The Divinity of Christ (Luke 23:56-24:5)

“Are you the Son of God?” So He said to them, “You rightly say that I am” (Luke 22:70).

The most controversial issue about Jesus is His deity. Since the earliest days of the church, skeptics have hammered at this doctrine. Debate between those who maintained Christ’s divinity and those who rejected it raged in the first few centuries after Christ. The dispute focused on the doctrine of the Arians.

Arius, a Greek rationalist, taught that the Son was subordinate to the Father. He and his followers believed so strongly in the immutability of God, that they could not accept the teaching that divine substance could be shared with or communicated to any other being.

The Arians maintained that Jesus Christ was a created being—first in the created order, but still created. Arius strongly asserted that there was a time when the Son was not. He and his followers argued that Christ had been created out of nothing before anything else had been formed.

In the fourth century, the Council of Nicea rejected Arianism and answered its objections to the divinity of Christ, saying, “in one Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, begotten of the Father, only-begotten, that is from the substance of the Father.” The council asserted that Christ is “true God from true God, begotten not made.” This has been the standing doctrine of the orthodox Christian church since that time. But the struggle was intense. The early church vacillated back and forth. But in the end, truth prevailed. The church officially upheld the divinity of Christ as the only biblical doctrine.

The debate concerning Christ’s nature is central to the Gospel, for our Mediator must be both divine and human to settle the dispute between God and man.

Only our Lord, who possessed an eternal Spirit, could forever perfect those who believe in Him. Only Christ our God can be the source of life that comes through faith in Him. Such life cannot be imparted by creatures, who do not have life in themselves. And finally, none but a divine person can be the object of our worship and the source of religious life for all who are redeemed.

Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other non-Christian groups object to the divinity of Christ as expressed in the Nicean creed. They distort the truth and try to convert Christians to their false doctrine. Be on guard against such groups.

The Spotless Lamb (Hebrews 7:20-28)

"For such a High Priest was fitting for us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners" (Heb. 7:26).

Another common question regarding the person and work of Christ is “Why did He have to be sinless?”

Some people have argued that Jesus must have been a sinner because He was birthed by Mary—a sinner herself. She was born with original sin. The Catholic Church has sought to deal with this by maintaining the sinlessness of Mary, which enjoys no biblical support. It even asserts that she was conceived without sin. This false doctrine is called the immaculate conception.

The Bible doesn’t explain how Christ’s humanity was kept free from original sin. Nor does it reveal how original sin is translated from parent to child. But mystery is not contradiction. And mysterious though the doctrine may be, the Word of God is crystal clear about the sinlessness of Christ. The Scriptures stand on their own testimony, and—contrary to some beliefs—Jesus did not have to be a sinner to be fully human.

If Jesus had been a sinner, He would have needed a savior Himself. He would not have been qualified to save others. Two things had to occur for the Messiah to mediate between fallen man and God: He had to fulfill the requirements of the law perfectly (which would mean that He had to be sinless inwardly and outwardly), and He had to receive the penalty of death. Innocence was prefigured in the Jewish sacrificial system in which only a spotless animal could be placed on the altar. Only a spotless sacrifice would do: “… the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Peter 1:19).

There are many biblical proofs for the sinlessness of Christ. Here are a few:

“For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15).

“For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us” (2 Cor. 5:21).

“For such a High Priest was fitting for us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners” (Heb. 7:26).

Hallelujah! What a Savior!

Read Hebrews 4:15, 5:2, 7–9. What do these passages say about the difficulty of Christ’s earthly ministry? Do you ever find it difficult to ask for Christ’s help? Christ has suffered in many ways, and He continually intercedes in your behalf. Go to Him today, confess your sins, and be encouraged by His love and grace.

Sharing in Our Humanity (Hebrews 2)

"Therefore in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God" (Heb. 2:17).

As I have said, the doctrine of Christ has been fraught with controversy since the inception of the Christian church. Because of this doctrine’s importance to the Gospel, I will spend the next couple of weeks examining the person and work of Christ in greater detail. We’ll highlight those themes from other parts of Scripture crucial to a deeper understanding of the Gospel and the person and work of Christ.

We begin by looking at one of the most commonly asked questions about Jesus: why was it necessary for our Redeemer to be human? Why couldn’t He have been an angel, or some divine manifestation? We find the answer to this question fully laid out in Heb. 2:14–16: “Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For indeed He does not give aid to angels, but He does give aid to the seed of Abraham. Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.”

God established His covenant with people, not with angels. Because it was people who broke that covenant, people suffered the penalty of death. Our Redeemer had to be human in order qualify as the bearer of the penalty: “For if by the one man’s offense (Adam) many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many” (Rom. 5:15).

As the representative head of humanity, Adam failed. But as the new representative, Christ succeeded. Only a man could fulfill the requirement of righteousness and take on the penalty of death so that we could be freed from the condemnation of the law. The sacrifices of animals could not save. Only one who was like us, who lived under the law, who obeyed the requirements of the law, and who suffered the penalty that we deserved could qualify our Redeemer.

Read the passage for today (Heb. 2). After thinking about everything the writer has to say about this subject, put into your own words a defense of Christ’s humanity. Why was it necessary for the Messiah to be human? Write it out if that would help clarify your thinking (use verses below for more help).

The Only Begotten (John 1:16-18)

"No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him" (John 1:18).

The glory of “grace and truth” not revealed in John the Baptist but in the “only begotten”—Jesus Christ. This extraordinary statement of John’s concerning the Son’s relationship to the Father has caused great controversy in the church.

Some have interpreted “only begotten” as “being born,” which implies that Christ had a beginning. But this is not John’s emphasis in this passage. “Only begotten” refers to the eternal generation of the Son in the Trinity, not as an emanation of a different substance than God, but as God Himself. This “Trinitarian Sonship” expresses the eternality of the Son and His intimate relation to the Father. Christ, in other words, did not become God’s Son when He was born to Mary, but He had been God’s own Son from all eternity: “And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was” (John 17:5).

Because of this Sonship, the religious leaders crucified Christ. He claimed to be Yahweh, and such a claim was in violation of everything the Jewish religious establishment believed in. They could not accept Jesus’ claim that He was the eternal Son of God, begotten of the Father.

The glory of Christ as the “begotten God,” who proceeds from the Father for all eternity, possesses a fullness of grace and truth that exceeds the law given to Moses. Hendriksen comments, “There was nothing wrong with the law, moral and ceremonial. It had been given by God through Moses. It was preparatory in character. It revealed man’s lost condition and it also foreshadowed his deliverance. But there were two things which the law as such did not supply: grace so that transgressors could be pardoned and helped in time of need, and truth, i.e., the reality to which all the types pointed (think of the sacrifices). Christ, by His atoning work, furnished both. He merited grace and He fulfilled the types.”

Though the law was given, grace and truth came through Christ, who is called in this passage by His full name for the first time in this gospel. In the fullness of the person of Jesus Christ, as the God-man, only begotten of the Father, we have unmerited favor with God and the fulfillment of Old Testament law.

Read Luke 22:63–23:5. What did the Sanhedrin ask Jesus (v. 70)? Their use of “Son of God” has direct reference to deity. What was Jesus’ response? What is the significance of His saying “I AM”? (See Ex. 3:14.) When someone says to you that Jesus was not God, how can you answer them?

The Incarnation (John 1:14-15)

"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14).

In verses 14–18, we have the grand climax of John’s prologue: the Incarnation. When John writes that the Word became flesh, he does not mean the Son of God ceased to be divine. Christ retained His divinity but took on a human nature. This concept can be compared to a woman becoming a mother. She does not cease to be who she is when she becomes a mother, yet she takes on something else. Likewise, when the Word became flesh, the Son of God took on something else—a human nature—without eradicating what He was before.

This point must be continually stressed. There have been heresies concerning the incarnation since the dawn of the Christian church. Some people have believed that Christ was merely human. Others have maintained that He was solely God. Both errors must be avoided. This is clearly one of John’s goals in this book—to establish both the humanity and divinity of Christ.

Another point to remember about the Incarnation is that Jesus’ human and divine natures did not become mixed or fused into each other. Each maintained their distinct properties. To be sure, we cannot comprehend how the infinite became united with the finite without being mixed or confused. But we can apprehend that this is the teaching of John concerning the incarnation of Christ.

When John says that Christ took on “flesh,” he is referring to human nature in its weakness, not sin. Throughout Christian history, some have equated humanity with sinfulness. But the Scriptures clearly teach that although Christ veiled His glory by taking on human nature, He did not become sinful. If He had any hint of sin, He would not have been a worthy sacrifice for sin. But being pure and holy in even sense, His sacrifice was acceptable to His Father.

The incarnate Word is the spotless Lamb of God, who came to take away the sins of the world. He alone is full of grace and truth—qualities that John and the other apostles saw firsthand. And being the fullness of grace and truth, Christ is the source of eternal life.

Read John 8:46, Romans 1:3; 8:3, 2 Corinthians 5:21, 8:9. What do these passages say about Christ’s human nature? His divine nature? Some respond to the Incarnation with skepticism; others, with worship. What is your response? Praise God today for the. glorious power and the gracious provision displayed in the Incarnation.