ABC’s of the Christian Life #23: Following Jesus Christ Rightly #15b: Affirming the Incarnation #2

[♪ guitar music begins to play ♪ Last Lord's Day we began to address the important matter of the

Incarnation of God and Jesus Christ. This matter of the

Incarnation is a foundational Christian doctrine, one which we should all understand clearly.

You cannot be a true Christian unless you embrace the biblical teaching on the

Incarnation, but some do not understand it clearly, and so that's why there's need for instruction.

The Apostle John had written about some who had at one time understood this clearly but had departed from the doctrine of the

Incarnation. He wrote, "...whoever transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ, does not have

God." You have to be right on this or you're not a Christian. You don't have salvation.

But he who abides in the doctrine of Christ is both the Father and the Son. And so the essential doctrine of the

Incarnation may simply be stated as this, the Incarnation is the event in which the

Eternal Son of God, the Second Person of the Blessed Holy Trinity, took into union with Him the nature and body of a man, or the soul and body of a man, whereby

Jesus Christ is true God and true man, two natures in one divine person who will continue in this blessed union for eternity.

And that is a statement regarding the Incarnation. Last week we quoted

Robert Raymond who, by the way, went to be with the Lord just a couple months ago. He has a wonderful systematic theology

I read a few years ago, found it very helpful. He wrote this, "...without ceasing to be all that he was and is as the

Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Eternal Son of God took into union with himself in the one divine person that which he had not possessed before, even a full complex of human attributes, and became fully and truly man for us men and for our salvation.

Jesus of Nazareth was and is that God -man." That is the doctrine of the

Incarnation. I read in the little book by J .I.

Packer, Concise Theology, which is very helpful, he's got little short chapters on every aspect of biblical teaching there is.

He spoke about the relationship of the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the Incarnation.

He wrote these words, "...Trinity and Incarnation belong together. The doctrine of the

Trinity declares that the man Jesus is truly divine. That of the

Incarnation declares that the divine Jesus is truly human. Together they proclaim the full reality of the

Savior whom the New Testament sets forth, the Son who came from the Father's side at the Father's will to become the sinner's substitute on the cross."

So that's the Incarnation. It is in and through the Incarnate Son of God that we are able to know

God and relate to God. In Jesus Christ, the age -old promise of God is realized by His people, that promise being, "...you

shall be my people, and I will be your God." That's covenant language. This covenant relationship involves our knowing

God and enjoying His presence with us even as He is our transcendent

God, meaning He's far off, so different from us, so far from us, and there's no way we can bridge that gulf to understand

Him. He is far above the heavens. But in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, we have the transcendent

God imminent with us. Transcendence and imminence.

He's with us. And so, we read the passage, I don't know if you picked up on that, but here you have the transcendence of Jesus Christ and the imminence of Jesus Christ set forth in His names.

And so, it was said to Joseph, "...they shall call His name Immanuel, which is translated

God with us." There is God's transcendence in Jesus Christ.

He's God. And then the angel said to Joseph, "...you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins."

There's God's imminence in Jesus Christ. And so, God meets with us,

His people, and relates to us as our God in Jesus Christ. And this is really the heart of what the

Incarnation means and brings to us. The holy, infinite, immanent, or transcendent

God is now with us, imminent with us. He with us in Christ.

Last week, we began to address the one side of this Incarnation by showing from the

Holy Scriptures the abundant teaching that Jesus Christ is

God, the divinity of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is God. That is, He is the second person of the blessed

Holy Trinity, who was begotten of the Father even from eternity.

There was never a time when He was not the Son of God. However, in the fullness of time, the

Son of God came down. We use that kind of language to depict transcendence coming among us.

And was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and in doing so, the Son of God assumed a human soul and body, even as He remained eternal

God. And so, whereas we gave attention last week to the deity of Jesus Christ, today we want to give attention to the human nature of the

Lord Jesus Christ. Both are involved in the Incarnation, and so let's consider the biblical presentation of the humanity of Jesus Christ.

We read last week, John 1 .14, And the Word became flesh, or was human, dwelt among us, and we beheld

His glory, the glory as the only begotten, in other words, the only begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.

There you have the two natures of Jesus, His humanity and His deity.

Now, we might think that the human nature of Jesus is rather a straightforward matter, an easy and straightforward matter for us to comprehend, in fact, for all people to comprehend, that we shouldn't have any trouble with this one, the humanity of Jesus Christ, but actually this is not the case.

It's been, after the apostolic age, an issue of great debate down through the centuries.

In fact, there have been many people, many groups, who have denied, through history, the biblical teaching about the humanity of Jesus Christ.

But again, to believe in the humanity of Jesus Christ is essential to true Christianity.

You can't be a Christian if you deny the humanity of Jesus Christ.

We may assume that this is such a given truth that we need not even address the matter, but actually it's something that needs to be addressed, for there have been serious errors respecting this doctrine that have threatened orthodox, in other words, biblical

Christianity since the first century. And so, as we consider this, not only do we need to consider the biblical information about this matter, but we also are going to have to consider some

Christian history, church history, on how the Lord's people have historically dealt with this issue of understanding both the humanity of Jesus and the deity of Jesus Christ.

So let's first consider several matters, just to build a foundation, a clarification.

And first, by addressing the biblical expression that we find in the Gospels, mostly on the lips of Jesus himself, the expression, the

Son of Man. This is used in the New Testament to refer to Jesus on dozens of occasions, the

Son of Man. And yet it should be noted that aside from Stephen's use of that expression, the

Son of Man, I behold, I saw the Son of Man standing at the right hand of the Father, just before he died,

Stephen, in the book of Acts. And aside from his use twice in the book of Revelation, the

Son of Man, so aside from those three occasions, the other occasions, in other words, 65 occasions, recorded in the four

Gospels, are all of Jesus referring to himself. This was

Jesus's preferred self -designation. Who do you say

I, the Son of Man, am? Is what one day he asked his apostles, his disciples.

And so in the Gospel tradition, the Son of Man was Jesus's favorite way of designating himself. In fact, it was a title he freely used.

And consider too that no evidence exists that the early church ever used this title to refer to Jesus. Again, except for Stephen, and except for twice in the book of Revelation.

Rather, it's a title that Jesus himself used to identify himself. Now why did he do so?

What does the expression mean, Son of Man? Most commonly, you'll hear it popularly taught and proclaimed, it's been understood as a designation of Jesus's humanity.

And you hear it all the time. It's commonly taught the Son of God depicts his deity, the Son of Man depicts his humanity.

Well that might sound good, but it's not true to history.

For although the title Son of God does speak to our Lord's deity, the title

Son of Man is not used by our Lord to emphasize his humanity. Nobody was doubting

Jesus's humanity as they saw him, watched him, and listened to him. Not everybody knew he was a man.

He didn't have to go around and prove it and call himself a man to prove that. Rather, the term

Son of Man was our Lord's self -designation as the Christ, as the

Messiah. There are, of course, a great many misconceptions among the

Jewish people about the nature of the Messiah, the Christ who is coming, the Son of David. And Jesus did not want them to impose upon him those expectations.

They wouldn't have listened to him. They would have immediately tried to thrust him into the role of a political king.

And so instead of calling himself the Messiah, he referred to himself as the Son of Man. And although the

Son of Man is used in Ezekiel frequently, Ezekiel referred to himself as the Son of Man, there emphasizing humanity,

Jesus's use of the Son of Man is probably taken from Daniel 7, 13 and 14, when it refers to the

Messiah coming to the throne of God and from God receiving a kingdom.

The Son of Man is a messianic title. The Son of Man is a title for the promised

Messiah, the Christ. But nobody ever used that title, Son of Man, for the

Christ. And so Jesus referred to himself as the Son of Man. And so over the course of three years, he was able to instruct and guide his apostles, his disciples, into the true understanding of the nature of the

Messiah and what he came to do, mainly to suffer and die for sinners.

And through the resurrection, he would enter into his glorious kingdom. And so he was able to fill out in the thinking and the minds of his apostles what the true nature of the messianic mission was.

And so toward the end of his earthly ministry with his disciples, one day he finally asked them, who do men say that I, the

Son of Man, am? Well, some say you're, you know, Elijah, some say, you know,

John the Baptist. Who do you say that the Son of Man is? And Peter said, Thou art the

Christ, the Son of the living God. And so there, Jesus affirmed him.

You said rightly, Peter, flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father is in heaven.

And so they came to understand at that point, this truly was the Messiah. But now they understood that this

Messiah was going to do something, do a work far different than what the common Jewish expectation had been.

And so Jesus, when he referred to himself as the Son of Man, it was a self -designation, a title for the

Messiah. Now secondly, regarding the biblical material, we need to be aware of the danger and warning of the spirit of Antichrist.

In the New Testament, the spirit of Antichrist that is mentioned in several places is addressing the heresy of denying the humanity of Jesus Christ.

We think of people today who deny the deity of Jesus Christ and see that as the great error. The great error that was threatening early

Christianity was, after the apostolic age, was the denial of the humanity of Jesus Christ.

And this is what John the Apostle dealt with toward the latter end of the first century. This occurred in the

Gentile lands, principally, in Asia Minor, what is now western Turkey, the area around Ephesus and Pergamos, Thyatira around there.

And so error crept into the churches and they began to deny the humanity of Jesus Christ, and yet they claimed to be

Christian. John the Apostle wrote against this heresy that arose in these

Gentile lands. And it could be argued that John's writings of his gospel and his three short epistles at the end of the

New Testament, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, were penned to refute and correct this error that crept into the churches, teaching that Jesus was indeed a human being, a man, is a human being.

And so consider, for example, 1 John 4. By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses

Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God. Every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God.

This is the Spirit of Antichrist, which you have heard was coming and is now already in the world.

And so according to the Apostle John, according to the Holy Spirit of God, who moved John to write this epistle, the

Spirit of the Antichrist at the end of the first century was a denial of the humanity of Jesus Christ.

Every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God.

The opening verses of 1 John 1 speak to this as well. That which strips from the beginning, he's talking about Jesus, which we have heard, we heard with our ears, which we have seen with our eyes, he's a human being, which we have looked upon, our hands have handled concerning the word of life.

This life was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness and declare to you that eternal life, which was with the

Father, was manifested, or in other words, appeared to us, revealed to us. And that which we've seen and heard, we declare to you that also, that you also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the

Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. And so John opened his epistle of 1

John with a very great emphasis on confessing that Jesus, the Son of God, was actually a human being.

The eyes of the apostles had seen him. Their hands had handled him. Indeed, he was a man.

And John was opening his epistle in this way to repudiate the heresy that was in the churches in that region that was denying the humanity of Jesus Christ.

They declared he was God, but he didn't become a man. We see other verses in John's epistles about this.

Second John 7, for many deceivers have gone out into the world who do not confess that Jesus Christ is coming in the flesh.

See, they were denying his humanity. This is a deceiver and an antichrist. And then in 1

John 2, 18 -20, little children, it's the last hour. This whole church ages to the last hour.

And as you have heard that the antichrist is coming even now, many antichrists have come by which we know it is the last hour.

And now notice verse 19, he's describing some who had been Trinitarian, who believed in Jesus as the

God -man, but who had rejected that teaching, and they went out from us, he says.

They went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us.

They would have no doubt continued with us. But they went out, in other words, they separated from us, departed from us, that it might be made manifest or clear, might be evident, revealed, that none of them were really of us.

I'm paraphrasing a bit. Nevertheless, you, he's talking to true Christians, you have an anointing from the

Holy One and you know all things. When he says you know all things, he's not saying that you don't need to be taught or anything.

But with regard to the person of Jesus Christ, every true Christian knows he's

God and knows he's man. You have that anointing. The Holy Spirit taught you that.

Remember, Jesus told Peter, blessed are you, Simon Bar -Jonah, flesh and blood didn't reveal this to you, my

Father in heaven. If I stood up here and declared that Jesus wasn't really a man, you'd probably throw your hymn books at me and walk out.

I scarcely think anybody would be in here remaining because God has given you an anointing.

You know what is true. And if I spouted something that heretical, you would recognize it immediately.

And God has preserved us in this. This is essential, an important doctrine. And so apparently these heretics in John's day were denying the humanity of Jesus.

They had at one time been in the churches, claiming to be Christians. They had been Trinitarian, believing in the deity and the humanity of Jesus, but then they separated from the

Christians and went out from their churches and started their own denominations. And the reason they separated is they no longer believed in the humanity of Jesus Christ.

We also read John's words in 1 John 2, 21 -24, I have not written to you because you did not know the truth, but because you know it and that no lies of the truth.

Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is Antichrist who denies the

Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either. He who acknowledges the

Son has the Father also. Therefore let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the

Son and in the Father. Here again, John was refuting the heresy of those who denied the humanity of Jesus.

And so the Bible clearly teaches that the eternally begotten Son of God was incarnated. He took upon himself a human soul and body.

Jesus Christ is fully God and man. But when the incarnation is considered carefully, questions surface.

How does this work out practically? How are we to understand the person of the incarnate

Son of God? How do the divine nature and the human nature of the

Son of God meet together in one person? Or was

Jesus two persons? Some of the early heretics taught that. How are we to understand one nature, the divine nature, influencing the human nature?

Or was it vice versa? Our present understanding, that is, the accepted and widely confessed understanding of historic

Christianity, was really only understood and stated with conciseness after several centuries into the

Christian era. And so it's important for us to have a little bit of understanding about Christian history at this point.

And so let's consider the historic theological development of the Christian understanding of the person of Jesus Christ.

The formulation of the stated Christian doctrine of the incarnation of Jesus took place in the arena of conflict in the early

Christian era. We've already spoken to the error that is reflected in John's writings, but now let's speak more specifically of errors or threats to biblical teaching of the incarnation.

The historic Orthodox understanding of the person incarnate Son of God was formulated over time, clarified, articulated with conciseness as it addressed errant teachers and false doctrine that arose in the churches.

In other words, the truth became evident and clear largely due to the identifying, confronting, and correcting false doctrine.

That's how sound doctrine came to be recognized, established, and affirmed in the churches.

Now there are some who do not like preaching and teaching that seem to always be pointing out the error of someone or some group or some church.

And I know people that I could name Christians that have that philosophy of ministry.

Never say anything negative. Never identify someone who is false.

Only accentuate the positive. Only accentuate that which is true. They don't realize they're setting themselves up for failure.

Because it's commonly God's way to present truth, to make truth known, as it is viewed in contrast with error.

And, in fact, much of the New Testament writings are set forth in this way.

For example, we commonly refer to the books of the Bible as occasional documents.

I believe every book of the Bible is an occasional document. In other words, there was an occasion or situation, humanly speaking, that God used to motivate the writer to pen what he did.

And so, for example, Jude wrote his epistle to confront and correct licentiousness among those who claimed to be

Christian. They were living in a loosey -goosey fashion. And so he wanted to correct this.

He wrote the epistle of Jude. You have Paul who wrote the epistle to the Galatians to correct the error of legalism.

See, it was an error that needed corrected, and so Paul was moved to write the epistle to the Galatians.

And we've already seen how John wrote to confirm Christians in their faith in the incarnate Son of God for salvation, but it was because an error had arisen and it had to be addressed and refuted and the truth affirmed in the context of error.

And this is the manner in which God has worked through history among his people. Some movement emerges, commonly led by a single influential false teacher.

His error becomes popular and spreads among others. And then the Lord causes men to arise to confront and correct the false teaching and its promoters, thereby further defining and establishing his truth to the people of God.

Whether you realize it or not, our confident and firm understanding of the Incarnation and how we describe it and articulate it is largely because God raised up faithful men in the early church centuries to address error and heresy that was being promoted.

And so let's consider some of these and what resulted from them. Again, God in his providence was superintending this whole process.

And so first, again, we've already considered in an elementary measure the heresy of Gnosticism.

The heresy of Gnosticism actually became a major problem for the early churches into the 2nd and 3rd century.

John was just dealing with it in its incipient form, in its beginning stages.

But it became full -blown error and heresy in the 2nd and 3rd centuries.

Gnostics did not believe that Jesus Christ was both God and man. Their teaching was born of their philosophy.

It was born out of Greek culture, Greek philosophy, that the spirit world and the physical world could never meet.

They believed everything physical was inherently evil, including the human body. They believed that the spiritual realm was inherently pure and good.

And oftentimes they saw these two realms as so far apart that in order for God to communicate with man, he couldn't do so directly.

So he had to have intermediaries, demigods,

Jesus being one of them, but right up there at the top. And then angels, for example.

And so God can communicate with fallen man, but he'd have to do so because he's so transcendent and distant from us, he can't do so directly.

He has to do it through these intermediaries. And so this is what

Gnostics thought. Therefore, Jesus Christ can't be both God and man, is what they concluded. They still claimed to be

Christian, but they had to modify or change their doctrine of the incarnation. And they were farther away from the apostolic era of apostles who saw and handled and talked with the

Lord Jesus. And so they began to say things about Jesus in history that just weren't true to history.

And so again, John addressed this in his gospel. John 1 is really against this incipient

Gnostic heresy. In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the

Word was God, and the Word was made flesh, and we beheld his glory. That completely repudiates this

Gnostic idea. A man arose, a heretic, whose name was

Marcion, probably born around 85, died in 160. He taught that Jesus only appeared as a man.

He wasn't really a man. He believed the death of Jesus was only a hallucination, because Jesus really didn't have a physical body.

He denied the incarnation. He denied the humanity of Jesus. Another Gnostic heretic named

Serentis, he had a little different form of his heresy. He taught differently. He claimed that the

Christ Spirit, this sounds like Christian science by the way, I hear my grandmother used to believe this kind of nonsense.

He claimed that the Christ Spirit came upon the man Jesus at his baptism, but the

Spirit of Christ left Jesus at the crucifixion. The Spirit of Christ that you can have, just as Jesus had, came upon him and then departed from.

He denied the humanity of Jesus. The Lord raised up men, therefore, to write against these heretics, because they had a wide influence.

Many had embraced their teachings. One of these godly men was

Irenaeus, toward the end of the second century. He wrote a classic book, you can find it online,

I have several copies of it in my library, entitled Against Heresies. He basically repudiated this

Gnosticism, this denial of the humanity of Jesus. And he did it largely arguing from Paul's epistles.

He basically said Jesus had to be a man because he set forth as the last

Adam. In other words, he undoes what the first Adam did, therefore he must be a man if he's the last

Adam. That was one of his major arguments. And then later in the third century, you had men like Tertullian, one of the first early

Church Fathers who wrote in Latin, and Origen, even though he was kind of flaky in a lot of ways, nevertheless he was right in repudiating

Gnosticism, and they wrote against this heresy. And so the outcome of this heresy in the second and third centuries was the affirmation of the doctrine of two natures of Jesus Christ, he's fully divine, fully human.

And so you and I, you know, we don't even question that nowadays. Now some do, but we don't.

It's a given. But realize it's so given and substantiated to us largely because of the battles that were waged in the earliest centuries.

And really the language we use to describe the Incarnation oftentimes come from these early

Church Fathers who examined the scriptures and set down their proper biblical understanding about the

Incarnation. Another great heresy arose in the early Church era, and this was the heresy of Arianism.

And it finally began to affect so many different churches in so many areas that a council of Nicaea, at Nicaea in what is now western

Turkey, was convened in AD 325 to address this matter. Arius was a leader of the church at Alexandria, Egypt.

He taught and promoted an aberrant view of Jesus Christ. He taught that although Jesus was the Son of God, whom

God sent into the world to save sinners, he taught that Jesus was not

God incarnate. He believed and taught that Jesus was a created being, but he was not

God himself. This is Arianism. Jesus was the firstborn son, and the scriptures describe

Jesus as the firstborn son. But he said that means Jesus was the first one created. We understand

Jesus as the firstborn means he's the chief one in the family of God, like the eldest son in a family.

Not that he was created. That's heresy. Jesus is eternal. He's the eternally begotten

Son of God. And so they taught that Jesus was the first of God's creatures. Arians taught

Jesus was the Son of God, but he was not God the Son. Does that sound familiar?

This is the common teaching of Jehovah's Witnesses today. Jehovah's Witnesses are the modern expression of Arians.

This is what Arius taught, and it's heresy. You cannot be a

Christian and believe in the doctrine of Christ taught by Jehovah's Witnesses.

They deny the deity of Jesus Christ. Arianism became a widespread belief in the early 4th century.

And because he was the pastor, the bishop in Alexandria, Arius was, Arianism spread throughout the regions of the eastern

Mediterranean region. And so the problem was so great that in the early 4th century, Emperor Constantine called for a church synod to address the matter.

This is how one described the beginning of this synod. July 4th, 325

AD was a memorable day. About 300 Christian bishops and deacons from the eastern half of the

Roman Empire had come to Nicaea, a little town near the Bosporus Straits, flowing between the

Black Sea and the Mediterranean, right where Istanbul is today. And in the conference hall where they waited was a table, and on it lay open a copy of the

Gospels. The Emperor Constantine the Great, because you remember Constantine moved the capital of the

Roman Empire from Rome to Byzantium, and it was renamed

Constantinople, which again is Istanbul today, renamed by the Muslims when they took it. And so the

Emperor Constantine the Great entered the hall in his imperial jewel -encrusted multicolored brocades, but out of respect for the

Christian leaders, without his customary train of soldiers. Constantine spoke only briefly.

He told the churchmen they had to come to some agreement to crucial questions dividing them.

Division in the church, he said, is worse than war. And so they came really to address this error of Arianism.

And so this Council of Nicaea convened, and it denounced Arianism as a heresy.

The Council produced what has been called the Nicene Creed, and to this day, this classic definition of the person of Christ came forth from this

Council of Nicaea. And I reproduced it here for us in our notes.

This is the Nicene Creed. We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things, seen and unseen.

And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, the only begotten, that is, of the essence of the

Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of the same being as the

Father, through whom all things came to be, both the things in heaven and on earth, who for us humans and for our salvation came down and was made flesh, becoming human, who suffered and rose again on the third day, ascended into heaven, who is coming to judge the living and the dead, and in the

Holy Spirit. And we believe in the Holy Spirit. And so the focus of this Church Council was really the precise relationship of Jesus Christ to God the

Father. And the Greek term the Council used was that the

Son of God was the same, homoousis is the Greek word, with the

Father. In other words, Jesus was of the same substance, or essence, of the

Father. And we use those words today when we speak of the deity of Jesus Christ. This was a declaration that Jesus was fully

God, equal to the Father. Now they used the Gospels, the Bible, to show this.

This is biblical teaching, but it was articulated and formulated in a context of addressing heresy, the heresy of Arianism.

Well, then thirdly, there was the heresy of Apollinaris, which resulted in the

Council of Constantinople in 381 AD, or better,

AD 381. Apollinaris, who died a year following that council, was the bishop of the

Church of Laodicea, which is in western Turkey today, about 80 miles east of the

Aegean Sea. He denied the doctrine of the Trinity, even though it had been long the orthodox teaching of Christianity by this point in time.

He taught that Jesus Christ could not have, in his one person, had both a divine nature and a human nature, and he reasoned this way.

He declared that all human beings were sinners, and therefore, if Jesus had a human nature, he would be a sinner too, and therefore he must not have a human nature, is what this man taught.

He therefore lessened the human nature of Christ, emphasizing the deity of Christ. I've heard

Christians do this. I heard some Baptist preachers do this years ago in California, who got up and began to declare that Jesus' blood wasn't really human blood, his hemoglobin was different because he was

God. That's heresy. A council was convened in Constantinople in 381

AD. It condemned the doctrine that Apollinaris had promoted, and so it produced a modification of the earlier

Nicene Creed that had been drafted in 325 AD. And so, years later, how many years, 55 years later, roughly, 56 years later, you had the

Creed modified, and this has come to be known as the Niceno -Constantinopolitan

Creed, or sometimes it's just referred to as the Nicene Creed, but actually it's modified from that earlier council.

And again, I want to read it. It's more full, complete, than the earlier statement, but it offers more clarity regarding the person of Jesus.

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

Same language as the earlier one. 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. There's that Greek word I mentioned earlier, ousis, ousis, by whom all things were made.

Who, for us men, for our salvation, came down from heaven and was incarnate by the

Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, was made man, and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate.

He suffered and was buried. The third day he rose again according to the scriptures, ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the

Father, and he shall come again with glory to judge the alive and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Ghost. Notice the expansion here. The Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the

Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets.

And I believe one holy Catholic, that means universal, and apostolic church.

I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins, and I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

Amen. And so the Council promoted the true humanity of Jesus Christ, and that only through Christ being fully human could he redeem humanity.

And so we see through these councils a clear setting forth of a classic orthodox understanding, in other words, a biblical understanding of the person of Christ.

Jesus Christ is one divine person with two distinct natures, both divine and human.

With respect to his divine nature, he is the Son of God, begotten from eternity. With respect to his human nature, he derived it from his mother, the

Virgin Mary, through whom he was born into the world as the God -Man. And he continues to be the

God -Man for eternity, even now. And that is the classic statement that we just read of the person of Christ.

And the Trinity, by the way. And to show you that this is so classic a statement of true understanding, we can turn forward about 1 ,200, 1 ,300 years and look at our own

Baptist confession of 1689, and the same ideas are set forth in sometimes the same terminology.

And so here's the statement in our own confession, which is the same as the Reformed Congregational Confession, Savoy Declaration, and the

Westminster Confession of the Presbyterians. The Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, being very and eternal

God, the brightness of the Father's glory, of one substance—there's the language from the

Council—and equal with Him who made the world, who upholds and governs all things He hath made, did, when the fullness of time was come, take upon Him man's nature with all the essential properties and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin, being conceived by the

Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, the Holy Spirit coming down upon her, the power of the Most High overshadowing her—that's biblical language—and so was made of a woman of the tribe of Judah, of the seed of Abraham and David, according to the

Scriptures, so that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures were separately joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion, which person is very

God and very man, yet one Christ, the only mediator between God and man. Very precise.

But again, those words are very precise because they historically confronted and repudiated error.

And so our Lord is a single person—He's not two persons—a single person with two natures.

As the eternally beyond Son of God, He came into time and into this world to become our Redeemer.

He assumed a created, finite, and temporal human nature into union with His own divine nature.

And these two natures are distinct from one another. They're never mingled. In other words,

Jesus has a divine nature and a human nature, and they are separate from one another.

And what this means is that Jesus, therefore, has two minds, two ways of thinking, two wills, two sets of affections.

And so Jesus in every way is like us as human beings, but He has a divine nature that's completely different and separate.

And for somehow, someway, it's a mystery. But it's a truth that cannot be denied biblically.

Those two natures are in one person, Jesus Christ. And so our Lord's human nature informs

His divine nature with respect to our human condition. Now God's omniscient. He knows our condition.

But God knows experientially, because of the human nature of Jesus, in conjunction with His divine nature,

He's able to truly sympathize with you and me, because He experienced what you and I experience. You take away the human nature of Jesus, and you take away that connection, that vital basis of relationship, and a sense of association and appeal.

He really understands my difficulties and troubles, because He Himself went through that.

You can't say that to just God Himself, who is transcendent and holy. How can we relate to Him?

We're finite. He's infinite. He's holy. We're sinful. The incarnation enables us to relate to God and to know

God. God reveals Himself to us through Jesus. And so when we see

Jesus, we see what God is like. Let's consider the importance of Christ's divine and human nature so that we may know

God. First of all, of course, Jesus Christ in His incarnation is our only prophet, priest, and king.

And He has to be the incarnate God in Jesus Christ in order to be our prophet, priest, and king.

It's Jesus Christ as a God -man who's our prophet. Because He is God and man, He can reveal to us what

God is like. You and I can't understand what God is like. He is infinite. We're finite.

He has to condescend to us to reveal what He's like. And He does that through Jesus, through the incarnation.

The scriptures say this, What man knows of things of man except the spirit of man which is in him.

I can know somewhat what you're thinking, what you're feeling, because I'm a human being, like you're a human being. But none of us are like God.

And so none of us can know God. None of us can really know what it's like to be an infinite, holy

God. Only the Spirit of God. Because He is God.

And He reveals to us what God is like. And He does so, the Spirit does so, by making us understand who

Jesus is and what He's like. God must reveal Himself if we're to know

Him. The Holy Spirit reveals God to us when

He reveals Christ to us. And so He must reveal Him, or He would not be known to us.

I read this little analogy by John Owen, and this is wonderful. And it shows the need for the incarnation.

Or we couldn't know God. And he compares it to the benefits we receive from the sun.

By the beams of the sun, light and life and heat, that's the analogy to Jesus in His incarnation.

By the beams of the sun, light and life and heat, into the procreation, sustenation, refreshment and cherishing of all things are communicated.

But if the sun itself should come down onto the earth, nothing could bear its heat and luster. That's what would happen if God, without any semblance of restriction, revealed

Himself. No one can see God and live, right? That would be like the sun coming down, and it's right before us.

We couldn't handle it. Nothing could bear its heat or luster if the sun came down.

Our eyes would not be enlightened, but rather darkened by its glory. All things would be swallowed up and consumed by the sun's greatness.

Whereas through the beams of it, probably, everything is enlightened and kindly refreshed.

So it is with this eternal beam of brightness of the Father's glory, in other words, Jesus Christ. We cannot bear the immediate approach of the

Divine Being, but through Him, through Jesus, as incarnate, are all things communicated onto us in a way suited to our reception and comprehension.

You can only know God through Jesus. It's the only way.

We can only know the Eternal God through Jesus Christ, the God -Man who reveals Himself to us.

And in this way, He's our prophet. He reveals God to us. And then, of course,

Jesus Christ, as the God -Man alone, could be our priest. He must be a man in order to atone for man's sin.

He must be God for His human sacrifice to have infinite value to save sinners everywhere at all times.

He must be the God -Man. We won't read the passage, but Hebrews 10 .5 -7 substantiates that.

How could Jesus Christ offer Himself as a sacrifice for sin unless He was a man as one of us?

How could His sacrifice have been of infinite value to atone for the sins of all His people unless the divine nature was in union with the human nature?

How could Jesus have represented us before God unless He had been one with us? How could He have approached the

Father on our behalf unless He was the beloved Son of God from eternity? He must be the

God -Man. There is no other mediator between God and man except the man Christ Jesus, as Paul wrote to Timothy.

And certainly He is our King. And He had to be the God -Man to be our King. God is the

King over His creation, but He has purposed that man would be His co -regent who would rule over His creation on His behalf.

That was Adam and Eve's privilege which they forfeited, and all mankind lost that blessing and that privilege through Adam and Eve.

But God the Father sent His Son into the world to assume our human nature so that through Jesus that purpose of God for humanity might be realized.

And the writer of the Hebrews expressed it this way. He quotes from Psalms, talking about the wonderful privilege that human beings have.

What is man, God, that you're mindful of him, that you would give him so many of these privileges and blessings and promises that basically they're going to rule the world that God has created?

And yet the writer acknowledges, yeah, we don't see everything submitted to man. What happened? But we do see

Jesus. See, everything is submitted to Him. And so Jesus is our

King, and only He could do so, and He enables us to rule with Him.

But it took the Incarnation to bring this about. He, as the ideal man, was raised to be

King, and it's because He's the God -Man that this is realized. And then lastly, let's close with considering His Incarnation bring comfort and rest to His people.

The humanity of Jesus Christ is so critically important. This is how we understand that God is with us, and He cares for us, and He sympathizes with us, because of the humanity of Jesus Christ.

We don't have time to go through the whole passage in Hebrews. I hope you will. But Christ's high priesthood is to be an encouragement to the people of God.

Jesus is a man who experienced every kind of difficulty you and I encounter, every kind of temptation you and I have, except without sin.

And sometimes people just can't get their head around that. I remember a time I couldn't do that. Hebrews tells us that He's able to sympathize with us when we experience temptation, because He suffered through temptation.

And I always used to think, how is it He can really sympathize with me, because He's never sinned like I've sinned.

And then I read some wise men as they addressed it. The one, some would argue he's a liberal, but he got this one right.

Sympathy with the sinner in his trial does not depend on the experience of sin, but is dependent on the strength of the temptation to sin, which really only the sinless can know in its full intensity.

He who falls yields before the last strain. Then I found a sermon by Spurgeon, and I gave quite a lengthy portion of that as an appendix to your notes.

I would hope you read it. And he is the one who answered it. How can Jesus truly sympathize with us?

Well, He experienced temptation in a form that you and I experience.

He can sympathize with us. Now, not with the perversion stuff that some people are tempted to do, you know, that you have to be perverted to be even tempted to do that.

But within the nature and the category of temptation to sin, Jesus experienced it and encountered it, but He never yielded.

And Spurgeon rightly said that the Scriptures speak of Jesus suffering through His temptation.

How is that? And he describes how temptation is a great cause of suffering for a godly person.

Someone who wants to be holy, temptation, they're tormented by it. And if you and I as fallen creatures are tormented by our temptation, can you imagine how

Jesus suffered under temptation? Because He was without sin. And then

Spurgeon went on to say, you and I have never suffered to the degree that Jesus did in being tempted to sin.

Because when you and I are tempted to sin, we always yield before it gets tough.

We always commit sin before temptation becomes its greatest and worst. Jesus never sinned.

And so His suffering and temptation had to be infinitely greater than yours and mine. And so He's able to empathize with us and sympathize with us.

And He intercedes for us as our High Priest. This all impinges upon the humanity of Jesus Christ.

And some people think that they are really defending the person of Jesus Christ when they're emphasizing

His deity to the exclusion of His humanity. Both natures are true to Christ, and both bring blessing to us, and both are essential for us to understand and affirm.

The Incarnation is a wonderful thing to understand, a wonderful thing to celebrate.

And I hope you'll take time to read more thoroughly the notes at your leisure. Let's pray.

Thank You, Father, for Your Word. And thank You, Lord, for Your work of providence through history in raising up men to be able to address error that was contrary to the teaching of Scripture.

Men, Lord, who poured over the Scriptures to ascertain what the truth truly is.

And we affirm, our God, the Incarnation of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ with His divine and human nature.

And we thank You, our God, for all the blessings that come to us from You through Him to us,

Your people. May You help us, our God, to live for the Lord Jesus and exalt

Him and enjoy the blessings that we have through Him. For we pray in Jesus' name, amen.