During this Christmas time we turn our hearts and minds toward Jesus Christ. During these weeks of Advent we have been studying the Nature of Christ in our CITY-U. As John led us through the Theological material, I asked my friend Nate Cline to write down some of the class content as succinctly as possible for the rest of us who couldn't attend the class. Please read his article below:
The Doctrine of Christ: Who Do We Say That He Is?
We are beginning a short series on the Doctrine of Christ. Who we understand Jesus to be will affect our understanding of salvation, justification, and ultimately God. In 1John 4:2-3, the Apostle John says “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.” The distinction between those coming from God and those coming from the Devil is about Jesus. In Matthew 16, Jesus tells Peter that the foundation of the Church is the right confession of who He is. Therefore, we must learn about who Jesus is, and what we confess about him. This first week, we will discuss the two natures in Christ. Jesus was fully God, and fully man. More importantly, we are going to demonstrate why these two natures are necessary to our understanding of who Jesus is.
You may wonder why the virgin birth is important to the doctrine of Christ. The primary reason is that it is the way that Jesus comes to us. The Bible records for us that Jesus was born to Mary at a particular time in a particular place. The next obvious question is the one which Mary herself asks; “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” (Luke 1:34). The angel gives us the only response that we can give in verse 35. The Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary, that Jesus could be called holy, the Son of God.
The virgin birth is also key to our own understanding of the two natures in Christ. We see these two natures in Luke 1 :32-33. Jesus is both the Son of God and a descendent of David, who will rule the house of Jacob forever. It is vital that we understand there are two natures, but only one Jesus. He is fully God and fully man.
Why did Jesus have to be fully man? Paul gives us the most crucial reason in Romans 5:12-21. A man (Adam) sinned, and brought more sin and death with his action. Therefore, another man (Jesus) had to obey where the first hadn't. The writer of Hebrews tells us that Jesus was human that he might identify with us; yet, he was without sin (Hebrew 4:15).
Why do we teach that Jesus was fully God? John tells us in the first chapter of his gospel that Jesus was with God in the beginning, and calls him God. Also, salvation is from God alone (Jonah 2:9, Isaiah 43:11, and Psalm 3:8).
Paul calls Jesus a mediator (I Timothy 2:5). Perhaps, this office is the one where the two natures are most clearly defined. As mediator, Christ goes before the Father for us, and declares the words of the Father to us. This office was held by two separate persons in the Old Testament; the prophets and the priests. When God thunders from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments, the people cry out for Moses to tell them the words of the Lord, because God scared them to death (Deuteronomy 5: 25-28).
Jesus tells his disciples in the upper room that everything he has spoken is from the Father (John 12:49-50). The writer of Hebrews says that God had spoken through the prophets in the past, but has now spoken to us through His Son (Hebrews 1:1-12). The prophets being mere men suffered two problems. First they died, and were unable to be a continual voice. Second, they had no authority of their own. When Jesus finished the sermon on the mount, the people marveled at his authority with the law (Mathew 7:28-29).
The second office aspect of mediator is that of priest. The priest would go before God to make sacrifices for the people (Leviticus 16:15,34 and Exodus 30:10). Christ, however, goes before God with the sacrifice of himself (Hebrew 9:11-14). Because Christ is fully man, he could bleed and die. Because Christ is fully God, his sacrifice covers the sins of all humanity.
This is a very brief discussion of who Christ is according to scriptures. Much like the people of the first century, we may be tempted to make Jesus into a savior of our own making who looks and talks like we want him to, but Christ is not one of many, he is the only Savior, and he is to be had only as the Father has revealed him in the word. As Peter says in Acts 4:12, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
