Colossians 2:9 “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form”
We believe that Jesus Christ is true God and true man. God purposed from the beginning of time to come to the earth as a human being to save and redeem humanity. Jesus, the Son of God, left heaven where he existed eternally with the Father to enter the world to live as a human being (John 1:1, 12). In fact, Jesus said he was the only one who had ever seen heaven (John 3:13). Jesus was born of a virgin conceived by the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:18-23). He had a human lineage through Mary his mother, and a divine lineage directly from God, through the Holy Spirit. Jesus is called the second Adam [1 Cor 15:45-49]. Adam was created pure and untainted, without shame, and without a sin nature. When Jesus was incarnated he inherited humanity from Mary, but unlike Adam Jesus lived a sinless life in obedience to God [ 2 Cor 5:21, Heb 4:15]. It is essential that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine because both natures are required for Jesus to be the Messiah.
In the Law of God if a life is accidentally taken, the retribution is one life for one life (Ex 21:23). The Law likewise stipulates that one righteous person may redeem one other person. In Numbers 3 Moses obediently counted the 22,000 Levite sons and 22,273 firstborn sons of the other tribes of Israel. God accepted a male Levite child in a 1-1 exchange redeeming a firstborn son of another tribe. These Levites served a holy life in service to God as priests in the tabernacle so that their brethren could go free [Numbers 8:17-18]. The remaining 273 firstborn sons were redeemed at a cost of 5 shekels each (totaling 1365 shekels). The need to redeem firstborn sons and the role of a righteous priest to stand in their stead is part of God’s grace in the OT law.
Christians believe that Jesus paid the penalty for all sin for everyone when he died on the cross [Romans 5:8]. So why do we believe that Jesus’s death on the cross redeemed all people, if a righteous man can only redeem one person according to the Law?
The resolution to this mystery is that Jesus is not just a righteous man, he is also an eternal divine being. An infinite eternal being can redeem an infinite number of finite people. This divine nature is reflected in Jesus being called the “one and only” (Greek “monogenous”) Son of God . This title is used of an only child. There are many “sons of God” in scripture, but Jesus is the “one and only” son who shares God’s divine nature. Jesus himself testified to his eternal nature when he said, “Before Abraham was born, I am!” (John 8:58) In response, the Jews picked up stones because they understood clearly that he was claiming to be divine and eternal; even taking the name of God as his own.
Eve was promised that her “seed” would crush Satan’s head. Jesus is that “seed” of Eve, a human descendant of Eve that destroyed the power of sin and death that held the entire human race enslaved to Satan. The Jews were desiring a Messiah to sit on the throne of David and restore God’s theocracy to earth. However Jesus’ mission, as the Messiah, was to conquer the usurper Satan who had led Adam and Eve to follow him in rebellion against God and had thereby enslaved the human race.
Believing that Jesus is true God and true man guards against all forms of Docetism, the doctrine that Jesus was not truly a being of flesh and blood, but instead a spirit being who only gave the appearance of being a fleshly being. Docetism was embraced in many heretical belief systems such as Marcionism and Gnosticism. Gnosticism holds that the flesh and material world are evil, and thus Jesus, could not have been truly flesh and have been good.
It also guards against attempts to reject the divinity of Jesus as found in many heretical beliefs such as the earliest Ebionite (Jewish) views that Jesus was the son of Joseph and Mary, also espoused by Adoptionists. Today groups like Mormons, Christadelphians, Christian Scientists and Jehovah’s Witnesses deny the divinity of Christ.
In the 4th and 5th century the debate raged about the nature of Christ. Many different flavors of heresy attempted to undermine the divinity of Jesus. The Appollonian heresy denied that Jesus had a human mind, while the Traducian heresy claimed that the soul was passed on to children from their parents, not from God, thus implying that Jesus got his soul from Mary. Miaphysites argued for a single new nature in Christ, a synergy of divine and human. The phrase “true God and true Man” is a direct restatement of the doctrine of Hypostatic Union that was adopted at the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD). The orthodox position which emerged was that Jesus was a single person with dual divine and human natures perfectly in union.
Believing that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine is one of the seven ties that bind us all together as Christians. If this is not what you have learned or what your church teaches, I challenge you to pray, engage with scripture and seek after God. This is a non-negotiable part of our faith.
Atheist to Elder 