Jesus, Both God and Man

Philippians 2:7-11

5 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men.

It’s impossible to over-estimate the importance of this portion of Scripture. It is of utmost importance because it tells us who Jesus Christ really is. Paul very carefully outlines exactly the essence of Jesus’ being, and he does so through the course of eternal time - he takes us back into eternity past all the way through eternity future. We get to follow Jesus as He leaves heaven, comes to earth in the incarnation, and is eventually glorified again in heaven.

Why is this so important? Because there has been a relentless effort on the part of Satan to confuse the issue. As we said last time: Jesus is God. But God has a lot of enemies, and His chief enemy is Satan. Satan is a liar, so lies and deception are his most common tactics of attack.

Yes, Satan is a liar. That’s what Jesus called him in John 8:44: “For he is a liar and the father of it.” Those who follow him follow that same pattern. They lie about Jesus and His nature. They either lie about Jesus being fully God, of one essence with the Father, or they lie about Him becoming fully man. Satan’s false teachers, planted within the church as wolves in sheep’s clothing, simply lie about Jesus.

2nd Corinthians 11:13-14 describes them:

13 For such are false apostles, deceitful workers [translate that as liars], transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. 14 And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. 15 Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works.

The easiest way to tell if someone is a false teacher following Satan is to check out what he says about Jesus. He will either lie about the deity of Jesus, or he will lie about the humanity of Jesus. Both heresies were rampant in the early church. The Gnostic heresy denied the true humanity of Jesus, while the Arian heresy denied his deity.

The truth is: In heaven in eternity past, Jesus reigned as the Son of God, the second person of the Triune Godhead, equal in form and substance with the Father; but He did not cease to be God as He came to earth to become a man. The truth we believe is that Jesus is 100% God and then became 100% man without the incarnation ever, in any way, lessening His godhood.

In our Church Constitution, we have the Apostle’s Creed printed, and it says:

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, dead, and buried; the third day He arose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit; the Holy Christian Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Amen.

That creed was born in the catacombs by the early church - probably not by the apostles, but by the persecuted church as they tried to distill the truth they were willing to die for and what beliefs really constituted being a Christian. But, the liars continued to spread their false teaching about Jesus while true disciples died for this truth. The onslaught was non-stop.

Since the Apostles Creed didn’t stop the onslaught, the Church convened the Council of Nicaea in AD 325 to settle the issue once and for all, they thought, and they adopted a new creed – the Nicene Creed. This creed basically followed the format of the Apostle’s Creed but strengthened the declaration that Jesus was eternal, not a created being and that He was God.

The pertinent part reads:

We believe . . . . . in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made; who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man, and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried, and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father. And he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end.

The argument between the two sides centered around a single letter of the alphabet. Was Jesus homoousios, of one substance with the father? Or was He homoiousis, of similar substance with the father? The difference is on little “i”, or the iota in Greek. But the “i” was left out. The church affirmed that Jesus was fully God with the same substance as the Father. The heretics could not affirm this doctrine and the church was protected from their lies. The council of Nicaea thought they had officially resolved that Christ was God, at least for those who believed the Bible.

But, the question remained as to whether He was also truly man, and whether it was even possible that He could be both God and man. To answer this heresy, in 451 AD, a council was called in Chalcedon. The Council of Chalcedon was a gathering of 600 Bishops from across the church, and they met to search the Scriptures to see what they said concerning the humanity of Christ. What they published was a statement known as the Chalcedon Definition that affirmed again 1st, the full deity of Christ, and 2nd, the full humanity of Christ. That is what the church believes, because this is what the Scriptures teach. This is the truth we believe, preach, and stand on. Jesus is fully God and fully man.

No doubt, one of the principle places the bishops looked was Philippians 2 which declares both. If the heretics had only taken time to study this passage, they could have been straightened out (But only if they were willing to be taught by Scripture).

Already, in our study of this passage, we’ve learned that Christ was eternally God. We read this in Philippians 2:6 – “who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God.” We’re not going to rehash the last sermon, but if you were here, you remember, that the word “form” is morphe, a word, in Greek, that means the essential form that never altars. The essential form that Jesus has always had, and always will have, is God. But when Christ was born in Bethlehem, he took upon Himself the flesh of a human in order to die for our sins. All the while, He never gave up being God. That is truth.