Jesus, Son of God Brentwood Baptist Church TNT October 18, 2017
The incarnation is an essential Christian doctrine.
1 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 All things were created through Him, and apart from Him not one thing was created that has been created. 4 Life was in Him, and that life was the light of men.... 14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father s only son, full of grace and truth. John 1.1-4, 14, HCSB
What can we know about the humanity of Jesus?
And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and with people. Luke 2.52, HCSB During His earthly life, He offered prayers and appeals with loud cries and tears to the One who was able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverence. Though He was God s Son, He learned obedience through what He suffered. After He was perfected, He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him.... Hebrews 5.7-9, HCSB
What can we know about the divinity of Jesus?
6 who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be used for His own advantage. 7 Instead He emptied Himself by assuming the form of a slave, taking on the likeness of men. And when He had come as a man in His external form, 8 He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death even to death on a cross.
9 For this reason God highly exalted Him and gave Him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth 11 and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2.6-11, HCSB
Death and Resurrection
Three Key Stories The Death Drama (Mark 14.32-15.47 The Confusion (Luke 24.1-53) The Story (1 Cor. 15.1-11)
Common Heresies
Docetism this heresy comes from the Greek word dokeo which means to seem. The idea is that Jesus only seemed to be human but he was fully divine. He was not actually tempted, he did not actually suffer, and he did not actually die. He only appeared to do so. This belief was common among Gnostics (a good term to look up in a theological dictionary because they were a prominent group in the early Church) and the early church theologian Irenaeus specifically addressed this heresy in Against Heresies (c. 180 CE) (Available in the Early Church Fathers www.ccel.org link). Even today when people refuse to believe that Jesus could have been tempted or actually suffer they engage in docetism.
Adoptionism this heresy is the opposite of Docetism. It holds that Jesus was a very special human being who was adopted by God as God s son at Jesus baptism. This perspective of Jesus calls for people to follow God as Jesus followed him and eliminates the idea that Jesus was co-equal with God. It exists today among Unitarians and some liberal Protestant Christians who resist the deity of Jesus Christ.
Arianism you will remember the discussion of Arianism from the conversation about the Trinity. Arius (d. 336 CE) taught that there once was a time when Jesus was not and that he was created by God. He denied that Jesus was eternal. This heresy takes modern form in the theology of Jehovah s Witnesses today.
Apollinarianism This heresy is commonly called God in a bod as way of visualizing how it believes God inside a human body. The problem with this heresy is that which God in the body of Jesus did not effect could not be saved.
Nestorianism In this heresy Jesus is two-in-one. The natures do not meet where the divine nature performed the divine actions and the human nature experienced the human actions.
Eutychianism or Monophysitism A phrase often used to describe this idea is Jesus humanity was like a drop of wine in the ocean of his divinity. While he had been human had been overcome by his divinity. This notion of Jesus still exists in some small groups of churches in the middle-east.
Council of Chalcedon (451 CE) We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable [rational] soul and body; consubstantial [coessential] with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, according to the Manhood;
Council of Chalcedon (451 CE) one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the prophets from the beginning [have declared] concerning him, and the Lord Jesus Christ himself has taught us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us.
The hypostatic union is the belief in a perfect union of two distinct but never separate natures one human and one divine in one integral, eternal divine person. Roger Olson, The Mosaic of Christian Belief, p. 227.
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/creeds2.iv.i.iii.html
How would you describe Jesus in thirty seconds or less?
Incarnation Scriptures Colossians 1:15 20; 2:9 Hebrews 1:2-8 Romans 1:3-4; 8:3-4; 9:5; 10:9 Galatians 4:4-7 Philippians 2:6, 9-11 Titus 2:13 I Corinthians 8:6 2 Corinthians 8:9 (reference to incarnation); 13:14 (Trinitarian reference) Revelation 1:12-18; 22:13, 16
Incarnation Scriptures Matthew 1:23; 28:19 Mark 2:5-7 Luke 1:35 John 1:1,3,10, 14, 18; 5:18; 8:56-58; 10:30; 14:9; 20:28 I Am statements in John: 6:35; 8:12; 8:58; 10:7; 10:11; 14:6; 15:1