The Deity of Jesus, Part Two

Sermon Sept 26, 2021

Deity of Jesus – Part Two

 

As I talked about briefly last week, without the resurrection of Jesus, there is no such thing as true Christianity. Without the resurrection of Jesus, there is no hope for our salvation. Without the resurrection of Jesus, every person on this planet is doomed to an eternity away from God’s presence.

 

Last week I preached part one of my theme devoted to the Bible-based truth of the Trinity and the deity of Jesus. Why am I focusing on the deity of Jesus? Well, just as the resurrection of Christ is vital to our salvation, without belief in the deity of Jesus, there is no salvation.

 

We are not talking about three gods when we talk of the trinity. We are talking of only One God whom Christians know as the Father, the Son of the Father (Jesus) and the Holy Spirit, who are of one nature, one essence, co-equal and co-eternal with each other. Each a distinct person, yet each identified as God.

 

Last time we also looked briefly at the definition of the word ‘incarnation’ as it applies to Jesus. It means the triune God whom we know as Jehovah (or more accurately perhaps, Yahweh) BECAME human with flesh and blood.

 

We also looked at some of the more common objections to what true Christians have believed about Jesus’ deity since the inception of the first century, and the Scriptures which easily dismiss those objections.

 

On numerous occasions, Jesus made direct claims to His deity. And the first century religious scholars understood exactly what He was saying because they kept trying to stone Him for blasphemy. In addition to His direct claims to deity, He also made many indirect statements which, in context with the whole New Testament, also identify Him as God incarnate.

 

But before we look at some of those other texts, let’s first look back into the Old Testament and what it says about Christ’s deity. Why? Because we simply cannot understand the New Testament without a clear understanding of the Old Testament. And neither can we understand the Old Testament without a clear understanding of the New. As St. Augustine correctly noted, "In the Old Testament is concealed in the New, and the New Testament is revealed in the Old."

 

So, let’s look at some of the Old Testament prophecies regarding the deity of Messiah Jesus. For example, Isaiah 7:14 – “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel” (i.e. ‘God with us.’) 

 

It is important to note that some modern Bible translators mistranslate the Hebrew word for virgin in this text as ‘young woman.’ We cannot take time now to speculate why such a mistranslation made it through their editorial committees, but let it suffice for now to only say that the Holy Spirit gives us the true meaning of that Isaiah text in the New Testament gospels. Here is how the He inspired St. Matthew to refer to that prophecy about Jesus: “Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which translated means, “God with us.” (Matthew 1:23)

 

Two chapters later in Isaiah we also read: “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.” (9:6)

 

Throughout Scripture, names were often given to a person not simply as a label by which people could identify each other, but names also often expressed what was – or what was hoped would be – the nature and essence of the person or thing being given the name. We see that as early as Genesis two when God charged Adam with giving names to all the animals. Later in Genesis, God changed Abram’s name to Abraham to mark the destiny of the man as the Father of a Multitude. And later again in Genesis, God changed Jacob’s name – which meant supplanter or deceiver to ‘Israel’ – one who strives with God.

 

And so, here in this Isaiah passage, God tells us what Messiah’s ‘name’ will be called. Hear it once again: Mighty God. Eternal Father. Prince of Peace.

 

Remember now God’s commandment to Israel through Moses: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before Me.” (Exodus 20:2-3). The primary reason God sent them into devastating exile was precisely because they did not keep that commandment. And so it is no surprise that during the ensuing centuries, God continued to remind them of that first commandment. Through Isaiah He again said: “I am the Lord, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another, Nor My praise to graven images.” (Isaiah 42:8) A few chapters later, Yahweh said, “ . . . Is there any God besides Me, Or is there any other Rock? I know of none.’” Isaiah 44:8 And once again in 45:6 the Almighty said, “. . . .There is no one besides Me. I am the Lord, and there is no other . . .” (Isaiah 45:6)

Fast forward to the New Testament. When Jesus appeared to the 11 apostles after His resurrection, Thomas fell at Jesus’ feet and called Him: “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28). But Jesus did not correct him. Instead, what otherwise would have been extreme blasphemy, He ACCEPTED worship due only to God Himself.

 

The there was the time when Phillip asked Jesus to show them the Father. Jesus answered, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?  Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? (John 14:9-10).

 

Once again, if He is not God then Jesus is worse than a devil to say such a thing.

 

All these examples, and more, of Jesus’ claim to be God is the reason that C. S. Lewis wrote: “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him [that is, Christ]: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse…. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

 

In the incarnation, the invisible God became visible in Christ; deity was clothed with humanity. Here is how the writer to the Hebrews said it:

“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of his nature, sustaining all things by his powerful word.” (Hebrews 1:3, CSB)

 

In other words, all that God is, Christ is.

So critical to our salvation is the belief in the co-equality of Jesus with the Father and the Holy Spirit that St. Paul wrote to the church at Galatia: “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!” (Galatians 1:8-9)

 

I hope that between what I preached last week and what I am saying in today’s message that I have sufficiently demonstrated by the Scriptures that Jesus is precisely who He said He is – Jehovah God in the flesh.

 

So, in the time remaining, let me bring us to the REASONS our confession of Jesus’ deity is critical to our salvation. I will focus on only three:

 

First:  If Jesus is not Jehovah God incarnate in flesh and blood, then everything Jesus said about His deity, and everything the apostles said of His deity was a lie.

 

I repeat that for emphasis: If Jesus is not Jehovah God incarnate, then everything He said about His deity, and everything the apostles said of His deity was a lie.  

 

And if His deity is a lie, then what else do we read in Scripture is a lie? The virgin birth of Jesus? His resurrection? The promise of God’s forgiveness of our sins? The promise of eternal life? The promise that God loves us? The assurance that death itself is defeated?

 

This is an important question we must diligently consider, for if Jesus is not who He said He and the apostles said He is, then we have no reason for any assurance about the rest of the story. We are still in our sins and without hope of eternal life.

 

Second: If Jesus was a created being, then He could not pay the penalty God requires of you and me for our sins – that being death. The wages of sin is always death, but God’s free gift to us is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord (see Romans 6:23).

 

Listen! This is crucial to our correct understanding of Christ’s deity. Only God could take on Himself the sins of the world. Here is what He tells us through St. John’s pen: “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation [satisfactory atonement] for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.” (1 John 2:1-2)

 

Therefore, without God the Son’s death, we have no forgiveness of sins, for a man who is only a man could only pay for his own sins. But the God-Man, the one who created the new covenant, did what no mere man could do.

 

God in Christ could die for our sins because although a Man he lived as any other human lived – except He never sinned. That is why the writer to the Hebrews tells us (4:14-15) – “Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.”

 

And again in 10:12-14: "When Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified."

 

Again, the Scriptures repeatedly tell us only God could take on Himself the sins of the world.

 

Third: If Jesus is not God in the flesh, then the New Covenant God promised through Jeremiah is still waiting for implementation. The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews, quoting from Jeremiah 31, tells us: “For this reason [Christ] is the mediator of a new covenant, so that, since a death (i.e. of sacrificial animals) has taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance. For where a covenant is, there must of necessity be the death of the one who made it (emphasis mine). For a covenant is valid only when men are dead, for it is never in force while the one who made it lives.” (Hebrews 9)

 

In other words, for the New Covenant to take effect, God, who initiated the New Covenant, HAD TO DIE

 

We all understand the concept of that kind of a covenant. It is like what we call a Last Will and Testament. Nancy and I have such a will. On our death, our heirs will receive their inheritance according to the instructions in our wills. But none of those instructions are executable unless and until we die.

 

And so, regarding the New Covenant (the New Testament), the one who WROTE the specifics of the new covenant had to die for the covenant to be enacted.

 

If Jesus is not God in the flesh, then God has not died, and the New Covenant is not yet in place – which then means we are all without hope and without God in the world. And what St. Paul wrote to the Christians in Ephesus would STILL apply to all of us:

 

“Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh—who are called Uncircumcision by what is called the Circumcision made in the flesh by hands— that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” (Ephesians 2:11-13)

 

I very much hope it is clear by now from Scripture that what we believe about Jesus' deity determines our eternal destiny.

 

So, I will bring this to a close by way of review:

 

First: If Jesus is not Jehovah God incarnate in flesh and blood, then everything He said about His deity, and everything the apostles said of His deity was a lie. And we must then ask ourselves – what ELSE was a lie?

 

Second: If Jesus was a created being, then He could ONLY pay His own God-required penalty for sin. The wages of sin is always death, but God’s free gift to us is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:23). And because only God could take on Himself the sins of the world, as St. John wrote in his first epistle, Jesus must be God for Him to be the propitiation – the satisfactory sacrifice for the sins of all who come to Him in repentance.

 

And third: If Jesus is not Jehovah God, then God has not died and therefore the New Covenant has not yet been enacted. You and are I lost in our sins and we will face eternal damnation when we die.

 

I conclude with this encouragement: Jesus told His disciples in the first century – and His eternal words extend to the 21st century, “Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me.” (John 14:1) (Notice once again, Jesus commanded them to have the SAME confidence, trust and obedience to Him as they have toward Almighty God).

 

THAT is why the faithful Christian can trust Jesus as implicitly as he or she trusts the Father. Because Jesus is the second Person of the Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

 

And that is also why we can do as Jesus commanded, “Go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.” (Matthew 28:19-20).