Jesus Christ the God-Man, What We Believe, Part 6

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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Welcome to The Rap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

01:09

This is a ministry of striving for eternity in the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

01:18

Well, welcome to The Rap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport, here for another episode and joined by the

01:26

Niners fan. We'll have to figure out what that means. The illustrious co -host. Yeah. Jim Osmond.

01:31

Pastor Jim, how are you? Very good. It's a pleasure to be on the program. You have some love for - Nice to be back.

01:37

You have a love for the number nine, right? Is that it? No, well, the 49ers, that's my team. Oh, that's right.

01:42

49ers, oh yeah. I don't follow football, so. I know you love to, you love to. That's okay. I enjoy football, yeah.

01:49

You think there's gonna be football in heaven? I do. Really? I think there'll be all kinds of sports in heaven. New heavens and new earth.

01:55

Glorified bodies, athletes. I think there'll be all kinds of sports and competition in heaven. Actually, that might be a fun topic to go.

02:03

I never really thought about that before, but hey, this is episode 200. So we've made it that far.

02:12

Some of you never thought we would make it this far. You were like co -hosting with me back in like episode one.

02:19

Well, I don't know if I was co -hosted, but you did an interview or two with me and I was pleased to be on way back in the beginning.

02:26

So let me give some stats for folks that just looked this up just before we started recording. This is kind of neat just to see, and I tried to encourage folks in our

02:35

Christian Podcast Community Facebook group that like, people are always asking, how do you get more downloads? How do you get higher rankings and things?

02:43

And I ended up posting the rankings just to say, look, it's really simple. Produce good content and stick with it.

02:49

Just don't quit. I mean, it's really, that's what you do. So we're ranked as of right now, the

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Rap Report Podcast is ranked 51 in the United States in religion.

03:00

Now, religion is a broader section than Christianity, but we're ranking in the religion section.

03:05

We're number 51 in the United States, 153 in Great Britain, 67 in Canada, 133 in Australia, and 34 in Ireland.

03:18

And so we've moved up nine slots from we were at 60 and we moved up to 51 in America.

03:24

So to all of you who are listening, who are sharing these episodes, thank you, because that's what helps.

03:30

Actually, this is a little -known fact that most people have, I should say a little -known myth,

03:36

I'll put it that way. If you ever listen to podcasts, you'll sometimes hear podcasters say, write us a review, give us a five -star review, and that helps to get us better rankings.

03:46

Okay, insider tip, it does absolutely nothing for that, okay?

03:51

It doesn't help you in rankings. What actually helps in rankings is the number of people that are following the podcast for a given timeframe.

04:00

So we were, I remember we were number one in the Philippines not just for religion, but religion and spirituality, the broader topic.

04:09

We were number one in Philippines when I spoke in the Philippines, and 1 ,500 people, and I encourage them all to subscribe, which we used that language back then, now we say follow, but that followed the podcast, and all of them took out their phones and did that.

04:24

And so because so many people were doing that, we jumped to number one because they look at how many follows you have.

04:30

However, reviews are very helpful, and what we announce to you right now because we've prerecorded some episodes, we had

04:37

Jim Wallace, J. Warner Wallace, on his book, Person of Interest, and if you do write a review for us, then you will be able to get a hold of that.

04:47

And so the way to write a review is, it's in the show notes, it has a link to it, but just go to lovethepodcast .com

04:55

slash rap report, that's rap with two Ps, lovethepodcast .com slash rap report, leave a review there, and two lucky winners will get a free copy of Jim's latest book that we, not

05:09

Jim Osmond, but Jim Wallace, that's right, we got two Jims there, Jim Wallace's latest book,

05:14

Person of Interest. I wonder what you were signing me up for there, giving away books. Well, actually, I do need to, we should talk about this offline, but I do need to place an order for your book,

05:23

God Doesn't Whisper, I'm out of them. We could thank our friend, Justin Peters, for that because we went to an event and he didn't have,

05:30

I brought all the copies of all of your books, we sold everything that I had for his ministry, and so the only thing

05:36

I have left, I think, is one copy of Truth and Territory. So, I'd be happy to give away your books.

05:43

Of course, you want me to buy them. Andrew, I just want to say congratulations on the 200th episode, congratulations on being number 51, and what most people don't know is that under that broader rubric of religion and spirituality, and then you go down to a narrower category of Christianity and then narrower evangelical, and then narrower than that reports, and then underneath that podcast named

06:06

Rap Report, you are number one overall podcast. I think it's

06:12

Todd Friel who says like, we're the number one on this radio station at this time. You're limited down to where this is the only one in that category.

06:22

That's kind of the way people do things nowadays. So, let's dig into the - And you are also the fastest growing podcast in that category

06:28

I just mentioned as well. There you go, that is helpful. And the highest rated podcast in that category.

06:34

And the only. So, what we're going to talk about today, folks, is we're doing our series, going through what we believe.

06:41

This is the doctoral statement that you can find at strivingforeternity .org under the About section, and it's what we believe.

06:49

So, if you go there and we're in this section under God, we're picking up now with God the

06:55

Son. And so, we're going to look at some different things that we see with God the Son.

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I think this is probably, just to give you guys a heads up, I'm thinking this is probably going to take four episodes.

07:07

That's my guess. We'll see how well Jim and I can do just to get through God the Son. But Jim, if you wouldn't mind reading for us the first, let's be very optimistic and think we can get through the first four paragraphs there.

07:21

I'll be ambitious and read those first four paragraphs. Here we go, God the Son. Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, possesses all the divine excellencies, and in these he is co -equal, consubstantial, and co -eternal with the

07:34

Father, John 10, 30, and John 14, 9. God the Father created according to his own will through his

07:40

Son, Jesus Christ, by whom all things continue in existence and in operation. That's John 1, 3,

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Colossians 1, 15, and 7, through 17, and Hebrews 1, verse 2. Paragraph two, in the incarnation,

07:52

God becoming man, Christ surrendered only the prerogatives of deity, but nothing of the divine essence, either in degree or kind.

07:59

In his incarnation, the eternally existing second person of the Trinity accepted all the essential characteristics of humanity, and so became the

08:07

God -man, Philippians 2, 5 through 8, and Colossians 2, verse 9. Jesus Christ represents humanity and deity in indivisible oneness, like 5, 2,

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John 5, 23, John 14, 9 through 10, and Colossians 2, 9. Paragraph four,

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Jesus Christ is virgin -born, Isaiah 7, 14, Matthew 1, 23 and 25, Luke 1, 26 to 35.

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He is God -incarnate, John 1, 1 and verse 14, and the purpose of the incarnation was to reveal

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God, redeem men, and rule over God's kingdom. Psalm 2, 7 through 9, Isaiah 9, verse 6,

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John 1, 29, Philippians 2, 9 through 11, Hebrews 7, 25 through 26, and 1

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Peter 1, 18 and 19. That was the first four paragraphs. Okay, so let's dig into this first one.

08:50

Jesus is the second person of the Trinity. Now, we've already looked at the Trinity in the previous episode that we had done on this.

08:57

The Trinity properly defined, and this is important because any time that we deal with cults, and remember, this, a doctrinal statement is saying what we do not believe as much as it is saying what we do believe.

09:10

And so a lot of this is to answer false views that have come up on different subjects here.

09:15

So the Trinity is something that is often misunderstood, really misdefined, so you'll see this with different cults.

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You'll see this in Islam that will say that the Trinity is the belief in three gods. You will see that throughout other cults that try to do that.

09:35

The Trinity properly defined is three separate and distinct persons in one

09:44

Godhead, one being. And so the reason that becomes important is we are seeing that God the

09:51

Father, God the Son, God the Spirit are separate and distinct from one another, and yet they are

09:58

God. They're not three gods, they're one God. And this first paragraph is gonna dig into that.

10:05

Now, why I wanna focus a little bit more energy on this is because people mostly battle over the deity of Christ and not the deity of the

10:13

Holy Spirit. If someone accepts the deity of Christ, accepting the deity of the Spirit is easy. But what is hard for most people is the deity of Christ, especially because so much of the scriptures talk about you must believe that he came in the flesh.

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And a lot of people don't understand that the passages that are talking about that being mostly written by John are dealing with Gnosticism that believe that Jesus didn't come in the flesh.

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He was a spirit. As spirit, he's God. Anything of the flesh is evil and bad.

10:46

Anything of the spirit is good. And so Jesus didn't come in the flesh in that thinking, and therefore, they didn't believe he actually came in the flesh.

10:55

He just appeared to be in the flesh. So a lot of what we end up seeing is the deity of Christ is contested by many groups.

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Let me say what also we're gonna see in this, and we're gonna see this in the definition that we have here for the

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Son. There is a view that many people hold within, let's say, Christianity.

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Broadly speaking. Broadly speaking. Someone, Jim, let's name names. T .D.

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Jakes. Very well known. He holds to a view of the Trinity called modalism.

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Modalism is the idea that God the Father was God in the Old Testament. He changed modes.

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So it's one person, one being, but in the Old Testament, he was the Father.

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He walked on earth as the Son. Now in the church age, he is the Spirit. He changes modes as he needs to be, but they would say it's one person, one being.

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Now that is easier to understand. It's just not true. And Andrew, what is important there is the recognition that T .D.

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Jakes can affirm the deity of Christ while denying the doctrine of the Trinity. And that's key.

12:04

So a lot of people like Jehovah's Witnesses would deny the deity of Christ and deny the doctrine of the Trinity. It is possible to deny the

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Trinity while affirming the deity of Christ or to believe that Jesus Christ is fully God and was fully man and at the same time, deny the biblical doctrine of the

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Trinity, Trinitarian theology. And that's important to keep in mind when you're defining what the Trinity is and who

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Christ is and how he is related to the Father because not everybody who denies the Trinity, the biblical doctrine of the

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Trinity actually denies the deity of Christ. And that's an important distinction to keep in mind that when we're talking about the deity of Christ, we're not talking about the doctrine of the

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Trinity as if they are synonymous with one another. And that's true. But yet when talking with someone, we have to ask, what do you mean by Trinity?

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Because T .D. Jakes would say he believes in the Trinity. Mormons would say they believe in the

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Trinity. And yet both of those groups would have very different understandings than I just defined.

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So this is the thing we want you guys to understand as you're listening to us. You got to dig into the definition of terms.

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That becomes really important in any of these things. And we wouldn't say that T .D. Jakes is a brother or that Phillips, Craig, and Diener brothers are the

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Motelister brothers because they have a different view of God as a Trinity, though they would affirm the deity of Christ.

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So it's important to remember that you can come across somebody who would affirm the deity of Christ. That doesn't necessarily make them believers because they may have a different doctrine of God.

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They're worshiping a different God. You know, in fact, this is so important. By the time this drops, the next day

13:37

I will be doing apologetics live where I'll do a debate. And this is an interesting debate.

13:43

I was being challenged to debate. This is the topic, Jim. I don't know if you saw this, but the topic is

13:48

Calvinism is useless and dangerous. Now, I've said,

13:53

I don't even have to be a Calvinist to argue that one because, you know, here's the thing. I just asked the guy, what's your definition of Calvinism?

14:02

I could teach Calvinism. Well, okay, I didn't ask if he could teach it. Can you define it? I mean, if you could teach it, you should be able to define it.

14:08

Can you define it? He's like, he says TULIP. Okay, can you define TULIP? So he gives me the acronym for TULIP.

14:15

Well, close to it. He got the last one wrong. He said preservation of the saints instead of perseverance of the saints.

14:22

Difference there, but he still didn't define it. I said, no, you have to actually define it. If we're gonna debate, we gotta make sure that we're using the same terminology.

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His response was to block me. So this debate should be very interesting because really what it's gonna come down to is exactly what we're trying to express to you guys here.

14:41

Definition of terms matter. If he is defining Calvinism incorrectly, then yes,

14:47

I could actually agree with him that it might be useless and dangerous, but he's defining it as soteriology.

14:53

Well, if you're just saying Calvinism is soteriological, which means the doctrine of salvation issue,

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I think that all I have to do is show that it has a use. And if the argument is that God's sovereign in salvation, then done.

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I mean, it's not only useful, it would be necessary. John chapter two, salvation is of the Lord. So definitions can change everything.

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So if he's gonna not define it and just open it up to anything, all I have to do is say Calvinism is that God's sovereign in salvation, and then he's stuck, right?

15:24

This is why we wanna spend the time looking at these things. So Jesus Christ, the second person of Trinity possesses all, notice all, not some, all the divine excellencies.

15:35

What do we mean by that? What I'm trying to say there's all the attributes, but attributes isn't enough.

15:40

And so some people use the term excellencies. Some of the Puritans use that phrasing.

15:46

There's other phrases that people will use for attributes, but it's basically, if you look at the attributes of God, and if you take our

15:53

Striving for Eternity Academy course on systematic theology, the first thing we do is we look at the attributes of God and we define them in three ways.

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Attributes of divinity, those things that only God possesses, attributes of personality, what defines a person, and attributes of morality.

16:12

So that's how we end up classifying the different attributes. But we're trying to emphasize here is he possesses all the divine attributes, or perfections, if you'd like to use that term.

16:24

Yeah, that's a really good word for that category. And I think either of those, perfections, excellencies,

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I think have a better notion, but this is the essence of who God is. God -

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What we say about God that is true, right? True things about God, that's what we're talking about. Correct, because you're claiming someone or something is

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God, and it doesn't have these attributes, that person's not God. That becomes the issue.

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So any human being that claims they're God and can't prove that they're omniscient, they're not

16:54

God, okay? When we talk about perfections, if I could just interrupt you for a second, we talk about God's perfections, we're talking about the things that make

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God, God. So God is loving, he's kind, he's gracious, he's good. God has a personality,

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God has an intellect and a will, but we also possess these qualities, but we're not God. But when we describe

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God's attributes, and we use the word perfections, what we're describing is these things that are true of God that have no imperfections or limitations in them, because they're not just excellencies and perfections, but they're,

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God possesses all of these qualities in infinite degree and to an infinitely perfect measure and an infinitely perfect being or quality with them.

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We have these certain communicable attributes that we possess in a limited measure that are reflections of the divine image, but God possesses these things.

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And because he possesses them to the degree and with the excellency with which he possesses them, the perfection of them, that's what makes him

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God. We can have some of the same attributes as God, but we don't have them in perfection. These are the perfections.

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We talk about God's attributes, we're talking about uniquely the degree to which God possesses these excellencies and these attributes that make him divine.

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And without which, if God did not have any one of these perfections, he would not be

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God. In other words, all of these things are necessary in their fullness and to the perfect degree for him to be considered

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God, for him to be divine. And so Jim used a term that maybe is new for some folks, but this is how the theologians will refer to them as communicable and incommunicable.

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What that means is there are attributes that we as human beings possess. Angels possess certain attributes that we could see, but we being made in the image of God have certain attributes that angels would not have.

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And so when we see these things is we have attributes that God has. We have emotions, we have intellect.

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These are things that are communicated. That's the word communicable. They're communicated to man. Incommunicable are those attributes that are only that of divinity.

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So only God possesses. Things like omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, those sort of things, being eternal.

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So this becomes a major thing, and we'll get into this at some point, that Jesus is not created.

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He can't be created because if he's created, he wasn't eternal. And if he's not eternal, then he doesn't have all of the divine excellencies.

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He's missing something. And missing that would mean he's not God. Because those incommunicable attributes are true only of God.

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Those ones that aren't communicated to us. And so we say here that he possesses all of them, all of those divine ones.

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Jesus possesses completely. And the thing with that means he can't lose them. It's not like he could be omniscient one moment and not the next.

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So we continue on and it says, and in things he is co -equal, co -substantial, and co -eternal with the

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Father. Now these are very important words to have and there's reasons we have them. Co -equal.

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This is going to be out of John 10, 30. I and the Father are one. The Jews pick up stones to stone him.

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And he says, for what good works are you gonna stone me? And they say, not for good works, but for you claiming to be

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God. So in that day, the Jewish leaders of that day when he said,

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I and the Father are one, they understood what that meant. He also says that before Abraham was,

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I am, and they picked up stones to stone him then too. Why? Because they understood that phrase at that time.

20:27

Words change. They knew that that was a claim of deity. You being a man claim to be

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God. That means Jesus was claiming that he was equal with God. Exactly what

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Philippians chapter two ends up saying, that he is equal with God. He didn't consider it robbery to be equal with God.

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That is important because what he's saying is he's claiming those divine excellencies.

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Co -substantial, meaning he is of the same essence. He's the same. This is important because some people in the first century made a big argument over Greek words, homo sapiens versus homo sapiens.

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One letter change. Homoousios. Ousios. Or homoi, homoousios and homoousios.

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The letter is one single letter's difference. And yet the meaning is completely different.

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Meaning whether it's the same essence. One means of the same substance and one means of a similar substance. Which if it's a similar substance, then

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Jesus isn't God. If it's the same substance, he is God. This is why we're saying this one is to say he is of the same substance as God.

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He shares in that. And he's co -eternal, meaning he had no beginning. He was not created.

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He has no end. This is the idea that you and I, any of the folks who like geometry class,

21:52

I know some of you, it's like, no, that was so long ago. If you remember the difference between a line and a ray.

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Okay, a line is a line with two arrows on either end. Meaning it has no beginning and no end.

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It just goes on infinitely in both directions. That's God. Everything else is a ray.

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That's where you have a dot with a line and an arrow. Meaning it had a starting point, a point where it was created and then goes on forever.

22:20

Well, that's you and I. We are that. So, and this is the difference between being eternal and being immortal.

22:27

Now, you might see the word immortal in the Bible referring to God because we've become more specific in language with some of these things.

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Eternal being that God never had a beginning and will continue forever. Where immortal, you and I had a beginning and go on forever.

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You know, a very interesting thing, Jim, I think it was Ligonier that put the study together and they do this every couple of years, a systematic theology study, see where how people are in Christianity.

22:55

He asked the question about Jesus being a created being. And unfortunately it was very high.

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I think it was like 40 some percent of evangelicals agreed that Jesus was created, not realizing they just agreed with Jehovah's Witnesses.

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And I wonder what's to blame for such a low ability to understand theology in the church today.

23:17

It's just horrible that pastors are not teaching the people theology. Correct. They should.

23:23

So the second sentence that we have is, God the Father created according to his own will through the

23:30

Son, Jesus Christ, by whom all things continue in existence in operation.

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So this is specific language that's going to answer the issue of the way

23:41

Jehovah's Witnesses will try to argue. Now, the argument becomes for Jehovah's Witnesses is that God the

23:48

Father created Michael the Archangel, who later became Jesus, but God the

23:54

Father creates Michael the Archangel, and then through Michael the Archangel creates everything.

24:00

And it's God who holds everything in existence. But let's turn to some scripture here and see what scripture says.

24:07

First, I want to look at Hebrews chapter one, and it says, chapter one in verse two, two is really the one we want to focus on, but God, after he spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and many ways in these last days has spoken to us in his

24:27

Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the world.

24:36

So what you end up seeing here is it's very clear that Jesus is the heir of all things and sustainer of all things, and he made everything with the

24:44

Father. Here's an issue that some would have is the Jehovah's Witnesses will say, but see, that's okay because God made

24:50

Jesus, and then Jesus created everything, that could be fine. And Jesus would be a created being.

24:57

That way they can maintain that he's the creator of all things while maintaining also that he is a created thing.

25:03

Correct. And in fact, as we turn to Colossians one, we're going to see that they actually have to add to scripture.

25:10

So we see in Colossians chapter one, verses 15 to 17, we read 17, so here's what it says.

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He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

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For by him, all things were created, both in the heavens and the earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things that have been created through him and for him.

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He is before all things, and in him, all things are held together.

25:43

Now, four times you have the term all things, Jehovah Witnesses have to add to the

25:50

Bible. They have added the word other, all other things. Why do they have to add it?

25:57

They argue that it's to clarify the meaning of the passage. They say, well, just like you have in the King James translation, words in italics that help clarify the meaning of the passage or put words in there that were not in the original text, those are inserted for that purpose.

26:12

And they're a little bit deceptive on this, Jim. I don't know if you know the history, but what the Jehovah Witnesses had done early on, they had, when they first came out the

26:21

New World Translation, they had it in italics showing that it wasn't in the Greek. And people started pointing that out.

26:28

So they, actually, sorry, originally they had it without the italics and people pointed out that that's not in the

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Greek. And so they added the italics, but they recently updated the New World Translation and they have removed the italics again.

26:41

Oh, interesting. Because this is such a strong point. Because if he created all things, and I argue this doesn't need clarification.

26:51

It's, now, if you're adding something that changes the theology, and that's what this does, saying he created all things versus saying he created all other things changes the theology.

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And therefore they should recognize their position is wrong. Now, it's okay to add when you're doing translation words to help in the meaning.

27:11

But if it is - Smooth out, smooth out the translation. I mean, if you and I speak English, but if we were to be translated into some other language, they would need to move words around, smooth things out so that it is better understood for that language.

27:27

That's perfectly acceptable. The problem is, is when you do that smoothing out actually changes the meaning.

27:34

And it's a point of theology, then that's wrong. So they end up saying that the firstborn of creation, it means that he is the first created thing.

27:44

Again, culture, words have meaning within a culture. Firstborn doesn't always mean the first one born.

27:52

David is called the firstborn. Abraham or Sir Isaac is referred to as the firstborn.

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They are not the firstborn. In fact, David was the last of his siblings. So how could they be the firstborn?

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It means the preeminence one. And in fact, if you read this, that's the idea is the preeminence of all creation.

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He is the image of the invisible God. That right there says everything. But to emphasize that,

28:20

Paul is going into saying he's the firstborn of all creation, meaning he is the supreme of all creation.

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He's above it all for by him, all things were created and he lists everything. So there's nothing left out.

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Anything that was created was created by him. Now, let me give you a passage I love to go to when

28:39

I take Jehovah Witnesses. You take them to Colossians 1, 15 to 17, then take them to Isaiah 44, 24.

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And before you go to Isaiah, what you do is you ask them, who created everything that was created according to Colossians?

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And they say, Jesus. And then you turn to Isaiah 44, 24. Thus says the

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Lord, Jehovah. They make big emphasis of that being Jehovah. Thus says the

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Lord, your Redeemer, and the one who formed you in the womb, I am

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Jehovah, am the maker of all things. Okay, let's just stop there.

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Who is the maker of all things? Jehovah. And you could stop them and say, okay, how can that be?

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They say, well, Jehovah did it through Jesus. Okay, so does that mean there's two people that were involved in creation?

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There's Heavenly Father, God the Father, and Michael the Archangel. And they would go, yes.

29:36

Well, then let's read that again. I, the Lord, am the maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by myself.

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And I stretch out the earth all alone. Oops, the scripture doesn't support the view that God had help.

29:56

He says he did it all alone. The idea there is if Jesus is involved in creation, it means he cannot be a created being.

30:06

If he created all things, he could not be a created being.

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A good way of getting the Jehovah's Witnesses to admit this is to ask them the question, what is a thing? And eventually you wanna get them to give the answer, a thing is something that is created.

30:20

So then would Jesus be a thing since he is created? Well, yes, he would be a thing. So if God, if Jesus created all things, then how can he himself be a thing?

30:28

Because then he would, the text would have to say he created all things except for one thing, namely the thing that is

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Jesus Christ. Which is why they have to add that word other, all other things for time.

30:39

Because they're trying to have their cake and eat it too. They're trying to say that Jesus is a thing and yet the creator of all things that are not him.

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And this is why folks, for you who are listening, it's important to go through a doctrinal statement like this and explain it so that you know.

30:54

I mean, the reason we're taking the time is the doctrinal statement that we have here doesn't explain all these ways that this phrasing, this definition of things helps you to know what's right versus heresy, right?

31:07

Jehovah's Witness comes to your door, you can take this and go, oh, here's what the scriptures say, here's what we can turn to scripture.

31:13

So let's look at the second paragraph. On the first paragraph we have identified that he's co -equal with God. Second, in his incarnation, which the incarnation means, and I put it in parentheses there,

31:24

God becoming man. So in his incarnation, God becoming man, Christ surrendered only the prerogative of deity, but nothing of his divine essence, either in degree or kind.

31:39

And so what we're trying to say here is that he never stopped being God. This is important because there are people who will say that Jesus became

31:49

God at his baptism, or some will say after his resurrection. Some will say that when he was on the cross, he gave up his attributes.

31:59

You'll hear Muslims say this often, how could God die? God's eternal, he can't die.

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Now, one thing with that, if you listen to what I said earlier, we don't die in that sense either, okay?

32:11

What is death? When we speak of physical death, we're talking about the separation of our physical body from our spirit.

32:17

There's a separation, that's what death is. Death is really a separation of something. Either us from God is spiritual separation, that's spiritual death.

32:27

Eternal death is that spiritual death for eternity. But what we end up with is it doesn't mean that what makes us us stops living.

32:36

We don't have a body, but we continue to live. So as we look at this, some will claim in Philippians chapter two, that what that teaches is what's called the kenosis theory.

32:51

The word kenosis is the Greek word for emptying. And what people will try to argue is that Jesus on the cross gave up his attributes of deity.

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And just when he was on that cross was just a man. Now, we're gonna look at Philippians two, but let me explain why that's so important to understand that that's wrong.

33:11

If Jesus was just a man on the cross, and he was just a temporal being, then his death on the cross was a temporal punishment.

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And not an infinite one. Correct. And the whole fact of how we have salvation is that the fact that Jesus Christ being an eternal being can pay an eternal fine.

33:35

Why did he have to become a man? Why the incarnation? Because as a man, he lived perfectly, never breaking the law, and can be a substitute for us because he lived perfectly.

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So now as a perfect man who never broke the law, he can be a substitute. But guess what? If he was just a man, he can only pay for one person at one time because he's temporal.

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Being eternal, he can pay that infinitely. And so that is a very, very important thing to understand and remember.

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That when we talk about him becoming a man, he never gave up all of his deity. So let me turn to Philippians 2, verse five.

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Have this attitude in yourself, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking on the form of a bondservant and being in the form of the likeness of men.

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Being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.

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For this reason, God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name, which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth.

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So what you end up seeing here is it says he emptied himself. And this is the word kenosis, where we get the kenosis theory.

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What many will see this as is this is what we're referring to where he laid aside his deity.

35:12

It wasn't that he didn't have those attributes, but he chose not to use those attributes all the time.

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In other words, he could be hungry as a man was hungry. God doesn't get hungry, but he had certain things that he could as a man.

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Now, he still has a body with him today. That's something that some people may not have thought of. Jesus still has a body and he will have that.

35:37

But the idea that he emptied himself is not the idea that he gave up those attributes or lost those attributes, but he didn't use those attributes.

35:47

So I hope that's kind of clear. Anything you want to add to that, Jim? Yeah, I was just going to say, you probably heard that old hymn, and can it be written by one of the

35:55

Wesley brothers. Yeah, John Wesley brother. And can it be the second verse in that says he left his father's throne above so free, so infinite his grace, emptied himself of all but love and bled for Adam's selfless race.

36:09

There's no way that Charles Wesley or John Wesley, whoever wrote that, whichever one of the Wesley brothers wrote that, there's no way that what they meant by that was that he emptied himself of all of his divine attributes because they would have affirmed the full deity of Christ while he walked the earth.

36:23

But that is not the best wording. So actually when we sing that in our church, we change the wording to emptied himself to show his love and bled for Adam's selfless race because he didn't empty himself of all but love.

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He emptied himself of the use and the reliance and the expression of those attributes at certain times for a certain purpose, veiling himself in human flesh so that that glory would be veiled from us.

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He emptied himself of the display of that glory, but not the glory itself. He emptied himself of the prerogatives of deity, the use of those attributes in order to confine deity to humanity that required that.

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You can't have fully God and fully man dwelling in the same person without certain prerogatives of deity being emptied or left beside, not the nature itself, but the prerogatives of that laid aside so as to experience the limitations of humanity.

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And this is why it's so important what we sing in church or even in our personal life. And your church changing the words, and I do have done the same thing the same way, because the changes that is not actually changing the meaning that John Wesley had for it because this kenosis theory wasn't really a theory back then.

37:34

So he wouldn't have been using it that way. But since people do use it that way, you've updated that to match what the author intended from that song.

37:44

And so that it reflects what he was meaning by it rather than a heresy that came up later.

37:51

And that's like you were saying with the smoothing out of words, right? What are you doing? And you're smoothing it out to give the meaning of the author's intent.

37:58

So people will sing that and don't even know, don't even think about it. I've done the same thing or I won't sing that stanza right there.

38:05

So looking at this, it says, in his incarnation, the eternally existing second person of the

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Trinity accepted all essential characteristics of humanity and so became the

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God -man. So I packed in that beginning, right? Incarnation.

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Incarnation means is the idea of God becoming a man. So what is that? That's saying he's God. Fact that we're saying he eternally existed.

38:34

We've emphasized this already, but the fact that we're saying that means he is God. He's eternal.

38:40

Co -eternal, co -eternal because you used that in the previous paragraph, right? He's co -equal, consubstantial, and co -eternal with the

38:47

Father. And so this is where I'm trying to emphasize all this because this is where the debate comes, right? He's eternally existing second person of the

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Trinity, but we have a difference in incarnation. It's not that he gave up attributes.

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That's what the first sentence refers to. In this one, it's that when he became a man, he took on new attributes that he wouldn't have as deity.

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He took on characteristics of humanity. He experienced hunger. He was tired.

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He would sleep. He experienced things that humans would experience that God would not. And so that's the idea there is that a lot of people will try to say he became

39:27

God. What we're saying very clearly is he always was God, but even though he's eternal, and this is a hard concept for us to understand.

39:35

We don't understand eternity, right? Because we live bound by time. Even though he's outside of time, he's not bound by time, within time, he became a human.

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He took on new characteristics. He took on humanity. And we can't fully comprehend how that could be with an eternal being.

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We understand time and things within time. So he can work within time, though he's not bound by it.

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So he ends up in time, taking on the characteristics of humanity, and he has them forever.

40:09

Matt's like so. And he experiences time too. God experiences time. Now, God may experience time differently than you and I do, just as a two -year -old experiences time different than you and I do.

40:20

A two -year -old's concept of time is entirely different than us. And his experience of time and how he relates to time to a two -year -old next week is like, you know, that is almost an inconceivable amount of time.

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But to you and I, next week is gonna come and we're gonna have to record another podcast and it's gonna be like, I can't believe it's here already.

40:36

God experienced time in the incarnation, and I believe God experiences time now as he works in time, but his experience of it is different.

40:45

But in the incarnation, God lived in time. So he experienced sunrises and sunsets, the changing of the calendar, the changing of the seasons, the changing of the days, being tired, waking up early and being tired, going to bed late and being tired, waking up late and being well -rested.

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He experienced all the things that time does to humanity in aging and growing and developing and growing in favor with God and man.

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Those are all things that happen in time. Those are all attributes and experiences that the

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God -man Jesus Christ would have had that before the incarnation and the kenosis, God would not have experienced time in that way.

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And this is a thing where the reason this becomes important is him adding new attributes, that he becomes a man and he remains one.

41:32

Matt Slick likes to do a theological test for people. He'll quiz people theologically.

41:38

And one of the things he always asks is, is Jesus a man today? I remember we were there in a conference up in New York City, and Matt had all these as a pastor's conference, everyone there is a pastor.

41:50

And he asked that question. I was the only one that raised my hand, yes. And he was like, not one of them had realized that Jesus is a man today.

42:00

He didn't give up those attributes of humanity. And he never will. Correct. He didn't give up the essential attributes.

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And we got to talk about that word here in a moment, but he never will lose those attributes. He will always be in a human body, in a glorified human body, and he will always be the

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God man. There is no point in the future where that will change and God will become divorced or divested of his humanity, when

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God the Son will become divorced or divested of his humanity. You know, before you talk about those attributes, you mentioned that Jesus came as a baby.

42:34

Now might be a good time that we should talk about the fact that sometimes we like to - We want to sleep like a baby.

42:41

And if you want to sleep like a baby, you saw where this is going. I did, I can see it already. You can get -

42:47

I was waiting for the hard sell. I was waiting for that transition where you slam it into reverse and grind the gears and pop the clutch and the engine rears and the brakes squeal and tires -

42:56

You know me too well. The whole vehicle jerks into a different mode. No, you knew that I would find a way to smoothly transition to why you should get yourself with my pillow.

43:04

Like silk. But folks, MyPillow does sponsor this show.

43:10

We're glad for that. I actually love their products, so I recommend them highly. Jim, you got yourself a

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MyPillow pillow. How do you like it? I do have a MyPillow pillow. I sleep on it and I absolutely love it.

43:22

It's just, it's comfortable. And I have two now actually. And I have one for myself, one for company and one for going camping with.

43:29

It's fantastic. So next time I come to your house, I don't have to bring my own MyPillow. That is great.

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Good. One less thing to bring. And I do travel with mine. I love it that much. They're running a sale right now.

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44:05

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44:11

That is their way of knowing to help support us that keeps them giving support to us. I'll tell you,

44:17

I'm not gonna say who, but I will say that I have gotten a bunch of pillows for people for Christmas. So they do make great

44:23

Christmas presents. For the person that you don't know who to buy for, MyPillow.

44:28

And most people don't think of upgrading their pillow. Most people don't think about that. Once you get a MyPillow, you're glad you got that for Christmas or birthday.

44:36

People need to buy the MyPillow so they can support you so you can pay me for being your co -host this month. And then

44:41

I can afford to buy my children Christmas presents. So do it for the children. Now you're sounding like a

44:47

Democrat. So, okay, let's get to those attributes that you wanted to mention. Which one was that?

44:53

Well, you said that you wanted to get to attributes. We were talking about the attributes that he does not. He accepted all the essential characteristics of humanity.

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And this is important because a lot of people think that things that we experience in our fallenness are actually essential attributes of humanity.

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So a propensity to dissent, a desire for illicit satisfactions, these things we think of as being innate in our humanity because they're part of us.

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They're the only things that we've ever experienced is humanity in a fallen state. And yet we need to remember that Adam was perfect and he was innocent and he had no sin and no inclination to sin when he was originally created.

45:34

That is actually essential humanity. So when we talk about the essential qualities or characteristics, how does the thing, yeah, essential characteristics of humanity so as to become the

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God man, we're saying that he possessed the same kind of unfallen humanity that Adam did.

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So while experiencing the limitations that you and I experience of being able to get tired, being limited in time, in energy and resources, et cetera,

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Christ experienced all of that while not experiencing any of the things that are attributes of humanity now in our fallen state.

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So an essential aspect of our humanity is when we say that, we're talking about unfallen humanity, not fallen humanity.

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Because our sin, our desire for sin, our lusts, our greed, our selfishness, our frustration, our anger, these are not essential attributes of humanity.

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They are the effects of sin on humanity, but they're not part of essential humanity. So Jesus can be fully man right now and not experience any of those sinful proclivities or sinful tendencies at all.

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And yet he is still full humanity. And this becomes important because some people will try to claim that Jesus had a sinful nature.

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Right, and he had to resist this and he had to fight against the desires of his flesh. Not at all.

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And Andrew, you mentioned earlier, is Jesus today still a man? We need to remember that when we, in answering that, we need to ask, well, am

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I, when I get to heaven in eternity, are we going to be still humans? Are we going to exist in humanity?

47:05

And we most certainly will. But we'll be glorified. We'll be human for all of eternity. But we'll be glorified. And so Jesus took on humanity in a glorified way.

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He didn't take on a sin nature. And so - He took on an innocent humanity and now he has glorified humanity.

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We will become glorified humanity without losing our humanity and become everything that Adam was and more in our innocence, in our perfection, in our humanity.

47:29

We will be humanity in its glorified state, which will be greater than humanity in its limited, unfallen, pre -fall, innocent state.

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So we will be innocent. Adam wasn't glorified. We are going to enjoy glory. We're going to reflect the glory of God in a way that Adam never did.

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And if we want passage to look at this becomes important is Romans chapter five, 12 and following to the rest of that chapter.

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Because what that shows is that it is through Adam that sin is passed on.

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Why is that important? So if sin is passed on from father to child, then Jesus skipped that.

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He didn't have a sin nature. So I'm sorry, dads. I know if those dads out there, if your wife blames you for your child's misbehavior, she's theologically accurate.

48:15

I used to say when my kids, I say, look at my kids, be like, oh, the kids, they're such good looking kids.

48:21

I'd say, yes, they get their good looks from mom and their sin nature from dad. It's theologically accurate. So when my bride would blame me for my kids did something wrong, she was right.

48:30

It's my fault. Sorry. So that's the importance of the virgin birth that we'll probably look at next week.

48:39

But let's finish this up with this next paragraph here. Jesus Christ represents humanity and deity, indivisible oneness.

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This is essential. And I think this is a good conclusion for everything we've been talking about today, because this really does sum this up.

48:56

This sums up where we're at with this is that this is what we've been saying throughout the whole episode, right?

49:05

That in his humanity, he still is deity and both are inseparable from one another.

49:12

Now, let me give you a theological term just in case you ever hear it. You notice that I don't use a lot of theological terms in here in the doctrinal statement without defining them, right?

49:21

I used incarnation and I said, God becoming a man, because I wanna be able to use incarnation specifically and use it again.

49:28

But this is called the hypostatic union. Big word, press your friends.

49:34

Hypostatic union. It's the idea that there is a union between the two separate natures, the divine and the human, and they're indivisible.

49:44

You start dividing one or the other and you have heresy. So don't do that.

49:49

This is one indivisible person. His humanity and his deity cannot be divided.

49:57

He can't give up either of them now. And this is what we were just talking about, that he is a human now and will be.

50:05

We see this in Colossians 2 .9, for in him, the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form.

50:15

You see, now what we've been trying to do is build up to this, right? So the first paragraph is to point on the fact that Jesus is

50:23

God equal with the Father. The second is he becomes a man. He had divine attributes, but now he's taking on human attributes, human characteristics.

50:34

And now this third paragraph is to say, now that we have a God -man, truly

50:40

God, truly man, one being, one person, indivisible, you cannot separate the two natures of Jesus Christ.

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In fact, when you do, you get into heresy. There's a way that we need to think about what we mean by indivisible.

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What we mean is that these two natures, they are forever joined together, but in joining them together, they don't mix and mingle to become something other than God and man.

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So like you might mix ketchup and mayo together and get a fry sauce, that when you mix ketchup and mayo together, you have a substance that is indivisible.

51:15

You can never separate the ketchup and the mayo together once you've blended it together. You never separate out the ketchup and separate out the mayo, but you have something different that is neither ketchup nor mayo.

51:24

It's really a fry sauce or some other things. When we talk about the indivisibility of the nature of Christ, we're not talking about some kind of a mixing and a mingling in that sense.

51:34

We're talking about a uniting and a bringing together in one person with two separate and distinct natures.

51:40

Those two separate and distinct natures, they are distinct, but they are indivisible. They cannot be separated from one another because Jesus Christ can never just lose his humanity and become fully

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God and only God, and neither can he lose his divinity and become now only man.

51:55

He is once united in the incarnation, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, forever the God -man, so that those natures can never be separated from one another and exist apart from each other, but they're not indivisible in the sense that they are mixed and now we have something separate.

52:09

So I had a young man coming to our church some years ago. I was teaching through the Gospel of John, the very early chapters of the

52:16

Gospel of John. I think it was in a Christmas message, I was talking about the incarnation, and he had had some issues with me about divine election,

52:23

God's sovereignty, and issues of reform theology and Calvinism, and he wanted to come over to my house and talk about reform theology.

52:30

I said, yeah, come on over. So he and his wife and his kids came over, and we spent a brief couple of moments just kind of introducing the subject of, okay, what is your issue with election?

52:37

What's your objection to election? And he started into it, and then he said, but you know, that's not the only thing where you and I disagree.

52:43

You said that Jesus exists and as fully God and fully man, two separate and distinct natures.

52:49

He said, I actually believe that they're mingled together so that they form something new. So it's fully

52:54

God and fully man, 100 % of each, but mingled together in some new entity. So it's a quasi -human, quasi -divine nature.

53:01

And I stopped him and I said, look, Joe, his name wasn't Joe, but for the sake of privacy, I'll just say that it was.

53:06

I said, look, Joe, your issue with, your biggest issue here is not the doctrine of election. It's not understanding the predetermining work of the grace of God.

53:14

Your biggest issue here is regarding salvation. If you believe that, you are damned because you are trusting in a

53:20

Jesus that cannot save you. So that was an example of somebody who believed that these two natures were indivisible, but indivisible because they were forever mingled together like ketchup and mayo.

53:29

This is the way the Puritans used to argue is, hey, if Jesus isn't God, we have a problem when it comes to salvation because he's not eternal.

53:39

And only, you cannot pay an eternal fine unless you're an eternal being or it takes you eternity.

53:45

So if he's not eternal, he can only pay it for one person. He has to be an infinite being in order to pay an infinite price.

53:51

Correct. And so that's really the starting point is, is our crime an infinite crime? Does it have an infinite everlasting consequence?

53:59

The answer is yes. That's why he has to be God. But if he was just God and not a man, then he didn't experience temptations and things like that.

54:10

So then he couldn't be a good substitute for us. So he had to be man. And so if he wasn't man, we don't have salvation.

54:17

You see, this is why this becomes so important. If you remove or change this idea that Jesus being truly

54:25

God, truly man, then you've lost salvation. You don't have salvation. That's why it's so important.

54:31

People can go, what's the big deal? Well, the big deal is that you're damned if you don't believe it correctly.

54:38

Now, does this mean that I can, I have to have all my theology accurate to be saved? No. In fact,

54:44

I did not understand the Trinity at all when I became a Christian. Why? I grew up Jewish.

54:50

I knew nothing of the Trinity. I wasn't taught that at all. So it wasn't anything I knew, but I knew that Jesus was

54:56

God. And then further understood more as I read the scriptures, as I was taught, started to see, oh, this is the way we resolve this problem.

55:07

Because it is a problem. The Trinity is a solution, not the problem. See, the problem is Jesus is called

55:13

God. He has attributes of God. He does the works that only God could do. The Spirit is called God. He has attributes that only

55:18

God can have, and he does works that only God could do. Same with the Father. And yet we see them separate and distinct from one another.

55:25

So how do we resolve that? The Trinity is the solution. It's not the problem. The problem is how do you resolve all these things we see in scripture?

55:33

And so you don't have to have all your theology accurate, but if somebody is learning the scriptures, learning the theology, and then rebelling against this and teaching otherwise, then we would say someone who's knowledgeable on what the scriptures teach, and then rebelling against that, then we would say, no, you're not accurate and you're probably damned.

55:56

I mean, I can't know their soul, but I'd say probably, but I think that the

56:01

Holy Spirit would lead them into truth and bring them out of a false thinking, as he did with me in not understanding the

56:07

Trinity. And so that becomes very essential as we talk through these things, is to know that we're going to learn more, but these things are essential.

56:17

So many people would think that some of these things, could they be minor issues? In fact, one of the things, if you ever hear me preach the gospel on the streets,

56:25

I will refer to Jesus as God and not the Son of God, because in our culture,

56:32

Son of God doesn't have the same meaning as God. And I have had countless times on the streets that I will say,

56:39

Jesus Christ, God Almighty. And after I get done, I get down and someone will try to correct me in a loving way.

56:46

Hey, brother, you said he's God. He's the Son of God. What does

56:51

Son of God mean? It means God. It means he has the essence of God, the attributes of God. It means

56:56

God. It's the same nature. It's the same nature. And so the fact that Son of, doesn't mean the same thing in our culture that it meant in the first century, is why

57:06

I, just like Jim does with the song, what am I going to do? I'm going to smooth out the language to give the author's original intent that Jesus is

57:15

God. He's not some offspring of God. Or as, if you go back on Apologetics Live, I ended up talking with a bunch of guys where we ended up going through a video where I came onto a show thinking that they asked me to just come in and share the gospel.

57:30

And really what it was is they want to get a gang mentality to say that I'm wrong, because I have to understand that God the

57:35

Father's name is Jesus. Oh yeah. Yeah, Jimmy, you'll have to go back and listen to that episode on Apologetics Live.

57:40

It was quite interesting. At times they're saying that what they were saying was Jesus is, they'll say he's

57:46

God, but they don't mean he's God the way we're saying it. They say that God is in him.

57:52

And that's what makes him God. Now, why is that a problem? Because they also say that God is in them. And that's something you see in Word of Faith and New Epistocal Reformation as well.

58:02

So these things become very essential to make sure we get accurate. If you're listening to this and you're wondering, wow, if I'm not able to explain this the way that Andrew and Jim have just explained it and defend it in that way, does that mean

58:13

I'm not a Christian or that I don't understand these things? And to go back to what Andrew just said earlier, it doesn't mean that at all.

58:19

But it does mean that if you reject these truths, you're not a Christian. You may not be able to necessarily express them the same way.

58:25

In fact, I run across a number of Christians who when asked to define the Trinity, what they give is more of a functional modalism,

58:32

Sabellianism than anything that's really Trinitarian. But then when you correct them and you try and demonstrate to them what the doctrine of Trinity actually means, then they'll say, yeah, yeah, that's what

58:40

I meant. That's what I'm trying to say. The child of God will resonate with the truth that we're communicating, even if they themselves are not necessarily equipped well enough to articulate them as clearly and precisely as what we're trying to do.

58:52

What we're trying to do really is articulate these things with such precision and such clarity that the average

58:58

Christian is going to be lifted up to these things, okay, I need to hone my language and refine it a little bit so that I can understand this and communicate it better rather than slipping into Christian verbiage or Christianese or even a type of bad theology or heresy when they're trying to explain actual orthodoxy.

59:15

That's one of the benefits of going through this and really thinking through these issues with clarity and trying to be more clear in how you're presenting them.

59:21

That's right. And you know what, Jim? That's a wrap. This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

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My name is Andy Olson, and I wanna tell you about Echo Zoe Radio. Echo Zoe Radio is a podcast outreach of Echo Zoe Ministries.

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