Word of Salvation – Vol. 29 No. 39 – October 1984

 

Jesus Christ, The God-Man

 

Sermon by Rev. S. Voorwinde, v.d.m. on John 20:28; Colossians 2:9

(Belgic Confession Art. 19)

Scripture Readings: John 20:19-31; Colossians 2: 1-15

Suggested Hymns: 363, 372, 376, 383, 373: 1 & 4.

Congregation of our Lord Jesus,

I don’t know what kind of a week you have had.  I don’t know whether it was easy or hard, whether it was filled with joy or grief.  But I’m sure you have come to church today to get some encouragement and strength for the week that lies ahead; you want something that’s going to be relevant, that’s going to be helpful.  There are many comforting passages of Scripture that we might call to mind.  There are many verses that seem so directly relevant.  Yet, in this sermon we are going to do something that may seem rather irrelevant.  The topic today is on the Person and Nature of Jesus Christ.  On the surface it may seem that this has nothing to do with the griefs, joys or troubles through which some are passing.  And yet, in the deepest way it is relevant.

As Christians we draw strength as we focus our attention on who Jesus is.  As we fix our eyes on the Person of Jesus Christ, as we meditate on Him, it’s amazing how many things fall into their proper perspective.  If Jesus is in the right place in our lives, in our hearts and in our minds, then it’s remarkable how many other things will fall into place also.

So, the basic question before us today is: Who is Jesus Christ?  We know that He was and is truly man.  Now we consider the fact that He is also truly God.  And I’d like to present this doctrine in three parts:

1.  As it was confessed by Thomas in John’s Gospel.

2.  As it was confessed by Paul in his letter to the Colossians.

3.  As it was confessed by the church in its creeds and confessions.

First of all, let’s take a look at Thomas:

For Thomas it had been a very hard week.  He’d been a courageous follower of Christ, perhaps a bit pessimistic at times but still a loyal disciple.  He must have had his hopes and he must have had his dreams.  No doubt, they had been smashed to smithereens by the terrible events of that dark Friday.

The man Thomas was shattered.  It was going to take a lot for him to snap out of his depression and disappointment.  Perhaps he even went off on his own for a while.  At any rate he wasn’t there when Jesus appeared to other disciples on the evening of Easter Sunday.  For one reason or another he missed out.  And by then his scepticism had settled in rather deeply.  The others came to him with an excited and combined and unanimous testimony: “We have seen the Lord!”  But he was still unconvinced; he wanted scientific evidence: “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it;” (vs.25).

It was exactly a week later that the demands of Thomas were met by the commands of Christ: to the disciples.

1.  Thomas had said: “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands.”  Jesus said: “See my hands.”

2.  Thomas had said: “And unless I put my fingers where the nails were.”  Jesus said: “Put your finger here.”

3.  Thomas had also demanded: “Unless I put my hand into his side.”  Jesus was to reply: “Reach out your hand and put it into my side.”

4.  Thomas had insisted: “I will not believe it!”  Jesus came with the challenge: “Stop doubting and believe.”

Thomas’ demands were met at every point.  Now, he doesn’t have to touch and he doesn’t have to feel, He has seen and that’s enough.  In adoration he exclaims: “My Lord and my God!”

Why does he say that?  Why does he use such extravagant language in addressing Jesus?  He applies terms to Jesus that a religious Jew would never have taken upon his lips.  Jesus is Yahweh, Jesus is Jehovah.  Jesus is identified with the One who spoke to Moses from the burning bush the One who introduced Himself as “Lord and God” in the smoke and thunder of Mt. Sinai: “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt.”  Yes, for Thomas that very One now stands before him with nail prints in his hands and a spear wound in his side.  How does Thomas know that?  How can he equate the two?

Well, for one thing Thomas had just experienced that well-known truth of Psalm 139: that God is all-knowing.  He could have quoted that to Jesus too:

“O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.
 You know when I sit and when I rise;
 you perceive my thoughts from afar.
 Before a word is on my tongue
 you know it completely, O Lord.”

Jesus had known the exact details of what Thomas had demanded a week before and he answered him at every point.

But there’s also something more and even greater.  Jesus stands before him as the victor over death.  And that certainly is the greatest possible proof that he is God; he has conquered death.  As Paul writes to the Romans in the first chapter of that letter:

“Jesus Christ was declared with power to be the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead;” (vs.  4).

A few years ago I met a young man who was really searching for the truth.  He was still an agnostic at the time.  He asked me a fairly common question: “How do you know Jesus Christ was right?  Why couldn’t it have been Mohammed or Buddha or Confucius?”  The simple answer is that they never rose from the dead.  The resurrection proves that Jesus Christ is God and that his claims are true.

Now Thomas may have been a doubter, he may have been a sceptic, but he caught on pretty quickly when faced with the facts.  When he saw those nail prints and that spear-wound, his reaction was immediate.  In worship, wonder and praise he exclaimed: “My Lord and my God.”  Everything he had read about God in the Old Testament now stood in front of him in the person of Jesus Christ.  And his confession is as perceptive as it is spontaneous: “My Lord and my God.”

Now I want you to compare that for a moment to what is said in the Nicene Creed:

“And I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.”

These are beautiful words, true words and very profound.  But do you know that it’s possible to say these words and still not to be able to say what Thomas said: “My Lord and my God.”  You see, you can say all the right things about Jesus, but still not know that he is yours.  You’ve often said the Nicene Creed, but can you say with Thomas: “My Lord and my God?”  Is he your personal Saviour, or is he just some kind of abstraction that you believe in?

What a simple and yet powerful confession are these words of Thomas: “My Lord and my God.”  And what a comfort is it, what a source of strength, when in the midst of struggles or sorrow we can still look to the risen Lord Jesus and say: “My Lord and my God,”

And, then there’s that second statement, almost as brief and just as powerful, from the pen of the apostle Paul: “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.”

Now we must read this verse carefully.  Paul is not talking in the past tense but in the present tense.  He doesn’t say “lived” but “lives”.  He is not talking about Jesus as He was on earth, but about Jesus as He is in heaven.  Of course it’s also true that Jesus was fully God while He lived here on earth.  John points that out in the first chapter of his Gospel: “The Word became flesh and lived for a while among us.  We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth,” (John 1:14).  But Paul is now speaking about the risen and glorified Christ in heaven: “In Him all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.” That body, that human body that Thomas saw, with its scars and its wounds, that’s now in heaven and all the fullness of the Godhead lives in him.  You could say that it is concentrated as it were in that human body of Christ.

I should try to illustrate this, though I have to apologise in advance for the illustration.  Take vitamin C for instance.  You have it in oranges and lemons and other fruits and juices.  But if you go to the chemist you can also buy vitamin C pills, and in one little pill you might get as much vitamin C as in say five oranges.  You get it in a concentrated form.

Now, God is everywhere.  He’s present throughout the entire universe.  But He’s present in a concentrated way, in a visible and tangible form, in the body of Jesus Christ.  In that sense we will certainly see God face to face in glory.  We will see Him as he is.  And I think it’s also safe to say that those who have gone to be with the Lord already see Him in this bodily way.

This really is an amazing truth that the God who fills the universe should live in such a concentrated way in the body of Christ, first on earth and now in heaven.  Brothers and sisters, let’s believe that, however hard it may be to understand.  You see, there are all sorts of voices today suggesting that we should not believe this kind of thing.  Those voices were already there in Paul’s day, and that’s why he’s so emphatic in his letter to the Colossians.

1:19: “God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him,” i.e.  in Christ

2: 3: “In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,”

In the verse preceding our text he has issued a warning: “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow, deceptive philosophy.”  The philosophy then was very different to the philosophy now, but the warning is just as current.  With all the humanistic thinking of our own day, how tempting is it to think of Jesus as just a man; yes, an ideal man, a perfect man, but still just a man.  Philosophers and theologians have been doing that for the past 200 years.  They have been tampering with the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus Christ.  Protestants have done it; Catholics have done it.  They have tried to fit Jesus Christ into the thinking of modern man.  They’ve tried to make it easier for people to believe; but in the process they have lost the faith.  If Jesus Christ is not God, brothers and sisters, then we might as well get up and go home because we’re wasting our time coming to church Sunday after Sunday.  In Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.  It was this truth that was challenged again and again in the life of the early church.  It was also a truth that some of the early church fathers appreciated so well.

Let me just give you a quick history lesson.  It was at the time of Constantine, the first Roman emperor to become a Christian.  Christianity had just become the official religion of the empire.  The state that had once been the deadly enemy had now become an unlikely friend.  But it wasn’t long before a doctrinal dispute erupted.  In Alexandria in Egypt, the bishop was having problems with one of his presbyters named Arius.  And this Arius taught that Jesus was somehow less divine than the Father.  To his way of thinking God is too far removed from man to come into a direct relation to him.  He even went so far as to say that the Son had been created and that “there was a time when He was not.” In fact the Son was created by the Father out of nothing, as the first of all created beings.  So in actual fact He was neither God nor man.

Now you may think that all of this must have been rather academic.  But Arius made sure it didn’t stay that way.  He put his thoughts to music and they were sung to popular tunes by the rank and file of Christians in Alexandria.  So it became quite an issue and the new Christian emperor wanted it straightened out.  Then the council of Nicaea met in 325.  The views of Arius were decisively rejected.  And out of this council grew the Nicene Creed and it did not want there to be any mistake as to who Jesus is.  It is very explicit.  Jesus is not somewhere between God and man, but He is “God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father.”

I am happy to say that these words have been accepted by the majority of Christendom.  It’s still the official teaching of the Greek Orthodox church, of the Roman Catholic church and of most Protestant churches as well.

But there was one question which the Council of Nicaea didn’t answer.  “All right, so Jesus Christ is true God, but He is also true man.  So how does His divine nature relate to His human nature?”  And so for the next 100 years or so the best Christian minds worked on that one.  There were some who said: “Well, Jesus wasn’t completely human.  He had a human body and a human soul, but not a human mind that was the divine part.  Jesus was fully God but partly man in one new being.” Others said that Jesus was two persons as well as two natures.  Only the man born as Jesus suffered and died.  He was controlled by the eternal Son of God, but He wasn’t really God.

And so the discussions went back and forth for over 100 years until finally the Council of Chalcedon met in the year 451.  It was a historic moment and again they came to a definition which has since been accepted by all the main streams of the Christian tradition.  They confessed: He is “One and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten; recognized in two natures without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.”

Well, you may say that is a far cry from the words of Thomas to the risen Lord.  Maybe so, but where churches have departed from this teaching they have either become very weak or ceased to exist.  And where Christians have watered down this doctrine they have all too often lost the faith.

Why is it so important that we believe that Jesus Christ is fully God?  Because it is only through Jesus Christ that we know God.  At times of bereavement and acute sorrow and pain, it is very important to know what God is like.  It’s so easy to think wrongly about God, to let our minds wander, sometimes even to think about God in negative and awful ways, but we won’t go far wrong if we think about Jesus Christ.  Through Christ we know God’s compassion and comfort and love.  Through Him we can address the Creator of the whole universe as “My Lord and my God.” with confidence.

Amen.