The Deity and Humanity of Christ

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Transcript:

If you have ever gotten in your car to leave after church and head home and said, man, that preacher does not know what he’s talking about. Today might be one of those days. Because to be honest with you, what we’re going to talk about this morning is something that I don’t fully understand, which has got to be reassuring for y’all, right?

I don’t watch the late night talk shows very much, but sometimes they’ll be on because we’ll watch the news and then nobody wants to get up and change the channel. We’re all doing other things. But there is one thing that I really enjoy, which is one of those comedians does something called lie witness news.

And you might have seen this, where they will go out on the streets of New York City outside the studio and they will interview people about fake news stories. And it’ll be something, I was trying to think this morning, because I laugh so hard at these that I think I’m going to black out. But I was trying to think this morning, could not remember an example off the top of my head, but it’ll be something like, along the lines of President Obama this week appointed Dave Thomas of Wendy’s to be Secretary of Defense.

And I’ll ask people what they think about that. Okay, first of all, he didn’t do that. Second of all, Dave Thomas is dead.

And that’s just an example. I don’t remember that being one. But it’ll be something like that.

It’s something that never happened. These people didn’t hear it on the news, but it doesn’t stop them from pretending they know something about it and acting like it’s a real thing. And it just makes me think every time, you know, a lot of things people don’t know about, but it doesn’t stop them from having an opinion.

When I say I don’t fully understand the topic of this morning’s message, it’s not going to be like lie witness news where I’m here chattering away about, Well, yes, I think it was a bad idea that Obama appointed Dave Thomas to be Secretary of Defense. Talking about something I have absolutely no idea about. We talked last week about the difference between comprehending and apprehending something when we talked about the Trinity.

You know, I get the idea from the Bible that there’s one God. I get the idea that there are three persons who are identified as God, share the attributes of God. I get that.

I get the idea that the Bible teaches there’s one God revealed in three eternally distinct persons. I apprehend that idea. I grasp it.

But the idea of comprehending something means I fully understand it. I know the ins and outs of how that works. And if anybody tells you they comprehend the Trinity, they completely understand that they’re either God or they’re lying to you.

I mean, that’s where they misunderstand. Those are the three options. This morning, when I say I don’t fully understand the topic.

I grasp what the Bible teaches, but if you ask me to sit down and draw you a picture of how this works and explain all the ins and outs of it to you, I can’t because we’re going to be talking about the nature of Jesus Christ. And with him being God, there are things in the mind of God that are beyond our searching out. I think we would all agree that God knows more than we do, right? I hope so.

If you don’t think God knows more than you do, what are you here this morning or what are you doing here this morning wanting to hear from his word. God knows more than we do. God understands things that we don’t.

And there are some things that God says, I’m going to give you just a little information, just enough where you can grasp it, but there’s no need for me to try to explain all of this to you. For God to try to completely explain his nature and how he works and how he does things and why he does things. I’ve thought of this a lot from time to time.

For God to try to explain all of this to us in great detail would be like me trying to explain algebra to my dog. My dog might understand one, he might understand two, might even understand three. You put three treats in your pocket and give him two, and he still knows there’s something in your pocket.

That tells me dogs can count. But trying to explain algebra to my dog is way beyond his comprehension. There are some things that are outside of our comprehension when it comes to God, And yet we can grasp bits and pieces of what he teaches us about himself.

And this morning I want to talk to you about the two natures of Jesus Christ as we’re going through this series on non-negotiables. We may not be able to completely comprehend how it works that Jesus Christ is fully God, fully man, which we’ll talk about a little more in depth based on what the Bible teaches. We may not be able to understand completely how that works, but we are capable of seeing and understanding that that is what the Bible teaches, even if we don’t fully understand how it works.

It is what the Bible teaches. We’re going to talk about the nature of Christ a little bit. We’re going to talk about who he is, and we’re going to talk about why it’s a non-negotiable.

We’re going to look this morning, first of all, at John chapter 1. John chapter 1, if you want to turn there. We’ll also look a little bit at Colossians chapter 1 and Philippians chapter 2, if you want to put a bulletin or something there to mark your place for when we turn there.

I’m going to ask you to bear with me this morning. I’m having allergies, as you can probably hear up here having to clear my throat. I’ve heard some of you sneezing and coughing, so I guess it’s that time of year again.

John chapter 1, I referred to it a little bit last week in talking about the Trinity. But it says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Now, I’m going to stop right there before we go any further.

That word, Word, in some of your Bibles may be capitalized. It’s capitalized in mine. The Greek word there is logos, L-O-G-O-S.

It looks like logos. The Greek word is logos. It doesn’t just mean a written or spoken word like we would say the word apple.

Okay, what word are we talking about? The word pulpit, the word piano. Not thinking about that word. There are other Greek words for those things.

The word logos has a wider meaning that we don’t convey in English. And when it talks about the Logos, when it talks about the Word, it is talking about the embodiment, the physical embodiment of the Word of God. Well, who would that be?

It goes on to explain to us in verse 14 and in some other places who the Logos or who the Word is. But the embodiment of the Word of God is Jesus Christ. We know this not only because of what it says in John chapter 1, but you look back and the fulfillment of everything that God said in the Old Testament is Jesus Christ. You look at the prophecies of the Old Testament, they’re fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Either they are fulfilled or they will be fulfilled in Jesus Christ. You look at the laws of the Old Testament, they are fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Because the law was there to point us, as Galatians tells us, to point us to the fact that we are sinners. It’s to show us how high the bar was set that we can’t reach and attain to God’s holiness.

and that holiness, that righteousness is fulfilled for us in Jesus Christ. All of the demands are fulfilled for us in Jesus Christ, all the demands of the law that we couldn’t keep for ourselves. You look at the sacrifices of the Old Testament. And I did a study on this once in Fayetteville that you go through, I think it was Leviticus chapter 1, and just in this one chapter talking about how they were to sacrifice a bull in a particular way, there were something like 11 things that pointed to the crucifixion of Christ just in that ritual sacrifice, just that one sacrifice.

You look at the history of the Old Testament, and it points to Jesus Christ. I was teaching my third through fifth graders this week in Bible. We were talking some about Isaac and Jacob and how God reaffirmed to Jacob the promise that he made to Abraham that he would make his descendants like the dust of the earth. And I told him that wasn’t a threat like we might see in some of the books of prophecy, that God might grind them into dust. It was talking about making them numerous and God telling Jacob that in your seed, all the nations of the world will be blessed.

Well, how has, how has, how have the descendants of Jacob been a blessing to all the nations of the world? Through the coming of Jesus Christ, through the coming of Jesus Christ, who offers salvation, not just to the Jews, but also to the Gentiles. And so you look at the, you look at the prophecies, you look at the law, you look at the rituals, you look at the history and all of it, all of God’s word up until the coming of Jesus Christ points forward to who he was and who he was going to be.

He is the very fulfillment, the very embodiment of the word of God. And so it says, in the beginning was the word. That’s not just referring to spoken words or written words.

That’s referring to the person of Jesus Christ. In the beginning was Jesus. In the beginning was the word. And the word was with God.

And folks, the word was God. He’s not somehow a created being, as we talked about last week with the Trinity. He’s not somehow a created being that God created, and he’s still more powerful than us, but he’s still a created being, somehow inferior to God.

In the beginning was the Word. So before all of this started, Jesus Christ was there with God the Father, and the Bible says that he was God. The same was in the beginning with God.

All things were made by him. So is he any less powerful than God the Father? Not a bit, because everything was made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made.

I love sometimes where the Bible repeats itself for emphasis. God doesn’t forget that he’s already said something and repeat himself the way I do. I have people tell me, you’ve already told me this story.

I’m sorry, I can’t remember who. It’s only going to get worse, isn’t it? It’s only going to get worse.

I’m sorry, I talk so much to so many people, I can’t remember who I’ve told the story to. God doesn’t do that and forget and repeat himself. When God repeats, it’s so we know and understand God didn’t speak hastily there.

God didn’t speak rashly. God didn’t misspeak. He meant what he said and he emphasizes things.

And so when he says all things were made by him, he follows that up with, and without him was not anything that was made, was not anything made that was made. So he says, everything was made by Jesus Christ, working there in concert with God the Father. And by the way, that means nothing that was made was made without him.

So he almost challenges us to say, think of something. Yeah, he made that. Well, what about the moon?

Yeah, he made that too. The trees? Yep, that was all him.

There was nothing that was made that was made apart from him. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.

So he talks about men being in darkness, men being born into darkness, which we’ll talk about the sin nature in about two weeks, I think. But we’re in darkness collectively, individually. We’re born into darkness, into sin.

We are born because of our sin nature, not having an understanding of God or of spiritual things. We may know there’s a God, but knowing there’s a God and having an understanding of God are two different things. And the Bible says that we can look around and see creation around us and know that there’s a God, but that’s not enough for our salvation.

That’s not enough for us to actually know God because as we looked at in the last couple of weeks with Romans chapter one, How many people are there throughout the centuries and even to today who have a knowledge that there is a God out there, and yet they look around and they change and they diminish the glory of the uncorruptible God into the likeness of birds and creeping things, as the Bible says. They begin to say, yes, we know there’s something out there. There’s a God.

Let’s pray to the trees. Let’s pray to the birds. Let’s pray to the moon.

And they change the glory of God into something corruptible. And so we’re able to know that there’s a God and yet our minds, our spirits are darkened. And yet the Bible says that Jesus came and he’s shown this light among men and the darkness comprehended it not.

Does that mean they didn’t see the light? No, comprehending and apprehending are two different things. They didn’t understand what they were looking at.

We didn’t understand what we were seeing. And I think it had to be that way because if they fully understood who Jesus was, I don’t think people would have killed him. But there was a man sent from John, or from God, excuse me, there was not a man sent from John.

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. The same came for a witness to bear witness of the light that all men through him might believe. He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light.

So there’s no confusion. This is the book of John. It’s the Apostle John writing and speaking of John the Baptist, who was a separate person.

And he talks about the prophet John the Baptist who came to prepare the way for the Lord, for the Lord Jesus Christ to come. And he came to bear witness to try to prepare the people to receive the light. But he was not the light.

He was sent to bear witness of that light. Verse 9 says, that was the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world and the world was made by him and the world knew him not.

He came unto his own and his own received him not. He came into his own, meaning he was born among humankind as one of humankind. He was born among us as one of us.

And more specifically in the context here, he was born among the Jewish people as a Jewish person. And then more generally, he was born among all of us as one of us. He came unto his own, and get this, his own received him not.

Whether we’re talking about the Jews rejecting him as the Jewish Messiah, as the king of the Jews, or whether we’re talking about all of mankind in general rejecting him as the savior of mankind, he came unto his own and his own unfortunately received him not. And unfortunately, many continue to receive him not. But verse 12 says, but as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.

Those who saw the light and realized that they were in darkness, those who saw Jesus Christ and realized what God had done to provide for their salvation, and who received him, the Bible says to as many as received him, gave he the power to be the sons of God. God adopts us into his family through what Jesus Christ did. Because Jesus Christ, who is revealed to be the Logos in verse 1, revealed to be God in verse 1, and revealed to have been born as a man, in verse 11, came to us, God now is able to adopt mankind into his family if they will just receive Christ and believe on his name.

Which were born not of blood, nor of the will of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And there’s disagreement about what this verse means. What I understand it to mean, what I believe it to mean, is when it says it was not the will of flesh, it was not the will of blood, nor the will of man, but the will of God.

It means that this salvation, this idea that Jesus Christ would come and die on the cross for us, this idea that God would offer salvation freely by his own goodness, that wasn’t man’s idea. We didn’t come up with salvation and say, God, why don’t you do this for us? Guys, we’re not that smart.

I’m not trying to insult you because I’m right there with you. We’re not smart enough to come up with that. God, for 2,000 years, has been telling us that salvation is a free gift through what Jesus Christ did, And most of us on this planet are still trying to work our way to heaven, still trying to do things the hard way.

He’s already told us what the plan of salvation is, and we’re still not smart enough to figure it out. This wasn’t our idea. This wasn’t anything we orchestrated.

It was all God from first to last, saying, because I’m good and because I’m merciful, I’ll send Christ to die so that I can freely offer salvation. And verse 14 says, And the Word was made flesh. Jesus Christ was God made flesh and dwelt among us, And we beheld his glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

And we look through this passage, ladies and gentlemen, and we start talking about Jesus Christ being God from this passage. And we read through a few verses and talk about all the places that it indicates his deity, meaning him being God. And we read through these verses, but then we look at these same verses and we can hardly go through it and have a full discussion of how it indicates him being God because twisted and tangled into it are these references to his humanity as well.

Wait, he’s God and he’s eternal and he was creative and yet he became flesh and he dwelt among us. Okay, so we’ve gone from talking about him being God to talking about him being man, but he was made flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory as of the only begotten of the father. We’re back to him being God again.

And I don’t say that to indicate that these are in any way in contradiction or that Jesus Christ went from being God and he was God here and then suddenly he became man and now he’s God again. I don’t mean that at all. What I mean is these two are so intimately intertwined that we can’t separate the two and talk about really his deity without also talking about his humanity or talking about his humanity without talking about his deity because the Bible makes it clear that he’s both.

And that is for believers a non-negotiable. And the first thing we see in here as I’ve already indicated is that Jesus Christ is fully God. There’s nothing in this passage where it talks about him being God and then talks about him being man to indicate that he’s anything less than fully God.

We’ll get to this in a minute, but he’s not half and half. He’s fully God. It says that in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.

It doesn’t say the word was as some translations like the new world translation that the Jehovah’s Witnesses made up, ladies and gentlemen. It says in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a God. Okay, big difference.

What a difference the little a makes, huh? He was not a God, he’s God. And let me tell you, there’s no basis in the Greek texts to add that word a.

And if you have a Jehovah’s Witness at your door, whoever tries to tell you, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a God, there’s no basis in any Greek manuscript for putting that word a in there. And second of all, the people who, they never revealed, they never publicized who translated their version of the Bible. We do know from people who left, who were high up in the Jehovah’s Witness organization, who left, we do know the names of a few of them.

And the ones who, the ones who that we know were involved had really no special knowledge of Greek. What they did was go through, I’m convinced, what they did was go through and take the American Standard version of the Bible and add some words here and changed some words here to suit the doctrines they were already teaching. The founder of the Jehovah’s Witnesses himself was on the witness stand in a trial, in a libel suit that he had brought, and it was revealed he couldn’t even name the Hebrew or Greek letters, which I probably couldn’t either, but I don’t claim to be a Greek and Hebrew scholar.

Not to get off on the Jehovah’s Witnesses too much, but you may hear that someday. Well, the Bible says here he was a God. No, ladies and gentlemen, there’s no reason for that to be in there.

In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God, period. He was not less than God. He was not partially God.

The Bible says that he was God. It says in verse 14, we beheld his glory as of the only begotten of the father, full of grace and truth, full of these attributes that belong to God. The Bible says in places that we talked about last week, that Christ bears these attributes of God that he’s omniscient, that the Son knows everything, that the Son is worthy of worship.

He is no less God than God the Father. And guys, if he was half God and half man, he would have to be somehow less than God the Father. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Jesus Christ, his nature is that he is fully God, but he is also fully man. And this is where I’m trying to tell you I don’t, I believe it, but I don’t fully understand it. Because we would say he’s God and he’s man.

Oh, 50-50, or maybe 60-40, 70-30, whatever you want to come up with. No, he’s 100-100. I don’t understand how that works.

You can’t have 200% of something. And yet that seems to be what the Bible teaches. Can’t wrap my mind around it.

One day, maybe I’ll get the opportunity to ask him. I hear this idea that, well, I’ll just ask God when I get there. I’ve never seen it in the Bible where we get to ask questions.

Maybe we do. If that’s in there, show me, because I’m not saying it’s not in there. I’ve just never seen it.

I think we’re going to be too busy praising him and thanking him for what he’s done to even care any more about the questions we had here. But maybe I’ll get an answer to that one day. How does that work?

But he was fully God and also fully man, because we look at verses 11 through 14, and there’s all this indication of his human nature that he was born among his own. Now, if he wasn’t fully man, we wouldn’t be his own, would we? God would have said through John that, yeah, and then I made him be born among all the pitiful little humans.

No, but it said we were his own. We were his own kind, his own people. The Jews were referred to as his people, not just a group, not just a race of people that he was plopped down in the midst of.

They were his people in a way that your community is your people. in a way that your family are your people because you come from them and you’re of them and they’re part of you. Guys, it says that he came into his own and it said he was made flesh.

He wasn’t made the illusion of flesh. As we get into this problem, more people are willing to believe that he was just sort of an illusion after the resurrection, which is a bad idea and we can demonstrate that it’s false from the Bible because you can’t put your hands in the nail prints on an illusion or a hologram. There are groups out there that say Jesus dissolved in the tomb and came back as a hologram.

I don’t think they knew about holograms 2,000 years ago. What do you think? A hologram or a spirit doesn’t want to eat, and yet he ate with his disciples after that.

So that’s, you know, we can demonstrate that’s false. In their day, though, they were fighting against the idea from the Gnostics that because spirit is good and matter, flesh, it’s all evil, so Jesus to be completely good couldn’t have come in the flesh. Well, that’s a problem for us because Jesus couldn’t die for us if he didn’t come here with a body.

And they were fighting against this idea. Guys, the Bible says he was made flesh. He was made human.

He was made to be like us and to go through the same. It’s hard for me to picture Jesus going through the same needs that we have, the same feelings, the same struggles, the same temptations, and yet the Bible says he went through everything we did but without sin. He came and was made flesh and was made fully man.

So we’ve got him being fully God and fully man. Now an idea of how this works, there have been debates since the earliest days of Christianity about how this works, and even with this explanation, I still don’t fully understand all of how it works. But guys, this wasn’t fused together as a third kind of nature, something completely new, where we’ve got the fully God and fully man fused into one because if it became something else, something new, then he’s not fully God and fully man.

What we’ve got here is that Jesus Christ’s two natures are distinct but inseparable. So within himself, he still had the full nature of God and the full nature of man, and they sort of existed side by side and what theologians, I’m not going to get into all of that, but the theologians call it the hypostatic union. It didn’t become a new thing, a fusing of God and man, where he became sort of the middle ground between the two.

No, he continued to have the full God nature and the full human nature. The word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory as of the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And we see right there human nature, and and the only begotten of the Father, we see the nature of God right there next to it.

In Colossians chapter 1, it says, And he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he might have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell. And you read other places in Colossians chapter 2, it’s talking about the fullness of the Godhead.

The fullness of the Godhead. Okay, if the fullness of the Godhead dwells in him, he’s fully God, ladies and gentlemen. If he wasn’t fully man, if he wasn’t man, there’d be no reason to say that the fullness of the Godhead dwells in him.

We don’t have to say that about God the Father because there’s no question of who he is. And so, again, I don’t completely understand how this works, but he’s got two natures, and they’re distinct from each other, and yet they’re inseparable. They’re both part of who he is.

And I won’t belabor that point because if you’re asking me how that works, I can’t draw you a diagram. But that’s what the Bible teaches, and so I believe it. Now, people have asked, well, if he was fully God, if he was fully God, then how did he not know this?

Or how is it possible that he was not in every place at one time? And many of you will recall where Jesus said, no man knows the date or the hour when he would return. He says only the Father knows.

And some people have pointed at that and say, well, God knows everything. God does know everything, right? If Jesus Christ is God, how can he say he didn’t know?

So that must prove that he’s not God. Well, not exactly, Mr. Smart People.

Some people pick up on a verse or two of the Bible and think, I can just throw it out and it defeats the whole thing. No, not if you know what you’re doing. There’s a word, a Greek word I believe is called kenosis that’s found in Philippians chapter 2.

If you’ll turn there with me real quick, we’re going to look at Philippians chapter 2 for just a minute. This passage may be familiar to you as well. It was considered to be one of the earliest hymns in Christian churches and was worked into Paul’s letter to the Philippians.

But he tells them, starting in verse 5, Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men. And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Now what that has to do with it, you’ll look at verse 7, and see that it says, but made himself of no reputation. Some translations, some older than the King James, and some newer than the King James, say that he emptied himself. That’s a good way to say it.

That doesn’t mean that he threw away his divine nature. That doesn’t mean he stopped being God, but that Greek word, again, I think the word is kenosis. I hope I don’t go home and look it up and realize I threw out something that meant like a Greek food or something.

But I think the word is kenosis. It means emptying. And I remember studying this when I was reading about a year ago, The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel.

He talked about this with a brilliant theologian the name now escapes me. And what he said was Jesus didn’t stop being God. And things like this where Jesus said, no man knows the date or the hour, not even the son of man, not the angels, just the father.

Those don’t prove that Jesus Christ was not God. They don’t prove that he stopped being God for a while. They don’t prove that he threw away his divine nature.

What it means, and the phrase he used, is that Jesus Christ voluntarily limited the independent exercise of his divine attributes when he was here on earth with us. That sounds like a lot of words, but they’re all important. And what that means is that he came willingly because God the Father had this redemptive plan that God the Son would die on the cross for our sins.

And so he would need to come as a man, as we’re going to talk about in just a minute. He would need to come as a man. Now, he wouldn’t stop being God, but he would need to become fully man so that he could die for us.

And he came knowing everything that was going to be involved. And in order to be a man, he willingly decided that he was going to empty himself of some of these divine attributes. Not get rid of them, but he was going to willingly limit the independent exercise of them.

And what that means is we see places in the Gospels where Jesus seems to know what somebody’s thinking. We see places in the Bible, in the Gospels, where Jesus does miracles, where Jesus does things that only God can do. It really captivates the attention of the people around him, and it really shakes up the Pharisees and Sadducees as he does things that only God can do.

And yet at other times we see him say, I don’t know that only God the Father knows that. What it means is clarified in verses like where Jesus says, I only do what the Father has sent me to do. And I’m paraphrasing.

But he tells his disciples, I came to do the bidding of the Father, and I can do nothing apart from him. So when I say, well, I didn’t say it. I wish I wa