JESUS: FULLY DIVINE AND FULLY HUMAN
Christology is the next piece of our Doctrine. It naturally flows out of out of our last conversation. We last talked about Theology proper and ended with the trinity. In this section about Christology we are going to discuss two main pieces; the first being the person of Jesus and the second being his work on the Cross. The person of Jesus will have a little overlap between what we talked about in the Trinity, especially with the deity of Jesus. The second part will be about his humanity.
A note about importance. Christology, despite being the second piece of our doctrine document, is the most important thing we can talk about. What you believe about Jesus is the most important question in history. We are by definition believers and followers of Jesus The Christ. Christ is a Title. The English Christ is borrowed from the Greek Christos. In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, it always uses Christos for the Hebrew Mashiach, or Messiah. It is not Jesus the prophet, not Jesus the moral teacher, Jesus The Christ.
JESUS IS FULLY GOD
So, what do we see in the Bible about who Jesus is? It is worth noting, as was said before, that Jesus doesn't come right out and say, "I am God". But he gets really close and there are mountains of Biblical evidence. His fulminant of prophecy, things he said himself, and things that writers of the New Testament said about him definitively point to Jesus' divinity. This is what theologians call 'implicit Christology'.
First, Jesus did things that only God does. Jesus' ministry is full of him doing God things. Some of these things are Jesus' miracles.
Read Mark 4:35-41, The disciples ask, "Who is this man?" Even the winds and waves obey him”. Calming a storm seems like a pretty cool thing in its own right but it looks a little less like just a cool miracle to get the boat where they were going and a lot more like the authoritative God of the universe in light of reading Psalm 89:9.
We are not going to read through the whole Gospel of John but John's Gospel is full of the divinity of Jesus. Jesus' signs in John's gospel are signs that he is God. John even starts his gospel out saying. "In the beginning was the word. The word was with God and the Word was God".
Read John 6:16-21 where Jesus walks on water. Now read Job 9:5-8. Jesus is doing what only God does. He also tells the disciples “Do not be afraid”. Seems innocent enough but if you are listening with Bible ears you know that every time God shows up in the Old Testament he is telling people not to be afraid. In Genesis 15:1 he says it to Abraham, in Isaiah 41:13 he says it to Isaiah, in Genesis 26:24 he says it to Isaac.
Read John 9:30-34.Jesus opens the eyes of the blind. No one has opened the Eyes of the Blind. Except the Lord in Psalm 146:8.
Read John 11:40-48. Also, the story of Jarius' daughter in Luke 8:54-55 is another example. We see God doing these in the Ministry of Elijah and Elisha. See 1 Kings 17:21, 2 Kings 4:35.
Second, Jesus said things that only God says. In, John 10:22-38 he says, "I and the father are one" In John 8:56-59 He says,"Before Abraham was, I AM". Even if you don't take that as an I AM statement like God's statement in Exodus to Moses he still says he was before Abraham. Mark 14:61-65 is a similar statement.
In Matthew 9:1-7 Jesus claims to forgive sin. Throughout God's redemptive story you have a lot of miraculous events that could lead you could say Jesus is just another prophet in God's revelation. But no other prophet claimed that he was able to forgive sins. That is a huge statement on Jesus’ Part.
We also see that He taught with authority. In Matthew 5:21-22 and other places, Jesus' teachings do not appeal to any authority other than himself, a big difference between him and his contemporaries.
Others throughout the Bible clearly said Jesus was God. Even during his lifetime. This was not revisionist history. While the people around him did not quite understand it and would only come to understand it more after the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, Jesus was clearly understood to be divine during his life and shortly after
Unfairly named doubting Thomas says in John 20:28 "My lord and may God" when he sees the risen Lord and Jesus didn't spend his time correcting him.
Paul's letters are full of statements that point to Jesus divinity. Read Colossians 1:15-20 and Colossians 2:9. These are pretty big statements.
You really only need to look at Jesus' ministry and his road to the Cross. People want to say that Jesus was a prophet, Jesus was maybe a great moral teacher, but being a great moral teacher doesn’t get you murdered by an occupying nation. The religious leaders in Jesus' life had no misunderstandings about what Jesus said about himself and they wanted him crucified for Blasphemy, claiming to be God.
The most important thing we say as a church is that Jesus is God. This is significant for a number of reasons.
First, that because Jesus is God we can have real knowledge of who God is. Read John 14:9-11. If we have seen Jesus, we have seen the Father. If you want to know who God is and what he is like you need only to look at Jesus.
Second, that redemption is available. It takes more than a prophet or a system to have a restored relationship with God. Because Jesus is God it was God himself that made a way for us to be back in fellowship with him.
JESUS IS FULLY HUMAN
The other side of Jesus' identity is his Humanity, which, while not as commonly emphasized, is equally important. There have been many classical and popular heresies throughout church history that deny Jesus' humanity. But this issue is important because the basic problem with sin is that there is a gap between man and God. There is a spiritual gap that is broken because of sin and also a gap because we are created beings trying to understand a creator.
We see in Jesus’ life that he was fully man. We have just as much biblical evidence of Jesus' humanity as we do his divinity. He had a pretty typical human existence. He didn’t descend down from heaven but was born like any of us. Although his conception was unique his birth, was as a typical middle-eastern birth. Check the Scripture references below to read about how Jesus grew, got hungry and thirsty. He suffered physically and died. All human things.
We also see that Jesus experienced regular human things. The references below show us that Jesus loved, he had compassion on others and was moved emotionally, he experienced Joy and he got angry. Even after the Resurrection there was the question of Jesus' humanity and he put those questions to rest by eating with his followers and showing them his wounds in Luke 24
Jesus' contemporaries and the writers of the New Testament had little doubt that Jesus was fully man.
Uniquely, despite Jesus' clear humanity, he was sinless. Hebrews 4:15, 7:26, and 9:14 are clear about Jesus' sinlessness. Peter, who knew Jesus personally, wrote about it in 1 Peter 2:22. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:21 that Jesus "knew no sin". Even Pilate, His wife, and Judas said Jesus did nothing wrong. Read the scriptures below.
So why does it matter that Jesus was Human?
First, Hebrews 4:15 tells us that Jesus fully understands us because he has experienced all that we might in life
Second, that Jesus was not some outsider who died on the cross. It was, just like in the Old Testament sacrificial system, a man who offered a sacrifice on behalf of his fellow man. This time it was a person who was also fully God though.
Third, Jesus not only told us how to be the best examples of humanity he modeled it. He is not calling us to the impossible when we are called to follow him. He went there first, lived a perfect life, and empowers us with his spirit to follow, albeit imperfectly, in his footsteps.
Finally, Because Jesus was fully man we can rejoice because through him we can know God. The finite can know the infinite because God himself choose to fully dwell in humanity. John 1:14 gives us this encouragement.
In Conclusion, our faith hinges on the indisputable fact that Jesus is both Fully God and Fully man.