Jesus is God’s word —
God’s mind and thought —
manifested in and
The unique beauty of the Christian faith is that God is revealed in Jesus, the Son of God. Jesus is not just a man, if by that you mean he is merely an outstanding man. Jesus is unique. He is the head of the New Creation, the counterpart to Adam. Jesus did not commit sin, yet he was tempted as all human beings are (Heb. 4:15). Jesus was created supernaturally by the action of God’s spirit — His creative energy — working in the Virgin Mary. Jesus was “preplanned,” “pre-appointed.”
This is the belief of Peter (I Pet. 1:20), a leading spokesman for the Christian faith and one who was personally trained by Jesus and gave his life for the faith. Peter and the Apostles taught that Jesus came into existence in Mary’s womb and was thus begotten (=brought into existence) by the Father. All sons are by definition the products of their Father. Jesus is no exception. The word “Son” and the word “begotten” are completely meaningless if one thinks that Jesus is “coequal and coeternal with his Father.” In an attempt to cover up their confusion, traditional systems of belief have claimed that Jesus was “eternally begotten.” But such language has no recognizable meaning. It is much like speaking of “square circles.” To be begotten means that you have a beginning. But if you exist eternally you have no beginning. Jesus the Son of God was begotten. Therefore the Son had a beginning. His beginning was his conception miraculously brought about by God.
Only the Father is the One God. “There is
One God, the Father” (I Cor. 8:4-6). Jesus called
God, His Father “the only one who is truly God”
(John 17:3; 5:44). God is described by singular
personal pronouns (singular pronouns define a
person as one and not more)
over 11,000 times.
Jesus is
the Lord Messiah, the adoni
(my lord) of Psalm 110:1.
This Psalm is the great key
to understanding, and it expressly says that Jesus
is not the Lord God (adonai) but adoni the
supreme human lord (adoni in all of its 195
occurrences never refers to God).
...
The best way to study the Bible is to ask:
What is the broad view of a given subject across
the pages of the whole Bible? It is particularly
important to search the Old Testament for its
view of who God is and who the Messiah is.
Does the Hebrew Bible have anything to say
about the Son of God being alive before his
birth? The answer is positively “no.” The
Hebrew prophets foresee the coming of the Son
who in the future (future to the time of the
prophecy) will come on to the scene of history.
Thus, in the classic prophecy of the future
appearance of the Son of God who is also the
Son of David, God announces to David a
thousand years before the birth of the Messiah “I
will be his Father and he will be my Son” (2
Sam. 7:14). We note that
God said nothing at all
about that Son already
existing with Him in
heaven.
The Son of God is to be the unique agent of
God who will arise from the line of David and,
because of the miraculous creative conception
effected by God, will be designated Son of God.
The precious instruction given us by the angel
Gabriel needs to be repeated constantly. It is “for
that reason” — the action of God in Mary —
that the Son to be begotten (brought into
existence) will be the Son of God (Luke 1:35).
To maintain that “Son of God” means you are
actually God Himself makes a nonsense of this
simple, elementary teaching of the Bible. In a
fine statement of the facts, a leading theologian
in our time says: “To be called ‘Son of God’ in
the Bible means that you are not God.” (This
should be self-evident, but the pressure of
tradition and ecclesiastical councils threatening
anathemas to all who might question their
dogmas, makes it very difficult for Bible readers
to enter the Jewish world of the Bible.)
This world of Jesus and the New Testament is
delightfully free of the complicated and
mysterious doctrines about God devised some
400 years after Bible times. Our readers should
learn to distinguish how much of what they have
learned in church really comes from the Bible
and how much has been accepted as biblical
without careful examination.
The climax of God’s dealings with man
arrived when God spoke “at the end of those
days” in a Son (Heb. 1:1, 2). God, this letter to
the Hebrews says, spoke in many different ways
to the “fathers” but gave his final Message
(word) in a Son. That Son, says the same author,
is superior to angels, to Moses, to Joshua and to
Levi. (If the author really believed that Jesus was
God it is very strange that he labors to show that
he is superior to God’s prominent spokesmen in
Old Testament times. All he needed to do was
say “Jesus is God.” But he never said this, nor
did any New Testament writer.)
When challenged by hostile Jewish religious
authorities that he was making a claim to be
“equal with God,” Jesus gave a very interesting
answer to set the record straight. He denied that
he “was God.” He compared himself to the
judges of Israel whom God had called “Gods.”
Obviously this use of the word “God” for human
judges meant that they represented the One God,
not that they were actually “God.” If those
important human Israelite agents of God were
“God,” then, Jesus argued, he was entitled to be
called “Son of God.” In no way did Jesus claim
equality with God. His highest claim was to be
“Son of God.” (This whole episode should be
carefully studied in John 10:34-36.)
Many
contemporary writers simply leave out the words
of Jesus when he responded to the charge that he
was making himself equal with God. Some jump
to the conclusion that Jesus’ enemies precisely
understood what Jesus was saying. That is not
so. Jesus had to clarify his claims and he did it by
comparing himself to the human judges of Israel.
His position was as the supreme revealer of
God’s Plan. Jesus’ teaching gives us insight into
what God is doing and what He expects of us. Jesus is God’s word — God’s mind and thought
— manifested in and through a perfect human
being. “God was in Christ reconciling the world
to Himself” means that God was carrying out
His salvation purpose by using Jesus as His final
missionary agent to rescue the world from the
grip of Satan. Thomas was slow to realize Jesus’
uniqueness and Jesus chided him with these
words: “Have I been so long with you and you
do not recognize that if you have seen me you
have seen God?” (John 14:5-11; 12:45). The
God whom Thomas finally recognized in Jesus
was the God of Jesus also. Jesus is like a
perfectly clear window giving us a view of God.
Jesus is as much God as can be contained and
revealed in a human person.
Various passages in some Bible translations
force the original to say what it does not say.
Here are two examples. I Timothy 3:16 states
that “God was manifested in the flesh…”
Modern versions, following a better manuscript
reading, read “He who was manifested in the
flesh….” I John 5:7 inserts a statement which
reflects times long after the completion of the
writing of the Bible. This verse is found in the
KJV but has been rightly dropped from all
modern translations. It is universally known to
be a forgery and should never be used as the
basis of a doctrinal argument. It appears in no
Greek manuscript until the 15th century!
The Bible comes alive for its readers in a
new way when we recognize the Jewishness of
Jesus and the original “faith once and for all
delivered to the people of God” (Jude 3). Jesus
subscribed wholeheartedly to the cardinal tenet
of Judaism found in Deuteronomy 6:5: God is
One Lord and there is none beside Him. This we
call unitary monotheism. This is the creed of
Jesus and the Bible writers. As a leading scholar
at Cambridge recently wrote, “John is as
undeviating a witness as any in the NT to the
fundamental tenet of Judaism, of unitary
monotheism (Rom. 3:30; James 2:19; John 5:44;
17:3)” (J.A.T. Robinson, 12 More NT Studies, p.
175).
In other words, John and Jesus believed
that God was one Person, not three. This creed has a simple beauty, and it is likely to win the
attention of Jews today and of course Moslems.
The Church has a long history of erecting an
unnecessary barrier between itself and the Jewish
and Islamic communities by proposing the very
strange and inexplicable idea that God is
mysteriously three and yet one. Jews and
Moslems will instinctively reject such a notion.
Jews will deny — and rightly — that any idea of
a three-Person God is found in the Hebrew Bible
(the Old Testament, the Bible which nurtured
Jesus). ...
What a
marvelous new opportunity for evangelism! The
God of Jesus is One Lord. Jews know that God
is One and so do Moslems!
The above article was taken from here — Some editing has been done.
