Believers Armed and Dangerous

Do you ever wonder why the statue in New York Harbor isn’t called the “Statue of Freedom” or why that bell in Philadelphia isn’t called the “Freedom Bell”?  How about why the Navy calls it “liberty” when sailors are in port rather than “freedom”?   It’s because “Freedom” and “Liberty” mean very different things.

The Hebrew word for “freedom” (hupsah) and the Greek word (eleutheria) nearly always speaks of freedom from slavery.

The word “liberty” in both the Old and New Testament is a little different.  Where freedom means total release from a situation, liberty means a partial release and addresses our actions.  The individual is still under behavioral restrictions.  You can see this most clearly speaking of Paul’s captivity in Acts 24:23:

Acts 24:23 (ESV)
²³  Then he gave orders to the centurion that he should be kept in custody but have some liberty, and that none of his friends should be prevented from attending to his needs.

Paul wasn’t totally free from Roman captivity or the Roman legal system.  He had liberty within that system, but his behavior was restricted.  He still needed to abide by the law of the land and some other specific rules regarding his captivity.

In a similar way, we are free in Christ, free from sin.  We have been released and no more can sin rule our lives.  Paul uses this idea in Romans 6:18:

Romans 6:18 (ESV)
¹⁸  and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

We are no longer slaves to sin.  We have our freedom from that slavery.  We are now voluntarily slaves of righteousness, bond slaves.  Ours should be a life of freedom from sin, but not total freedom of action.    

So, we still need to follow the two greatest commandments to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and love our neighbors as ourselves.

Paul dedicates all of 1 Corinthians chapter 8 to this topic.  He tells us we may be free to eat meat sacrificed to idols, but that freedom is limited if it stumbles a brother.

A pastor friend of mine used to tell me we were free to drink alcoholic beverages, but he chose not to because it might stumble someone who thought it was sinful.  He didn’t want to stumble his brother.

So, as Christians, we have freedom from the bondage of sin and liberty to do as we like with certain considerations, but like the liberty Sailors get in port, there are certain restrictions on our behavior which may damage the freedom of others should we participate. 

This is, of course, not a salvation issue but an issue concerning our Christian walk.  Let’s live in our freedom from sin.  Let’s live lives of liberty.  But, let’s not let grace go to our heads and forget the commands we are still under and the consequences of our actions.

Many years ago, an atheist friend of mine, Adam, called me.  He had seen me come to Christ 20 years earlier and asked me to come and talk with his son who was in danger of being influenced by the Mormons.  I asked another good friend, Ruthie, to join us.  Ruthie had been a temple Mormon and was now a Christian.

Shortly after Ruthie and I arrived, it became quickly apparent we were not there for Adam’s son but for Adam himself.  The conversation opened with my telling Adam I wasn’t a Christian because it made me feel good or for the rewards to come.  I was a Christian because it’s true.  Ruthie joined in to tell him of God’s love and how it was a free gift.  Adam seemed to fight against what we said, and as we left, we weren’t sure where he stood but knew it had been a divine appointment.  Two weeks later, Adam went forward at a Calvary Chapel to accept Christ.  Two weeks after that, Adam died.  At Adam’s memorial service, his oldest son stood and told us the last two weeks of Adam’s life had been the most peaceful two weeks of Adam’s life.

Sure, people need to hear that Christianity is true.  But they also need to know God loves them.  Many have been burned by situations in their lives.  Hurts done to them by churches, Christians, cults, and other sources turn them off from listening to the truth.  What they do hear is the love God has for them.

There are, of course, many non-believers who have serious road blocks on their paths between them and God.  Sometimes it’s anger.  Sometimes it pain.  Sometimes it’s just an unwillingness to allow Somebody take control of their lives.  So, they need the Truth explained to them.  But for many more, they need to see God’s love from His people first before they can believe the message is genuine.

Jesus said we should love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.  The heart speaks to the heart of others.  Our mind speaks to the minds of others.  Most lost people need both the love and reason to come to Christ.  We should be ready to supply both.

I was talking with a friend just yesterday and I said the only reason the atheists haven’t been completely eliminated intellectually is because most Christians don’t know enough about the truth of our faith to answer them well.  Ours is not a blind faith.  It is a faith founded on fact, on reason, on truth claims which can be checked.  We have nothing to fear from the non-believer.  Some of the greatest minds over the centuries have been Christians: Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Newton, C.S. Lewis, Gutenberg, Leonardo da Vinci, Copernicus, Adam Smith, George Washington, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Enrico Fermi, and the list goes on endlessly.

But, with truth must come love.  Paul says, if we can do all sorts of miraculous things but don’t have love, we’re just background noise.

 1 Corinthians 13:1 (ESV)
¹  If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

We need both love and truth to further the kingdom of our Lord.  We should study to show ourselves approved of God, have an answer for anyone who asks of us, but if we can’t love them, if we can’t see them through the loving eyes of God who loves both us and them unconditionally, if we love them but don’t share the Truth with them or tell them the Truth but don’t show love, we’ve not done what God had commanded.  We’re poor examples, poor ambassadors for our Lord.

2 Peter 1:16-18 (ESV)
¹⁶  For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. ¹⁷  For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” ¹⁸  we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.

I love this passage.  It speaks of the certainty of the Gospel record, that the books weren’t written by people who had nothing to do with the story but by people who were eyewitnesses to the Lord’s ministry.  In fact, one of the requirements for the books of the New Testament were that they be written by those with “apostolic authority,”  those who were there throughout the three years Jesus walked the earth or, like Luke and Mark, were close companions of those who were.

At the beginning of his first letter, John speaks of his time with Jesus and tells us the same thing Peter does: 

1 John 1:1-2 (ESV)
¹  That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— ²  the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us—

So, John was an eyewitness as well and identifies himself as such. 

Luke opens his Gospel telling us he has researched this and tells of what he found, that he interviewed people who had seen and walked with the Lord:

Luke 1:1-4 (ESV)
¹  Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, ²  just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, ³  it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus,
⁴  that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

His opening to the book of Acts is very similar:

Acts 1:1-3 (ESV)
¹  In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, ²  until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. ³  He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.

Much of Paul’s ministry was personally witnessed by Luke since the third person narrative is replaced in chapter 16 with the first-person, “we”.  Luke was Paul’s partner in ministry through most of Paul’s work, and as such, met the great leaders as well as the common Christians who had witnessed the Lord’s ministry.  In fact, many think Luke had a prolonged interview with Mary, Jesus’ mother, since his is the Gospel with the most information about Jesus’ childhood.

Another evidence of the genuineness of the books of the New Testament, of course, the apostles themselves. All but one, John, died violent deaths without ever denying what they had witnessed.  You might live for a lie, but you don’t die for one especially one you made up yourself.

And, if it were a lie, for what reason, so the apostles could live in wealth?  No, the apostles all lived lives of humility.  Was it for fame?  No, the apostles spent most of their time trying not to attract the attention of the powers that be who sought to kill them.  Was it for power?  No, during their lives, these men held very little sway over people except for the message they carried.  The teachings and character these men displayed were also consistent with their message of honoring God with honesty, love, and truth.

The Gospel message is true, not some made up story by a conspiracy of men who thought they would spring a lie upon the world.  Take it from those who were there, the eyewitnesses.

What is the church?  Certainly we see churches on streets in our neighborhoods, downtowns, in almost any populated area .  But, are those churches in the biblical sense of the word?  According to the Bible, the church isn’t a building, it’s a group of people, of saints, of fellow believers.  In fact, very few church buildings were constructed prior to the early fourth century.

What does the bible say about the church?  Jesus spoke of His Church (Matt. 16:18).  His use of the term speaks of a large universal group.  Then there’s Paul who addressed some of his letters to particular churches:  1 Corinthians 1:2 (ESV)  “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints.”

So, the word “church” can be a large body or a small local one.  In fact, the Greek word for “church,” (ekklesia) simply means “assembly.”  We, the church, are the assembly of God’s people, “sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints.”  With this understanding, we may have a number of local churches in our own city or town, but there is only one church worldwide, the total number of living saints, followers of Christ.

This also would lead us to understand that most local churches as we most commonly use the term, have non- believers present.  In the biblical sense, these folks are not truly members of the church.  Some are seeking God.  Some are seeking refuge.  Others are quite good at playing the Christian role.  They pray publically, they do good deeds, they help others, they even profess their faith and perhaps witness to the lost, but they are lost themselves.

I was one of these people.  For five years, I played the Christian game.  I thought being a Christian was just being someone who went to church regularly and tried to live a good life according to biblical principles.  I was mistaken, and I think there are a lot of people in local churches unknowingly playing the game like I was.  Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to a bank makes you a dollar bill.

Others have less godly motives.  Some join a local church for the business connections, maybe to find a spouse, or maybe just because they’re lonely.  We welcome them to our local bodies of believers to hear the Gospel message, but biblically spaeking, they are not truly church members until they have turned control of their lives over to Christ.

The church is truly God’ family.  It is called “the body of Christ” (1 Cor. 12:27).  As such, we are the visible representation of the invisible God.  When people look at us, they should see the love of God.  When they watch what we do to help others, they should see the hand of God operating in their lives.  And, when they hear the words we speak, they should hear the voice of God calming the angry, reasoning with the uninformed, caring for the suffering.

We have no excuse for anger, rudeness, or disrespect toward others, even to our enemies.  We are told just the opposite: 2 Timothy 2:24-26 (ESV)  And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil,   correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth,   and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.

Who do we think we are confronting others who are hurting as we were, misused as we were, lost as we were?  We are the church, God’s ambassadors to a foreign land (2 Cor. 5:20).  Let us represent our King well and see to it that His work is done.

2 Peter 3:15-16 (ESV)
¹⁵  And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, ¹⁶  as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.

Scripture twisting is nothing new.  It was present in the first century, and I imagine, in Old Testament times.  Sometimes it’s harmless enough.  For instance quoting something as Scripture when it isn’t at all: “God helps those who help themselves.”  Jesus didn’t say that, Ben Franklin did.

An extreme example of Scripture twisting was committed by the Marharesh Mahesh Yogi when he said, “‘Jesus said ‘Be still and know that I am God.’  So, be still and know that you are god.”‘  Too many things wrong with that one to list them all, but Jesus didn’t say this at all.  It’s a quote from Psalm 46:10 where God says we are to be still and know that He is God.  See how the Yogi has twisted this to suit his own purpose?

The Mormons claim the stick of Joseph mentioned in Ezekiel 37 is a prophecy predicting Joseph Smith and the establishment of the Latter Day Saints.  There is no foundation for this belief.  The passage speaks of the reunification of the tribes of Israel.  But Joseph Smith, the founder of the LDS, used this Scripture in an attempt to lend God’s authority to his group.

Jehovah’s Witnesses take Psalm 83:18 as their action verse:  (KJV) That men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, art the most high over all the earth.

The word “Jehovah” is not a Hebrew word.  There is no “J” sound in either Hebrew or Greek.  “Jehovah” is a mistranslation of “YHWH”, the tetragrammaton which represents God’s name (see earlier blog posts for a detailed description of this) .  So, we don’t actually know God’s name.  Yet the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society wants to identify their people with that name to lend biblical authority to their organization.  They believe they must be God’s organization since they carry God’s name.

Additions to change the meaning of a passage of Scripture is another way to twist it.  The New World Translation (NWT) of Jehovah’s Witnesses translates  Colossians chapter 1:16-17, this way:  Speaking of Jesus:  “because by means of him all other things were created in the heavens and on the earth, the things visible and the things invisible, whether they are thrones or lordships or governments or authorities. All other things have been created through him and for him.  Also, he is before all other things, and by means of him all other things were made to exist, “

See the word “other” included in the passage four times?  You won’t find that word in any other translations.  It isn’t in the Greek either.  It only appears in the New World Translation.  So, why do they put it there?  Because it makes Jesus one of the things created rather than the Creator Himself which supports their  theology.  Remove “other” and Jesus is clearly God the Creator.

Not everyone who claims to be one of God’s people or a member of God’s organization is.  As Peter says, they twist the Scriptures to their own destruction.  The Bible says to watch out for these people and for yourself:  1 Timothy 4:16 (ESV)   Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching.  Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers. 

So, we need to be careful and check everything we hear against Scripture as did the Bereans (Acts 17:11)

I don’t often recommend books, but I do recommend “Scripture Twisting” by James W. Sire on this subject.  It’s available on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback forms.

We are all tempted every day.  But, is temptation sin and does it come from God?  James, speaking of sin,  tells us it’s a progression: 

James 1:13-15 (ESV)
¹³  Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. ¹⁴  But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. ¹⁵  Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

According to James, then, temptation doesn’t come from God, but is the first domino.  If we stop with temptation, we have not sinned.  It’s when we dwell on the temptation, roll it around in our minds, ponder our desire, that it becomes sin.

If God doesn’t tempt us, where does temptation come from?  Satan is called “the tempter” in 1 Thess. 3:5.  Then temptation comes from Satan and his underlings.  But, there is another source for temptation and eventually sin, our own flesh.  Romans 7:21-25 says that our body leads us into sin.  Our body has desires and needs.  Some of those are not to be honored.  We struggle all the time against the desires of the flesh, the desires of our bodies.  But, Scripture says we should not live according to our fleshly desires but according to the spirit, God’s way (Rom. 8:1-8).

Even Jesus was tempted (Matt. 4:1; Heb. 4:15).  So, we have a God Who personally and directly understands the temptations we face (Heb 2:18), yet He did not sin.

Why does God allow us to be tempted?   James talks about that, too:

James 1:2-4 (ESV)
²  Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, ³  for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. ⁴  And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

Temptation, when it  is resisted, increase our faith and produce steadfastness or endurance.  It makes it easier to resist temptation next time it arises.

1 Cor. 10:13 says we will not be tempted beyond our ability to resist.  It says God will provide a way of escape, and that’s just what we should do at times.  When Joseph was tempted by Potipher’s wife, he ran.  Sometimes, we need to run, too.  There’s no shame in that.

Another technique for dealing with temptation is to memorize Scripture.  I like 1 Cor. 10:13.  It speaks of temptation directly and is long enough that the temptation is often gone by the time I’ve repeated the full verse.

God understands temptation because He has experienced it.  He provides a way out of sin as a result of temptation, and He tells us living by the Spirit of God is the only way that pleases Him.  However, we will fall, we will yield to the flesh or to Satan’s influence.  When that happens, God has provided a way to be forgiven, to be cleansed, through repentance and confession (1 John 1:9)

We must strive to live according to the spirit and not the flesh, but when we fall, God is waiting and anxious to forgive us of our sin.

Last week I promised to address a benevolent God in the light of children’s suffering.  Suffering comes in various forms from illnesses to physical abuse to mental and physical torture.  The question arises, how can a benevolent God allow such things.  Let me say at first that as Christians, our hearts should break over the sufferings of others.  Jesus told us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. It is with our hearts we should reach out to the suffering.  But, it is with our minds that we should look at the reasons for suffering.

Let’s first look at mental, emotional, and physical suffering.  This comes at the hands of others.  A child is called”stupid” or “a failure” or worse is beaten, raped, even tortured and killed by another usually in authority over them.  Why doesn’t God stop this sort of abuse?

Abuse of any sort, of course, is done according to the will of the abusers.  As we’ve seen in previous posts, God has given us freewill. It’s as much a law of the universe as gravity.  For God to stop these godless acts, He would have to change the laws or violate His promise of freewill.  God doesn’t break His promises.  He has given these laws for a reason and will seldom violate them.  Yes the deviant who sexually molests a child is evil, but it is his own freewill he’s acting on, not God’s.  The child’s will to stop the abuse can’t be acted upon because the pervert overpowers the child.  But, the fact this pain occurs is not to say God is not present.  He is and weeps at the godlessness and barbarity of man.

God loves us and wishes for us to love Him.  A world with freewill but without suffering is unrealistic.  God grants us freewill so we might love him freely and genuinely. If He had created us with the love for God built into us, it would have been a forced love, not given freely.  The cost for us to freely love is the choice not to love God, to choose to do things which are ungodly.  It is then that suffering is imposed on others who are weaker.  This isn’t the result of God’s will but man’s. 

The second category is natural evil, the pain of illness,birth defects, accidental physical injuries and such.  Paul tells us suffering is a fact of life.  Yet, for the Christian,suffering builds our character, and our  relationship with God and man.

Romans 8:16-17 (ESV)
¹⁶  TheSpirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, ¹⁷  and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

While we certainly may not enjoy the suffering, it draws us closer to our Lord.  James tells us in the first chapter of his epistle that we are to embrace the trials in our lives as they build character and endurance  by proving our faith.

We spend about 70 years on this earth.  That time is so short compared to the eternity we have awaiting us.  Paul agree and says the suffering of a few years seems almost insignificant compared to eternity.

Romans 8:18 (ESV)
¹⁸  For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

As Christians, earthly suffering produces much.  It should cause us to act like Christ by comforting and assisting those who are hurting.  It draws us closer to God and gives the world a chance to see the heart of God through the acts of His children who seek to comfort those in pain. Suffering also brings many who suffer to Christ seeking the peace He provides. 

God is no masochist. He seeks to use us as His hands and feet to heal the sick, feed the hungry, and comfort the hurting.  We are His ambassadors to a hurting world.  We are the body of Christ.

I’ve been talking with an atheist friend lately about God killing thousands of innocent people in the Old Testament.  My friend’s complaint isn’t just that God slaughtered these people but that He did it when they chose not to worship Him but other gods.  After all, He gave them free choice, why did He kill them just because they chose wrongly?

Actually, God didn’t kill them because of their choices, at least not physically.  Most of these gods and their ancestors were worshipped for centuries without such consequences before the Israelites entered the land.  He killed them because their choices effected His people and drew them away from the truth, from the worship of the true God, leading them to spiritual death.  As I’ve said in earlier blogs, I believe God is much more interested in the condition of our souls than that of our physical bodies.

Some of these pagan gods required worship through temple prostitution and live child sacrifice.  One of them, Ashtaroth was worshipped by heating his iron idol until cherry red then placing live children in its arms where they suffered a torturous death.  Some gods required the firstborn to be killed and buried under the doorstep of the family home in order to bring blessings.  These were not “innocent” people.

“But, He didn’t give them a chance to turn to Him”, you might say.   We know Sodom and Gomorrah and Nineveh were warned, of course. 

In 1968, an ancient town known as Ebla was discovered in Syria.  Ebla was founded around 3500 B.C. and was at its heyday around 2700 B.C. The king of Ebla at that time kept records of everything he bought,everything he did, and all the news in the city.  Some 17,000 of the king’s tablets have been found by archaeologists.  According to these tablets, a prophet entered the city and told the people of the great God “Yah” (a shortened version of “Yahweh” and the same Yah we praise in our term “alleluia” meaning “Praise be to Yah”). There are even recorded names of individuals dedicated to Yah: ish-ma-ya meaning “Yah Hears”and eb-du-ya meaning “servant of Yah.”   So, the pagan nations were told of the One Who was to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob centuries later.  These pagan cultures were warned.  They weren’t ignorant of Yahweh’s call to worship Him.

If we were to see someone killing a loved one of ours, we would be justified in killing the perpetrator. In the same way, God saw people of other cultures as spiritual threats to His loved one, Israel, so he killed them to protect His people.

My friend wanted to know how a benevolent God could allow children to suffer.  We’ll address that next week.  God bless.

At this time of year, we often think of others in need.  We help strangers carry their packages, feed the Salvation Army pots, help out in soup kitchens, or deliver meals.  These are all good things we should do. 

Good works are an important feature in the Christian life as well.  But, the question is do we help others to gain favor with God, or do we help others because we’ve already gained favor with Him?  Let’s look at what the Bible says:

James 2:14-17 (ESV)
¹⁴  What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?  ¹⁵  If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food,  ¹⁶  and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?  ¹⁷  So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

 

James seems to say we need works, doesn’t he.  But, when we look a little closer, we see James says if you claim to have faith, but that faith doesn’t produce work, yours is a dead faith.  He’s saying those who have a faith which doesn’t cause them to want to reach out to a lost world and help others should reexamine what they believe.

He’s also saying that other people can’t see our changed hearts as God can.  It’s our good works that show others our faith in Christ.  Like Him, we want to help the poor, heal the hurting, and feed the hungry.  It’s Christ in us that causes this.  A few verses later, James repeats his theme of justification by works using Abraham as an example:

James 2:21 (ESV)
²¹  Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar?

In Romans, Paul says he was not justified before God by his works:

Romans 4:2-5 (ESV)
 For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.  ³  For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.”  ⁴  Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due.  ⁵  And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness,

 

These two passages don’t contradict one another though it might appear so.  James says we are justified by men through our works just as Abraham was.  Men saw him climb the mountain with Isaac to sacrifice him to God.  They could see his devotion to God in no other way.  But, God saw Abraham’s heart before he even climbed the mountain, and he was justified before God by his faith.

 

So, we shouldn’t help others by carrying packages, feeding the homeless, or feeding the Salvation Army pot to gain favor.  As Christians, we’ve already received His favor.  God’s Spirit now resides in us.  It is He who prompts us to reach out to all people, people for whom Christ died.

“Incarnation”  is one of those big theological words Christians throw around that a lot of people, especially non-believers, just don’t understand.  We can impress our friends when we say it, but, do we know what it really means? 

It’s a little like chili con carne, “chili with meat.”  “God incarnate” means “God with meat”, “God with flesh”, “God in human form”.   As I said in a recent blog, Jesus draped His divine nature with flesh just as we drape our eyes in flesh when we blink or sleep.  The eye’s nature is still there.  It just doesn’t function as it would if it did not have flesh covering it.

We get this idea straight from the Bible:  Philippians 2:5-8 (ESV) “…Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷  but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. ⁸  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

So, Jesus always existed in the form of God, as God, but a little over 2000 years ago He came in the form of man.  Jesus is called God in Scripture (Titus 2:13), so while Jesus since conception in Mary’s womb until today has had two natures, divine and human.  The human nature of Jesus had a beginning.  His divine nature did not. 

Jesus is fully man and fully God.  The two are not mutually exclusive any more than being round and being blue are mutually exclusive for a ball.

This biblical teaching clarifies a lot of passages that would be problematic if we didn’t understand the incarnation.  Passages like John 14:28 where Jesus says His Father is greater than He, for instance.  Of course He is.  Jesus humbled Himself and took the form of a servant.  The Father is not better than Jesus as “better” is a word depicting quality.  The Father is greater because, positionally, Jesus is submissive/obedient to the Father by His own choice (Phil 2:8).

It is why Jesus prayed to the Father and yielded to the Father’s will (Luke 22:42).  It’s how Jesus could still be God but die on the cross.  It was His human body which died, not His divine nature, and it was His human body which was raised from the dead (1 Cor. 15:3-4).  It’s how Jesus could be called “a little lower (positionally) than the angels” (Heb. 2:9).  It’s why Jesus could say the Father was His God (John 20:17).  As a man, the Father was His God.

The fact that Jesus took on human form also has great benefits for believers.  If Jesus had not become human, He could not have died for us nor have been raised.  Jesus’ death and resurrection are the foundations of our faith.  If He did not shed His blood, our sins remain (Mat. 26:28).  If Christ is not risen, we are lost (1 Cor. 15:17). 

Even more, our continued growth in Christ  depends on his taking human form.  As a human being, He was tempted as we are (Heb. 4:15), yet He did not sin.  And, because He has a human nature and walked the earth as we do, He knows what it is to be one of us.  So, He is the perfect mediator, advocate, for us before the Father (1 Tim. 2:5).

The infinite God merely spoke, and all things came into existence.  That God humbled Himself to the point of washing the feet of the humans He created, then dying on the cross for them so that they/we might be with Him forever.  How truly great He is.