries knew as Jesus. The Word is not the first thing that God makes but is there with God before creating even gets started. In fact, the Word is the agent through whom everything that is created gets made (read v. 3). This is bold stuff! Being the creator, and performing actions like creating everything, are definitely divine characteristics. It would be a mistake to claim that anyone other than God could do these things. John is trying to help us see that Jesus isn t just close to God but really is divine, and always has been. Actually, this is a good way to explore the question of whether Jesus is God: to ask whether he shares the characteristics we know God has. We ve already skipped another couple. The Word exists before time, space and matter, sharing the divine characteristics of eternality and being immaterial (or as we would normally say: being spirit and not made of stuff). Just in case we were confused, John s opening line clears it up for us with a clear identity statement of who the word is, the Word was God. Doing God s work Let s look for a few more examples of Jesus showing us his divine characteristics. Jesus claims to be sent by the God the Father, to do the Father s work. Lots of Jesus works and miracles even point to his divinity by expressing different aspects of the nature of God. In John 5:17 there are two ways he claims to be equal with God through associating with God s work, My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working. There s a sense in which you or I could claim to be working on God s mission. But Jesus was claiming something much more provocative. God the Father worked to create everything, and continues to work as the authoritative architect who guides, superintends, cares for, and rules over creation. This sort of work is something only God can do. Jesus effectively says, me too! He claims to have the same position, the same authority and to exercise the same divine rights. What really tweaked the minds of his listeners was that he called God his Father. This was a claim of

2 intimacy, and of a family bloodline connection. Employees, servants, and so on enjoy a special privilege through connection with a family, but a real son, can naturally lay claim to the same rights, position and privilege as the head of the family. Other people that followed God we adopted into that relationship by a covenant agreement a sort of contract. Jesus claims that he has this connection in a more direct way: because of who he really is. If you keep reading, you ll see that they were insulted by Jesus claim, and wanted to kill him for being a heretic and if he was not divine, then heresy it was! We don t have space to look at one other important aspect of how we know Jesus fits with the divine nature. That is prophecy: prophecy is God revealing himself by his reaction to what is current, and projection to what will be future, all as part of his unfolding storyline that is history. Prophecy develops a pattern, a blueprint, of what God is like and what we can expect. And Jesus is the only one to fit this pattern exactly and in every way. Accepting God s glory A characteristic that God has, and protects, is being the object glory. This means he is rightly worshipped, prayed to, believed in, and so on. One of the things we notice about angels, prophets, miracle workers, and all sorts of other people that represent God, is that when people are amazed by their works or teachings, they always point back to God. If someone kneels down to worship them, they call out, Don t do that! Worship God! (Rev 22:9) But Jesus, although he acknowledges that he does what he does in partnership with the Father and the Spirit, is quite happy to accept the sort of glory that people offer to God. He even says that he has always had this glory since the beginning (John 17:24). Let s look at a couple of examples. In John 14:1 Jesus makes himself the object of faith, Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. This sort of faith is to be placed in a higher power, and if it is to be faith that won t ever fail, it needs to be placed in the highest power. Jesus says that the same sort of expectations we have of God the Father, we can have of Jesus. How could this be, unless Jesus is also powerful, loving, faithful true, etc.? Not only does Jesus accept faith, but also worship this is a big problem if you are not God! God doesn t share worship (Isa 42:8, Ex 34:14), not because he is petty minded but because to worship anyone who is not God is a mistake. In Matt 28:17 Jesus is worshipped by the disciples, When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Thomas worships Jesus when he realized that he has risen from the dead (John 20:28), and the disciples worshipped him in the boat after he calmed the storm (Matt 14:33). Jesus life even began with worship, as the wise me came to honor his birth. If Jesus is not God, the first thing he should be doing in these situations is following the example of every other human and angel: to stop them and turn their worship to God. But Jesus does not. Let s look at one more instance of Jesus participating in divine glory. It happens in Luke 5:26, Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, We have seen remarkable things today.

3 Jesus heals a paralyzed man who was lowered through the roof by his friends. Actually, Jesus first forgives the man s sins. This gets everyone thinking, because only God has this authority. Jesus helps them see that he does have divine authority by then healing the man! But notice the way people responded to this: they gave praise to God. This is a theme in the gospels, with lots of people who are healed, or see Jesus working, praising and worshipping God. Jesus shares this outflow of worship, participating in being the one who is being revered and elevated. When the disciples miraculously heal someone in Acts 3, and they jump around praising God, they are quick to point out that they should not be elevated, because they didn t heal God did! We don t have space to look at more now, but there is lots to explore. Jesus reveals his divine identity with themes like claiming to have the same home base as God: heaven (John 6); doing works that only God can do, like giving life (John 5); and by using the names and identities of God something that John gets us thinking about with Jesus I am statements (we ll cover this in a later piece). What did Jesus say? Jesus said that he was God. There are quite a few crazy or deceptive people that have claimed this. But Jesus is different, because his teaching was accompanied by signs that God used to authenticate his life and message (John 21:25). This culminates in the ultimate vindication of the truth of his claims that God raised him from the dead! The Jews Jesus was trying to reach didn t think about God as a trinity (we ll do a series on the trinity in the future). So, it was difficult for Jesus to be explicit in ways that we might anticipate he would. But there are times when Jesus makes an explicit statement about his own divinity. As the disciples wrestle with who Jesus is, things come to a climax as he asks them what they think. Peter gives a definite answer Matt 16:16, You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Jesus responds by affirming that Peter has hit the nail on the head so much so that Jesus encourages him that God himself has revealed this truth to Peter. The same question about Jesus identity comes up again at the end of his life. When he is on trial before the Jewish authorities in Mark 14:61 we have this exchange, Again the high priest asked him, Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One? I am, said Jesus. This was an ultra-provocative way to answer, since not only does it communicate a simple yes, but I am is one of the most guarded and special names of God, reserved only for him. This is why they felt justified for condemning him to death. To say this if you are not God, would be blasphemy of the worst sort. Although there are lots we could unpack, let s have just one more. In John 10 Jesus is in Jerusalem, and everyone is waiting with baited breadth, asking him for a plain answer to their question about who he was. So, does he give them a straight answer? Well, he says that he has already said and demonstrated through his works who he is. But even though their rejection of these things identifies a problem they have, he still says more (v. 30), I and the Father are one.

4 This is a way of clearly saying I am God in terms that they could understand. It was such a bold, unguarded way of saying it that they immediately picked up stones to kill him for blasphemy. How divine is Jesus? So, Jesus claimed to be God, and reflects divinity in his words and works. Jesus accepts the glory of God through faith, prayer and worship. The Bible even explicitly states that Jesus is God and we only scratched the surface by looking at the beginning of John. As the Holy Spirit used Paul and others to write the rest of the New Testament, the question of who (and what) Jesus is, comes more into focus. There are enough places to unpack to fill several large books! Some later releases in this series will dive into some of this, but there is one important piece of the puzzle for us to look at here. In Colossians Paul is talking about how amazing Jesus is, and in 1:19 he says, For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him This is a staggering statement to make! It would be quite unsurprising to say that in God, we find all of God. Just like saying that in Han Solo, we find all of who Han Solo is there aren t any bits left over tucked away in a drawer, and nobody else has borrowed a bit of who he is and run off with it. If you want to know and understand Han Solo: look at Han Solo. That s a fairly normal thing to say. But Paul is saying that when God the Son emptied himself (Phil 2) and took on human form, expressing his divine person solely through an ordinary human life, he was still able to fully express who God is! If I became a bunny rabbit I would not be able to fully express who I was: something would get left out. But God is able to fully express himself in this human form of Jesus. On one hand this is a statement about just how divine Jesus is. Jesus is one hundred percent divine. When God the Son becomes a human being nothing of God s heart, intentions, love or wisdom gets left out. Jesus is such a perfect high-point of God communicating himself to us that Jesus can be the anchor for us exploring who God is. When we are asking what God is like, and trying to put together all the information the Bible provides, Jesus provides a foundation to ground us as we make sense of the rest. Since he is completely God we can respect Jesus like we do God; listen to him like we do to God, appreciate him like we do God; and trust him like we do God. When Jesus sacrifices himself for us, God is sacrificing; when Jesus is raised to life and ascends to heaven head of us, God is going ahead of us to show us our destiny. All that Jesus accomplishes is not just a human attempt at reconciliation and redemption (like so many other religions) it is God himself accomplishing these things. And that makes it so much more powerful and secure, grounding our identity, story and destiny in God and his story and actions. But on the other hand, this is a statement about God being able to express all of this through the medium of humanity. This is the mystery of the incarnation: that God is able to communicate one hundred percent of himself through humanness. That this is possible should perhaps not be entirely surprising. After all, in the beginning of Genesis we see that humankind were created for the purpose of relating to God, being made in his image and likeness. In our brokenness, we feel a long way from this, as if communion with God is not really a possibility. But Jesus came in the

5 likeness of sinful flesh (Rom 8:3), and re-casts what is possible, renewing our vision for what is possible for humanity that communion with God is a real possibility here and now! Responding to Jesus divinity Jesus divinity is something that can be really meaningful to us. That God would go to such extreme lengths to express himself as to squeeze everything of himself into human form teaches us about God s heart to reach us. God is so desperate for the communion and relationship that he created us for, that even when we are lost, broken and far from him, he will go to extreme lengths to communicate himself to us. To become just like the person you are trying to reach is the ultimate expression of how to lovingly connect with someone, and to remove as many barriers as possible to a deep connection. Although God is magnificent, and far above anything we can even imagine, his heart is not to be aloof, or a transcendent far-off God. Jesus full divinity shows us God s heart to expose all of himself to us, which is a deep expression of loving vulnerability. By fully expressing himself in human form, God also elevates humanity. This is a staggering example of what is possible for humanity. We are not some frail, insignificant pawn in creation s machinations. But we are a vessel designed to bear the full image of God, with a capacity to connect with God without limit. Out of all of creation, only humanity has this possibility. Jesus divinity inspires us about what is possible, giving us vision for what we were designed for. But more than that, Jesus life and work actually pave the way to get us there, opening a path for us to renew the partnership with God we were created for and achieve something amazing through God s empowering relationship. Lastly, understanding that Jesus is fully God sets the tone for how we relate to him. When Jesus teaches, we can listen as if God himself is speaking with absolute authority and power because that is precisely what is happening. Because Jesus is God, we follow him as a disciple, but with a respect and reverence that goes far beyond being a disciple of a mere human being. We are following God himself, which is a surprising possibility even, and a great responsibility that we approach in the fear of the Lord (though, because God is so good and gracious, he supplies everything we need to meet this responsibility). We can relate to Jesus as a worshipper. Jesus is not just a great moral man, or inspiring social visionary he is God. So, we can throw all our worship towards him: adoring him with radical abandon, trusting him with absolute vulnerability, and following him in a relationship that will never disappoint. Study Questions We have only begun to unpack Jesus divinity and its significance. Here are a couple of questions that would be great to discuss in a small group to continue exploring this more after reading this article. Emmanuel Jesus is God with us, revealing himself fully to us. This expresses God heart to be with us. Look at John 14:15-21 where Jesus talks about sending the Holy Spirit. Is there a connection between

6 God s heart to be with expressed in the incarnation, and what Jesus expresses in these verses? Can you think of any other places where this theme of being with is expressed? Dwelling The incarnation is described in Colossians as dwelling in human form (see John 1:14 as well). This is part of a theme stretching throughout the Bible. God dwelt in the midst of his people by manifesting himself in the tabernacle and temple. Look up the following places where the New Testament talks about dwelling : John 14:23, John 15:4, Eph 3: How does what we have learned about this incarnation connect with what is said about God dwelling with us? Incarnational intimacy Read John 17:20-24 and think about the quality of relationship and intimacy Jesus invites us into with himself, the Spirit and the Father (you might want to look up Col 2:9-10 as well). How does what we have looked at in the incarnation affect how we understand the sort of relationship we hope to have with God?