Christianity sure seems popular for such a boring religion. Yet what truly draws people in isn’t the squeaky-clean music, abstaining from drunkenness, or waking up early to read a book which, let’s face it, we don’t always understand. It’s a cross, the God-man who died on it, and the magnificent implications that has for our sin-drenched world.
A god? A man?
and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied. (1 Corinthians 15:17-19)
The center of Christianity is that Christ died for sinners. However, we can’t understand what that really means without discussing who Jesus Christ actually is. Much like God, the true nature and purpose of Christ are often misunderstood or attacked. If He were a moral teacher, a swindler, a mere fabrication… if He were anything but God then our religion is pointless and He died for nothing.
But who do we say He is? Before we can discuss salvation, let’s spend some time looking at why Christ had to be who He is, and why that was the only way to save us, a bunch of sinners who don’t deserve such goodness and mercy.
100% God
We must first establish that the Bible says Christ is God. Not a god, a prophet, or even a good man. He is a person of the one God, existing eternally before the universe began (see this post for my article and podcast on the trinity).
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. (John 1:1-3)
Christ was there in the beginning. He wasn’t created at the beginning; rather, He saw time begin. All of this is possible because He was with God, and was fully God.
“I and the Father are one.” The Jews picked up stones again to stone Him. Jesus answered them, “I showed you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you stoning Me?” The Jews answered Him, “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God.” (John 10:30-33)
Christ said, with no uncertainty, that He is God. We can also see Him confirm this in John 8:58 when He references His interaction with Moses in the burning bush (Exodus 3:1-6, 14). Of course, Christ wasn’t the only one to claim that He is God.
But of the Son He says,
“Your throne, O God, is forever and ever,
And the righteous scepter is the scepter of His kingdom.
“You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness;
Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You
With the oil of gladness above Your companions.” (Hebrews 1:8-9)
God the Father is speaking here, referring to Christ as God. He is an equal part of the Trinity, along with the Father and Holy Spirit.
For by Him [Christ] all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. (Colossians 1:16-17)
The fullness of Christ’s deity is further understood when we realize that Christ was part of the universe’s creation. All things were made through Him by the Father. By the necessary order of events, Christ had to pre-exist the world, and therefore must be God. It can be hard to wrap our minds around that, so let’s quickly break down why Christ couldn’t possibly have been created:
- God created all things through Christ (John 1:3)
- For anything to exist, it requires 3 things:
- Stuff for it to be made of
- Space for the stuff to sit in
- Time (existing from one moment to the next)
- If Christ were created by God, then time/space/matter had to be made before Christ
- For everything to be made through Christ, He had to exist before anything else
- In order for Christ to pre-exist anything, He must be God
Simply put, Christ created and upholds the universe. This can challenge some assumptions we have about how creation worked, but it’s what we can clearly see in the Bible. And when we understand this truth, we get to see the wonder of God’s love more fully because we realize that everything has always gone according to plan.
Christ wasn’t sitting in a box that read “In case of emergency, break glass.” Christ wasn’t a last-ditch effort after things had gone awry. God knew, before Genesis 1:1, what His creation would do, and what needed to be done to redeem us (1 Peter 1:20-21). Only God could save us, but He had to come in the form of a man to do so.
100% Man
Understanding that Christ is God can make His humanity seem all the more perplexing. We can see this throughout church history as people have struggled to understand what it meant for Him to be human.
A few ways we’ve poorly understood Him are to say He is:
- A spirit who looked like a human
- “God in a bod,” having only a human body and divine nature
- A 50/50 split, or a blend, of human and divine natures
However, the Bible teaches that He very much had a human nature along with His divinity, and there’s no indication that either was compromised. For those who like $10 words, this is called the “hypostatic union,” or Christ’s joining of his fully divine and human natures into a single being. In other words, He had a full human nature like us and the fully divine nature of God.
This is something the New Testament writers were very clear about. In their time there was a belief called Gnosticism that, among other things, made a clear line between good and evil. Things of the spiritual realm were considered good and pure, whereas matter was corrupted and evil. When this met with Christianity, they would say it’s impossible for a pure God to have existed in something as vile as a physical form. Thus, the New Testament writers often had to correct the belief that Christ came in a human form.
Although this system still finds itself buried deep in many of our religious and philosophical beliefs today, writers like Paul and John encountered it quite directly. They called people “false teachers” if they taught that Christ didn’t come in the flesh (1 John 4:2). They had to establish that his virgin birth wasn’t a mere metaphor, but an actual event (Galatians 4:4). Even his resurrection wasn’t just His spirit, but His physical body as well (John 20:27-28).
That covers His physical self, but what about His human nature? We can see that Christ had a human nature by how He interacted with the world. Throughout the gospels we see Him experience sorrow at His friend’s death (John 11:33-35); frustration at false teachers and hypocrites (Matthew 23:33); compassion for the lost (Matthew 9:36); and anger at those using the temple of God for profit (Mark 11:15-18).
One could argue that God also experiences sadness, anger, and joy. However, God experiences those according to His divine nature. He’s God, and experiences those things as God should. Yet when we see Christ engaging in the world, He acts and responds as a human.
Why does it matter?
For 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. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:15-16)
Unlike us, however, Christ always responded perfectly. He is able to understand our weaknesses because He experienced them Himself. He knows what it is to want our physical desires met (Matthew 4:3), our pride boosted (Matthew 4:6), and our greed satisfied (Matthew 4:8-9). Yet despite those real temptations, and throughout all His life on earth, He never sinned.
Christ had to be a man in order to be our representative to God, yet had to be divine to live the life we never could. We want to understand Christ’s nature because, without it, the beauty of salvation gets distorted. Christ is our very foundation. We must establish who He is before we can understand the full breadth of who we are and what He did for us.
Let’s end Part 1 in awe of what we know of Christ up until now. He created us with the full knowledge that we would make ourselves enemies of God. Despite our wretched condition, He chose to come to earth as a man, knowing that His path could only lead to a brutal death on a cross.
Christ was born to die so that we can live. Stick around for Part 2, where we will dig into what that death means for us.
