December 29, 2017 Show with Derek Thomas on “ICHTHUS: Jesus Christ, God’s Son, the Saviour”

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Derek Thomas on the Meaning of Ichthys and the Incarnation

Now here's our host, Chris Arnson. Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you a happy Friday on this 29th day of December 2017, our very last live episode of 2017 on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I'm so delighted that for the first hour, I have the honor and privilege of having a returning guest who has not been on this program since March 25th, 2010, and that is Dr. Derek Thomas.

Many of you in the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio audience will be very familiar with that name. He is an author. He's senior minister of First Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina, which is an ARP affiliated congregation, Associated Reformed Presbyterian Church denomination, and the First Presbyterian Church in Columbia is the oldest Presbyterian Church in that city.

He is also the Robert Strong Professor of Systematic and Practical Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Atlanta, Georgia. He's a teaching fellow at Ligonier Ministries, a former chairman of the theology department of RTS in Jackson, Mississippi, and former minister of teaching at the historic First Presbyterian Church in Jackson, Mississippi.

Today we are going to discuss for the first hour with Dr. Thomas his book co-authored with Sinclair Ferguson, Icthus, Jesus Christ, God's Son, the Savior, and it's my honor and privilege to have you return to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio,.

Dr. Derek Thomas. Good afternoon, and it's a joy. I can't believe it's been, what, seven years?

Yes, it has. It's amazing, and time has flown by, and hopefully we're not going to wait another seven years to have you come back on the program because I look forward to having you on frequently in the future, as often as God will allow.

And I know that you are not a native South Carolinian, you are from Wales, am I correct? I grew up in Wales, part of the United.

Kingdom, of course, went to high school, went to college, married to Sibby for a couple years, and then returned 18 years before returning back here to the States.

And I'm sure you must know our brother who is now in heaven with Christ for eternity, Peter Jeffrey, who is from Port Talbot, Wales. Yes, I didn't know him well. Of course,.

I've read many of his books. I met him a few times, maybe. A dear, dear brother.

Yes, well, I had the privilege of getting to know him when he would make regular trips from Wales out to the United States before his health prevented that, and I had the honor and privilege of having Peter sit at my mother's bedside during the last days of her life on earth, and Peter arose from that sickbed.

He spent a half hour, at least, alone with her, and he rose from that sickbed, giving me a lot of further reassurance that she was truly trusting in Christ alone as her Savior and that she was indeed on her way to heaven.

So I thank God for that privilege that I had with Peter. But today we are going to be talking about the book that you have authored or co-authored with Dr. Sinclair Ferguson, who is also one of my favorite of all-time preachers, Icthys, Jesus Christ, God's Son, the Savior.

Now, Icthys, some of us who are Christians will remember that that is somehow connected to a symbol shaped like a fish. Can you tell us how that symbol and that word, Icthys, became connected.

With Jesus Christ and with Christianity? Yeah, it's true. There are engravings on wall in transliterated English form, Our Son, Our Savior, and it's probably most familiar.

That's right. That's probably.

Speeding by, breaking the speed limit, and I see that quite often.

Yeah, that's unfortunate. Do you know why the early church used that symbol? Was it because of the miracle of loaves and fishes? Was it because Jesus was making his disciples fishers.

Of men? Do you know exactly what the connection was in the early church? No, the Greek letters that make up Icthys can be shaped into something that looks like a fish, and it might just have been that, the burrow and be fishers of men that the early church felt, and therefore that certainly would be apt, a reminder that one of the last things he did was he died in the Sea of Galilee.

And I know that this book basically is a summary of the major events that are the core of the history of redemption, Jesus Christ's conception and his birth, his baptism, his temptation, his transfiguration, the incident in Gethsemane, the cross, resurrection, ascension, and second coming of Jesus.

Can you tell us, since we are still, even though Christmas was last week, can you tell us something about what you relate to in your book in regard to the birth.

Of Christ? Yes, perhaps I did. Sure. Together here at First Presbyterian, he was the evening preacher, and then he retired and I became the synagogue minister, but during those two years that we had together, we had always together that would end up as various ideas.

You know, as evangelicals, the deity of Christ and the absolute unqualified deity of Christ, you know, we tend to worship Jesus' deity and defend him, but from another point of view, Jesus was also a true man, just in one person, and the gospels, particularly the Synoptic Gospels, portray Jesus as a human being, and a human being in whose life there are indivisible and significant redemptive moments, one of which, of course, is his conception in the womb of the Virgin Mary.

We talk, of course, about the virgin birth of someone who is a virgin, but the actual birth is here at First Presbyterian churches. We celebrate the advent of Christ, and it begins, you know, it begins in the...

But I never grow to love Jesus, even though it's only told. John, in his prologue, tells it in a very different way, in a theological way, and actually begins in heaven. In the beginning was the Word.

One of the most beginning and end, the beginning of Jesus, nine months before, and at the conception of this are both the beginning and end of Jesus' life. They're like two pillars, the natural in whose worldview cannot accommodate the supernatural and the miraculous.

If you can't fathom the miracle that attends the coming of Jesus into the world, then there's no point in going any further. That is deeply, deeply significant. A birth told and prophesied that he would be lying in a manger.

And, of course, we know that.

The commonly seen creche or nativity scene with the wise men there at the manger is incorrect, that they did not show up until Jesus was already living in Joseph's house as a young boy.

Yes, you know, was about two years old. It would make sense why Herod had babies all about his. It does suggest that the Magi were probably a couple of years later. Famous nine-lesson sentence of reading seems to suggest, and every children's nativity.

Right. Well, I know that you believe that every Christian should believe that every major event, in fact, every event in Jesus' life, period, was an act of obedience to the Father. And this is a primary theme in what you have written with Dr. Ferguson.

Am I correct?

You know, the birth of Jesus, the redemptive Savior, we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, but we cannot in and of ourselves, and therefore the miraculous conception of Jesus to be suggest that he was ex Maria.

So therefore he bore DNA that was that was of Mary. He had 23 of Mary's, 23 coming from the Holy Spirit is how I understand that is indicative of the fact that humanity cannot in and of itself produce the Savior that it needs.

That in itself is a kind of theological death. Darwinianism philosophy, because even the.

Very fittest gene to produce a safe. And unlike you and I or any Christian or any human being who when we were born, that was not an act of obedience on our part. But when Jesus was born or even conceived as a human, it was because Jesus existed in eternity past.

He did not come into being in the manger in Bethlehem. This was a willful act of him becoming human. Am I right?

Yes. There was a time when he was not created and has a finite into being. In addition, he assured that becoming incarnate is an act of obedience. It's an act of obedience on the part of the second person of the Trinity being in the form of God.

King James in my head thought is not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself nothing taking the form of a servant. The literal, the more literal latest translation of the ESV, for example, that literally that he emptied, it does the key employing that because of what did he empty himself and then begin to answer the question, you're in heresy within a short space of time.

He emptied himself not by emptying his divine nature or emptying some of his divine attributes in John Wesley's words. I don't think he meant quite what it says, but he emptied himself of all but love.

Intend for us to understand that in a sort of literal way, incarnation by divine suicide. Right. To being God, he veiled, he hid that Godhead. He hid it behind the veil.

And he also limited how he used his powers as deity. I mean, he could have, you know, prevented the crucifixion if that was his will. He could have gotten down from that cross or prevented the soldiers from even nailing him there.

I mean, there were many things that Jesus could have done as God because he always remained fully God, but.

He chose not to use those powers of deity. Am I right? Yeah. And here are not divine and human matters that in the Gospels is, in fact, his human nature. Consciousness, him being divine, is a human consciousness and not a divine consciousness.

I don't think that you should read the Gospels and, you know, nine times out of ten, it's the human Jesus speaking, and then on the tenth time, it's the divine Jesus speaking. I think that's entirely false.

I think it's always the human Jesus that's speaking in the Gospels. Even when he asserts his identity, he's doing that as a human being who believes his identity by the power of an inerrantist and Bible-believing Christian point of view.

And there are some evangelicals who believe that every now and then God's, Jesus' divine nature is human nature. And so I'm happier with, I think, the point of view that John Calvin held to, and I believe it's the majority view.

You know, Jesus never talks to himself. His human nature doesn't address his divine nature. He doesn't pray to himself. He doesn't worship himself. So his consciousness of his divine nature is a human consciousness.

Yes, and we know that he even grew in his knowledge and things like that, that we cannot fathom how that could possibly be, that a man that is not only fully man but fully God.

Could learn when he was growing and so on. Right. And remember the Chalcedonian insist on each other and are not the unity of the nature. There is one. Yes, interesting. There's no parallel to that. Right, and it's interesting that when the devil.

Is trying to tempt Jesus, he did not say that I as a deity could, you know, crush you with my bare hand or anything like that. He was speaking as a human being, a human being with.

Authority, but as a human being. Correct. And the Anselmo Kant tradition, at one time I did my undergraduate degree in mathematics. I mean, mathematically that doesn't make any sense, but you know what I mean when we say that.

Otherwise.

The Son of God and Savior Confession in a World of Heresies

Amen. We do have a listener from Slovenia, Joe, who has a question for you. Joe in Slovenia, who's listening, says, since in our day some 2 ,000 years after the first Christian confession, Jesus Christ is the Son of God and Savior, there is a veritable plethora of heretical and heterodox cults and sub-Christian religions that will readily use this phrase, yet with different meaning for the words.

How useful is this phrase as a Christian confession today? In what ways, if any, would we need to clarify or expand this phrase today if we would use it as a Christian confession and measure for fellowship?

That's Joe in Slovenia. And the confession again is? Jesus Christ is the Son of God and Savior. Right. I'm assuming perhaps he means such as the Jehovah's Witnesses who say, yes, he is the Son of God, but he's not God the Son.

There are a multitude of.

Various ways that Jesus is God's Son in the sense God adopted him. He was promoted to be a son, or he is a son among many other sons. The Bible, for example, uses the term sons of God. Therefore, like any term, like any theological term, needs to be fully explained and therefore fully defended.

And that had been made, of course, upon Christ and his identity and therefore a diminution of his deity, but that is meant to be a divine title, a title of divinity. And as I say, there are no limits to the attacks that are made of God.

Our Savior is, it just needs explaining, which is part of the reason why we wrote the book, to explain exactly what we did mean by that term.

Well, thank you, Joe. In Slovenia, you have won a free copy of the book that we are discussing today by our guest Derek Thomas. Icthus, Jesus Christ, God's Son, the Savior, compliments of our friends at Banner of Truth.

And that will be mailed to you, compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com, cvbbs .com. And we're going to be going to another break right now, or actually our first break.

Dr. Thomas will be here waiting for your questions and waiting to answer them. If you'd like to join us with a question of your own, our email address is chrizarnsen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA. And please only remain anonymous. If your question is about a personal and private matter, don't go away.

We'll be right back with more of Derek Thomas and Icthus, Jesus Christ, God's Son, the Savior. Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said,.

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Useful, and I assure you, never dull. Join us this Saturday at 12 noon Eastern time for a visit to the pastor's study, because everyone needs a pastor. Welcome back. Our guest today, if you just.

Tuned us in, is Dr. Derek Thomas for the first hour. We are discussing his book Icthys, Jesus Christ, God's Son, the Savior. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com, and please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA.

Only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter. Dr. Thomas, we have a question from RJ in White Plains, New York, and RJ wants to know, why did Jesus Christ have to be baptized.

Many of those who deny his deity will use that as their evidence? Well, of course, he received, it wasn't Christian baptism, he wasn't baptized in the name of the Trinity, he was baptized according to John the Baptist, which was a lot of washings for the unclean.

And therefore, when Jesus is baptized, and we remember, of course, that John the Baptist himself, the implication that if Jesus were to be baptized, he would be confessing that he was a sinner, and John the Baptist understood that he wasn't a sinner.

But Jesus said to himself, for it to be so now, he had come to be the last Adam, the second man, as he'd come to be our substitute, necessary for him to identify with sinners. You know, there of his willingness to become one of us, as somebody who is unclean, a baptism of forgiveness.

He did that for me.

And it's interesting, obviously, it was not a Trinitarian baptism, as you mentioned, but the Trinity was present at that event. That's one of those instances in the Scripture, where you have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost there in the same event.

Yes, the Trinity are present at every point. It's fascinating to see that the references to the Holy Spirit, for example, at the time of the conception, baptism, temptation, he was driven into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit.

The book of Hebrews speaks of his death moments. There is particular mention of the role of the Holy Spirit. What is significant is the fact that although there are these references to the Holy Spirit and Jesus, his Heavenly Father, throughout the course of his life and ministry, he never addresses himself.

He never addresses his divine nature.

And by the way, R .J., you have also won a free copy of the book, Icthys, Jesus Christ, God's Son, the Savior. So, please give us your full name and mailing address so that Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com, can ship that out to you.

And we thank our friends at Banner of Truth, once again, for providing these copies. One of the things that you bring up in the book in regard to this a redemptive history and summary of Jesus is the very powerful scene in Gethsemane.

And some people have viewed that as Christ agonizing over the physical torturous death that he would about to partake in. And others would say it was only that he was fearful of knowing that the wrath of the Father was going to be poured upon him.

And some would say it was both. Do you have any particular opinion on that very moving and powerful scene that we have in Gethsemane?

Yes. Human, and I think it's important to emphasize that this is the human Jesus. He has never been in before. From a human point of view, cannot the depth of the suffering. And I think it's pointless to ask, is he thinking about physical suffering or spiritual suffering or emotional suffering?

And it's all of the above. It's every aspect of it. But there is also, I think, an awareness on the part of Jesus, not just of the physical sufferings. And that in itself, you know, would bring many a Christian to immense difficulty.

As to Christian martyrs, far greater timidity and resolution Jesus does in the Garden of Gethsemane. Because he does say in the Garden of Gethsemane, Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.

In other words, he is saying, I don't want to go through with this. I therefore, there is an intensity to what Jesus is expecting that goes beyond the mere physical suffering, immense as that in itself is.

And I think that there is an awareness here, growing awareness, an awareness upon his human mind and consciousness that perhaps he has not had before. Now, the immense cost of becoming the savior of sinners and not just the wrath of God, but facing the unmitigated wrath of God of being cast into outer darkness.

And the climax of that being those words, you know, my God, my God, why have you forsaken? Never before had Jesus ever experienced, and we mustn't, we mustn't minimize it by suggesting that he is being upheld, he is consciously upheld by his own divine nature.

I think his divine nature is totally on the back of the naked human consciousness, that he is going into a place that he has never been before. The overwhelming degree of his commitment to fulfill the role of the mediator and savior, he finds that resolution, and he finds it for the Holy Spirit, we read in the Gospels,.

An angel. We have Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, who says, when Jesus asks the Father if the cup could be passed from him, some might look at that and think that the future is not fixed because of God's decree, as we as Calvinists believe.

How do you respond to someone who does not believe that the future is certain, and that God has not already decreed all things that will come, because of the fact of Jesus asking the Father to have the cup passed, even though he does not do that?

An example,.

Once again, of where we need to keep the two natures of Jesus apart and distinct, his divine nature's future was fixed because his divine nature had fixed it, but his human nature did not know that, and did not know what that, what, I mean, his human nature knew that God is sovereign and that the future was fixed, but his human nature didn't know what that future was, and therefore, this is a classic example of Jesus speaking from his incarnate.

Knowledge point of view as a human being. And the actual crucifixion of Christ, the day that he provided the redemption of his people on Golgotha, or on Calvary, as some would say, there is, as you know, division amongst the body of Christ as to whom did, for whom did Christ die.

We who are theologically Reformed believe that he must have only died for the purpose of the redemption of his elect, because since his work of atonement or redemption was perfect, therefore, everyone for whom he died will certainly be in heaven one day.

They certainly have been redeemed by his blood, whereas, as Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said, that the Arminians truly have a limited atonement because it's limited in its power. The Arminian believes that most of whom Christ died for will not be saved.

How can you perhaps give a word to our brethren who are in serious disagreement over this very serious point on the redemption of Christ to perhaps, by God's grace and the Holy.

Spirit's aiding, give them a greater reason to understand this? Yeah, you are even limited atonement, so it's not of that. My own belief in particular redemption or limited atonement is based on the theological point of view expressed by Poplady in a hymn in which he said these words, payment God cannot twice demand, once at my bleeding surety's hand and then again at mine.

If Jesus is our substitute and if he does that in a general way, he does it for everybody, why then isn't everybody saved? Why is it on the day already died for our sins and the only logical that Jesus died redemptively who are the elect and therefore on the day of judgment their sins are already, ransom price has already been paid and other benefits from in terms of a more general nature and the fact that the rain falls on the just and the unjust is also of the cross.

I believe that from a point of view of just Jesus making general atonement for everybody, unless point of view is salvation in the end is your decision and then you've moved into Arminianism. So I think Arminianism has a logic to it, I think High Point Calvinism has a logic to it, but Four Point Calvinism is just illogical, it just doesn't make any sense.

Yeah, you're right, it doesn't. Yeah, you wonder why those who are Amaraldian or Four Point Calvinist, why they would believe on the one hand in unconditional election and that there will be a fixed number of people going to heaven who have been predestined before the foundation of the world and yet they want to maintain an atonement or a redemption that includes all of mankind, even those who are damned.

It doesn't make any sense as you just said. One thing that you said, go ahead, I'm sorry.

Oh, yeah, sure. Limited atonement is a question about the nature of that which Jesus did on the cross, and did the cross mean forgiveness or did it symbolize salvation? And if you say the latter, you know, you're into Arminianism, and there is a certain logic to it that sort of how Jesus actually achieved salvation on the cross, that only makes sense if he actually achieved it and that that achievement becomes effective in the salvation of the elect.

Yes, and in fact most, as you probably are aware in your own conversations with those who are non-Calvinists, most people don't say, even if they reject particular redemption or definite atonement or limited atonement, even if they reject it, they don't say that the atonement was hypothetical.

They will say that Jesus certainly did complete the work of redemption on Calvary and it shows their very serious inconsistency. There is no logical consistency how he could have paid the price for all of humanity's sin, and yet most of them are going to, as you quoted from Top Lady earlier, most of them will be paying for those sins again and will be in eternal torment.

Right, and that simply doesn't make any sense.

Right, and you said something in description of this book, not on this program, I had seen your promotion of the book on the Banner of Truth website, where you were saying that books about Jesus do not sell very well, which is very poor reflection upon the body of Christ, at least in the 21st century.

Why Christians would rather not buy books about Jesus is pretty startling. It might interest you that I have heard from an art collector that if you have very old and rare paintings that are depictions of the Old Testament, they may be very, very valuable, but they are very rarely very valuable when the depiction of Christ is in the painting, which is kind of going along with what you said about books.

Why is that, that you believe that books about Jesus are not very popular, at least in our 21st century?

Yes, I mean, the most people want, you know, five ways to do that, and those are, I mean, they tend to apologetics, the issue about Jesus, and partly because most, but it was our opinion, Sinclair Ferguson and I, that of the work of Jesus, that are the divine nature, and there's a tendency suggesting the divine nature of Jesus is some human nature.

Well, I know that, you know, that the title,.

I want you, I know that you have to leave early, I want you to have five minutes of uninterrupted time now to just summarize what you most want to be etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today regarding Ichthys, Jesus Christ, God's Son, the Savior.

Well, of course, and Jesus, and Jesus as both enables us who we are, and far more important still, he is the one that ensured a union with him, and Sarah being adopted, one of living in union every day, and I need to, he is my, and without him, life of Jesus, from his conception to second coming, was an attempt, lovely one.

We do have time for one more question.

The Two Natures of Christ, Gethsemane, and Definite Atonement

Joey in Clifton, New Jersey says,. I very much agree with your point that the formulation of Chalcedon is very important to maintain orthodoxy regarding Christ's person and work. Heresies on both sides of this formulation continue every day.

My question regards your statement that Christ's expression of himself was always through the human nature. Can you share then how the divine nature was operating and expressing itself? Can you also share your thoughts on the interaction between Christ's two natures?

Well, I was reading it for the first time.

It's a wonderful question, how we understand who this is and he does that, and I just think that besides which, who is to make the speaking here, and this is the human Jesus speaking here, it is speaking.

I don't know the divine nature, human nature, by faith, and I think that the human, by faith, in the way that we are conscious of the divine nature of Jesus.

Well, thank you, Joey. You have received, or you will receive, our last copy of the book, Ichtheus, published by Banner of Truth. We thank our friends at Banner of Truth for supplying them, and we thank Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com, for shipping that out to you.

I want to thank you so much, Dr. Thomas, for being on the program today, and I look forward to your frequent return. I know that the Banner of Truth website is BannerofTruth .org, BannerofTruth .org, and also the website for First Presbyterian Church of Columbia, South Carolina is FirstPresColumbia .org, FirstPresColumbia .org in Columbia.

There is a different spelling than the country, there's not two O's in that, it's C-O-L-U-M-B-I-A. FirstPresColumbia .org. Thank you so much, brother,.

And I look forward to your return. May the blessed new year to you and yours.

You too, brother. God bless you. And coming up, don't go away, folks, because coming up, Mike Gadosh is going to be joining us, God willing. He is going to be talking about new hope for a new year. Mike Gadosh is an ordained Baptist minister, and he is also the founder of Solid Ground Christian Books, and I look forward to having my discussion with him.

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Mike Gadosh on New Hope for a New Year

Find Harvey Cedars on Facebook or at hcbible .org, hcbible .org. Call 609 -494 -5689, 609 -494 -5689. Harvey Cedars, where Christ finds people and changes lives. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our second guest during our program today will be Mike Gaydosh.

He is an ordained Baptist minister, and he is the founder of Solid Ground Christian Books. He also happens to be my very first pastor. After receiving the new birth by the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ in the mid -1980s, we are going to be discussing new hope for a new year, but before we do that, I have some important announcements to make.