Diety of Christ — J. Glyn Owen

The Deity of Christ as the Foundation of Salvation

Are you still officially the Pastor Emeritus, or are you now the past Pastor Emeritus? At any rate, he told me to introduce him by saying that an old sinner has come back to visit. Well, that might well be, but our conversations with Dr. Owen and the things that we always hear from him indicate that he's quite a long ways down the road of sanctification and has much, much to say to us about our topic this morning.

I'm greatly looking forward to hearing Dr. Owen speak to us this morning on the Deity of Christ. I won't take any more of the time that you could be spending listening to him. I give you, ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Owen.

Thank you very much indeed. It's good to see your faces again. I've missed so many of these faces, and some that we've perhaps not seen before. I can't even see any of you clearly, nevertheless, but I know you're there.

Shall we just commit ourselves to the Lord before we begin? Heavenly Father, we confess, not as a matter of form but of fact, that without you we can do nothing, nothing. And yet, in the knowledge that you are with us and your promises are given to us, and your Holy Spirit enables us, we can tackle anything in your will.

We come in our weakness this morning, and we pray that you will take each of us, whether our part be speaking or thinking and listening and comparing Scripture with Scripture in our thoughts, that we shall do all things with the enabling that you give to the everlasting glory of your name and the profit of your redeemed people.

We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, now, the subject has been given to me, and I'm going to try to keep to some kind of order. I hope you can put your hands up two minutes after 10 .30, and I know that that is a sign for me to shut up, and we'll have some questions, God willing.

I've got some notes here, and in order to try to be as brief as I can, because so many of the aspects of this subject invite comment, and not just comment, but invite worship. When you deal with a subject like this, you find that your heart goes out to the object of your faith, and it's not purely academic.

There is something which draws the soul and warms the spirit and brings the glory and the glow of heaven into your soul when you deal with holy things, and particularly so when you deal with the person of our Lord and with his work.

So the person of Christ is my subject this morning, the deity of Jesus Christ. Now, this is no purely academic or trivial subject. It may be important at this time of the year that your RRSPs are safely deposited.

That's all we hear on the TV these days. But this is far more important, that you are quite sure that Jesus Christ is competent to be your Savior, competent to save you now and hereafter. And basic to that issue lies this question this morning, is Jesus Christ God the second person, or is he anything less than that?

If he can be shorn of his deity, he is at the same time shorn of his capacity to be your Savior and mine. It is as serious as that. And so I ask you to give me the tools that I want to bring before you.

Let's give them our wholehearted attention this morning. At one time, my family, my parents and brother and sister and I lived in a little town in South Wales. We were on the outskirts of the town. Two miles up the road, there was a mental institution, an institution for the mentally sick.

Now, many of the patients there were allowed out of the grounds occasionally. They were quite harmless. And they would come down into the town, and they would pass the end of our road. One of these men—I'm going back now to 1938, leading into 1939—one of these men was a very familiar man.

He came down with a tash. It was exactly the Adolf Hitler tash—mustache. And he called himself Adolf Hitler. And whenever he came out, he came with a bundle of chalks in one pocket and two or three pencils in another pocket.

And he would stay at a gate or a door or whatever he could write on. And he would write, first of all, a swastika, and then, Adolf Hitler has been here. Now, he wasn't always able to finish that, but you would see, wherever you went, shops of doors and various places, this little swastika, either in chalk or in pencil.

Then came 1939 and the outbreak of the Second World War, and the real Adolf Hitler came forward. But this guy still believed that he was Adolf. And when you met him on the street, he expected you to salute him and call him Adolf.

Is that a picture of our Lord Jesus Christ? Was he deluded? Were his disciples led astray? Or was he really God incarnate? Now, it's as serious as that. That's the issue before us. Now, the way I want to travel this morning—and you can pursue this in your own thinking, because I can't complete this—but I would take about four different ways.

I would begin by asking the question, what is meant by the deity of Jesus Christ? What do you mean by the Godhead or the Godhood of Jesus? A second point that I would come to is this. What was the consciousness of Jesus himself?

What did he think of himself inwardly, in himself, and, of course, as expressed in his words and revealed in his actions? How did he think of himself? The third, the conviction of those who lived with him and saw him at close quarters over a period of three years, saw him live, heard him teach, watched him in his ministrations of mercy and kindness and power, saw him die and rise again from the dead.

What did they think of him? And then, to make it complete, I believe, one would have to look at the confession of the Christian Church, or the confessions, the creedal statements of the Church, down through the ages.

And I believe, though I can't go through all of this this morning, I can just take examples from each one of these, I believe that in the history of the Christian Church, the Orthodox Christian Church, the historic faith, Jesus Christ is always seen to be God the Son, the second person of the Godhead.

Jesus Christ Claims Absolute Deity

Now then, to the first question, what really are we claiming for Jesus when we speak of his deity? What does it mean? In brief, it is nothing short of the claim to be God. Now, you may well think that is a tremendous claim, and of course it is.

It has been made by no other sane creature that I know of throughout the course of human history. It might have been made by a deranged man such as this dear man Adolf. Jesus Christ claimed to be divine in the sheer absolute sense.

Now, how can I explain that in brief? Well, let me put it to you like this. What do we believe about God? What does the Bible tell us about God? What does the Church believe about God? Let me put it very briefly and succinctly, and perhaps it is an oversimplification.

The Christian believes that there is a personal God, creator, ruler of the universe, a God who is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. I'll repeat that. There is a personal God, creator, ruler of the universe, a God who is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable.

That is a minimal Christian view of God. Now, when we come to the Lord Jesus Christ, do we have to detract anything? Do we have to take anything away from that? Or can we posit these factors to Him? The Bible doesn't ask us to withdraw anything whatsoever, but the attributes that we attribute to God are equally attributed to Jesus.

For example, He, too, is eternal according to the Scriptures. He preexisted His own birth. The birth of the Virgin, the conception in the Virgin's womb was not the beginning of the life of this person.

It was the beginning of His life as the God-man here on planet earth. But it was not the beginning of the person, the Christ, the Savior. He preexisted His birth. I'll come again when the Bible tells us that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Can we believe such a thing about Jesus? Does the Bible make such a claim about Jesus? Where was He? Now, you know your New Testament, I'm sure, as well as I do. You remember how John begins his Gospel?

Very early he says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Without Him, he goes on to say, there was nothing made that was made. Paul goes further and he says, All things were made by Him, and listen, for Him.

And He is the heir of all things. He was involved in the making of all things. He was, all things were made by Him and for Him, and He is the ultimate heir. You were made for Him. I was made for Him. This church was built for Him.

I mean its people. The whole cosmos is in existence for His glory, and if it does not serve His glory, it does not serve the purpose of its existence. That is true of the individual, it is true of society.

I'll come again. God is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. Does the New Testament ask us to forget that when it tells us that Christ is God? No. You attribute all these things to the Christ, the Son, as well as to God, the Father.

I am, He said, Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. He is everything, He is everything. Before Abraham was, I am. In the beginning was the Word. He is before all things, again another quote from St. Paul, and it is in Him that all things consist, which means He is the one that holds the whole universe together.

We are talking a lot today about a nation falling apart. There are very few safety pins, very few things that glue us together. What is it that glues the universe together, the ages together, that makes some sense and some unity running through the millennia?

The New Testament says the Son of God is the one that glues the ages together so that the purpose declared at the beginning of time continues to be wrought out little by little, line upon line, through the ages, until at last He will consummate His purposes and all things will redound to His glory and praise.

That's what we need. And you see, I have only to say this to elicit in all of us who are believers in Him the desire to bow and worship. Being this, He demands and He deserves the worship of His people along with the Father and of the Holy Spirit.

The Trinity and the Mystery of the Godhead

Now, it was because of this kind of testimony, mine is only but illustrative of the whole, because of this kind of testimony that early in the history of the Christian church, the doctrine of the Trinity was formulated.

Now, the facts were there before, but the facts were related one to another into a doctrine. Nothing was put in paper that was not already factual in the revelation before, and the doctrine of the Trinity says that the Godhead constitutes three persons in one undivided nature, co-equal the one with the other, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

When you and I were baptized as Christians, we were baptized into one name, baptized into the name, my name, sorry, I shouldn't have said that, into one name, but three persons. I'd like you to notice that.

In Matthew chapter 26, in the Great Commission, I have no time to go into it now, we are baptized into one name, but there are three persons that are involved in the one name. Now, here, of course, is a complete mystery, and we have to take that.

There is mystery everywhere, but sure, there is mystery here. A philosopher friend of ours, dear friend of ours too, just recently died, used to tell me, there is a world of difference, he used to say, between a mystery and a mist.

I asked him, Reinach, what do you mean? Well, he said, more than once, and I asked him the question, I'd like to hear him say it. He said, in a mist, he says, you don't know what's there. But where there is a mystery, you don't know how it got there.

There is no mist around the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, because he manifested his deity in his words, in his actions, in his attitudes, in his prophetic utterances concerning himself, his coming death and resurrection and ascension and sending forth of the Spirit.

In all of these things, we see what's there, how it got there, how God and man can be united in one person without diminution of either, is something that we cannot, cannot understand. But he was as truly human as he was truly divine.

He was so human, you might judge that he was not God. He was so divine, you might judge, if you didn't know the fact, that he was not human, but he was born. And on the score of his humanity and his deity, united in all glory in himself, we worship him and we trust him and seek to obey him.

Christ's Sinlessness and Divine Claims

Now, it is impossible to dissect the person of our Lord Jesus Christ and to diminish him down to the level of a man. So many critics over the years have tried to do this and tried to take away from him, sheer him as they sheer sheep, sheer him of some aspects of his glory.

But you can't bring him down to a simple manhood. You see, not in his birth, because two of the Gospels, two of the testimonies tell us that he was supernaturally born. And, of course, there are other evidences, but Matthew and Luke tell us that.

No, no, he wasn't a mere human, nor in his character. He, of all the sons of men, is said to have been faultless, sinless. He claimed it himself. He challenged his foes even. Which of you convicts me of sin?

And he was not crucified because sin was found in him. He was crucified for other reasons. Nor can we classify him as a mere human because of his claims. No human has ever made the claims that Jesus made.

Listen to them. He accepted what John the Baptist said about him. Indeed, he says, has John baptized you with water? But after me there is coming one who will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

Just think of what that means. He commands. He says, I will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. I have authority to send forth the Holy Spirit of God and to come upon you and to change you and to bring the Spirit of God and, as Peter puts it, the very divine nature to human beings.

He will come upon you. I baptize you with the Holy Spirit. You can't do that. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church can't do that. There is no community of people that can do that. It's only the incarnate Son that ever dared make such a suggestion that he could order, in fellowship with the Father, the Holy Spirit to come as another parakeet to assume the role of the divine among people.

All things, he said, have been delivered to me of my Father. And no man knows the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son will redeem him. No one knows the Father except me. No other individual of sanity has ever said such a thing.

Philosophers and teachers and religious leaders have said, well, I can help you. Our teaching is good. My teaching is good. My philosophy is respectable. And I've got something to contribute. That's not what Jesus said.

He stands apart. No man cometh unto the Father but by me. And either he is, as C .S. Lewis said, an utter megalomaniac, or we must accept him as the Son of God, truly the Son of God. Now, that brings me then to his own innermost consciousness.

Jesus as the Son of Man and the Christ

Let me just cull for the moment some illustrations of what I have in mind. I want you to imagine Jesus. I want you to think of him now among his disciples, particularly the last half, the last 18 months or so of his earthly life.

Shall we start with the confession of Peter in Caesarea Philippi? I want you to think of the way he accepted from men, accepted as true certain things they said about him, and how he himself naturally, spontaneously spoke of himself in certain terms.

Now take, for example, that confession of Peter in Caesarea Philippi. It started like this. Jesus said, well, I won't enlarge, just come to the point. Whom do you say that I, the Son of Man, am? Now, notice, he didn't say, who do you say I am?

He has already said what he thinks of himself in asking the question. What I think of myself is that I am the Son of Man. Now, Son of Man is really an English translation of a Hebraism. In some circumstances, it may only mean a man, a person, man or woman, actually.

Son of a man, you have this in Semitic languages without going into details now. So it may simply mean that. And it could mean that in some places in the New Testament, the reference was to his humanity, could be.

I wouldn't argue for it, but I wouldn't argue against it. But there are some places where it is absolutely clear that when Jesus referred to himself as the Son of Man, he had a most amazing picture of himself.

He did it against the background of the picture of the Son of Man that we find in Daniel chapter 7, verses 13 and 14 there. Now, let me read that to you. I hope I can put my finger on it. Can anyone read for me Daniel 7, 13, 14?

I'd be grateful. Click. Oh, here we are. I've got it. Here we are. I've got it. In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a Son of Man, this is Daniel speaking, coming with the clouds of heaven.

He approached the Ancient of Days, which is a title for God, and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory, and sovereign power. All peoples, nations, and men of every language worshipped him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed. Now, I say to you that there are some places in the New Testament where Jesus unequivocally has that in mind when he speaks of himself as the Son of Man.

You ask me, where are they? Let me read three to you. In Mark chapter 8, verse 38, he's referring to the future. When he, the Son of Man, comes in his Father's glory and of the Holy Angel. Still a little clearer.

Matthew 13, 26, 27. Men will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of great power and glory. And the third is this. You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming in the clouds of heaven.

Now, when you compare these with Daniel 7, 13, and 14, you will see that evidently the Lord Jesus Christ is thinking of himself as the Son of Man in terms of that portrait that was given to Daniel. Now, therefore, it is a very lofty term.

One whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom that will never pass away. One who has divine glory and excellence and power that can never be taken from him. The Son of Man. Whom say ye that I the Son of Man am?

Simon Peter came to his confession. You, he says, are the Christ. The Son of the Living God. The Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One. There is much more within that term, Messiah, than we generally appreciate, I think.

First of all, it means that God had appointed him, God had chosen him, and God had anointed him with the Holy Spirit without measure. As the epistle to the Hebrews tells us, he gives not the Spirit in measure to him.

Whoever says that they are filled with the Spirit and have the power of the Spirit, Jesus more. There are no limits, no qualifications. He had the Spirit without measure. And he came just as the prophets and the priests and the kings in the Old Testament were ordained for ministry of God, so was he.

There's more to it than that. He was anointed in order to anoint. He was anointed in order to fulfill his ministry in terms of Isaiah chapter 61, as he tells them in the synagogue in Luke 5, I think it is, when he went back to the synagogue in Nazareth for the first time during his public ministry.

He says, this day this scripture is fulfilled in your presence. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has anointed me to do this, this, and that. But it goes even beyond that. He is the one who will baptize us with the Holy Spirit, as we've made reference already.

He is the Messiah, the promised one of Scripture, alongside of whom there is no other, for God has not appointed another. Peter said, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Caesarea Philippi, you know, had been a very religious center.

I cannot go into this in detail. You can check it up. But if you know the history of Caesarea Philippi, there were about five very important religious centers there and temples. One was a temple to the old Greek god Pan.

It was his reputed birthplace. That's a mythical deity, of course. There was another very large white temple there, dedicated to the emperor Augustus. And the emperor was worshipped there. There were many, many other mythical deities that had their shrines there in Caesarea Philippi.

That's where Jesus posed this question. Whom say you that I, the Son of Man, am? Simon Peter said, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Not the Son of God. So many gods around, you have to distinguish.

But the distinction is this. The living God. Not the mythical deity that never lived. Not the emperor that is living and dying at the same time. The mortal man. But the living God, Jehovah, the great I am.

And not a son, the Son of the living God. And he accepted this. And he went on to say, blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah. Flesh and blood didn't reveal this to you. You've got this from my father himself.

He has revealed it to you. You see, he accepts it. And this is in written into his own consciousness, wherever you go. I think, for example, of those great ninefold statements in John's Gospel. They appear very simple at the beginning, but you know they are very, very profound.

The “I Am” Sayings of Jesus

The nine I am's of Jesus. Here is his consciousness. This is how he thinks of himself. I don't know whether it is necessary for us to go with the late Dr. G. Campbell Morgan and one or two others, Europeans particularly, who understood these I am statements of Jesus in this way.

G. Campbell Morgan particularly used to say that when Jesus said, I am the light of the world, what he did was this. He took the Old Testament title of God, I am, and he added to it a characteristic of the great I am incarnate before your eyes.

That is the eyes of his contemporaries. I am the light of the world. I am the door, etc. Well now, whether that is necessary or not, the deity of our Lord is coming out in what he says. Just look at a few of them.

I am, I quoted, the light of the world. What does this say? What it says is this, that Jesus sees this world in the dark. It is a world in the dark. It is a world unillumined. And he says to his people, I am the light of the world.

He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. He switched the lights on, and he is the light. I am the way, he says. What way? Well, in the context, it's quite clear.

He had said that he was going to the Father. And one or two of them didn't know quite what was happening. Where are you going to, and how do we know the way? Well, he says, I am the way. Come with me, follow me, believe in me, trust in me.

I am the way to the Father. No man comes to the Father but by me. I am the way. No one else has ever said that. The highest we humans can get to is we can point the way. John the Baptist pointed the way.

Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. And every preacher worth his penny is a pointer of the way. Like a signpost at the end of the street or out in the countryside, showing the way, pointing the way.

He said, I am the way. I am the truth. Truth means, philosophically and theologically, correspondence to reality. That which corresponds to reality. What is the reality? The reality is God, the Father to whom he is going, and the heaven to which he is going, and what he is going to build for his people.

I am going to prepare a place for you. Those are the realities here. He says, I am the truth. Corresponding to reality. I represent the whole truth of God my Father, of the eternal world that you can't see with your eyes.

I am the truth. Come again. Move on. These are very, very profound statements. I am the bread of life. He's already said he is the life itself. Life is in him. But I am the bread of life. I not only impart eternal life, but I am the sustenance of it.

He that eateth of me, he that comes and eats of me, devours of me, feeds upon me, will never die. And then he speaks of himself. He points to the living water of the spirit, which he can give and which will quench the thirst of the souls of men that drink it.

Then again, he is himself the good shepherd. With all that that meant for the ancient Jews of his day, and means for us if we have read some of the good books that are around. And again, not only the good shepherd, but the door into the sheepfold.

I am the door. It's through me you get in. And through me you get on. And again, I am the true vine. Let me read to you. He says, he claims, says someone, he claims here to be the life tree of regenerate humanity.

All that is truly fruitful and lovely must branch forth from him. All spiritual life must wither and die if it is separate from him. He stands consciously between heaven and earth, and is the communicator and the sustainer of life from its beginnings to its end.

It's no wonder the apostle Paul said that all the fullness dwelt in him, and we are complete in him. Prayer may be offered in his name, and it is heard. Looking at some of his contemporaries one day, he said this to them.

John 8, 23, he says, You, he says, are from beneath. I am from above. You are of this world. I am not of this world. He anticipated his death, and he told us what was going to happen afterwards. I, if I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men unto me.

He spoke of his own resurrection, and he spoke of his own ultimate coming to consummate his purposes. He is indeed law of death and of destiny. He that believes in him has the assurance of eternal life.

The Apostolic Witness to Jesus as God Incarnate

Now, I'm coming to the end. Just a few words about this. What about his followers? What did they believe? Let me just, just, these are purely illustrative. Let me just come to this main statement, the main series of statements by them.

First of all, they called him Lord. Now, and you understand, if you read Luke chapter 1, for example, the fulfillment of the Old Testament in the birth of the Lord Jesus, you will find that the title that Luke there uses a number of times for God, for Jehovah in the Old Testament, is Lord, translated Lord.

Kurios. Now, the New Testament used the same title for Jesus Christ. Now, sometimes, again, sometimes the title kurios can mean something less than God. As, for example, with a woman at the well. In, I think it's verse 19 of John 4, when she met Jesus for the first time, she didn't know anything about him, and she said, Sir, you are a prophet.

Now, the word kurios translated Sir, meaning reverence. But when you come to the end of John, and Thomas bows at his feet, and he says, My Lord and my God, the designation Lord assumes an altogether different sense.

It is now qualified by the concept of God. He links it with God. He wouldn't use the word Lord if it meant something less than God when he uses the word God afterwards. And when you come into the New Testament and into the epistles, that is what you find.

The Lord is risen indeed. He's Lord now. And then, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And incidentally, you know, you're familiar with the fact that Paul says that in Romans 10.

But Paul in Romans 10 is quoting from Joel. And in Joel it is said that whosoever shall call upon the name of Jehovah will be saved. Paul takes that passage from the Old Testament, and instead of using the word Jehovah, he says, whosoever shall call upon the name of Jesus shall be saved.

Jesus, you see, is Jehovah. And the New Testament writers do this remarkable thing. They take excerpts that speak of Jehovah in his fullness and his glory in the Old Testament, and in the New Testament they attribute it now to Jesus.

They were convinced that Jesus was God incarnate. The other one I must, with this I will have to close. The other word is the word God, of course. I've already referred this morning to John 1 .1, and the word was God.

And I've referred also to John 20 .28, my Lord and my God, said Thomas. In Romans 9 .5, Paul has a very remarkable statement too. From them, he says, that is the Jews, is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is, listen, God over all, forever praised.

In Titus 2 .13, he says, we wait for the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. In Hebrews 1 .8, the writer to the Hebrews takes Psalm 45 and verse 6, and he attributes it to Jesus Christ.

And this is how you find it written in Hebrews. But to the Son, He, that is God, says, your throne, O God, will last forever and ever. 2 Peter chapter 1 and verse 1 begins like this. He's introducing himself and referring to those to whom he is writing.

Writing to those who through a righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ, have received a faith as precious as ours. Have you got it? In the consciousness of Jesus himself, in the conviction of those that were around him, and ultimately, they are the primary witnesses to it all from within our human race.

Jesus was no mere man. He was not simply a good man. He was not simply a great man. He was not simply a wise man. He was not simply a holy man. They believed him to be God incarnate, and worshipped him, and honored him, and obeyed him.

And they tell us that when we read of heaven from this vantage point, and when we get there, we shall find that the praises of heaven are given jointly to God and the Lamb. Robin Hood, one minute after 25.

Now, there may be some questions I don't see. I can answer them, but here's a term in the Old Testament.

The Meaning of God’s Name “I Am”

Well, there's a guy here called Blake Walker that you might consult on this. Well, anyway, since he's over here just now, I won't call upon him. But we're glad to see him, by the way, and he's a good lady.

You know, the name arises... Oh, did you hear the question? Mrs. Walker says she's often been puzzled by the name for God, I Am, at high end. In order to be brief, let me put it like this. The name itself arises out of the Hebrew verb, to be.

And it can be legitimately translated in the present or in the future. God is thereby saying, I am the one who is, and who will be. And that's the thing that he wants Pharaoh to know. Go and tell Pharaoh, I am essential.

I'm not a dead deity. I'm not a mythical deity. I'm not a mere concept of the mind, but I'm alive. I've met you in the bush. I've talked to you. I've called you by name. And I told you to take your shoes off your feet.

And I commanded you to go. Tell Pharaoh, I am the... It's another way of saying, I'm alive. You see, the Jews themselves might have concluded that God had died by this time, too. But they'd been there for 400 years, and promises had been made to their fathers.