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Pastor Jeremy M. Thomas
Fredericksburg Bible Church
107 East Austin
Fredericksburg, Texas 78624
830-997-8834
[email protected]
B1028 – July 11, 2010 – Doctrine Of Hypostatic Union - Part 2
If you turn your attention to this chart, once again just to review, we’re on
the birth of Christ and the doctrine associated with that is the hypostatic
union.
All of these views on the chart are false ideas that the Church had to sift
through and filter out and that’s why I call them on the left column on the
chart by their ancient name and in the middle column the modern name. I’ve
tried to show you that this stuff is recycled over and over down through
church history. In the right column we’re pointing out the presuppositions
that people come with when they come to the person of Christ.
I hope that as I teach various classes you’ll pick up on the powerful role
presuppositions play in people’s thinking and that you’ll be clearer about
what’s going on. The errors in that right column, where I’ve underlined the
text, those are the presuppositions people came to the text with, most of them
Christians. All Christians before they were Christians were pagans, therefore
when we come into the Christian life we carry a lot of baggage. It’s that
baggage that has to be purged out of our minds before we can think correctly.
These early Christians had a lot of Greek baggage. And they had to get this
all purged out of their minds before they could even think correctly about the
person of Christ.
When we finish the Birth of Christ, before we turn to the Life of Christ we’re
going to deal with the doctrine of the Trinity. What you find out after going
through all these errors is that there’s no way to adequately organize the
data of the NT about the Lord Jesus Christ without the doctrine of the
Trinity. The Trinity becomes the only presupposition that can account for all
the data and so every one of those errors have replaced the Trinity with
something else, some other god model.
We said last time they finally came to the Nicene Creed, ~AD325. Just to
remind us again, when you recite these creeds, if we ever do in our
evangelical churches, at least let us as we recite them appreciate the fact that
they’re not just words on a piece of paper. These creeds were theological
filters that guys gave their lives for. It took them years to make these creeds
so that they could hold to the truth. Think of the Apostle’s Creed as
contrasted with the Nicene Creed. The Apostles Creed reads like this: “I
believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus
Christ His only begotten Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died,
and was buried.” See how it just goes right on quick. Contrast that wording
with this wording in the Nicene Creed. “We believe in God, the Father
Almighty, Creator of all things visible and invisible,” why do you think that
invisible stuff is in there? To cut out the idea that God created through
intermediary beings, the invisible angels. No, they’re created too. “… and in
one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, only begotten of the Father, that is, of
the substance of the Father, God of God, begotten, not made, being of the
same substance with the Father.” Remember this word, without the iota,
homoousion, that’s the word, that’s what they’re protecting in the Nicene
Creed where it says being “of the same substance with the Father.” Not a
different substance or a similar substance, the same substance, referring to
His essence.
This is the Church laying down the line, putting forth the truth about Jesus
Christ. This is what separates Christ from Mohammed, Christ from
Confucius, Christ from Buddha; it separates Christ from everybody else.
Nobody makes this claim except the stubborn Christians that keep making
this claim about Jesus Christ, an absolutely unique claim. Don’t ever be
confused; because of the media you’ll often get confused with some slick
talking academic that tries to say well Hinduism and Buddhism have
incarnations too. Yes, they have what they call incarnations, but their
incarnation is an incarnation not of the Creator God. They’ve already washed
out the Creator-creature distinction. They’ve got an incarnation; if your
imagination will recall Star Wars and all that, it’s the Force incarnating
itself, that’s what they’re talking about in their incarnation. Don’t let the
word “incarnation” that’s used this way by Oriental religions confuse you
with the word “incarnation” as it is used in Christian theology; same word,
absolutely different meanings. Lots of religions discuss incarnation and you
can have five people in one discussion over incarnation and six ideas of
incarnation floating around, all using the same word. You can sit there by the
hour and discuss, and afterwards you think we were talking by one another
all the time, we weren’t using the same definition.
The next step in thinking about Christ - turn to Heb 4. After it was clarified
that Jesus Christ distinctly was God, so that when I know Christ I know God,
then came another problem. We elevate Christ’s deity, we emphasize that
over and over and get that down, now my problem is, “Have I forgotten the
humanity of Christ?” So, the whole next discussion deals with the fact that
Jesus Christ was a real man. I want to show you the practical side so you
don’t get tempted to kiss this off as some theological stuff that really doesn’t
matter.
Look at Heb 4:14 and ask yourself whether that truth would work if Jesus
were really an angel or God walking around in a human body with no human
soul, no human spirit, just happened to have a body that walked around.
“Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the
heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15For we do not
have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who
has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.”
Look at that carefully. Our high priest was tempted in all ways like we are,
yet without sin. Jesus Christ had full humanity, if He didn’t, then He could
not put Himself in a position of being our high priest, because He wouldn’t
have had the experience it says here of being “tempted in all things as we
are,” God isn’t tempted like we are. God’s omnipotent, He’s not worried about
whether He’s going to get food tomorrow, He can turn a rock into a piece of
bread. God can’t be tempted. So the tempting of the Lord Jesus in verse 15
has to do with the humanity of Jesus Christ and He has to experience this in
order for Him to be a sympathetic high priest. That’s why in verse 16 there’s
a very practical thing in the realm of prayer. That’s why we can, “draw near
with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and may
find grace to help in time of need.” Why do we draw near to the throne of
grace? Because at the throne of grace we have One who’s been there, we have
some One who has walked in our shoes.i
In Heb 5:7-9 we come to another statement. This is an amazing section, we’ll
get into this more in the Life of Christ, but we want to deal with it here just
to show Christ’s true humanity. “In the days of His flesh, He offered up both
prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save
Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety.” Look at verse 8, a
powerful statement, “Although He was a Son, He learned obedience…” Can
God learn? If God is omniscient, what does He learn? He doesn’t learn
anything, He can’t learn anything. There are two people that can’t learn;
moron and God. God can’t learn anything because He already knows
everything. The Lord Jesus Christ is said to learn, so He had to learn through
the things which He suffered; He had to pass through this life as a man, a
real human being, and had to learn. Do you think He can empathize with us
when we come before the throne of grace and say it hurts down here? I think
He can. Because look what it says: He offered prayers with tears. Does He
know what pain is? Yes, he does. Does Allah know what pain is? No, he
doesn’t. Why is that? Because Allah never came down here and walked in our
shoes, Allah never incarnated as a man. It was only the Son of God that did
that. He walked around here. See the power? There’s a tremendous
difference between the Biblical God and all the phony gods out there. Other
gods are either impersonal gods or they’re so distant they never touch the
human race; they haven’t got a clue about what temptation means, haven’t
ever walked in our shoes. That is what is tied up with His humanity.
The next error we’ll go through is Docetism. There may be other names; I’m
using the word Docetism here because Docetism holds to the fact that the
humanity of Christ that appears in the NT is an illusion. It’s not real
humanity. “Only the Pure Ideal called ‘God’ is real.” I said the Greeks had
this thing and they were right in one sense but they were wrong in their
answer. It’s the question have you ever seen a perfect triangle? You can sit in
geometry class with your compass and pencil and make a triangle. When you
put a pencil on the paper the graphite on the paper can’t make a perfectly
straight line because of imperfections. So the Greeks simply asked the
question, where is there a perfect triangle. We all know what a perfect
triangle is but we never get to touch one because it doesn’t exist down here.
So they held that the perfect triangle was only in the world of men’s
thoughts, it was a mental projection of a perfect world. They knew it existed
somewhere because we can all think about it. So the ideal world is in our
mind. What they did is say okay, Christ is the ideal, but if He’s the ideal then
He’s not part of this world. This comes up again and again inside the Church.
We’ve seen it in Arianism, now we see it in Docetism. Now let’s look more at
what Docetism says. This is how we get razor sharp on the truth, by looking
at the distortions of truth, and then we see, hey, I never saw that before.
Here was the question they were trying to answer: If Christ is of the same
essence as the Father, how was this divine nature incarnated? Did God
acquire full human nature? Docetism answered the question very simply by
denying that Christ ever had any humanity at all—body, soul or spirit. Some
of them denied his body, that’s real extreme Docetism; that the body was just
sort of a ghost, an appearance. Others retained a genuine body but denied He
had a soul or a spirit. That was more common. In this view He had only what
appeared to be a human nature. God couldn’t actually have a real human
nature, that’s unthinkable.
Docetism arrived at this wrong answer by importing the pagan culture of a
Platonic and oriental dualism that believed the empirical world was not real.
Once again we observe a vital Biblical question answered wrongly because
concepts from outside the Bible were brought into the discussion. NT
revelation, of course, requires a real humanity for Christ in order for Christ
to generate legitimate historical righteousness. Remember, He learned
obedience. Think about that, He learned obedience, and what does obedience
produce but righteousness. How is that righteousness produced? It was done
by obedient acts of a real human being. If He wasn’t a real human being,
could He have generated real human righteousness? No. Could He have
shown us what righteousness is? Yes, God is righteous, but can you generate
real creature righteousness? Not if Jesus wasn’t a creature, not if He didn’t
have a full human nature. So that’s what we mean by that.
There are some reasons here; I’ve listed them with verses. Be careful when
you read this to distinguish; I’m saying several things in this sentence. “In
order for Christ to generate legitimate historical righteousness (e.g. Heb. 5:79)” that’s number one. Number two, “His priestly qualifications (e.g. Heb.
4:14-16),” He had to be qualified as a priest. “His representative position as
the Second Adam,” which we’ll get into later. He can’t be a second Adam if
He’s not an Adam. “His efficacious death (e.g. John 19:33-35),” the lamb had
to be slain, there had to be a real human death. If there’s not a real human
body with a real human nature, how can you have a real human death? And
if you don’t have a real human death, how do you have a real salvation? “His
absolute revelation of God (e.g. John 1:14; 1 John 1:1)” that was Athanasius’
argument, that if He’s not God, then when I know Christ I don’t know God, if
He’s not a man then He doesn’t present to me who is also a man what God is
like. “His fulfillment of the Davidic Covenant (2 Sam. 7:12-16)” depended on
Him being a literal human being with the literal genes of David. “The
function of the virgin birth was to introduce Christ’s human nature into the
world.” “In opposing Docetic interpretations of Christ the Church opposed in
principle all tendencies” and watch this sentence because here’s where I get
into extreme Calvinism, (I appreciate Calvinism, I appreciate what the
Reformers did, so don’t think I’m attacking them here. There’s just some
weirdo’s in the camp that must be an embarrassment to John Calvin
sometimes). “…all tendencies to downgrade and make illusory real physical
history (such as sometimes occur in extreme Calvinism in which there is so
much focus on God’s decrees that their historical manifestations are of no
account).” The doctrine of divine decrees, is it supralapsarianism or
infralapsarianism, and they go into all these questions. The answer to that is
the elect are always there in God’s mind, yes, but they don’t exist until they
believe in history. The elect can forever exist in the mind of God, but they
don’t exist in history until they believe. Until that time they don’t exist any
more than the universe existed before God created it. God called the universe
into existence and the gospel goes out and calls the elect into existence, but
they’re called into existence and they don’t exist before. You can’t have this
constant emphasis on God and His decrees without an emphasis on history.
And then people get imbalanced and you have all kinds of problems. You
wouldn’t have the problems if you’d just think about Christ. Christ is God;
Christ is true humanity. A lot of these things that we get in trouble with in
the Church come about because we are really not clear about Christ. If we
really thought through who Jesus Christ is, we wouldn’t have half the
theological controversy we have, because the principles that you use to
understand the person of Christ apply over here, apply over here, apply over
here, solves this problem, solves that problem.
“Later, more sophisticated versions of Docetism occurred which held that
although Jesus’ body was real, He did not have a true human soul (Arius’s
idea) or a true human spirit (Appollinarius’ idea).” Now we quote Philip
Schaff, a great church historian: “The Church could not possibly accept such
a half Docetistic incarnation,” this sentence is great, “such a mutilated and
stunted humanity of Christ, despoiled of its royal head, and such a merely
partial redemption as this inevitably involved. The incarnation of the Logos
is His becoming completely man…. This was the weighty doctrinal result of
the Appollianarian controversy.” That’s the next room down the hall. The
church kept walking down this hall, trying these different rooms, discovering
they don’t work and trying a new room.
Now we come to the next room. After we get the God and man together, after
we say that He is true humanity, He is undiminished deity, okay, what do we
do with getting these two natures together? Do they mix? Do they put vinegar
in water as one of the early church fathers said, and what you get isn’t either
vinegar or water, its vinegarized water? So when you put the deity of Christ
along with His humanity, what do we get? Deified humanity or humanized
deity? What happens here? What do we do with this?
“Christ’s Two Natures are United Without Mixture in One Person.” This is
the next step, we’re heading toward Chalcedon’s confession, it’s moving
toward that point of the Confession. “Christ’s Two Natures are United
Without Mixture” key word, “Without Mixture.” Why is it that we can’t have
mixture, why can’t we have a blending of the two natures? It goes back to
fundamental theology of the Gen 1. What can’t be mixed? The Creator and
the creature; that forever stays distinct, it’s not blended in the person of
Christ, there is a barrier between Christ as Creator and Christ as creature.
This is really deep stuff, and there’s never been a total way to comprehend it
because it is incomprehensible. The only thing we can say theologically is it’s
not this, it’s not that, it’s like this, it’s like that, we sort of work our way
around it. That’s what we’re doing. Christ’s two natures are not mixed
together.
“With Christ’s divine and human natures firmly recognized, early Church
discussion concentrated more and more upon the matter of how these two
natures were brought together. The person who is a casual student of the
subject will dismiss such discussion as impractical ‘theological quibbling’ or
as ‘irrelevant to my life’ because he fails to see what is at stake. The issue is
ultimately nothing less than God the Creator’s relationship to His created
universe. It concerns the vital Creator-creature distinction that sets Biblical
thought apart from all pagan thought. A wrong answer here will distort all
other truths. This final phase of Christological controversy, therefore, was no
‘theological quibble’ nor was it ‘irrelevant’ to everyday life. Literally
everything was at stake: the doctrines of God, man and nature.”
Now we look at the answers that were tried. Nestorianism is the first wrong
answer in this category of errors. “Nestorianism erred by starting at the
wrong point with the wrong question.” Remember when I started this series,
what did I say? Don’t answer a question until you’ve thought about the
question. Because you start in at forty miles an hour because you think
you’ve answered the question, you find yourself going down a highway that
you never should have gone down. And you wonder, after five miles of
driving, why am I down here, how did I get here? You took the wrong turn.
Why did I take the wrong turn? Because I tried to answer a question without
thinking through whether it was the right question. Nestorius did the same
thing.
“Nestorius and his followers began to analyze the union problem” now watch
this, they “began,” starting point, their starting point was wrong, it wasn’t
the starting point of the Scripture. It was the starting point in the concept
that they had that was floating around. So instead of going back to the
Scripture, Nestorius said he thought he had enough tools from his education
and Greek thought, etc. “Nestorius and his followers began to analyze the
union problem from the creature’s limited viewpoint within history. Nestorius
thought that the question was how the divine nature united with Jesus’
humanity after that humanity had already come into existence.”
Let’s see if I can draw in your mind's eye what these guys were getting at.
Here’s their wrong perspective. They are in the flow of history, they’re inside
time and they’re walking around. They look and they see the humanity of
Jesus was born through his mother Mary; he walks around in the world as a
real human being. So they say that’s interesting! Now given the fact that
he’s a real human being, how did God get in him? That’s how Nestorius
approached the union. He asked the question, how did the divine nature
unite with Jesus’ humanity after his humanity had already come into
existence.” The question was the wrong question. What Nestorius tried to do
was what philosophers try to do today; it’s what virtually everyone does. They
start off with a view that history is history, the universe is there, here’s the
way things are. Given the fact that things are this way, you know, we have
one head, not two heads, we have a certain IQ, we have two legs, not four,
here we are, we’re walking around in history, now given that situation, how
does God get in the picture? How does God get into this thing called man
without binding Himself up?
What’s fatally flawed about that? The whole approach is wrong. What’s the
first event we dealt with in the Biblical Framework? Creation. The first thing
was the act of creation; what does the act of creation do? What did God reveal
the moment He created? He revealed His nature, man’s nature and nature’s
nature. So Nestorius, instead of getting his idea of God’s nature, man’s
nature and nature’s nature from Gen 1-2, he started with man’s ideas of
what these were and then came back and tried to plug God into it. If He’d
gone back to Gen 1-2 he would have seen that when man was created he was
created in the image of God. So God doesn’t get in a bind when He comes to
incarnate Himself. The need for an incarnation wasn’t a surprise for God.
God thought of that for all eternity, that’s why He structured man after His
own image at Creation. So the vehicle was already there from the start.
So Nestorius never got the question right. Here’s the result of this is; the
same thing that happens today. “History rather than God’s plan for history,
was the starting point, according to his error.” Read that sentence carefully.
“History rather than God’s plan for history, was the starting point.” What
does that do to your thinking? If you start with history and you don’t think
back of history to a plan, aren’t you free to interpret history any way you
want to? You have your idea of history, I have mine, you can have yours,
everybody can have their own ideas of history, and we’ve got 100 people, 100
different ideas of history, all equally valid views of our own thoughts. The
reason we can say that is because there’s no absolute plan for history. But if
there is God the Creator there is an absolute plan and then there’s no
problem here with God incarnating Himself in a human nature, God made it,
God made us to be finite analogs to Him.
According to this error Nestorius said Mary bore Jesus the anointed one as a
human baby, not as God already united with humanity in one person. So he
held that Jesus was a true human person: God was a divine person. They
came together after Jesus’ birth in a moral union but not in a physical union.
The two persons with two natures formed a sort of company that could be
viewed as two parallel lines that never physically met. Again, great church
historian Schaff summarizes Nestorianism: “It asserted indeed, rightly, the
duality of the natures, and the continued distinction between them; it denied,
with equal correctness that God, as such, could either be born, or suffer and
die: but it pressed the distinction of the two natures to double personality. It
substituted for the idea of the incarnation the idea of an assumption of … an
entire man into fellowship with the Logos…. Instead of God-man, we have
here the idea of a mere God-bearing man…. The two natures form not a
personal unity, but only a… conjunction.” Then we have the results of
Nestorianism. Here’s what happens if we don’t have union of God and man in
the person of Jesus Christ, where else do we never get it together? If you
don’t get this right and we don’t get it together with Jesus Christ, then God is
never going to be any closer. So either it’s this or nothing. That’s why
Christology is such an important doctrine. If there never was a union of God
and man in Jesus Christ then no other event in history could have made
things any closer. The modern counterpart of this heresy is neo-orthodoxy
which keeps God so distant from His creation that He can’t even verbally
reveal Himself to us. Feel the distance that’s created by this view of Christ?
The last erroneous attempt to define the union of Christ’s two natures was
Monophysitism (meaning one nature). That went in the opposite direction
from Nestorianism. Where Nestorianism so exaggerated the duality of the
two natures that it produced a duality of persons, Monophysitism, see the
word “mono,” and phusis, phusis is nature, one nature, that’s what
Monophysitism means, one nature. “Monophysitism exaggerated the unity of
Christ’s person into a unity of one nature.” What they believed was “before
the incarnation, two natures… after the incarnation, one nature.” So now you
have humanitized deity or deified humanity, a mixture of natures.
“Eutyches… defended the doctrine that both natures were transformed into
the divine, which implied a unity and homogeneity in the nature of Christ.
Like Gregory of Nyssa, Eutyches made use of the metaphor of the sea and the
drop of vinegar to illustrate his doctrine of transformation. Jesus as a drop of
vinegar poured into the sea will take on the nature of the sea, just so human
nature was transformed into the divine. So Christ was certainly made up out
of two natures originally, but after the union he no longer persists in two
natures, but only in one.” People say whew, heavy stuff, and it is, but let me
show you something that happened twenty years ago in the evangelical
church. Some of you that came out of the flower child age, the hippie group,
will remember this. The Monophysitism heresy recalls the Indian myth of the
god Krishna, who has the power to transform himself into men, or even into
beasts. Oriental so-called ‘incarnations’, far from being parallel examples of
the Biblical God’s incarnation of Christ, are in reality examples of the old
Monophysitist heresy.” It’s recycled Monophysitism, that’s all it is, recycled.
“In the 1960s, when eastern religious influence came strongly into the
American culture, it was no accident that George Harrison’s then popular
song, ‘My Sweet Lord’ alternated the use of the words ‘Halleluyah’ and ‘Halle
Krishna.’ It was pure oriental Monophysitism, but naïve evangelical
Christians, lacking knowledge of Biblical truth, thought it was a wonderful
hymn.” What’s he saying? Think about it. What is he saying? He’s saying that
Hallelujah, the Biblical God and Jesus Christ is no different than Krishna,
they’re all the same thing, absolutely the same thing, no difference. And
everybody thought it was cool.
“The Nestorian and Monophysitist controversies finally led to one of the most
important Church councils in history, the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451.”
Now we come to the end of this doctrinal formulation. Next week we’ll get
into some of the implications of it and then start going into the Trinity. This
is one of the great church councils. The Council of Chalcedon had wideranging political results…political results because of what they did here.
Before the 1950’s there were a few people that thought, believe it or not, and
they thought very consistently, and these ideas had consequences, had
profound consequences. So let’s look at what they did at Chalcedon and then
we’ll introduce some of the fallout of what happened.
“The Creator’s divine nature, which Christ has, could never be mixed with
His created humanity after the fashion of Monophysitism. On the other hand,
there has to be a real physical unity to avoid the problem of Nestorianism.
The solution comes in recognizing that the Second Person of the Trinity,” see
all of a sudden now we’ve got to deal with the Trinity, “the Logos or Son, can
be distinguished from the Divine Essence because all three persons—Father,
Son and Spirit—share the same Essence and, therefore, are distinguished
within the Trinity. The Second Person, therefore, can be distinguished from
both the Divine Essence and the human nature; and it can be the real focal
point for unity in Christ. The Chalcedon Creed stated the matter thusly. Look
carefully at the actual creedal words of Chalcedon. “Following the holy
fathers,” (notice they saw themselves as continuous with the Apostles,
logically in line with the OT and NT Scriptures. They never thought, in
Chalcedon and Nicaea, of themselves as inventing new doctrine, they thought
of themselves as just articulating what the word of God said.) “Following the
holy fathers, we unanimously teach,” (notice they had unanimity in the
Council), “we unanimously teach … one and the same Christ, Son, Lord,
Only-begotten,” (now you see what they did beyond Nicaea, remember what
Nicaea did? It kept on putting those adjectives and phrases in there, these
guys knew Nicaea, and the Nicene Creed still didn’t solve a few problems so
now look what they’re doing). The “only begotten, known in two natures,
without confusion, without conversion,” that means conversion of one nature
to the other, “without severance,” that’s Nestorianism where they severed it,
“without division;” again kind of Nestorian-like, “the distinction of natures
being in no wise abolished by their union,” that kept the Creator-creature
distinction, “but the peculiarity of each nature being maintained,” that
protects against Monophysitism, two natures maintained, “and both
concurring in one person and hypostasis….” That’s why we call it the
hypostatic union, it comes from that word in the confession.
In summary, here’s what Chalcedon said, Jesus Christ is “Undiminished
deity,” Why do they say “undiminished deity,” why not just say deity there?
“Undiminished deity” keeps out Arianism, it also clarifies something we’re
coming to later, in the Life of Christ called the doctrine of kenosis, and some
held that His deity was diminished during His earthly life. We’re going to
deal with that, that’s coming up, so you’ve got a head start on that, He’s
“UNDIMINISHED DEITY,” at no point did Jesus Christ’s deity ever go away.
“Undiminished deity united with true humanity,” notice the “true humanity,”
that denies Docetism, notice the words “united with,” it’s not a company of
two walking around, not Nestorianism, its one person. “Undiminished deity
united with true humanity without confusion,” that gets rid of
Monophysitism, that was the vinegar and water, “without confusion” the
Creator-creature distinction has to be there all the time, “in one person,” not
two people, one person, and the last word is very important also, “forever.”
The humanity of Jesus doesn’t go away. When Jesus Christ appears in the
book of Revelation with all of His deity unleashed and you see the Lamb upon
the Throne, it’s still the Lamb that is upon the Throne. His glory shines, but
if you look carefully at His hands you’ll see the scars, the marks of history. It
is forever, so forever and ever and ever and ever we will be in the presence of
a true human being, Jesus Christ, one of our peers. That’s why when we are
judged, the Father has committed all judgment into the hands of His Son.
What does that mean? Trial by peer, we’re not judged by God the Father,
we’re judged by the God-man Jesus Christ. And then when we try to blow
smoke and say well, you didn’t understand what it was like to be me… Oh
yes, I understood, I walked around, don’t give me that stuff. It’s a rather
piercing judgment because He’s going to blow away all the excuses and
hogwash that we come up with because He’s been here, He isn’t fooled, He’s
walked around, He’s done it, He’s seen it. That’s what makes Him a fair
judge. He is a peer.
You tell me another religion that you know of in the world that is anything
remotely approximating what we’ve talked about in the last three weeks. The
deeper you get into Scripture, the more nonsensical and stupid it sounds
when you hear, well, Christianity is just like all the other religions. Anybody
who says that obviously hasn’t studied this material. How could anybody
study this material and come to such a foolish conclusion as that.
For five hundred years students of the Scripture fought to summarize
without contradiction… The doctrine of the hypostatic union is the only view
that has survived the greatest theological discussion man has ever
undertaken. It is the only one that has no contradiction with the NT
revelation. This doctrine alone does not complete one’s understanding of
Christ’s nature, but it forms the basis for other doctrines that we’re going to
study.
We’re going to stop here because we want to get into some of the implications
next time and we’ll get into the area of the Trinity. I want to deal with that
while it’s fresh in our minds that they had to come to that conclusion in order
to make it fit the NT revelation.
Depeche Mode once sang a song “Walking in My Shoes” where the Lyrics read, try walking in my shoes. Jesus
Christ has walked in your shoes. He’s been tempted as we are, yet without sin. He can identify with us and
sympathize with us because He’s already been there. The full lyrics are here so you can hear the plea of unbelief…
i
I would tell you about the things
They put me through.
The pain I've been subjected to.
But the Lord himself would blush.
The countless feasts laid at my feet,
Forbidden fruits for me to eat.
But I think your pulse would start to rush.
Now I'm not looking for absolution,
Forgiveness for the things I do.
But before you come to any conclusions Try walking in my shoes,
Try walking in my shoes.
You'll stumble in my footsteps,
Keep the same appointments I kept.
If you try walking in my shoes.
If you try walking in my shoes.
Morality would frown upon,
Decency look down upon.
The scapegoat fate's made of me.
But I promise now, my judge and jurors,
My intentions couldn't have been purer.
My case is easy to see.
I'm not looking for a clearer conscience,
Peace of mind after what I've been through.
And before we talk of any repentance Try walking in my shoes.
Try walking in my shoes.
You'll stumble in my footsteps,
Keep the same appointments I kept.
If you try walking in my shoes.
If you try walking in my shoes.
Try walking in my shoes.
Now I'm not looking for absolution,
Forgiveness for the things I do.
But before you come to any conclusions Try walking in my shoes.
Try walking in my shoes.
You'll stumble in my footsteps,
Keep the same appointments I kept.
If you try walking in my shoes.
Try walking in my shoes.
If you try walking in my shoes.
Try walking in my shoes.
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