20 - The Deity of Jesus Christ, Part 2

Well, welcome to the

Striving for Eternity Academy. This is a ministry of striving for eternity and all the details of the ministry can be found at strivingforeternity .org.

I will be your instructor tonight. I am Andrew Rappaport. We are in a school of world religions where we are going to be looking at different world religions and different topics under world religions.

This particular class is an introduction to the major western religions.

Now this is part two of really lesson number nine. Lesson nine is on Jesus Christ.

And so with that we are looking at who Jesus Christ is as compared to the other religions.

If you remember, we have gone through this and we have been looking at the different religions and what they believe about specifically in six doctrines.

Their authority, their view of God, specifically the Trinity, their view of Jesus Christ, the deity, the view of man and his sinfulness, the view of salvation, and their view of end times.

Now what we are doing is we are taking those six doctrines and looking at what the Bible says about those and kind of comparing what the

Bible says now to all of those as a whole. And just seeing what does the Scripture say.

A lot of the work on the world religions that you see was from my book that you can get at the store, store .strivingforeternity

.org. The book is What Do They Believe? I encourage you to go out there and buy that. That will give you a handy reference for different world religions as you encounter them.

We deal with six religions there, Judaism, Catholicism, Islam, Jehovah Witness, Mormon and Christianity.

Now for this class, if you are at store .strivingforeternity .org, you can pick up a syllabus if you don't have one already.

We have a study of the Western religions student guides out there. We actually also have a teacher's guide if you want to teach this in your church.

So this is a program that you can get the student guides for your students, your

Sunday school class and you can have the teacher's guide which has everything that I'm working off of when I'm teaching this class.

So you can get all those notes. Pretty thick actually. I think the total teacher guide is almost 300 pages.

So it's about 70 pages more than the student guide, if not more than that. I think it may even be more than that.

But with that, we've mentioned that the deity of Christ literally is the difference of heaven or hell, eternal life or death because Jesus said unless you believe that I am your dead and your sins,

Jesus said you had to believe that He is God. You had to to have eternal life.

And that's what makes this so important. There are many people, Jehovah Witnesses, we understand they deny the deity of Christ.

The Jewish people clearly understand they'll deny the deity of Jesus Christ. Islam, fully understand they deny the deity of Jesus Christ.

Mormonism, they have a different view of the deity of Christ. So as we look at that, they all have issues with this one area.

Roman Catholicism is the only one that we would say has an orthodox position of the deity of Christ. But that being said, they would not agree with it.

The real issue is I find many people that profess to be Christians, not Jehovah Witnesses, but they claim to be

Christians and they deny the deity of Jesus Christ. We mentioned last class. I encourage you if you didn't watch last class, go back to last class and watch that one because what you saw there, what you heard there was that we went through and showed how in the first century people did not question

Jesus' deity, it was His humanity that they questioned because of their thoughts, their philosophy back then, anything physical is evil, anything spiritual is good.

Jesus was so good, they doubted that He was actually a man. That's why so much of the

New Testament, the Gospels refers to Jesus as a man in the New Testament. Why?

I mean, shouldn't that be like brain dead, like everyone knows He was a man? Well, we're going to get to that. This lesson we're going to look at, we said that Jesus Christ is fully

God and fully man. We're going to start by where we finished off. We were looking at the deity of Christ last class.

We mentioned the names of Christ and how His titles and His names refer to Him as God.

We looked also at the works of Christ. We looked at the works of Christ, we started there and we're going to finish up there.

One of the things I did is I've been working on writing a book on Jesus Christ's claims of deity.

As I work through that, I broke this down into three categories, Jesus' words, His works and His witness.

His words were things He actually said. His works are the things that He actually did that show that He's God, healing the sick, controlling weather, things like that.

His witness are things like the names of Christ, the names that refer to Him as God, being called

Son of God, being called Son of Man as a claim of deity. How is that?

The fact that demons call Him God, that Jewish leaders said that He claimed to be God. We went through all of that and actually in all four of the

Gospels, I went through all of them, 48 % of the Gospels refer to Jesus as God directly or indirectly.

I actually broke those down into categories and I think we have a video. We have a video and this video was done when

I just had finished Matthew, going through the Gospel of Matthew. I'm going to give the numbers for Matthew but in my book

I'll have the numbers of all four Gospels and it shows you how you can see as you read through the Gospels the different categories, different ways that Jesus put

His deity on display. Let's play that. Many people say that Jesus never claimed to be

God, however when we take a look at these things we will see in the categories that Jesus Christ said that His words,

His works and His witness will claim to His own deity. The reality is He made words in both explicit and implicit statements.

We look at His works. He was omniscient. He said He would be with us always, in other words omnipresence.

The fact that He had the power to forgive sins, He had authority that could only come from God over illness, over death, over demons, over weather, over the physical things.

He claimed to be the judge of all mankind and He was even said He was the source of the judgment, that we have to accept

Him. He was witnessed to as God. We can see that, that He was virgin born in the titles that were given to Him, Lord, Son of God, Son of Man, Son of David, the

Christ, Messiah. He was worshipped as God. He was recognized to be

God by God the Father, by the scriptures, by holy angels, by men, by His disciples, even

His enemies and the demons attested to the fact that He claimed to be God. There's over 1070 verses in the book of Matthew and yet when we look in these categories we see that over 470 of them refer to Jesus in one way or another as God.

That's 44 % of the first of the four Gospels refer to Jesus as God. It's pretty clear

Jesus is trying to say He's God. Alright, well with that, that's just some of the categories, the way it's laid out.

Now we're going to look at the works of Christ and we started this last week but let's go through this.

If you have your syllabus, did I mention that? You can get a syllabus, I don't remember if I mentioned that, you can go to our website and pick up our syllabus, go to strivingforeternity .org,

you can pick up the syllabus. With the syllabus, while you're out at store .strivingforeternity .org you can pick up my book that a lot of this work was based off of,

What Do They Believe? That's a systematic theology of the major western religions so it really deals with the first half of what we dealt with in this class.

So let's see, the works of Christ. How do they point to His deity? Well, we looked at John 9, 3 -5 and it says there,

Jesus answered, It was not that this man sinned nor his parents, but that the works of God may be displayed in him.

We must work the works of Him who sent me while it is day.

Night is coming when no one will work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

What is Jesus saying that we could look to, to see His deity? The works that He did.

That's the argument. If you read that context there, the argument is that He healed a person and only

God could do that and they're challenging Him and He's saying, I do the works of God.

Therefore, look at the works I do. That tells you who I am. So what were some of those works? Well, creation for example.

We started looking at this and we looked at creation. We looked at John 1 -3. We won't look at them now.

John 1 -3, 1 Corinthians 8 -6.

We looked at Ephesians 3 -9 and we looked at Colossians 1 -16. In those, you see that Jesus Christ is the creator.

Now, here's the thing that we mentioned. Jehovah's Witnesses will argue, well, you know, God created

Jesus and then Jesus, through Jesus, God created all things. But in Isaiah, and we brought this out and this is not in your syllabus, so this is one you want to write into your syllabus, is

Isaiah 44 -24. We'll put that one up if we could. So, in Isaiah 44 -24, it says,

Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, who formed you from the womb, I am the

Lord who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself.

So, the Bible, sorry, Isaiah is saying that God alone created.

He didn't have help. This is a problem for Jehovah's Witnesses. Why? Because they think that Jesus was created and then

Jesus created all things. But God says, He alone. That becomes a problem for Jehovah's Witnesses and for Mormons.

Because they both have this idea that everything was created by Jesus, not directly from the

Father. Isaiah 44 says that it was created directly from the Father. Okay?

Problem verse for them. Not for us who think that Jesus is God. Alright?

One of the issues. And I mentioned this before in the last class. I'll mention it again. The Trinity is not a problem.

It's a solution. The problem that we have as reading the New Testament is that we see, well actually we see it in the

Old Testament as well, we see three different people that are separate and distinct and yet they're all called

God. We see them existing in the same place at the same time. That eliminates modalism.

If you know what that is, that's where the idea that God was the Father in the Old Testament, Jesus while He walked the earth and is the

Holy Spirit. Now He just changed modes but it's the same person, same God. Can't be because we see all three members at the same time.

So, it can't be modalism. We see that they're all referenced as God. So how do you solve this problem?

And that is a problem for the human mind. Some people solve it by going, well it doesn't make sense to me so it can't be true.

Then you think you're God. I mean if you think that it has to make sense to you, then you don't understand who

God is. God created everything out of nothing. He's greater than our ability to understand Him.

So, if we think we have to be able to comprehend Him for it to be true, then we think we're

God. Because we think that we're the standard on what judges what is right and wrong. And that's not the case.

So, with that we want to look at, next one is the forgiveness of sins. So let's look at, let's put up Matthew 9.

And I have in here also Mark 2, 7 because that applies. But I want to go to Matthew because it's a little bit shorter.

So Matthew 9, 2 to 6. If you turn in your Bibles, I hope you brought a

Bible to class. But turn in your Bibles to Matthew 9. And it says this,

And behold, some people brought to him a paralytic, lying on a bed. And when Jesus saw their faith,

He said to the paralytic, Take heart, my son, your sins are forgiven. And behold, some of the scribes said to themselves,

This man blasphemes. Now, this is where I want to stop before I get to verse 4.

And look at Mark 2, 7. You can look at what I have on the screen there. Mark 2, 7 emphasizes what it is.

Mark 2, 7 says, Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming. Who can forgive sins but God alone?

Now Mark 2 goes into more detail. But Matthew 9 is a little shorter. That's why we wanted to go there. So let's go back to Matthew 9, verse 4.

But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, Stop right there. He's knowing their thoughts. He's reading their mind.

That's something only God could do. And said, Why do you think evil in your hearts?

He knows what's in their hearts. He's stating what is in their hearts. Not guessing. He's stating what's in their hearts.

Now verse 5. For which is easier to say, Your sins are forgiven, or to rise and walk.

That you may know that the Son of Man, Oops. Son of Man. That's another reference to deity. We don't have time to get into it.

Has the authority on earth to forgive sins. He said to the paralytic, Rise, take up your bed, and go home.

You see what he has there is you have several different ways in that short passage. Three different ways that he's showing he's

God. He's forgiving the man's sin. Well, four different ways. He's taking a title, Son of Man.

He's reading their minds. And he heals the person. What does he do? He's saying, What's the question?

Who's this guy think he is? Who can forgive sins but God alone? And he says, So that you know that I have that authority.

Rise up and walk. What's easier to say? Well, they're both easy to say. One's provable. If I say, Your sins are forgiven, we can't see that, this side of heaven.

If I say, Rise up and walk, to a paralytic who can't walk, if he can't get up, then we know that's false.

If he does get up, we know that's true. So what's he doing? He decides that he's going to heal this man based on what he knew they would think in their heart.

But here's the thing. He says, He doesn't start by saying, Hey, rise up and walk. He's done that many other times. He says,

Your sins are forgiven. He knew that this would create an issue with the Jewish leaders. And it did.

He knew what was in their heart. He speaks to that issue and says, Why do you think evil in your heart?

But he says, I will prove to you that I am God. I'll prove to you that I have the authority to forgive sins.

Turns to the man and says, Rise up and walk. Why? Because again, that's something only God could do. Only God can heal, is the thinking.

Now, the issue there is a healing like that. It's not the healing where someone's stretching a leg and things like that.

This is, anyone that's had a long -term injury knows that your muscles atrophy.

This guy got up and walked. He did not need, not only was his muscles created in such a way that he could get up, but there was no atrophy.

Okay? And that's the thing. He proved by his work that he could forgive sins.

And that's something that only God could do. The Jewish leaders were right in that case. Next is the giving of life.

Now, there's two areas I want to focus on here. One is in John 11.

This is physical life. Jesus actually gave physical life. This is

John 11. Let's start with verse 17. And then we're going to look at verses 34 to 44, so a little bit of a longer passage.

John 11, 17 says, now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days.

Why is that important? Because in the Jewish mind, the Jewish teachings, that after three days, a person could not come back to life.

The idea was that after three days, their soul departed from them, and they could not come back to life.

So John 11, 34 to 44 says, and he said, where have you laid him?

And they said, Lord, come see. Jesus wept so that the Jews said how he loved him.

But some said, could he who opened the eyes of the blind and blind man also have kept this man from dying?

So they recognized Jesus healed people. They recognized that he had that ability to do what only

God could do. Then Jesus deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and laid a stone against it.

Jesus said, take away the stone. And Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, Lord, by this time, there is an odor, for he's been dead four days.

Jesus said to him, did I not tell you, if you believe, you would see the glory of God.

So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted his eyes and said, Father, I thank you that you have heard me.

I knew that you always hear me, but I say this on the account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.

When he said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, Lazarus, come out.

The man who was dead came out. His hands and feet were bound with linen strips. His face wrapped in a cloth.

And Jesus said, unbind him and let him go. You see in that passage, and this is one of several passages, where we see

Jesus giving physical life to someone. There was a case where he saw a funeral possession, and he raised a widow's son.

From the dead, he had the ability to give physical life. No man can do that.

That's something only God could do. And therefore, what you see there is he's saying, he's claiming there that this displays his deity, that he's sent from the

Father. Okay? Now, being sent from the Father in that case does not mean that he's doing these things on the

Father's behalf. He's claiming that he had a pre -existence before his humanity, that he came to earth.

Now, some Jews have the thought that all the souls were created at one time, and then we are given into a body.

That's not what he's claiming there. He's claiming that he had a pre -existence with God in a special relationship and came to be

God. And not only does he have the ability to give physical life, but eternal life. John 10 .42

says, And many believed in him there. That is not the right one.

I'm looking for John 10 .58. Do we have that one?

Okay. John 10 .58 is the one where he says, Sorry, we don't have it.

So we don't have that slide. But you can look up in your Bible that you have in front of you. John 10 .58. Where he gives eternal life.

Let's look at the fact that he accepted worship. Worship is to be accepted only by God. You see that when angels were worshipped, they stand people up.

Now, worship means to bow down. There's a difference in bowing down before a king and bowing down to someone as God.

There's a reason in the New Testament times, in the early century, that the

Christians would not bow before the emperor. Why? That was an act of worship because the emperor claimed he was

God. So there's a difference when someone bows down as an act of worshipping

God. It is always condemned to worship a false God. When angels see someone worshipping them as God, they raise them up.

When men see that act as God, they raise them up. But Jesus doesn't raise them up.

Let's see if we have some of these verses. Matthew 14 .33. Oh, we have all of them in one slide.

Perfect. So, Matthew 14 .33 says this, And those in the boat worshipped him, saying,

Truly you are the Son of God. When you see the phrase Son of God, it means attributes of God, essence of God.

Just replace it with God. So they're saying, And those in the boat worshipped him, saying, Truly you are

God. Luke 24, verses 51 to 52.

While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried into heaven.

And they worshipped him, and he returned to Jerusalem with great joy.

Lastly, look at Philippians 2, 9 to 11. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth, and under the earth every tongue will confess that Jesus is

Lord to the glory of God the Father. So you see there, he is accepting of worship.

That's something that would be blasphemy unless, of course, he's God. One more that we'll look at is the judgment of mankind.

If we have that slide. John 5 .22 says, The Father judges no one, but gives all judgment to the

Son. This is important because, in the Old Testament, we know that it is God who acts as judge. And here, the

Father is not actually the one that's going to do the judging. God's going to do the judging, but it's going to be the

Son. In John 5 .27, just a few verses later, it says,

And he has given him authority to execute judgment because he is the Son of Man.

Son of Man is a title of deity because if he was just a man, no one would have to be reminded they're just a man.

There's also a passage in Daniel that references that as divine. But here, it's that Jesus has the authority to execute judgment.

He has that authority. And yet, we know that it's God who's going to exact judgment.

Psalm 7 .11, God is a just judge. So, who does that judging? Well, it's Jesus.

But it's God. Well, Jesus is God. Acts 10 .42, And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed to God to be judged of the living and the dead.

We also see in 2 Timothy 4 .1, I charge you in the presence of God and Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead and by his appearing in the kingdom.

So, you see there that Jesus Christ, in those passages, he is very clearly being called the judge.

He's going to be the one to do the judging. Now, I want to be able to go to the next section in our syllabus which is the attributes of Christ.

Alright? The attributes of Christ indicate his deity. If Jesus Christ is deity, then he should have the attributes that are only of deity.

If you go back to our classes on systematic theology, when we first, those first few classes, we looked at the attributes of God.

In the first few classes, we looked at attributes that we said are only true of those members of the deity, of the

Godhead. Only God has certain attributes. So, if you have these attributes, you're

God. They're only true of God. And so, when we look, if Jesus has these attributes, and we already saw one that he's omniscient.

He knows what's in the hearts of men. He knows those things. These attributes that are attributes only of God.

Therefore, if Christ possesses these attributes, it is only because he is

God. That's your blank there. He is God. If he's got these attributes, he's

God. So, the question is, does he have those attributes? In the New Testament, we see that Jesus possessed the attributes of the following attributes of deity.

First, incomprehensibility. Ephesians 3, 8 and 19.

Ephesians 3, 8 says, To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the

Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. That talks about Christ's incomprehensibility.

In Ephesians 3, 19, it says, And to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

So, what you see there is that the fullness of knowledge, this knowledge is beyond what we can know.

So, this again talks about the incomprehensibility. Why? Because we can't fully understand everything about God.

Jesus Christ is sovereign. In Romans, chapter 14, verses 10 to 12,

Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or, you, why do you despise your brother?

For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written,

As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God, so that each of us will give an account to himself, to God.

Notice, remember, we already said, every knee is going to bow to who? Jesus. So, this is now,

Jesus is saying, every knee is going to bow to him. Okay, he's going to be the sovereign.

He's going to be the one that's sovereign. Now, let's look at omniscience. We already looked at one.

Let's take a look at John 2, 24 to 25. But Jesus, on his part, did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people.

He didn't guess. He knew. And needed no one to bear witness about man, about man, for he himself knew what was in man.

How could he know? Can you know what's in me? Do you know what's in my heart? No, I don't know what's in your heart.

I don't know what you're thinking. Jesus did. Every time you see him reading someone's mind, he's putting his deity on display.

Let's look at John 16. John 16, verses 30 to 32.

Now, we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to question you.

This is why we believe that you came from God. Jesus answered them,

Do you now believe? Behold, the hour is coming, indeed has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone, yet I am not alone, the

Father is with me. Notice he knows what is about to happen. He knows the future. He's not guessing it.

He knows it. This is showing his omniscience. Well, how about his omnipotence? This is the fact that he's all -powerful.

Okay? We see this in John 5, 19. So Jesus said to them,

Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the

Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.

That's John 5, 19. John 5, 21 says, For the Father raises up the dead and gives them life, so also the

Son has life to whom he gives, to whom he will. Again, he has the power.

Colossians 1, 17. For he is before all things.

That talks about his eternality. We're going to get to that in a moment, but we won't look at this one. He is before all things, and in him all things are held together.

He holds all things together. That talks about omnipotence. That he's all -powerful.

What about omnipresence? That he's everywhere at one time. This is a little bit different with Jesus, because though he's omnipresent, he's everywhere at one time in his deity.

Even today, because he's fully man, he is at one place at one time. Yet, in a

Godhead, he's everywhere. But we see this in Hebrews 13, 8.

That's Hebrews 4, 13. Oh, okay. No, you're right. I'm wrong on this one.

Hebrews 4, 13. I was looking at immutability, which we'll get to. Hebrews 4, 13 says,

And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom he must give account.

This talks about both his omniscience and his omnipresence. Everyone's going to give an account because he sees everything because he's everywhere.

This is his omniscience. We can look at his immutability.

Since I mentioned that we... Oh, we don't have that slide. Okay. Hebrews 13, 8 talks about his immutability.

That means the fact that he doesn't change. Hebrews 13, 8 says that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

That means that he does not change. His attributes are not going to change.

That's the idea there. Okay. He's eternal. John 1, 1.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Talks about his eternality.

John 8, 58. Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was,

I am. They recognize that as a claim of deity and want to stone him for it, for blasphemy because he was claiming that he was eternal.

This is Revelation 1, 8. I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the

Lord God, who is, who was, and who is to come, the

Almighty. That's again talking about his eternality. Really trying to get through this whole lesson today.

We can look at his holiness. That's not only of God. Mark 1, 24. What have you to do with us,

Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know you are the Holy One of God.

He's called holy by a demon who would know. He's seen him before he came to earth.

So while possessing the attributes of deity, Jesus Christ did not necessarily use them at all times, but he limited himself to his humanness.

You can see this in Matthew 4, 2. Luke 22, 43. John 4, 6.

John 19, 28. What you see in those passages, he's hungry. He's thirsting. He's doing things that show his limitations.

He's tired. He limited himself as a man because he was fully man, yet he was still fully

God. Can I comprehend that? No, but God, again, he's incomprehensible. This does not mean that he was stopped, that he ever stopped being

God or never was God, but somehow he limited himself in his deity, his use of attributes.

He limited himself as a man. One passage which is ascribed to Christ as the greatest statement of his deity is

Colossians 2 .9. Colossians 2 .9 says, For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.

In other passages it says the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily. And so you see that passage alone ends it.

In Jesus Christ is the fullness of the deity or Godhead. That is so clear.

It's the fullness. That's why I love that one because it's the fullness of the deity. Now, after examining the totality of the information on the deity of Christ, one must say one of three things.

I know this from C .S. Lewis, but there are three things. It is either that Jesus is a liar.

That's your first blank, a liar. That means that he deceived those who followed him because he told them he was

God. And he must have somehow faked it in doing works that only God could do and having attributes that only

God could have. So he either was a liar or he was a lunatic.

That's your next blank, a lunatic. That is, he was so deluded he did not know what he was saying when he claimed to be

God. He actually thought he was God. The only problem is he did works that only God could do and he had attributes that only

God could have. So how could a lunatic do those things? Therefore, really, he couldn't have been a liar and he couldn't have been a lunatic.

That leaves us with only one choice, Lord. That's your last blank there, Lord. He was who he said, or he is who he said he is.

Let me rephrase that, get it technically right. He is who he said he was, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Almighty God.

He is who he said he was because he is today God. He still is.

He is today God. He is today who he said he was, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Now, with that, we complete what we wanted to look at with the deity of Christ, but we said that Jesus Christ is fully

God and fully man. Let's take a look now at the humanity of Christ. Now, remember,

I said this before. While the deity of Christ is widely debated today, his humanity seems to be an accepted fact.

However, there are areas of his humanity that are still misunderstood by different world religions and cults.

It's important to look at the purposes prior to his existence, the evidence and the exaltation of his humanity.

But remember also as we look at this that this was something that was not debated or was debated in the first century.

It's not debated today. We accept the humanity of Christ, but in the first century, it was his humanity that was debated, not his deity, because of the thinking at the time.

They knew he was God. They couldn't believe how he could be man, and that's where the struggle had started.

Then there became this shift where they believed he was man because the New Testament speaks so strongly about it, and they had struggles because it's very clear, if you don't believe that Jesus came in the flesh, why would it need to say that?

Did they not think he was in the flesh? That's right. They didn't think he was in the flesh. That's why I said, if you do not think that Jesus was in the flesh, you have no part with him.

You had to believe he came in the flesh. You could take a look at the last lesson,

Lesson 19, The Deity of Jesus Christ, Part 1, where we played the video, or you could just go to our

YouTube channel, Striving for Eternity, and look at the video, Why Must Jesus Christ Be God?

You could see why this is such an important issue. Let's take a look at the purpose, the purpose of the humanity of Jesus Christ.

Why did Jesus Christ have to enter into humanity? Being God, Jesus Christ had everything in Heaven, where the angels worshipped him.

There was no sin. However, Jesus Christ came to Earth to become a man to live among his creation for the purpose of his death, burial, and resurrection.

However, there is more to the purpose than just the cross and the ascension.

Christ's death, burial, and resurrection provided a sacrifice, that's your blank there, a sacrifice for sin.

Let's take a look at 2 Corinthians 5, 21. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that me might become the righteousness of God.

So you see there that he became the sacrifice. Christ's sacrifice was the payment for our sin so that we could be set free.

You see this in Romans 6, 18 and 22. Jesus Christ became the fullness, the fullest revelation of God to man.

Because, as John 1, 18 says, no one has seen the Father at any time.

Now Jesus acts as the only true mediator, that's your blank there, the only true mediator between God and man.

We can look at this in Timothy, 1 Timothy. We won't put it up there, but 1

Timothy 2, 5 and 1 John 2, 1 to 2. The true mediator, and by the way this is against Roman Catholicism that says we have to have a human mediator, a father, a priest, or really that we need to go through Mary as a mediator.

This is where they have a problem. They don't see him as the only true mediator because of who he is, because he's fully

God and fully man. That's why only Jesus could be that mediator. They don't understand that.

Roman Catholics have that issue. The true mediation of Jesus Christ is because he is the only

God man. Mary is not God man. Roman Catholics try to give some attributes of deity to Mary while denying that she's

God. That's a problem. That's where you see that they have a problem in their theology.

Not only that, but they claim that Mary could be a mediator. How could Mary, a human, be the mediator for all people?

How could she listen to all the prayers of all people? She can't. Jesus can because, like we said, he's omnipresent.

He's omniscient. He can hear all the prayers of all the people. He can act as mediator because he's the

God man. It is this reality that makes him a sympathetic, that's your blank there, sympathetic high priest, as stated in Hebrews 2, 17 and 18, and Hebrews 4, 14 to 16.

Jesus Christ was the perfect man. He is the only human to have never sinned.

He is sinless. His sinlessness is what makes him the perfect example, that's your blank there, the perfect example to follow.

You can see this in Philippians 2, 5, 1 Peter 2, 21.

Yet, as a sympathetic high priest and example, he's more than that. He's not just an example, as some world religions will argue.

He is the sacrifice. Some Jehovah Witnesses say that his death on the cross was a payment of sin, but how?

How could it be the payment for all people? He's one human. He can only pay it for one person if he's just a man, as Jehovah Witnesses teach.

No, because of his deity, he can pay it for all people in all time.

It is because he's fully human, though, that he can sympathize with all humanity.

As a sinless being, he provides the perfect sacrifice for sin. Thus, we can only obtain salvation from God, accepting

Jesus as the sacrifice for he was sinless. Otherwise, he would have to pay for his own sin, which would disqualify him as being the substitute for us.

This is where some have a problem, because some argue that Jesus was a sinful being, and that means he's not the perfect sacrifice.

I'm going through this quickly, but this was the issue in the first century that they argued over. If Jesus wasn't man, you couldn't be saved.

If Jesus wasn't God, you couldn't be saved. This was the issue. Jesus had to be fully God and fully man.

If he wasn't, you are dead in your sins. That was the argument in the first century, and it's still true today.

Let's take a look at letter B there in your syllabus. His prior existence of humanity.

His prior existence of the humanity of Jesus Christ. Some falsely teach that Jesus Christ was merely a good man.

Good man, that's your blanks there. He was merely a good man. You'll see this in Judaism. They'll say he was just a good man.

We have seen in the deity of Christ that he could not be just a good man.

He couldn't be just a man, and he definitely can't be good. If he's just a man, he can't be good because he's either a lunatic or a liar.

That's not a good man. He can't be just a man, and if he is, he can't be good.

There are others that teach that Jesus Christ, during his time on earth or prior, was an angel.

That's your next blank, an angel. This you'll see in Jehovah Witnesses that they teach he was Michael the

Archangel who became a man. His deity again disproves that theory as well.

If Jesus Christ was at any point in time an angel, he could not have been the creator of all things because God alone created.

The correct view of Jesus Christ prior to humanity is that he was and is

God. This we'll see in John 8. John 8, 56 -59.

You, Father Abraham, rejoiced that he would see my day.

He saw it and was glad. So the Jews said to him, you are not yet 50 years old, and you have seen

Abraham? Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was,

I am. That's the name for God, Yahweh, Jehovah. That's the specific name. Before Abraham was,

I am. So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself from out of the temple.

They picked up stones to stone him for blasphemy. For blasphemy, they knew when he said,

I am, that was a claim of deity. Jesus Christ always was, is, and will be

God. Those that see Jesus Christ as merely a good man, the Jewish position, believe that Jesus Christ came into being at his birth.

Those that see Jesus Christ as an angel, Jehovah Witness position, believe that Jesus Christ was in the form of another being before his birth.

Jesus Christ claimed that before Abraham was, he's the great I am. He's God.

So with eternality, you can't have him being a man.

And his pre -existence, even if you accept the Jewish position of pre -existence or the

Mormon view of pre -existence, that all the souls were created at a time and just given bodies, even if you accept that,

Jesus claims something far beyond that. And that's what we have to recognize. What's the evidence of his humanity?

The evidence of his humanity. Well, we see there are three evidences of his humanity.

He possesses the necessities. That's your first blank. He possesses the necessities of humanity.

We're going to look at that. He possesses the names of humanity. That's your next blank.

The names of humanity. And he possesses the nature of humanity.

That's your third blank. The nature of humanity. Jesus Christ has the necessities of humanity.

He has a physical body, Hebrews 2 .14. And an immortal, immaterial soul.

We know that in Matthew 28 .6, Luke 23 .46. The reason this is important to note is that in the first century,

Christians were battling over the false belief that Jesus Christ did not have a physical body. So when we see much attention given to the humanity in the latter writings, like 1

John, it is because John is trying to combat this false doctrine of Gnosticism, trying to disprove the deity of Christ.

So that was widely accepted at the time. Jesus also possessed the names of humanity.

He's often called himself the Son of Man. And I emphasize again, why would he have to keep reminding himself that the most used terms that Jesus had for himself is

Son of Man, Attributes of Man, Essence of Man. Why would he have to keep reminding people he's a man unless they thought he was something more than a man?

You could look throughout the Gospels and see him calling himself Son of Man. He was also referred to as Man, John 8 .40,

1 Timothy 2 .5. Lastly, he possessed the nature of humanity. Jesus Christ had emotions.

We see him display his anger, Mark 3 .5. So anger is not always a sin, because he was angry because of the glory of God was being, not for his own sake.

That's the importance there, okay? He had compassion, John 13 .23. And he had sorrow,

John 11 .35. Jesus has the limitations that are common with human nature, such as hunger that I mentioned,

Matthew 4 .2. He thirsted, John 19 .28.

Fatigue, John 4 .6. Exhaustion, Luke 22 .43.

He was bound by time, Mark 11 .13. And even experienced death,

John 19 .30. Okay? So we look at this, and there's a question we really don't have time to answer, but the question often comes up.

Since Christ possessed the fullness of humanity, was he able to sin, or was he not able to sin?

So in other words, was he able to sin but didn't, or was he not able to sin? Jesus Christ was not able to sin.

The union of deity and humanity is complete union, where neither nature loses anything from the other.

Where both natures retain the attributes while functioning together in Christ.

So remember that Jesus Christ was the perfect human. He never sinned, but he couldn't sin.

That doesn't make his temptations any less. It doesn't make his suffering with the temptation of sin and the sympathy he can have for that any less, because he fully understood that, because he fully suffered the temptations without ever giving into the sin.

So he was not able to sin, but he did not sin. Alright, lastly, let's quickly wrap up with the exaltation.

The exaltation of the humanity of Jesus Christ. The exaltation of the humanity of Jesus Christ deals with the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ.

The purpose of the crucifixion of Christ was accomplished voluntarily and obediently by the second person of the

Godhead for the substitutionary atonement of the sins of the human race.

Substitutionary means that he paid for the atonement, what we owed, in our behalf. He took our place.

Historically, it is known that Jesus Christ would have died on a cross, not on a stake, because that's what

Jehovah's Witnesses argued. They argued that he died on a stake, and that it was

Jesus Christ on the cross. Why do I say that? Because the Muslims believe it wasn't

Jesus, that God deceived people and put a look -alike because they don't think a prophet could have died on a cross.

So they think Jesus is a prophet, not just a good man, but he wasn't God, so therefore they argue that it was a look -alike on the cross.

The resurrection is evidenced by the spiritual testimony, 1

Corinthians 15, 500 eyewitnesses, in verses 6 and 7 of there, so there's a multitude of eyewitnesses.

Paul even says, and some of you are still alive today, so he appeals them. You can go ask them. Go to the eyewitnesses.

The historical documentation is outstanding. Josephus, a

Jewish historian for Rome, he was not a Christian. This is what he wrote. Put that up there.

And this is from Josephus' writings, the works of Josephus, complete and unabridged, that I'm quoting from.

So it says, quote, Now there was about this time

Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man.

So stop right there, right? Josephus is even saying, if it's lawful to call him a man. This is a

Jewish, a Jew. He's not a Christian, but he recognizes that about Jesus when he speaks, that Jesus was more than a man.

He wasn't just a man. If it's lawful to call him a man, let's continue. So now, let me read the whole quote again. Quote, Now there was about this time

Jesus, a wise man, if it is lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men, as received the truth with pleasure.

He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the

Gentiles. He was Christ, or the Christ. And when

Pilate, at the suggestion of principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him.

And the tribe of Christians so named for him are not extinct at this day.

Unquote. Now look at this quote, because this quote is chock full of things. Josephus is recognizing that people referred to Jesus as God.

It refers to historical evidence that he was condemned on the cross, that it was him.

This is also something that shows that the Jewish mindset referred to the Christ, that he would do the works of God.

The divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand wonderful things. He's appealing to the works of Christ, the works that he did, the very things

Jesus said, look at the works I do. Josephus is saying these works that testify that he was the Christ, that he would be the

Christ, and that the Christ was prophesied to be God. I know that there's many who deny that Jewish people believe that today.

But in Josephus' time, this historian, he made it clear.

It's important to note that Jesus was physically born into the world, physically he died, and physically he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven.

Why that? Jehovah's Witnesses believe that he only bodily rose from the dead, not physically rose from the dead.

He bodily and physically rose from the dead. I know that was fast and we went over a lot.

I'm sorry, we wanted to get it done. Next lesson. Sorry, next class that we're going to do, we're going to look at lesson number ten.

We're going to look at sin specifically, the sin nature of man. If you have any questions, feel free to email us at academyatstrivingforeternity .org.

Again, if you want to pick up a syllabus, go to store .strivingforeternity .org. While you're there, you can pick up a syllabus, $25 each.

You can also pick up my book, What Do They Believe? Also, while you're at the website for Striving for Eternity, please consider looking for the

Bible Interpretation Made Easy seminar. Host one of those if you can. Your church, your homeschool group, whoever, would be happy to come to your area and do one of these seminars.

Lastly, if you're in the Ohio area or not, please consider April 8th and 9th, 2016.

We're going to have another Ohio Fire. You can register at ohiofire .org. Registration is open. Phil Johnson, Thomas White, Andrew Rapport, Michael Coghlan, all of us will be speaking.

Really want to encourage you to come out to that. I know we went long. Make sure you stay tuned for next class.

Until next class, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.