Last Sunday, I talked at large group about the divinity and humanity of Jesus. We had moved the talk from Monday to Sunday because of the 3-day weekend, and so that a visiting CCFer, Maura Mayock, could make it. We still had a large crowd for the second large group of the term. Keep reading for the notes I wrote out. Make sure to scroll over the Bible verses.
Where does the Christian faith always ultimately come back to? Jesus. I was at the Skeptics’ Society talk today [Sunday] where Michael Strauss talked about astrophysics for an hour and ten minutes and threw some philosophical barbs at the beginning of the universe argument for God for ten minutes. And I want to emphasize -- the core of Christianity is not that God created the universe however long ago. The core claim is that God actually came into the world, taught and trained people, performed public miracles, and died to save us. In other words, it’s all about Jesus.
Who was Jesus? Was he just an ordinary human being like the rest of us? Or was he God? These seem like mutually exclusive possibilities, but the Christian claim has always been that Jesus was simultaneously fully God and fully man. I spent the first half of this talk justifying that Jesus was in fact God and the second half arguing that he was a man just like the rest of us at the same time, addressing a few questions I’ve had about this subject.
My sources for this are the first two sermons by Mark Driscoll from his Vintage Jesus series back in October 2006. I’m not the only one who thinks these things are important.
Jesus was God
I’m going to go rather quickly over this because I think this crowd is generally Christians and already accepts that Jesus was God. The first thing to do is establish that Jesus said he was God. Once we accept that, we should look at the evidence that Jesus knew what he was saying. I won’t go into that more apologetics side of things, though, again because I think many of us already accept it. But you’re perfectly fine asking questions about it, too. Anyways, Mark Driscoll lists 12 ways Jesus claimed to be God.
1) He said that he came down from heaven (John 6:38ff). This wasn’t an ascension, like so many other religions. Moses went up Mount Sinai, met God, and came back down with the Ten Commandments. No, Jesus said his home was in heaven and he had come down.
2) He hints at it in Mark 10:17-18.
3) He called himself the Son of Man (28 times in Matthew alone), a title from Daniel 7:13-14.
4) He performed miracles, including his resurrection from death.
5) Jesus said he was God (John 8:53-58, John 10:30-33).
6) Jesus died for this claim (Mark 14:61-64).
7) Jesus claimed to be sinless (John 8:46), and his own brothers (James, Jude) believed him.
8) Jesus claimed to forgive sin (Mark 2:5; Psalm 51:4).
9) Jesus said to pray to him (John 14:13-14, John 15:7).
10) Jesus said he’d judge all people (John 5:22-24).
11) Jesus said he is the only way to heaven (John 11:25, John 14:6).
12) Jesus claimed authority over everything (Matthew 28:18).
So I know a lot of you have heard this quote by CS Lewis, but it’s worth repeating if you haven’t:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
Why does this matter? It matters because we have to believe Jesus’ words to us. We don’t get to decide what’s true about Jesus, we have to let him speak for himself. In the same way, as servants of Jesus, we don’t get to decide what we want to do but have to yield to his calling, in his Word and in our lives. We don’t get to debate with Jesus and if we do, he’s always right and we’re always wrong, because he’s God. And this is where many of the liberal churches are today; they proclaim that they get to decide what is right and wrong, and re-interpret Jesus’ words to fit their pre-conceived belief systems. We have to constantly guard against making Jesus into ourselves instead of ourselves into Jesus.
Jesus was human
We heard from Mark Driscoll directly on this one, since this sermon was voted by Mars Hill members on their Facebook page as the best sermon Mark has given. That is, we watched 15:45-28:45 of this sermon. Before this, Mark described how Jesus did all of the usual things humans do: eat, sleep, go to the bathroom. He’s talked about the error of believing Jesus wasn't God, and he'll start by talking about the error of believing Jesus wasn't human. Mark also addresses here some questions of how Jesus could be fully divine and yet fully human.
What’s the whole point about this? Hebrews 4:14-16: Jesus can sympathize with us. He came to reconcile us to God, so he has to be both fully human and fully God.
Who was Jesus? Was he just an ordinary human being like the rest of us? Or was he God? These seem like mutually exclusive possibilities, but the Christian claim has always been that Jesus was simultaneously fully God and fully man. I spent the first half of this talk justifying that Jesus was in fact God and the second half arguing that he was a man just like the rest of us at the same time, addressing a few questions I’ve had about this subject.
My sources for this are the first two sermons by Mark Driscoll from his Vintage Jesus series back in October 2006. I’m not the only one who thinks these things are important.
Jesus was God
I’m going to go rather quickly over this because I think this crowd is generally Christians and already accepts that Jesus was God. The first thing to do is establish that Jesus said he was God. Once we accept that, we should look at the evidence that Jesus knew what he was saying. I won’t go into that more apologetics side of things, though, again because I think many of us already accept it. But you’re perfectly fine asking questions about it, too. Anyways, Mark Driscoll lists 12 ways Jesus claimed to be God.
1) He said that he came down from heaven (John 6:38ff). This wasn’t an ascension, like so many other religions. Moses went up Mount Sinai, met God, and came back down with the Ten Commandments. No, Jesus said his home was in heaven and he had come down.
2) He hints at it in Mark 10:17-18.
3) He called himself the Son of Man (28 times in Matthew alone), a title from Daniel 7:13-14.
4) He performed miracles, including his resurrection from death.
5) Jesus said he was God (John 8:53-58, John 10:30-33).
6) Jesus died for this claim (Mark 14:61-64).
7) Jesus claimed to be sinless (John 8:46), and his own brothers (James, Jude) believed him.
8) Jesus claimed to forgive sin (Mark 2:5; Psalm 51:4).
9) Jesus said to pray to him (John 14:13-14, John 15:7).
10) Jesus said he’d judge all people (John 5:22-24).
11) Jesus said he is the only way to heaven (John 11:25, John 14:6).
12) Jesus claimed authority over everything (Matthew 28:18).
So I know a lot of you have heard this quote by CS Lewis, but it’s worth repeating if you haven’t:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
Why does this matter? It matters because we have to believe Jesus’ words to us. We don’t get to decide what’s true about Jesus, we have to let him speak for himself. In the same way, as servants of Jesus, we don’t get to decide what we want to do but have to yield to his calling, in his Word and in our lives. We don’t get to debate with Jesus and if we do, he’s always right and we’re always wrong, because he’s God. And this is where many of the liberal churches are today; they proclaim that they get to decide what is right and wrong, and re-interpret Jesus’ words to fit their pre-conceived belief systems. We have to constantly guard against making Jesus into ourselves instead of ourselves into Jesus.
Jesus was human
We heard from Mark Driscoll directly on this one, since this sermon was voted by Mars Hill members on their Facebook page as the best sermon Mark has given. That is, we watched 15:45-28:45 of this sermon. Before this, Mark described how Jesus did all of the usual things humans do: eat, sleep, go to the bathroom. He’s talked about the error of believing Jesus wasn't God, and he'll start by talking about the error of believing Jesus wasn't human. Mark also addresses here some questions of how Jesus could be fully divine and yet fully human.
What’s the whole point about this? Hebrews 4:14-16: Jesus can sympathize with us. He came to reconcile us to God, so he has to be both fully human and fully God.
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