Christology: The Incarnation

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Christology: The Incarnation

May 24, 2021

My guest joining me this week on the Sunday series is my brother Bryce. Bryce is getting his undergraduate degree in philosophy and hopes to get his MDiv. from a seminary after he completes his undergrad. He hopes to be a pastor shepherding Gods people one day. Today we continue moving forward in our series on Christology, the doctrine of Christ. This week we dive into the incarnation, when God himself took on flesh to be as one of us that he may represent us as the new Adam to save us from our sin if we would be place our faith and trust in him alone and repent from our idols. Dive into the scriptures this week with one of the most blessed hopes for us as Christians, that God became man!

Key Texts: John 1:1-6, 14-15, 18, Galatians 4:4, Ephesians 1:9-10, Luke 1:35-37, Luke 2:52

More reading : https://www.gotquestions.org/incarnation-of-Christ.html

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/10-things-you-should-know-about-the-incarnation/

https://www.ligonier.org/blog/incarnation-relevance/ -> READ THIS

https://www.ligonier.org/blog/incarnation-athanasian-creed/ -> READ THIS TOO

https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/five-truths-about-the-incarnation

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QaRs8iZMA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUWBelEa_6o -> GOOD STUFF

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYv5IcojRiY -> REALLY GOOD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRLulZdewVA

Inquiries to : forthekingpodcast@gmail.com

Website: forthekingpodcast.com

Transcript

(music) Hello everybody. It's Rock, the host of the For The King podcast. Not B. Rock.

Not Dwayne. No, no, no. I'm talking about Peter Petrow.

Oh. Petros. Petros.

Oh, Petros. That old, old fellow. I would love to name my kid that.

But I thought that my name would actually mean Rock, and it doesn't. It means "rest." Rocky means "rest," literally. In what language? I don't know.

I think it's Italian. It means "rest." Italian? I don't know. Rocky's an Italian name.

Oh, I see. I see. But Peter's name literally does mean Rock.

I thought my name would literally mean Rock, but it doesn't. So, Petro. I feel like that'd be a cool middle name.

That's weird, because you're never at rest. I know. I'm always bouncing off the walls.

Nothing has ever acted upon you, because an object at rest remains at rest until another object acts upon it. So, that's a law. Aren't you studying philosophy? How do you even know about that? I dabble in Newtonian physics.

On the side, he's a physicist. Is that Newtonian physicists? Yeah. Isaac Newton.

That's one of his laws. Okay. Of motion.

We good? Is that what we're talking about today? No, no, no, no. Bryce C. You told me to prepare for that. I know.

I was just trying to make this enjoyable for the audience. I told Bryce that we were going to be talking about Newtonian physics today. So, he's not going to be prepared at all, so you'll see actually how much this guy has to prepare to have anything good to say.

So, today, we're going to – I'm prepared, but he'll be off the cuff, so I don't know if he'll actually have anything good to say at all. We'll see what happens. No, he's got two books open in front of him.

He's prepared. We're ready to go. So, thanks for joining us today, guys.

Hope things are well, and the podcast is continuing to grow. We're almost to a thousand listens all the time. That's crazy.

Four digits, reaching the nations, eight countries, 15-plus states. Yeah, it's been good. God seems to be blessing it, and I'm thankful for the success it's had already.

And even if it failed tomorrow, I would be happy with some of the people that got to hear and what I got to do already. So, today, we're continuing with the Christology series. Essex is not popping in today.

Don't even worry about that guy. He's not here. He's popped out.

He popped out today, but Bryce and I are popping inside today. We're talking about, again, Christology. This is the second part of this new series we're doing on the Doctrine of Christ.

And last week, we talked about the pre-incarnate Eternal Christ. And we had a ton of really good texts, and we were in John 1 and Hebrews 1, Colossians 1, a lot of different places, Christophanes in the Old Testament. Man, I can't burp.

That was one of those "I can't burp" moments. Hopefully, you guys get used to that. Yeah, you guys are probably starting to pick up on that.

I know his fiancee has it, so hopefully, you guys can find. She thinks it's funny. So, yeah, we went through all that last week, so now we want to logically continue in this series, and the next logical step in this Doctrine of Christ would be the incarnation.

So, he's existed all throughout the Old Testament in this pre-ord. He was with God. Exactly, yeah.

He was in this pre-incarnate Eternal state all before the incarnation. So, the next thing that happens in this existence of Christ, him being eternally existent, is that he incarnates himself into our reality to be with us. God sent his only Son to die for us to save us from our sins.

And this is one of the glorious things about Jesus, that he willingly subjects himself to this. He is not forced to incarnate himself. It's the foundation of all Christian thought.

Exactly, yeah. And if, again, if Jesus did not incarnate himself and do the work that he did in his obedience to his Father and then die on the cross, then we should be a people pitied. So, this again is essential.

This is Orthodox, Nicene Creed kind of stuff. This isn't like the whole Calvinism thing. That's a secondary doctrine.

It's very important, but it's not... Bryce lets it bleed into the primary kind of stuff. Parts of it does. It's more... It's shaded more in primary for me.

Bryce thinks it's more of a primary doctrine. I think it's parts of it can bleed into primary, but in and of itself, it's not against Orthodoxy. So, we're in this Christology series and this is Orthodoxy.

This is like you need that... Literally everything we're saying, you have to believe it or you're not a Christian. You're not a follower of Christ. You have a different Christ because we're presenting you what the Bible says about Jesus.

And that doesn't mean you have to be able to articulate these things. That's not at all what we're getting at. We're just saying that if you don't believe that Jesus is the Son of the Living God as he's presented in Scriptures, then there's no salvation for you.

And if you don't think he came bodily in the flesh and died for our sins as an atoning sacrifice, you're not a Christian. And again, this is just foundational things that we're dealing with here. Yeah, nothing... It's about belief as opposed to the articulate thought of it.

Exactly. And these aren't unclear things in the text. These are clear.

Yeah, this is plain. This is a plain teaching of the text. This is not... People can say, "Oh, how can you claim to know what the Bible says or know what God's like?" And the Bible is very clear in a lot of things.

There's some things where it's harder to tell what's actually true, like the book of Revelation. That's a tough one. It takes... That's an easy one.

Now for you, but for a while it was hard, right? Yeah. But now that we're post-mill, we got everything figured out. I am not post-mill.

Bryce is post-mill. So yeah, this is what we're doing today. So let's get into it.

Where are we going first? Oh yeah, Luke chapter one. Tell me to read it. Oh, you're already there? Yeah.

Oh yeah, yeah, I do that. So foundation of Christ coming and being birthed of a woman is found in Luke chapter one, super... This is what we sing every Christmas. We read it every Christmas.

It's Luke 1 35 and it says, "And the angel answered her..." This is Gabriel answering back to Mary. "The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called Holy, the Son of God." And this is him answering a question of how I'm a virgin.

How do I get birth? Yeah. Right. So this is where we get the miraculous virgin birth that's been prophesied in the Old Testament.

And now we see its fulfillment in the New Testament with Mary. Yeah. So this is the way that the Savior into the world, he became flesh by the womb of a virgin woman.

Matthew 1 18 as well. "Now the birth of Jesus took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, she was found to be the child of the Holy Spirit." And also in Matthew 1 20, "Joseph's son of David..." Or sorry, shortly after the angel of the Lord said to Joseph, who was engaged to Mary, Joseph's son of David, "Do not fear, take, marry your wife for that which is conceived of her is of the Holy Spirit." And also Matthew 1 24 through 25.

"Joseph did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took his wife but knew her not until she had born a son and he called his name Jesus." So we see multiple, multiple verses about the beginning of Jesus' life that he came from the Holy Spirit and Joseph knew her not. Joseph never knew his wife, which is a euphemism back in the day for being sexually intimate with your wife.

And he, that never happened between him and Mary. And the claim is in the Christian faith that he was conceived of the Holy Spirit by the virgin Mary who never had known a man. Joseph did not know him.

So those are all again, the Gospels at the beginning is where we get the start of Jesus' life, the incarnation. And this is not something that's illogical because if God created the universe, surely he can implant a seed in a woman to give birth to a child. Surely he could do that.

If he's God, surely he could do that. If he couldn't, not God. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, there's no logical contradiction there. It's supernatural. Yeah, right.

Well, even we have troubles in philosophy of mind, understanding how the humans have a soul. So not the humans, like I'm not a human. I said that weird.

How humans, how the humans have a soul. No, how... He's an angel. Yeah, I just accidentally gave myself away.

You know, like some, you serve some angels on a knowing or whatever that verse. But yeah, we have conundrums in our philosophy of mind. It's like, how can humans have these metaphysical things about them, but also be physical? Like God can do this.

He put up eternity in the hearts of men. He made us in his image. He gave us a soul.

He can put it. It's clear. There's a lot of evidence all around us, every human you interact with, that God is very well capable of putting a spiritual metaphysical thing in conjunction with a physical thing and having them marry.

And it's not a logical contradiction. Yeah. To us, it may seem impossible, but to God, I think it's possible.

Yeah. Yeah. Even the virgin birth.

Exactly. So yeah, people like to attack that point because it's a logical, not a logical, it's supernatural. That's what we call it.

Exactly. Supernatural is not a synonym for a logical. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Another one, Luke one 34 to 35, the Holy Spirit will come upon you in the power of the most high will overshadow you.

Therefore the child to be born will be called holy the son of God. And that's important when it says he shall be called holy because again, this is separating his birth into the world is separate from any other birth. Yeah.

It's miraculous. It is something that's supernatural. The Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary and the only way or sorry, the only time that has ever happened is with Mary.

Yeah. For the son of God, the eternal word of God, the second person of eternity to be come flesh. Exactly.

And God overshadowing Mary actually keeps, you know, we wonder how did Jesus not inherit a sinful nature from Mary? You know, all humans inherit this. How does that happen? Well, God overshadowed Mary. God prevents this from happening because the Holy Spirit is the one conceiving the one doing all this work in the womb, this miraculous work.

He overshadows Mary and that keeps Jesus from ever inheriting a sinful nature. We also know all other humans have original pollution and original guilt and original corruption from Adam, the federal head of humanity. He plunged us all into sin and we're also, we're not just, you know, sinful or sorry, guilty because we sin when we become a human and we're conceived, but even from the womb and iniquity where we brought forth.

So we're already guilty before God, even before we've ever done anything. It's a part of who we are. Exactly.

So why did Jesus not have that standing before God? Why was he born holy well, it's because the spirit of the most side overshadowed him and he did not inherit this from Adam because we inherit it from the father, not the mom. So he was born of a virgin Mary and he did not inherit this original guilt, original pollution, original corruption, a sinful nature. None of that was given to Jesus.

He is holy. He's set apart. And this is why we don't know all, I can't explain to you a philosophical mechanism for how that works, but we just need to trust God on this one that the spirit of God overshadowed Mary and was able to prevent all of these things from happening.

And Jesus was born fully man, the hypostatic union and truly man and truly God, the hypostatic union. Yeah. And that is what the incarnation is.

Right. And that's a very important theological doctrine. And again, you don't have to be able to articulate this.

You don't, you don't necessarily have to know it, but this is very important to fight against heresy, to fight against false, falsehood is that the hypostatic union is referencing to the dual nature of Christ. I don't know if that's necessarily the right way to say it. Christ is both truly God and truly man at the same instance.

They're not confused. They don't intermingle and it doesn't affect his personhood. Christ is still one person.

He's not broken up into two people all of a sudden, but his Godhood, his, him being truly God is now clothed with him being truly man. And that's the analogy I like to use for it is that it's like, and the analogy breaks down for sure. It just helps to understand a little bit greater is that it's like putting on clothes.

It doesn't change your personhood in any way. Obviously that analogy breaks down, but that's what every analogy does. Yeah.

So yeah. Do you want to go into John chapter one and read the even more? And well, actually, sorry, before we move on anymore, I want to read Galatians 4, four real quick and a Ephesians chapter one, just talking about this, what we just read about what happens in Luke and Matthew and Jesus's incarnation begins with the version birth of Mary. Why did that happen? Well, here's our answer.

Galatians 4, four. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth the son born of woman born under the law to redeem those that were under the law so that we might receive adoption of sons. So why did God do that? To save us, to adopt us, to reconcile us to himself.

And Jesus willingly says, yes, I will go. Jesus subjects himself to that, not and subordination because he's, he's co-ordinate with the father. But difference in role.

He sends his son to do this task, to do this role. God, the father didn't die for us on the sins Jesus did. Right.

And that's the whole foundation of our salvation. And this is why it's so important to look at the hypostatic union that Christ truly became a man while also being truly God. Yes, exactly.

So then in Ephesians chapter one, I'll read verse seven, in him, sorry, seven to 10, in him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us and all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. So again, the reconciliation, the uniting, saving us the redemption of his blood, he lavished us and all wisdom and insight, this, this grace that he's given us. And what was the last point? Oh, the mystery of his will.

So this is revealed in the fullness of time. So for whatever reason, we can trust that when Jesus came, I know some people say, why didn't Jesus come when we have cell phones that we can take videos of Jesus doing these miracles? Why didn't Jesus come when it would have been very easy to prove that he is God, we would just taken videos of him healing people and raising them from the bed, all that kind of stuff. Well, first of all, you wouldn't believe anyways, if that happened, we have the prophets and that's not what causes one to believe.

It's not proof that causes one to believe the power of the spirit and also, but the proof is there. It's just you will always reject the proof because of your presuppositions, which is why we do presuppositional apologetics. But we have to trust that this was the best.

This was the fullness of time. This was, this was the perfect time God had chosen when to send his son and incarnate him. Makes sense.

Yeah. So I just want to say that before we go to John one. And I have a great quote on that with Christ being becoming truly man, being the foundation of all of our faith and all of the object of our worship.

A theologian named John Owen says this, for if the divine and human nature of Christ do not constitute one individual person, all that he did for us was only as a man, which would have been altogether insufficient for the salvation of the church, nor had God redeemed it with his own blood. And what he's getting at there is that Christ's person didn't change. He is still and always is God.

He is Jesus, the second person of the Trinity. And him coming and partaking in flesh does not confuse his person all of a sudden. And yet even still, when he died on the cross, he didn't lose his Godhood.

He didn't set aside his Godhood when he came down and was born of a woman. He was both truly God and truly man at the same time. And if you don't have that, then he just died for us just as a man.

And if he died for us just as a man, there's no salvation. So Christ has to be both truly God and truly man for salvation to be acquired. Yeah.

And we'll talk about that's not limiting him. Exactly. But it's heightening the glory of the cross of Christ because he was truly God.

Yeah. And we'll talk about Philippians two, where he talks about he did not count equality with God something to be grasped. What does that mean? Did he become lesser? We'll talk about that in a little bit.

There's a unique thing that happens in the incarnation that having the two natures makes things interesting, obviously. Good. You want to do John one now? Yeah.

Okay. Do you want me to read it? Is that what you're implying? Oh, I can read it real quick. I mean, we read it last one.

We can read it again, just to remind you guys. In the beginning was the word, the word was with God. And the word was God.

He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him was not anything made. Again, the pre-incarnate Christ in him was life and the life was the light of men.

The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. Oh, and then in verse 14, so we have this pre-incarnate Christ. So what happens later, John, again, because it's a gospel, it's going to get into the life of Jesus when he incarnates himself.

So then in verse 14, we see, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And that word dwelt is like tabernacled, like he set up a tabernacle with us. Yeah.

dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory. Glory is the only son of God from the father, full of grace and truth.

John bored a witness about him and cried out. This is the one of whom I have said he who comes after me ranks before me because he is before me. I'm going to read 18 too.

Yeah. No one has ever seen God, the only God who is at the father's side. He has made him known.

The father has made his son known. Yeah. Right.

This is all referencing to the incarnation. Yeah. The son of God becoming man.

He became flesh. He dwelt with us. He we've seen his glory.

Yeah. And a way that some of the old theologians have said it, and it's a very helpful honestly phrase to memorize just to help us when it comes to understanding this topic is that he became what he was not while never ceasing to be who he was. So all that that's referencing to is he became what he was not meaning Jesus is God.

He's the word who was with God and was God in the beginning. So he became what he was not, which was man, right? He became and took on flesh and roped himself with it. But he didn't lose anything.

Right. He didn't all of a sudden set aside his divinity, which is what some people will teach. He subjected himself to it.

Yeah. Willingly, willingly. He could have busted out of the flesh at any moment.

And like, and we see moments of that, you know, with the transfiguration. Yeah. Matthew chapter 17, the transfiguration where Jesus transfigures himself with this.

That's where we get the famous verse, his face shown like the sun before his disciples, John, Peter and James. Yeah. Yeah.

So we see he still bust through and he will show his glory and manifest it to his disciples at times, but it has been largely hidden in the flesh. It's robed in it. That's why I like that analogy of it's the roving in the flesh.

Yeah. So that was really good, Bryce. And another good quote.

Oh man, I lost my spot. That was right there. Nice.

Another good quote that John Owen says is, and this is a little heady. I'm gonna read it and then me and Rocky can explain it. I'm here.

I'll let Rocky explain it, though. I don't read the book. I'm just joking.

So John Owen says this, but this assumption of our nature into hypostatical union, again, that's referencing the Jesus being truly God and truly man with the son of God, this constitution of one and the same individual person and two natures, so infinitely distinct as those of God and man. And here's the really important sentence that he says. This is very like digest this whereby the eternal was made in time.

The infinite became finite. The immortal, mortal, yet continuing eternal, infinite, immortal, is that singular expression of divine wisdom, goodness, and power wherein God will be admired and glorified unto all eternity. So that's kind of old school language.

All that he's getting at is in the hypostatic union of the true God and true man, Jesus Christ, the Lord. He is infinite in his Godhood. Yeah, at the same time, he's finite as a man.

So exactly. And this goes to get into that. Yeah, sorry.

Go ahead. No, no, I was just gonna say that this will bleach perfectly into flip things too. Yeah.

Okay. So let's just go and hop in there then. So what did this man look like? Yeah.

And I also want to get into, by the way, guys, I'm reading from Wayne Grudem's Bible Doctrine. He does have some things that are we disagree with in this book and his systematic theologies, but he does have some good thoughts and I am reading from that. So the thing he goes to next dealing with this whole Christ humanity and his Godhood in two natures and one being.

Sorry, two, yeah, two natures in one being. One person. One person, hypostatic union.

Yeah. This is like the greatest text for that and understanding and we see like instances of it in the gospels and we'll point those out too. So in Philippians two, you know, based on what Bryce is saying, these seemingly contradictory or paradoxical truths that are in one person, the finite, the infinite God and man, all that stuff.

This is what Paul has to say. So he's exhorting the church in Philippi to not be selfish in the things they're doing because Jesus has given us an example and he says, let each one of you look not only to his own interest, but also to the interest of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ.

Again, this not looking to your own interest, but subjecting yourself to weakness for a time, even though that's what being meek is. Being meek and humble, Jesus is lowly and meek. Meek is restrained strength.

Jesus was meek because he was the God of the universe that came in the flesh. Jesus subjected himself to that. That's what being meek is and I've always thought that term was so hard to understand, but I think that's a great way to understand that.

It's a kind of humility of strength where you have it, but it's like pinpointed, unique strength, which is such a cool thought. Jesus exudes that in this way. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking, by what? How did he empty himself? By taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, having human flesh and a body, human nature, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. So the way Jesus is emptying himself, the weakness he's taking on, the meekness, the lowliness of Jesus, is that he is fully God and he subjects himself, although he's in the form of God, he is God, he is equal with God. He did not count in his humanity, in his incarnation, equality with God a thing to be grasped, but what did he do in the garden of Gethsemane? He said, "Not your will, sorry, not my will, but your will be done." In his humanity, Jesus is fearful, he's sweating blood because of what he has to do.

He has to bear the wrath of all of humanity, and Jesus in his humanity is definitely scared. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" All this stuff. In his humanity, this is the way he interacts with this guy.

He is subjecting himself to that kind of weakness, emptying himself. But in his... - Not his... He's not emptying his Godhood. - No.

- He's emptying his... - By dying on the cross. - Yeah. By becoming a servant.

- Yeah, exactly. He empties himself by being a servant. And again, that goes back to the thing of meekness.

You empty your strength and pinpoint it to what needs to be done. Because in a way, the only way Jesus could have done the obedience he did was because of his... So that meekness and humility of obedience to die on the cross to save us is actually his strength being shown in his deity. But in his humanity, he's weak.

He has a human mind and all these things, and he grows in wisdom and stature and all that. And that goes into when God says, "My strength is perfected in weakness." And that's not saying that necessarily that Christ is weak. To Rocky's point, it's concealed power.

But God shows his power by sending his son to die on a criminal's cross, as opposed to how the Pharisaical Jews thought that he was going to come in glory and crush the Romans. - Yeah. - Right? But literally, no.

He actually was going to come and crush that. - Crush it, yeah. And the Romans, both of them.

- Yeah. Yeah, I mean, exactly. And so I just want to... We want to make it clear that when he says he did not account equality with God, a thing to be grasped, this isn't saying God hurt Jesus, laid aside his divine nature.

He didn't lay that aside. He didn't, in that moment, think, "Oh, like my... I've now lost my deity. Like, my God, where are you? I'm now just a human and I'm lost." He, in his humanity, is having... And in his deity, having the full wrath of God poured out on him.

But that emptying himself and becoming a servant is in regards to his humanity. He does not account equality with God, a thing to be grasped, because he condescends and incarnates himself and limits himself. - And that's a crazy, important point that John Owen brought up, that if he truly laid aside his divinity, then his death on the cross meant absolutely nothing.

- Exactly. - Because then that means that if... That means that Rocky could go and die for me. - Yeah.

- And the argument back to that would be, "Well, well, Rocky wasn't perfect." Well, again, perfection has to do with being as opposed to the good that you do. Rocky's being is sinful, because he's been thrown... - The original guilt, original corruption, all that. - Exactly.

He has not been perfect. And perfection is something that lies with God alone. So this is what's called the "kinotic theory," where people go here and they say, he emptied himself... The word Greek word there for emptied himself is "kinosis." And they call it the "kinotic theory," which means that he laid aside his divinity.

And I'll just go ahead and throw out some names for you. People like Todd Freel, Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, all those prosperity teachers, those guys are heretics. They say that Jesus laid aside all of his divinity.

He died just as a man. He did miracles just as a man. And that goes into their bad behavior.

- And that's when they say, "Oh, Jesus said you'll do far greater works than me that you'll be able to do well." - So they say, "Yeah, because we're a man just as Jesus was a man, that means that we can go do miracles and stuff, too." Which we're not making important about spiritual gifts or anything. But at the very least, those guys are heretics. We need to watch out for people like that.

People like Steven Furtick, same boat. These guys fall under this heretical false teaching that Jesus Christ didn't have divinity. He actually changed his person.

- Yeah. - Because he laid aside his divinity and all of a sudden, now he's not God. Which if Jesus isn't God, we are dead in our sins.

The Trinity is the gospel. - Yeah. - The hypostatic union of Christ is the gospel.

If there's no hypostatic union, we are dead in our sins. We need the God-man, the one who's been revealed from the Old Testament. It was concealed in the Old Testament and he's in the New Testament revealed.

That's the one that we need. - Exactly. - Not some man.

- Yeah. - I don't need a man. I need the God-man.

- Yeah. Well said. Yeah, watch out for those guys, those false teachers.

They do. I've heard, I've watched YouTube videos of them saying, "Jesus did all this just as a man." And it's like, there is a unique, they literally say, "How can this man not be from God because he does these works?" - Yeah. - Now they're not understanding he literally is God, not just from God.

He is God. But they start to pick it up. People do claim these things about Jesus because of the works they see him doing.

- Yeah. What's the one guy with the glasses? Bill something? What's his name? - With the glasses? - Bill what? - Johnson. Bill Johnson.

- Bill Nye? - No, Bill. Yeah, Bill Nye. - At Bethel.

- Bill Johnson. - Yeah. - So guys, watch out for Bethel.

Watch out for Hillsong. Bethel, Hillsong, Elevation Church. Jesus Culture Band.

- Jesus Culture. Don't. Just don't listen to them.

- They have some good music. We will grant that. - The music's catchy, theologically inaccurate.

- Yeah. - If you read the words. - Not even inaccurate.

- If you read the words. Some of them is just inaccurate. Some of them are like, "Okay." Like, it's more emotionalism.

But yeah, watch out for that. Because again, remember, the world always wants to attack the person of Christ because this is our hope. All the heresies, all the, not all of them, but most of them attack the person of Christ.

- The church is built on the foundation of Christ. So if we get Christ wrong, if he isn't the son of the living God truly, then we're dead in our sins. We need the foundation, which is Jesus.

- Exactly. Okay. So another thing's concerning the weakness when it says that he emptied himself and he became a servant and becoming in the likeness of men, being weak and being meek and all these things, although he and his humanity did not count the quality of God a thing to be grasped, but he was God himself, these limitations he puts on himself are things like he has a human body.

So in Luke 2.7, we see he's born just as all other humans are born. In Luke 2.40, the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favor of God was upon him. And then in Luke 2.52, it says that he increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.

So like Jesus is growing just like any other boy grows. He incarnated himself. He literally was a man.

Again, Jesus has to be God to actually bear the burden of our sin, but he also has to be a man to represent us as Adam represented us. So we gotta remember Jesus, like when I read this stuff, I'm not trying to say, I'm not trying to detract from Jesus's deity. It's just we gotta remember Jesus was a man and we have to, it's both natures.

This is truly who Christ is, truly both. And we've made a case, the whole last episode of Christology was the pre-incarnate, eternal, co-eternal, co-ordinate Christ. And so we've seen that Jesus is deity.

He is God himself. Now we're just trying to expose you to the incarnation that he took on flesh. So Luke 2.52, he grew in wisdom and in stature.

And John 4.6, it says Jesus wearied as he was on his journey, sat down beside the well. So his body got tired, lactic acid built up in his muscles if he ran too hard. And John 19.28, when he's hanging on the cross, he says, I thirst and they give him some hyssop with some water, I think, or something like that.

And when he fasts in Matthew 4.2 and Satan's tempting him, it says he was hungry afterwards. And then there's angels sent to him that are ministering to him because he's weak, his physical body's weak. Let's see.

Oh, yeah. And then the culmination of Jesus's limitations is that in Luke 23.46 or any of the gospels where we see Jesus's death, his body literally gives out. He can't breathe anymore.

His heart stops beating. His brain is not firing. He's done.

Like his body literally dies. He bore that for us. Luke 24.39. And when he rises from the dead, he says he's not a spirit.

This is why in the nice and creative says he came in the body, in the flesh. We got to remember Jesus was a human. He had flesh.

So even in his resurrection, he had flesh and we'll get to that later on. That's another first shot on that, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have touched. Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Getting rid of some of these heresies about that Jesus was just a spirit.

Again, that is attacking the incarnation, that Jesus was just a spirit. He's a man. And actually, I want to end this with some of the common heresies.

I was going to just talk about of the incarnation. Yeah. Let's see what else.

Yeah. Those are some of the weaknesses. Jesus is increasing wisdom.

So Jesus had a human mind. Not only was his body subjected to weaknesses, like he's hungry, he's thirsty, he gets weak, he gets wearied. He also increased in wisdom and he learned things.

He learned how to be obedient to his parents, things like that. Jesus had a human soul and human emotion. So like he actually is troubled in spirit.

John 12, 27, Jesus said, now is my soul troubled. When he sees Lazarus, he weeps, you know, when he sees Martha and Mary, and they're sad that Lazarus is dead. He weeps over that.

He's sad. He's troubled in spirit often. Yeah.

And then we will get next week into, you want to do the high priest next week? Possibly. Yeah. We're going to start going into the offices that Jesus says.

So we'll talk about his sinlessness, his impeccability, things like that. But those are his attributes of him emptying himself in that kind of equal equality with God, a thing to be grasped. Those are the kind of things we're talking about.

Those kind of weaknesses of his body, of his mind, of that kind of thing. But in his deity, he is a strong fortress that cannot be broken into. He is the stronger man that binds Satan.

Yeah. So we got to remember both of these parts of Christ, very important, but they never combat with each other. And these are not stuff that's unpractical because I can't tell you how many people I've talked to.

And when I'm sharing the gospel with them talking about the person of Christ, where they'll say something like, "How can, if Jesus is God, how can he pray to God?" Yeah. And it's humanity. It's him and his humanity, but also this is talking about a distinct person.

Like the father is distinct from the son. The father is not the son. Yeah.

And also when you talk to people like Mormons and people like Jehovah's Witnesses. Muslims do a lot too. All the time they say, "How did Jesus pray to his father?" Yeah.

All the time. Whenever I evangelize to Muslims. And these are very, very, very easy things to answer, but it's a shame.

I have seen very many Christians fall prey to these kinds of questions, but they're so easy to answer. Yeah. And this isn't us lifting ourselves up, but this is all that we're saying.

We need to know these things. These aren't unpractical. You can't just say, "Give me Jesus.

I don't need that theology." Which Jesus? Yeah. Which Jesus are we talking about? And I know we keep saying this and it's like a beating a dead horse, but we really need to know who God is. Yeah.

We need to know who Christ is. Because if we don't know Christ, we don't have any religion. We don't have any Christianity.

Yep. And in terms of apologetics, like some of them, some of apologetics is literally, you need to know quote unquote, "extra biblical facts." But a majority of apologetics is just the world says, "I don't understand how Jesus could pray to the father." Well, if you have a robust Christology, you can answer that question. You don't have to go to extra biblical facts.

You just need to understand how God's word presents the person of Christ. Yeah. All we're commanded to do is just say, "What does the Bible say?" Yeah, exactly.

I mean, you don't have to be able to explain it. You just have to be able to say, "What does the Bible say?" Yeah. The Bible teaches this and that's that.

Yeah. Okay, good. Any last thoughts? Those are the main texts we wanted to hit.

No, all good. Okay. So I want to go real quick, three heretical views of the person of Christ.

So if you are thinking something like this, you know, it's not like you're not going to go to heaven, but it's just you've got to remember there's a right way to think about the person of Christ and people have thought wrongly about it and you may as well. I know I used to defend modalism all the time. Yeah.

In terms of the doctrine of the Trinity. So, you know, it doesn't mean you're going to hell. It just means you can you can always learn more.

So Apollinarianism, he was a bishop in AD 361 and he taught that the one person of Christ had a human body, but not a human mind or spirit and that the mind and spirit of Christ were from the divine nature of the Son and God. And he draws a figure of divine nature and human body kind of like clashing into each other. And this was rejected because Jesus is both had a human mind, human soul, human body, like there's body and soul for both his humanity and that divinity, not just a body and then divinity.

That makes sense. The human body has is both a composite of body and soul. Sorry, the human person is a body and soul.

So he had a human body and soul and then a divine nature that came into that. And then Nestorianism is another historical view that is saying that Jesus had two, sorry, he had two different persons in one person. We say it's the one person of Christ with two natures.

Nestorianism says that there was a human person and there was a divine person, a human Jesus and a divine Jesus together. So Jesus was like two different persons, people, but he actually has two natures. He's not two people, he's one person.

He's Jesus Christ, the eternal Christ. And then monophysitism or I don't even know how to say that. Yeah, monophysitism is basically that the divine person and the human nature come together and create a whole new nature.

That Jesus only had one nature and it was this divine human composite. And there's just one nature, but we gotta remember there's two natures to Christ, one person. So that monophyte, you know, the mono is one physis nature.

So there's just one nature, but there's actually two natures to Christ. So these are common and then the council of Chalcedon and 461. That was 492.

451. The Chalcedonian definition in 8451 was explicitly to get rid of some of these heresies that cropped up after even the Nicene Creed and all that. And what they say is that we have God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God, and we have the divine nature and the person of Christ is represented by both the divine nature and the human nature together.

So two natures, the Son is fully God, and there's one person Christ. That is how we are to understand what the Bible says. Okay.

So let's obviously not take any heretical positions. Let's remember Jesus is two natures and one person, fully human, having both body and soul. You don't like that? Truly.

Truly, sorry. Truly human, truly and fully human as a human is both body and soul and truly God as an omnipotent, all powerful, eternal, authoritative, sovereign, all that. The exact same attributes.

It says in Hebrews one or two, he's the exact, no, Hebrews one, three. Yeah, three, one, three. He's the exact imprint of the nature of God and what is the nature of God? He is sovereign and holy, righteous, wise, just, gracious, merciful, loving, all powerful, all knowing everywhere at once.

He, yeah, Jesus is that, but also in his humanity, he did limit himself. He is limited. He is limited.

Yeah. Yeah. So hopefully that was helpful.

And this is, you know, we've talked about the pre incarnate eternal Christ and now we've hit the incarnation. And now that we have got to the part of Christology where Jesus is incarnated and he's taken on a human nature. We will talk next week, these next few weeks about the offices he fulfills as priest and king and prophet that Jesus is all these things for us on top of his sinlessness and pecability, his lowliness, his meekness, all those things about the person of Christ.

And then we will hit on his resurrection and now his eternal glorified state as well. And he's been exalted like we read. And that's why every knee will bow and every tongue will confess.

See Jesus has now been exalted to the king, to the king, to the king for the king and by the king. Exactly. All things were made for the king, to the king, for Jesus, King Jesus.

Five, four, two, five, four, three, two, I buy through or two, buy through four to the king. Maybe we can work that into something through four to the king. Okay.

Well, buy through four to the king. Thanks for listening, guys. Remember the websites up.

Hopefully that's got some good stuff for you guys. Yeah. Please check that out.

I put some hard work into that. I'd love for that. Again, it's just writing and I got a blog part of it too, but I hope that that information is good and helpful.

I want it to be a community. I want you guys to come alongside me and to ask me questions and to, you know, be my brother, sister in Christ in this. I would love for this to be a community.

And guys, Rocky is really struggling with money. Please, please give him money. No, I don't need money.

No, I don't need money. I, again, the whole money thing. Oh my goodness.

People have been so weird about the money thing. Like weeks, like if you're going to work really hard on something, like if you guys find value in it, then you can say, Hey, I appreciate it. Here's some money.

I appreciate you working really hard on making a cool podcast. I am. I am because Nathan said something about it and that you said something about it and you're struggling.

I'm not struggling. I'm fine. I am in debt because I'm a student.

So if you, I have compassion on me in that sense, then that'd be sweet. You know, but yeah, I don't want to just like the whole money thing isn't to just help me out. Like I know, I know.

I would love to do something cool with it. Like support missionaries or like if somebody has a heart for some kind of like, I don't know that we want, I don't know if like it could ever become something like that. You know, you could be the middleman for tides.

Yeah. Like, I don't know. I, since we, you know, we know Nathan, like what if the podcast was a conduit to support a missionary to go out? You know what I mean? Like what if something like that happened? Like I don't know what could happen with the money, but we'll see what happens.

Yeah. For the King. It'll be for the King no matter what or for me.

I said or for me. I'm just kidding. Yeah.

Yeah. Totally joking. Okay.

Yeah. Hope that was helpful guys. For the King.

For the King. For the King Jesus.