Jesus is God

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If you have your Bibles, I want to invite you to open them with me to John chapter 1 and hold your place again at verse 1 and when it's time to read, we'll be reading verses 1 to 5.
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And there's a slight difference in what is in the bulletin and what is on the screen and I want to very quickly make note that it is my error because Andy asked me the title of the sermon and I, because he does the bulletin, and I said the title is
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Jesus is God. And then I came in this morning and put the screen in, is
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Jesus God? And where you put that is, is pretty important. Where the verb goes in that short three -word sentence does make a difference.
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Not only if it's an interrogative or a declarative, but it also makes a difference as to whether you're speaking with confidence or whether you're speaking with some form of questioning.
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Well, it's interesting that one of the most profound questions in the universe is the question, is
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Jesus God? And the answer to that question is yes, but it is a yes that requires us to dive into definitions and do some theological groundwork to understand what we mean.
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Because simply saying Jesus is God causes a litany of questions to arise.
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Questions like, well, if Jesus is God, to whom did he pray? If Jesus is God, why does he talk about God being his father as if he's another person?
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Why does he say the Father is greater than I? And why does he speak of his own limitations when he says things like no man knows the day of the hour, only the
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Father, not even the Son? And it is those questions that have stirred the early church and writers that came after the apostles to seek to distinguish and define the nature of Christ's divinity in such a way that we can firmly proclaim
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Jesus is God, while at the same time understanding that that comes with some theological definitional work that needs to be done.
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Those teachings were distilled for us in what we call the ancient creeds of the church, which as Andy said this morning, are not scripture.
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They do not stand on the same level as scripture. They are subservient to scripture, as are all confessions and catechisms and all of the other writings of the fathers, the medieval church, and the reformers.
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It all stands secondary. It all stands in service to, not on equal ground with, the scripture.
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But yet, they're important. They are truthful, and they define what we would call orthodoxy.
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Now we've heard that word orthodoxy many times. We think about the fact that there is an entire branch of Christendom which identifies itself as orthodox, the eastern orthodox church.
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And when we talk about truth, we talk about truth that is orthodox, orthos, and doxa.
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The orthos meaning to be straight. When you go to the orthodontist, their job is to straighten your teeth.
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That's the same word for orthos. It means to be straight, or to be right, or to be correct. And doxa, glory.
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We sing the last song of almost all of our worship services is the doxology. Putting the word logos after doxa, meaning the word of glory.
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Right? Well, orthodoxy means we are straight in regard to how we understand
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God, His glory. We are straight in how we understand His truths. We are straight in regard to how we glorify
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Him. That's what orthodoxy means. And throughout the history of the church, particularly in the first 400 years of the church, the great question in the minds of the writers and the teachers of the church was how do we define the divinity of Christ in regard to all the questions that come when we say
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Jesus is divine. How do we deal with these questions?
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And so, over the next few weeks, we're going to continue, as Andy started this morning, reading through these creeds.
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And if it goes well, we may do it again. But we're reading through them to see how the church has defined these important truths.
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The Apostles Creed, as Andy said, one of the oldest, one of the most used among Christians, one of the most orthodox and correct, simple.
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Next time, we're going to look at the Nicene Creed. Then we're going to move on to the Athanasian Creed, which will take several weeks because it's no short statement.
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But again, all of these are for the purpose of helping us to understand what we mean when we say
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Jesus is God. And we come this morning to the great text of text, which we've been in for the last few weeks, that reminds us that this is, in fact, the case.
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Jesus is, in fact, God. And so today, we're going to, again, look at verses 1 to 5.
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And since some of you were not here last Sunday night, I'm going to reiterate some of the things that I talked about because in our
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Christmas Vesper service, I looked at verses 3 through 5. And since some of you weren't here, I'm going to reiterate some of what
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I said because I want you to hear it and see how verse 1 is the great statement of Christ's divinity, and verses 2, 3, 4, and 5 are a restatement of the statement that we get in verse 1.
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John is not saying something different in verses 2 through 5, but he is expanding upon, he is broadening, and he is deepening our understanding of verse 1.
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So with that, let's stand and read together. John 1, 1.
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In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
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Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.
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All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.
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In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
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The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
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Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. We come to You, Lord, thankful that You give us this time to study
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Your Word and to be encouraged by it. And Lord, we are reminded, as Mike has already reminded us, that we have come now to the end of another year, looking forward to the beginning of a new year.
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And I pray, Lord, as we have already begun to blaze the trail of study in John's Gospel, that we would not seek to go in haste, but that we would stop along the way, and that we would take the opportunity to imbibe these important truths, and that they may reach down into our very souls and stir us toward a more faithful walk with the
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Lord Jesus Christ, as we understand even better who He is. Lord, I pray that You keep me from error.
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As You, Lord, know as I preach, as I pray every week, Lord, I know my capacity for failure, for error, and for the sake of Your people, for the sake of Your name, for the sake of my heart,
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Lord, keep me from that. And as we walk through this text today, Lord, I pray,
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Lord, that You would apply its truths to the heart of Your people. And for those who are here who have not yet bowed the knee to Jesus Christ, Lord, I pray that this would be to them a moment of challenge, and a moment of clarity, and conviction of sin, and that they would turn from their sin and turn to the
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Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. Lord, we ask all of this in the name of Jesus and for His sake.
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Amen. John begins his gospel by introducing this person who he identifies as the
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Logos. In our Bibles, the English translation, it is simply the
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Word. In the Greek mind, the
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Logos was the universal force that established all things and held all things together with rationality and order.
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Therefore, if a Greek -speaking person would have read John's gospel, their mind would have went immediately to that Logos that had been for several centuries understood as being the underpinning of all rational and logical thought.
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In fact, our English word logic comes from Logos. The Hebrew reader would have seen the word
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Logos and would have possibly seen it slightly differently because they had been reared not necessarily on the
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Greek philosophy, but rather on the Old Testament Scriptures, where the
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Word of God was the very active force of God from the very beginning, which did all the things that God intended for things to be done.
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For instance, when God wanted to create, He simply spoke and it was created.
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Therefore, it is said in Scripture that all things were made by the Word of God.
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When we read of the prophets, they prophesy the
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Word of God. We are redeemed by the
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Word of God. We are led by the Word of God. Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.
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Proverbs personifies wisdom. The Word of God is wisdom and truth.
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And so this is the word that John uses to identify a person.
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And he identifies this person to us in verse 14, when he says,
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The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory of the
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Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. So we don't have to wonder who this person, this
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Logos is. It isn't as if he keeps it a mystery. John does not want to present to us a mystery.
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He wants to present to us a truth that we can believe and trust. So he begins by telling us of this
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Logos and then identifying to us who this Logos is.
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And certainly we know that the Logos is Jesus. John 1 .1
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states three truths about the Logos, which we covered in our last sermon.
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So I'm not going to reiterate everything that I said. But because these are such sublime and important truths, it would be foolish of me not to at least remind you of them.
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In John 1 .1, we are reminded by John that the Word, the
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Logos, is preexistent, coexistent, and self -existent.
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Remember, if you will, last week, that the first verse of John's gospel can be broken into three parts.
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We call it, when we're studying John 1 .1a, John 1 .1b, and John 1 .1c.
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The first clause, in the beginning was the Word. That tells us that this
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Logos, this person who John is indicating, was in the beginning with God.
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He was there. He was in the beginning. So when we read Genesis and we see, in the beginning,
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God created the heavens and the earth. That's the beginning that John is here talking about.
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Genesis 1 .1 and John 1 .1 in the Greek have the same two beginning words,
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N -R -K, in the beginning. And it's not the beginning of the
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New Testament. It's not the beginning of the Abrahamic movement, the line. It's not the beginning after Noah.
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No, it's all the way back to the beginning of all things that are created. And it tells us, in the beginning, the
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Word already was. Therefore, we call Him preexistent.
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Jesus did not come to existence in Bethlehem.
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He preexisted Bethlehem. But He also preexisted time.
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He preexisted creation. He preexisted all things.
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He has always been. In the beginning was the
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Word. It doesn't say in the beginning the Word became. That would be a different verb. In fact, we'll see later when it says the
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Word became flesh. That's the verb. That's became. No, no, no. He was. He already was in the beginning.
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He was preexistent. But He was also coexistent.
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He existed with God. And this is John 1, 1b. And the
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Word was face to face with God. Pros tan theon.
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He was in the presence of God. And you say, how can
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He be in the presence of God? Because He is God. John 1, 1c.
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And the Word was God. By the way, if you've ever had a conversation with someone who tells you the
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Bible never says Jesus is God, it certainly does. John 1, 1c, the
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Word is Jesus. There is no complication in that interpretation. The Word is
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Jesus. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Verse 14, all throughout John's Gospel, he chooses to use logos to define
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Jesus as His person. There's no question who the Word is. And last week, if you'll remember,
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I said the noun here, which is theos. The noun is qualitative. Speaking of His quality, very interesting, there's a man, he is a
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New Testament scholar, and he has made big waves on TikTok and other social media with his platform where he is opposing a lot of the traditional things that Christians believe.
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I won't mention his name, but if you want his name, I'll give it to you afterwards. If I mention his name, it's like, bing, it'll cry out online.
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But he is a very intelligent man, but he is also a man who will tell you that the
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Bible is contradictory, the Bible is wrong. He is a liberal scholar when it comes to biblical interpretation.
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The other day, I saw a video he had made, and it said, the title of it,
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John 1 does not say Jesus is God. Oh, well, I gotta watch that.
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Like, there's no choice. It's only a two -minute video. I can waste two minutes of my life to hear what he has to say, so I click on the video, and he argues almost the exact same thing
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I said last week, and that is that the noun, theos, is not quantitative but is qualitative, and it speaks of Jesus in His quality, but he said it's better translated divine rather than God.
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It's better translated divine rather than God. And so,
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I'm sitting there listening to him, and I'm saying, everything you're saying is correct, but your conclusion is that by saying
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Jesus is divine, that's not saying He's God. How are you coming to that conclusion? If you want to argue that kaitheos ain't how logos means, and the word was divine,
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I'm with you. But guess what? There's only one divine, there's only one God, in Hebrew thought, there would only be one who met that quality.
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There's only one with the quality of divinity, and that is God Himself. Therefore, if it says the word was divine, guess what it's saying?
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The word was God. Jesus is God. That's right. So, he spent this time arguing for something, and I'm going, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, but you're wrong, because by arguing that He is divine, you're arguing that He's God.
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That's the very truth that John is pointing out. John is giving us, in this verse, something that's hard for our minds to comprehend, because he's saying
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Jesus is God, and He's with God. And as I said last week, if you do not have a
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Trinitarian understanding of Scripture, you will not rightly understand John 1 .1.
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Because only with a Trinitarian understanding of Scripture can you have a God who is one in essence, three in persons.
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These three persons are all co -equal, they are all co -eternal, they are all divine, and yet they are distinct.
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Only with the doctrine of the Trinity can you have one God who is eternally in relationship with Himself, and the three persons eternally exist as those three persons.
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The Father, the Son, and the Spirit have always existed. And they have always existed in a relationship of love within themselves.
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Now that's hard to understand, but that is what John is establishing for us in John 1 .1.
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The Word was in the beginning, already was. The Word was with God, He is co -existent.
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And the Word is God, He's self -existent. What does it mean to be self -existent? It means that He is not from, but He is
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Himself being. We are all dependent.
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We come from something. We come from our parents, we come from our ancestry, we come from something.
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He is, our existence is not from ourselves, our existence is from God. We are going to see that in a moment, the life comes from Christ.
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But His life is in Himself. His life is in Himself. And so when we read
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John 1 .1, we read about Jesus. In the beginning.
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And again, you can take the word logos, you can replace it with the word Jesus, and it reads perfectly fine.
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In the beginning, Jesus already was. And Jesus was with God. And Jesus was
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God. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Other than to say that it was only in Bethlehem, when
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He was identified as a person, Jesus of Nazareth.
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I don't believe in eternity past, that label of Jesus was the name of the
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Son, not in the sense of His personal name. Now you may want to argue that, and we can talk about it, maybe
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I'm wrong, but the point is, the idea of who He is in His person, has always existed, has always been with God, has always been
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God. We good so far? A lot to take in. Now we get to verse 2.
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And verse 2, I am convinced, is John's reiteration of verse 1.
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Because he says almost the exact same thing, as he says in verse 1. Notice it with me,
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I'll put it on the board for you. I created a little chart. You guys know how much I love charts. I preach off of a chart.
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This is kind of my thing. I was born a dispensationalist.
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I just grew out of it. So, it says in the beginning was the word.
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And then in verse 2, it says, He was in the beginning with God. So verse 2 is reiterating what verse 1 1a has said.
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Verse 1 1a, in the beginning was the word. Verse 2 says, He was in the beginning with God. Now, why is it necessary to reiterate this?
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I think it's necessary for this reason. In verse 2, the logos is personalized.
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In the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was God. Certainly, the word is being personalized there.
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But in verse 2, we are not able to abandon any idea of personalization because it says,
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He was in the beginning. Remember how I said, every word matters. And when it says,
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He was in the beginning with God, it's now taking the logos and it's identifying
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Him personally as He. Who is
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He? Jesus, the logos. It's He, and He was in the beginning with God.
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Again, reiterating His preexistence. And in verse 2, it also reiterates what's said in John 1 1b.
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Because in John 1 1b, it says, In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God. It says the word was with God.
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Well, in John 1 2, it says, He was in the beginning with God. It reiterates that same thing again.
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He was there with God. But then we get to verse 3.
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And verse 3 reiterates the idea of His coexistence. Because it says,
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All things were made through Him, and what? And without Him was not anything made that was made.
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This is expressing His coexistence with God and explaining His agency in the
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Godhead as the creator. I said this last week, I'm going to say it again. Jesus is our creator.
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The logos is the one through whom God created all things. That's what this text says.
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In fact, it says it in both the positive and the negative. All things were made through Him.
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And we say, yay. But somebody comes along and says, well, does that all mean all?
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A bunch of Calvinists. Does that all mean all? If you don't get that, you're not a Calvinist. Question mark as to what does all mean.
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So John, in his very important way of clarifying what he's saying, he says,
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All things were made through Him. And just in case you don't get that, just in case you don't understand that, without Him was not anything made that was made.
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That's a positive and a negative statement which completely encapsulate all things.
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Again, we could go over to Colossians chapter 1, where it says, All things were made by Him, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or rulers or powers.
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All things were made by Him and for Him. This is not something that the writers of Scripture had a problem with.
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Calling Jesus the Creator was not something that was an issue. It was something that they all understood and confirmed.
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It's confirmed by John. It's confirmed by Paul. It's confirmed in Revelation. Mike's already talked about it in Revelation chapter 1.
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It's Jesus being God. The Alpha and the Omega. The beginning and the end.
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It's confirmed in Hebrews. Hebrews, He's literally identified as Yahweh in Hebrews chapter 1.
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So we have this word that says, Jesus created all things and nothing that was created was not created by Him.
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And I showed this last week, I think, but just in case I didn't. There are only two categories.
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And the category is creator or creation. They do not overlap.
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There is no Venn diagram where there's a middle piece that connects the two. And that's where Jesus lies. No, He's either creator or creation.
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John identifies clearly Him as creator and not as creation.
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And this is why it says, All things that were made were made by Him. Nothing that was made wasn't made by Him.
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Because what John is doing there is he's creating this category. He's saying there's a category of made.
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And there's a category of unmade. There's a category of created. And there's a category of uncreated.
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The creator is in the category of unmade, uncreated. And that's where Jesus goes.
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This is why, again, the doctrine of the Trinity. He is eternally co -existent and co -eternal with the
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Father. He didn't come into existence. God didn't think Him up or produce
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Him. But He has always existed with the Father. So He falls into the category of creator.
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He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him. And without Him was not anything made that was made.
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And then His self -existence. John 1 .1c says, And the Word was God. And John 1 .4
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says, In Him was life. Could you say that about someone who is not
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God? You can't say, In Dale... You were here last week.
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In Dale was life. You could say, Well, Dale has life. But life does not come from Dale.
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That's the point. The word life here is the word zoe.
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There's another Greek word for life. Most of us are more familiar with the other word.
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It's the word bios. Bios is where we get the word biology.
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And that's the study of the physical world. The study of physical life.
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Zoe is more than just physical life. It can include physical life.
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It can be used in certain passages to relate to physical life. But you as a human being are more than just physical life.
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Do you agree? You are more than just synapses firing.
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You are more than just blood flowing. You are more than just animated flesh.
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But you have life in you. You know, we often talk about when does life end.
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It's hard to know sometimes. Especially when someone has lingered with sickness or some type of disease.
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And perhaps have been in a state of unconsciousness. It's hard to know when life truly ends.
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We know when bios is done. We have markers for that.
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But zoe is what God breathed into Adam. I guess
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I could say what Jesus breathed into Adam. All things were made through him and him was life. And it said he made the bios.
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He took the dirt. And by the way, all of your bios is the same. Everything else in the world is made of the same stuff.
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Somebody said, you know, in you is particles from stars and planets from all around the world.
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And that's probably true. We're all just pieces of this universe when it comes to our physical.
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But the bios and the zoe, the zoe God breathed into him.
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And he became a living what? Soul. He became a living soul.
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That life comes from God. That life comes from, according to this passage,
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Jesus. Because in him was life.
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And when he broke into this world, he broke into this world as the person of Jesus Christ.
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With a life that would change the world. And that's why John says in him was life.
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And that life, it's moving now to the idea of Jesus' life. It says that life was the light of men.
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Because his life changed the world, did it not?
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Is there any life in history that has had the impact of Jesus of Nazareth?
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Yeah, do this. The answer is no. It split time in half.
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It has affected all of the world. In fact, just a few days ago,
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I had a talk with a man who is an expert in Islamic studies.
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He's going to come on my show and we're going to have a conversation. PhD, he was in the
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Marines. He was actually an interpreter, Arabic interpreter. So he was one who was a go -between.
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Very intelligent man. And he said this, and I thought it was so interesting. He said,
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Islam is a Christian heresy. I've never heard it described that way.
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He said, because what do they do? They teach falsely about God. They call him
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Allah. And they teach falsely about Jesus. But they still talk about Jesus. They call him Isa. They say he is not the son of the father because cursed is he who says
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Allah has a son. They say, but they do say he's the Messiah. They say he's born of a virgin.
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They say he's sinless. So his point, and I thought it was just brilliant. He said, that's just another
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Christian heresy. They want to have Jesus, but they don't want the Jesus of the Bible. They want to have
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Jesus in their system because everybody wants Jesus in their system. All of the new age gurus, what do they try to do with Jesus?
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Oh, he's just like us. He's a hippie. That's where the hippie Jesus came from. Because all of these new age gurus, they wanted somebody who was important to be part of their group.
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Well, Jesus wore sandals and walked around with other dudes, had long hair. You know, he was a hippie too. I know that sounds sacrilegious.
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I'm saying what they say, not what I believe. I mean, he did wear sandals, but I don't know about the hair thing. It doesn't really say he had long hair.
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But the point of it is, there's no question that this man,
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Jesus, is the most important figure in all of human history.
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In him was life, and that life was the light of men.
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And the light, verse 5, shines in the darkness. And the darkness is not overcome.
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Now, I mentioned this last Sunday night. If you were not here, you didn't get to hear it, so I'll give it to you again.
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The word here, katalambano, can actually be translated in two different ways.
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And depending on the Bible that you have, will depend on how it is translated. Some translations say the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not comprehend it.
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Some translations translate this word katalambano as overcome.
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That's the way the ESV translates it. And so we understand there's a slight difference here.
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Depending on how we translate it, will determine kind of what we think is being said.
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And it can be used either way.
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This is why translations differ. Arthur Pink, if you've ever heard me say
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A .W. Pink, that's the same guy. Arthur Pink wrote a commentary on John's Gospel.
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I'm reading it along with my studies as I prepare my messages. And Arthur Pink believes that the best way to translate this is comprehend.
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Because he believes that what this is referring to is the darkness of men's hearts. And that as the light came into the world,
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Jesus is the light of the world, that men did not comprehend who he was or what he came to do.
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And there's a part of me as Calvinist that says, I like that. Because that goes right along with total depravity.
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Men don't want the light. They reject the light. They can't understand the light. They can't comprehend the light.
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I get it. I get why Pink goes there.
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By the way, if there's anybody who's a Calvinist, it's him. But another Calvinist, John MacArthur, holds a different perspective.
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He believes that it should be translated comprehend. I'm sorry, excuse me.
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That it should be translated overcome. And the word overcome here is to say that the light comes into the dark world.
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Jesus is the light. That the light comes into the dark world and the darkness cannot stop the light.
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And as I said last Sunday night, I prefer that. And here's some of the reasons why.
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When we see this idea of Jesus as the light coming into the world,
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I agree with Pink. The world does not want the light. It does not love the light. It does not comprehend the light.
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But the point of the passage is that this light has come into the world to do something that the world cannot stop.
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Now, you could take Bob Utley's approach. I like Bob Utley.
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If you don't know who he is, he's an old school Baptist teacher, but he's a very good Bible teacher. He's simple and I love it.
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I love it. Bob Utley says he thinks John is using a double entendre here, a double use of the word, the meaning, in the same way that logos can have a meaning for the
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Hellenists and a meaning for the Hebrews. He says perhaps Cato Lombano here is saying the better idea is apprehend rather than comprehend or overcome.
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The idea is that the light has come into the world and the world, even though it doesn't understand it, can't stop it. Okay. But here's the point
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I do like to say. One of the things that we see in the Gospels is the constant repetition of this idea that the kingdom is coming, the kingdom is going out, and the world that opposes it can't stop it.
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I will build my church in what? The gates of hell, gates of Hades will not overcome it, will not stop it.
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Right? Jesus makes that promise. He says that it's like a mustard seed that's going to go into the ground and it's going to grow up into the great big mustard tree, plant, bush, whatever.
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The idea is that the Gospel is going to succeed.
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I know I sound like a post -millennialist sometimes. I'm a non -millennialist, but I'm still very optimistic about the
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Gospel. Even though I do believe we have a battle to fight and the battle is going to continue on until the end of the age,
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I do believe we are going to continue to see Gospel success throughout the world because as much as the world hates the
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Gospel, God cannot be thwarted by the devices and intentions of men. The light comes into the world, the darkness can't overcome it because the light is too powerful for that.
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And so again, why? Because it's the light of God himself.
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Jesus bore the light of God in the world. There was a moment in Jesus' life where he drew back the veil for a moment.
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Do you remember that moment? By the way, that's not recorded in John's Gospel. Of all the things you'd think would be recorded in John's Gospel, as John is over and over and over expressing to us the deity of Christ, one story that's not in there is when
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Jesus actually pulls back the veil and displays his glory on the Mount of Transfiguration.
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But what does it say about the
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Mount of Transfiguration? When you go back and read in Mark and you read in the other Gospels about the Mount of Transfiguration, what does it say? It says, when the light shone from his face, it was like looking into the sun.
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That the glory that shone from him, his clothes were whiter than any bleacher.
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I always thought that was a funny word. We think of bleachers like seats. But a bleacher, a person who bleached, couldn't have bleached them any whiter.
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His glory, his light shone in such a way that it was a blinding, miraculous, powerful, doxa, doxa, glory, light.
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In him is light, life, and that life is the light of men.
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The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. Now, for our remaining minutes, and we only have a few,
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I want to talk for just a moment about how, particularly in the early church, darkness tried to overcome the light.
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Because, again, this is the whole thing. If the light comes into the world and darkness cannot overcome it, what does darkness try to do?
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What has it tried to do? It has tried to overcome the light, and it's tried to do it by concealing it, by corrupting it, or by canceling it.
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I'm going to introduce you to six words real quick. Don't get nervous. I say real quick, and I know you all go, liar.
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But as we're beginning the creeds of the church reading through, I wanted to say in my message today, the reason why these creeds exist, the reason why these early writings exist, is because there were men who were coming to cancel the light.
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There were men who were coming to corrupt the light. There were men who were coming to conceal the light.
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And so the early fathers, in their attempt to make sure the light was not corrupted, canceled, or concealed, stood for the truth.
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You go back and you read the early writers. Clement, Ignatius, these men.
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You go and you read Justin Martyr. Were they perfect? No. Did they say things
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I disagree with? Absolutely. Were they Baptists? Yeah. No. No, they weren't
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Baptists. Not like us. They didn't understand everything the same way we do. But they fought the fight against the enemy that was in front of them.
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We have enemies today that are against the church. We have enemies today that are against us and against what we're preaching.
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They had enemies, not the same, but oftentimes arguing the same things. One of the first main issues that had to be dealt with in the church was something called docetism.
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And if you want these, you know what? Don't try to write all this down. Email me. I'll just give you this.
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I'll just email you the PDF. This will be easier for that. It's a lot, real quick.
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Docetism, from the Greek dose, which means to appear or to seem. This was people who were saying Jesus did not come in the flesh, but was only a manifestation of a man.
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He was not a true man. That's docetism. I think John was actually dealing with early forms of that.
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When he says, if anyone says that Jesus Christ has not come in the flesh, he's accursed. Because there were those who were very early on saying
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Jesus didn't come in the flesh. He was just a manifestation of a man. There's a problem with that. If he's not a man, he can't represent men to God.
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This is why we say he's the God -man. He's truly God, truly man. The docetist said, no, he wasn't truly man.
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He was only a manifestation of a man. The next group we could talk about would be the Arians.
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No, not those Arians. A -R -I -A -N -S.
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After Arius, who lived at the later part of the 3rd century, the early part of the 4th century, who said
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Jesus was not fully God. So you got the docetists who say he's not man. The Arians who say he's not fully
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God. And that was what brought about the Council of Nicaea. And next week, we're going to read the
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Nicene Creed. And you know what it says in the Nicene Creed? It says that he is of the same substance of the
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Father. The Greek word homoousios, meaning same substance. That which
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God the Father is, the Son is as well. He is of the same substance. So the
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Nicene Creed argued, yes, he is fully God. He's fully man, the docetists are wrong.
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He's fully God, the Arians are wrong. And then you had others like the adoptionists who said, yes,
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Jesus was God, but he became God at his baptism. He was adopted. That's a whole lot of wrong.
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That's like all wrong. But that idea that that's when he became, this is my beloved
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Son in whom I'm well pleased. They'll say, that's the day he was made God's Son. Jesus wasn't made
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God's Son. He is God's Son. We are made God's Son by adoption.
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Had a guy argue this with me this week. He said, well, we're God's Son the same way Jesus is. I said, no, no.
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We are God's Son by adoption. Jesus is the Son of God by nature. That's different. This is why he is called the monogamous.
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The only begotten Son. Three more and we're done.
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Modalism. Modalism is a Trinitarian heresy, which says that God is not three persons, but rather simply three modes of being.
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So he's the Father in the Old Testament, the Son in the Gospels, and he's the Spirit now. And he goes from different modes.
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In the same way that I am a father to my children, I'm a son to my father, and I'm the husband of my wife.
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They would say I'm three different modes of being. That's the idea of modalism. It's also called Sabellianism.
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And by the way, if you've ever used the illustration, God is like H2O. He's solid, liquid, and gas.
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Stop using it because that's modalism too. I forgive you once. You get one mulligan on that one and then it's over.
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But that's the idea, right? People try to... You cannot make an analogy for the
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Trinity because there's nothing in all the universe that's like the Trinity. There's no analogy to the
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Trinity. So you can't say the Trinity is like three in one oil. Heard that too.
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It's not. The Trinity is absolutely unique. And so when the modalist tries to make the
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Trinity simple, they actually make it incorrect. Two more and we're done.
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Don't try to write this one. Apollinarianism. This one says that when the
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Word became flesh, the flesh did not have a human soul, but it was
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God's Spirit embodying human flesh. You say, well, what does that matter?
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Well, now you don't have Jesus as a full man, but you have God in a skin suit. The idea is that God is just God's Spirit in a man, but there's no manhood there.
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The argument from the early church was he was vera homo, vera Deus. Truly man, truly
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God. And if he's truly man, he has all that man has. And if he is truly
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God, he has all that God has. And they're united in the one person of Christ. So Apollinarianism says that the human side of Jesus is absorbed in the divine in the same way a drop of vinegar is absorbed when it's dropped into the ocean.
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That's not what we're saying. The last one is Nestorianism. Now this one's really hard.
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And I'll make it simple. Where the Apollinarians tried to make the union, the
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Nestorians tried to make too much of a division between the divine and the human. And therefore, what came about from the
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Nestorian controversy was what we call the doctrine of the hypostatic union. That Christ is fully
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God, fully man, united in the one person of Christ.
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Not to be divided ever again. You understand that the
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God -man will be the God -man forever. The union that took place when
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God became man didn't cease at the ascension.
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But Jesus continues to be the God -man now. And according to what I understand from scripture, will continue to be the
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God -man throughout eternity. So Nestorianism creates too much of a divide.
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So all of these arguments that may seem to us to be pedantic and unnecessary was the early church's way of trying to take the text, which is
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John's gospel and the other gospel writers and the other writers of the New Testament, and trying to make them understandable in a way that we can say, yes, we believe this and not that.
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This is orthodoxy. This is straight. And that is not. We're not Docetists.
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He's fully God. We're not, excuse me, he's fully man. We're not Arians. He's fully God. We're not adoptionists.
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He didn't become God. We're not modalists. He's not God sometimes and Jesus sometimes and the
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Spirit sometimes. He's all three at the same time. We're not Apollinarians. We don't believe he gave up his manhood.
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And we're not Nestorians. We don't believe his divinity and humanity can be divided. There is six arguments from the early church as they were expressed to us and given to us in such a way that we can now say we may not be able to comprehend it all, but we know what we're saying and what we're not saying.
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And beloved, we should be able to do that. You may not fully comprehend the Trinity, but you should be able to define it.
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The definition is this. God is one in essence. God is three in person.
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These three persons are co -equal, co -eternal, and distinct. That's the doctrine of the
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Trinity. And that's where we stand. Beloved, I hope this was helpful for you. I know it probably seemed more like a
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Bible study than a sermon. But understand this. I've been pointing you this whole time, I hope, to the true
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Jesus. So if you came in today and you had a false Jesus, a misunderstanding of Jesus, or maybe you came in and didn't know who
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Jesus was, I will tell you this. Jesus is God and he's worthy of your worship.
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If you worship him, praise the Lord. And if you don't, I encourage you to repent of your sin and bow the knee.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your word. I thank you for your truth. May it be now that as we focus our attention on the table and the participation in the bread and the cup, which point to the body and blood of Christ, I pray,
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God, that we would remember that that God -man did go to the cross and received the punishment we deserve and gave us the righteousness that he possessed.
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Lord, help us to remember that as we worship together now through the participation in the table.
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In Jesus' name, amen. There's a Bible study for you, huh?