Word of Salvation – September 2018
B.C.19 – Jesus Christ: Truly God And Truly Man
Sermon by Rev. John Westendorp
Scripture Readings: 1John 2:18-29 & Matthew 16:13-20
Introd: The question Jesus asked at Caesarea Philippi has to be answered by each of us personally.
Who do people say the Son of Man is? ….what about you? Who do you say I am?
The answer you give to that question determines your eternal destiny.
Believe that Jesus is whom He claims to be and you have eternal life.
Reject the claims of Jesus Christ and you have an eternity in which to regret your choice.
That question – who is Jesus – is one that people struggle to answer.
Jesus’ life on earth begins and ends with a miracle.
His virgin birth and His bodily resurrection.
Many folk reject that as unscientific.
Virgins don’t procreate all by themselves… and dead bodies don’t come to life.
So Jesus is regarded as just a man… a great man… but just a man.
In “Jesus Christ Superstar” Jesus is just a very human Jesus.
Christians have a different answer… that of the Bible.
They agree that Jesus was human.
But they also claim that He is divine… He is also God.
He is the Son of God… who took from the virgin Mary a fully human nature.
But Christians also struggle at times with that teaching.
We try to get a handle on it but we face many questions and difficulties.
Take for example the temptations of Jesus in the desert.
If it’s true that Jesus is God could He really be tempted?
Wasn’t His obedience a foregone conclusion?
Or think of other things we read about Jesus:
If He really was fully God why did He get hungry… and tired… and thirsty?
If He was fully and totally human how could He heal the sick and make the blind to see?
Some of the questions become quite intriguing.
If Jesus was fully God how much did He know?
In the manger in Bethlehem did He know already that He was the Messiah?
As a child did He know differential calculus and the table of atomic weights?
If Jesus was fully God…
…why did He say on one occasion that He didn’t know the day of His return?
…and how could God forsake God on the cross?
Our Confession of Faith helps us by reaffirming Scripture – that Jesus is Son of God and Son of Man.
Fully and totally God… and never ceasing to be anything less than God.
Yet also fully and totally human… and never ceasing to be anything less than human.
A] THE HUMAN NATURE OF JESUS.
1. When we look first at the full and total humanity of Jesus it takes us back to the Christmas story.
There is that great mystery of Christmas that we can’t explain… only believe.
Jesus took from the virgin Mary a fully human nature… a human body as well as a human soul.
IOW Jesus Christ is not half God and half man.
He is fully and completely human in every way we are…. except, of course, for sin.
Jesus lived the whole of our human life from the womb to the tomb.
The whole gamut of human experience was also His.
It is in this light that we must understand all those things the Bible tells us about Jesus.
– That after 40 days of fasting He was hungry.
– That after dealing with people all day He was tired enough to sleep through a storm at sea.
– That after hours of exposure on the cross He was thirsty.
Whatever the Bible says about the divinity of Jesus… it never ever plays down His humanity.
So we may never ever play down the humanness of our Lord Jesus Christ either.
I think we have a tendency to do that at times… to play down His humanity.
At times we think of Jesus as a SUPERman…. like Superman the cartoon character.
We say to ourselves: Well, of course that was okay for Jesus but we’re not like Him.
As though He is not fully human after all.
We have this image of Jesus when He tells us to come and follow Him.
That He’s like Superman running into a hail of bullets.
And He’s saying, “Come on, follow me… the bullets aren’t hurting me!”
But we know that they will hurt us…. we’re only human… we’re not like Jesus
That difference between Jesus and us…
is even greater than the difference between superman and Louis Lane
Yet Scripture calls us to take seriously the full humanity of Jesus.
He called Himself the Son of Man… He really was like us in all things.
That’s the point of Scripture telling us that He got tired… He knew hunger and thirst….
He knew disappointment… He wept…. He was angry…. pain was real for Him.
2. But now our confession makes one additional point about the humanity of Jesus.
This surprising point – that Jesus is still human even now in heaven.
Surprising… because we often forget that.
I have heard my Church-Ed students say: “Yes, Jesus WAS human.”
We do accept Jesus was fully human but we so easily think of His humanity as PAST TENSE.
Not IS human… but WAS human.
He was human while He was on earth… but now in heaven He is God and not human.
Today we’re reminded that the humanness of Jesus didn’t end when He died.
We must note that carefully…
Because this is probably why people have a tendency to invent other mediators.
Mary and the saints… let them approach Jesus on our behalf.
Because of course Jesus is now so far above and beyond us… why should He listen to us?
The Scriptures have a different outlook.
Jesus from His conception on, was and is and always will be fully and totally human.
He is now never less than human.
That became permanent after the Christmas event.
Of course He now has a glorified human nature… a resurrection body.
But nevertheless perfectly human… human as God originally intended it to be.
3. This is a very practical teaching for you and for me this week.
Right now I don’t know what worries you most… or what you especially struggle with.
I’m not familiar with all your needs…. but Jesus is.
And because of His full and complete humanity He totally understands.
It means that you and I can come to Jesus with our problems.
We can share with Him our cares and concerns… as well as our hopes and dreams.
We don’t need anyone to act as an intermediary between Jesus Christ and us.
He is totally sympathetic to our needs.
He lived out the whole of our human experience…
Not only can He say to you, “I know, I’ve been there…!”…
But He is still human… totally and completely.
Even after the resurrection He could still show Thomas His scars and wounds.
To bring home the reality of his humanity.
So what is your most fearful problem that you face this week…?
What are your most exciting plans…?
Bring them to Him… He understands… He is human!
B] THE DIVINE NATURE OF JESUS.
1. It is also the testimony of Scripture that this human Jesus was at the same time the divine Son of God.
And today we can heap up lots of Biblical evidence to prove that.
There were the miracles which no one had ever done before.
The apostle John calls these miracles SIGNS;
Signs that confirmed that Jesus is whom He claims to be – the Son of God.
He demonstrated His power to cast out demons… and to forgive sins.
All to back up what He Himself claimed on many different occasions.
On one occasion He said – Before Abraham was I am.
And that “I AM” referred to what Yahweh, God of the O.T., had said to Moses.
God had said, “I am who I am.” So Jesus is making a claim to being God.
On another occasion He said He would sit at the right hand of God in heaven.
He claimed that His would be the authority to exercise judgment.
It’s also interesting that Jesus never declined to accept the worship of others.
Angels frequently did that in the Bible… they always told others not to worship them.
But Jesus accepted the worship of others.
One thing is certainly very clear – the apostles came to understand this and to teach this.
They knew Jesus as the Son of God.
And when Peter confessed it at Caesarea Philippi, Jesus commended him for it.
Of course the greatest proof for the fact that Jesus is God is the resurrection.
His rising from the dead is the great testimony to His divinity.
Someone once asked: How do you know Jesus Christ is right?
Why not Mohammed, why not Budda or Confucius?
The answer is that they are all dead… Jesus is alive.
It is interesting that for Thomas the doubter this was the key proof.
It was the confrontation with the risen Christ that removed his last doubt.
So he could only confess, “My Lord and My God!”
2. It is important for us today to uphold and to reaffirm especially this truth.
Not too many people today deny that Jesus was human.
We may tend to play down His humanity in practice but we have no difficulty accepting it.
But the problem is that many today think of Jesus only in those terms – a great man.
And the trouble is that they reject His divinity.
Many of the so-called Christian cults (Jehovah’s Witnesses / Mormons) undercut the divinity of Jesus.
They teach that He was somewhat less than fully and totally God.
JW’s will not accept that Jesus is the Jehovah of the O.T.
They reinterpret Bible teaching and as a result come up with a false Christ.
The apostle John tells us in His letter what the spirit of ANTICHRIST is.
It denies that Jesus is the Christ.
In 1John 2 the Antichrist is the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ.
But John goes on to speak there of the unity of the Father and the Son.
No one who denies the Son has the Father;
whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.
The Father and the Son are inseparably one because Jesus had a fully divine nature.
And that divine nature always remained united to His human nature.
Even as He lay in the grave He was still fully God and fully man.
3. Now again this is an extremely practical teaching of Scripture.
It is basic… it is relevant… and then in a number of important areas.
First – – as we’ll see in a moment – your very salvation hinges on the truth of that teaching.
But secondly – it also helps us in our daily cares and worries.
Because Jesus is human we can come to him with our anxieties… with our hopes and dreams.
And we know He understands.
But there are a lot of sympathetic people around too… why not go to them?
Why look to Jesus when it comes to your problems?
Why share with Him your ambitions?
In fact – what would be the point of that if He were only human?
But the same Jesus who says to you, “I know, I’ve been there!”
can also say to you, “Yes and I can handle your problem too, I am God”.
I can deal with those fears…. I can take away those heartaches.
I can bless those dreams…. I can do it… for I am God of glory and power.
C] TWO NATURES IN ONE PERSON.
1. There is still one other thing that needs to be said about this matter.
We believe Jesus is fully God… and never stopped being God.
We also believe that Jesus is fully human… and since His birth He has never stopped being human.
However the tricky part is to accept that these two natures were combined in one person.
That’s where we really begin to struggle to get a handle on things.
Jesus was not half God and half man.
When we cross-breed animals or plants we get a totally new creature.
It has some characteristics of both its parents… but it is also unlike either of them… a hybrid.
Jesus was never less than God… and after His birth never less than fully human.
Nor did Jesus switch from one nature to the other.
Again we might be tempted to compare Jesus to Superman with his two identities.
OTOH – he’s the mild mannered Clark Kent.
OTOH – he’s the man of steel.
At one time he wears one identity… at another the other identity.
We have to avoid every impression that Jesus had some sort of multiple personality.
Or that He switches from one nature to the other depending on the circumstances.
He is at one and the same time Son of God and Son of man.
In every situation He is both Divine and human.
2. All of this is not a bit of abstract and unreal theology.
To talk about these things is at the same time to talk about our salvation.
The Confession speaks of these matters in the context of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
And it relates them to our certainty about our resurrection.
IOW we are talking about WHO JESUS IS… the two natures in this one person.
But you cannot talk long about WHO JESUS IS
without also talking about WHAT JESUS DID. The two are inseparable.
Scripture teaches that HE IS WHO HE IS so that HE COULD DO WHAT HE DID.
The nature of His work depends very much on the nature of His person.
In a small way it’s a little like fitting a person’s abilities to a task.
You are not going to get a frail and handicapped little man
and give him a job as a rigger on the multi-storied building construction.
Neither are you going to give someone who is tone-deaf
the job of conductor of the symphony orchestra.
The job has to be suited to the applicant.
And the applicant who is successful will have the necessary qualifications.
So too the two natures of Jesus qualified Him for His saving work.
He is the only one who ever has been and ever will be both fully God and fully man.
And that makes Him our suitable Saviour.
3. I said before that Jesus’ true humanity suits Him as our sympathetic Counsellor.
It was in order that He might be an understanding High Priest for His people.
But there is another reason why He had to be fully human.
It’s because there’s one thing that God cannot do… which is also why He had to be human.
You may say: Isn’t God all-powerful? Can’t He do anything?
No! There is at least one thing that God cannot do.
God cannot die! That is impossible… God is immortal… eternal.
So when God decided to save us by taking our penalty on Himself then He had to become human.
If Jesus had only had a divine nature He could never have died for us.
When God decreed to punish our sins in His son, Jesus had to have a fully human nature.
He needed to identify with us in our humanity… totally.
Even that part of our humanity that we call death…. He died.
But at the same time He had to be God… otherwise He would not have survived death.
If He had been only human death would have defeated Him.
The point is that there is this thing that humans cannot do – and that is defeat death.
God’s terrible judgement could only be carried by someone who was stronger than a mere man.
So this is not just a bit of theory about the person of Christ.
At the heart of it is our salvation…. our eternal certainty.
We now know that sin, Satan and death have been conquered.
And the fact that a resurrected, glorified human nature is now in heaven…
is the greatest assurance we have of our resurrection on the day Jesus returns.
The two natures of Jesus… abstract theory?
No way! It’s comforting teaching that gives us hope to face the future in every situation. Amen
BC stands for Basic Christianity. What are the fundamentals of the faith?
BC also stands for Belgic Confession – a document in which the Christian church (in a time of great persecution) spelled out the basics of what she believes.
When Christianity is a mile wide and an inch deep it needs to grasp again the basics of the faith and confess them in a world where the faith is increasingly under attack.
Those who drew up the BC declared that they were ready to obey the government in all lawful things, but that they would “offer their backs to stripes, their tongues to knives, their mouths to gags and their whole bodies to the fire” rather than deny the truth expressed in this confession.