The Person of Christ

Let's get started. This first lesson that we'll be doing today is an introduction to the person of Christ. I'll be touching on a lot of things from the incarnation to the manner of His two natures, but we're not doing this as a one-time lesson. In other words, we'll be touching on the incarnation all throughout this lesson, these 15 weeks. We'll be touching on His two natures all throughout. So this is just an introduction to the person of Christ.

By point number one, God eternally decreed — that's the first blank — to save humanity through His divine Son — that's the second blank — who eternally existed as the second Person — Person is the third blank — of the Trinity before all things were made. So let me reread that. God eternally decreed to save humanity through His divine Son, who eternally existed as the second Person of the Trinity before all things were made.

Because, as we studied in hamartiology, we're sinners and we're in need of a Savior, that caught God not at all by surprise. He knew that before He created us. Christ is the Lamb of God who was slain before the foundation of the world. And so He eternally decreed, before anything was created, that Christ would be given to people to save, and that He would save us before the foundations of the world by being the Lamb of God that was marked for our salvation.

Look at John 1:1 through 3, these are three verses that you're all familiar with. "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 were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made." So in the very beginning there was a Word, that's Christ Jesus. He was with God, and the Word was God. So Christ is not a creature; He is eternally preexistent in equality with the Father. He was in the beginning with God, all things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. That tells us that Christ is not a created being; He's eternally existed.

Second Timothy 1:9, "He" — speaking of Christ — "has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began." Before time began, God marked us out for salvation. His own purpose and grace was given in Christ Jesus. So Christ was never planned to be like, well, I'll create man, and if man sins, then maybe I'll get him out of this predicament. It was from the very beginning that Christ was ordained to be the Savior of men. Flip over on the back.

Ephesians 3:8 through 12, you should be very familiar with these passages, because Casey has preached through this. Paul writes, he says, "To me, who am less than the least of all the saints, this grace was given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ." And that's what we study when we study Christology — we study the unsearchable riches of Christ. "And to make all see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God, who created all things through Jesus Christ, to the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places, according to the eternal purpose, which He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through faith in Him."

So Christ's coming, His incarnation, was part of God's eternal purposes for His people, for His church. The application for us is this for number one: rejoice in God's saving purpose and grace. And so, number two, the first blank is grace.

God's purposes are mysterious to us. He did not disclose them to us from the beginning of the world, but now He has in Christ Jesus, and it's all His grace, His unmerited love that He showers upon us in the person of Jesus Christ. We'd never know His love apart from the person of Christ.

Number two, the Son of God was sent to save man at just the right time — that's the first blank, right. God prepared mankind before sending His Son to save them. The law — that's the second blank — the prophets — that's the third blank — and judgment — that is the fourth blank — were part of this preparation. Let me reread that. The Son of God was sent to save man at just the right time. God prepared mankind before by sending His Son to save them. The law, the prophets, and judgment were part of this preparation.

God originally disclosed Himself to the Jewish people, right. He told Abraham, get up from here, and I'm going to show you a land that you're gonna go to. I'm gonna make you a mighty nation, that through you, the entire world would be blessed. His purpose for Israel was not an end in Israel itself; it was that through Israel the whole world would be able to know God and be able to be reconciled to God. But He started with Israel, right. And what did He do? He gave them the law in Moses' time, right. And the law showed us the character of God. It showed us God's demands. And what did it show us?

How far short we are, right. There's no way we could keep the Mosaic law. We are sinners, as we studied in our hamartiology. It has bent our wills, it has bent our minds, it has estranged us from God. So the law shows us our need for a Savior, right. And more than that, it actually — the law Paul says would provoke him to sin.

Because when you have an ordinance and it says don't do something, and you hate the person who's made that ordinance, what do you wanna do? You wanna see how quickly you can break that law and how many different ways you can break that law, right. And so the law actually aroused sin and rebellion in one who hates God and shakes his fist at God and wants to do things his own way. But the law also showed the need for sacrifice, did it not?

It provided sacrifices for the people of God to atone for sins, right. And those sacrifices, though not efficacious in themselves, they pointed to the one who would be efficacious, and that's Christ, right. All those sacrifices were pictures of Christ. Christ is the Lamb of God without blemish, without spot. He's the Paschal Lamb, and therefore we're passed over because His blood is applied to us, right. So the law showed us our sin and it also showed us our need for salvation.

The prophets, much the same way. The prophets gave us many different directives. Sometimes it was encouragement, sometimes it was a rebuke, chastising us if you will. But we must not forget that while the law preached our need for salvation, it is mainly through the prophets that we hear about the Messiah, right. You read through Isaiah and about the servant and what he would do, God's perfect servant. And you read about Isaiah 53, right, how he would be wounded for our transgressions and bruised because of our iniquities and that by his stripes, we would be healed, right. So God gave us the prophets to prepare us for the incarnation, to prepare us for the way of Christ.

He also sent judgment as part of this preparation with Israel, because Israel, despite being promised a Messiah, they continued to rebel and to be stiff-necked. They continued to embrace idolatry, and what did God do? But He sent them away into captivity, right, into Babylon, and they were gone for 70 years. When they were surrounded by pagans and they were away from the worship of Yahweh, they missed it. And one thing it did do, historically speaking, is it broke Israel of idolatry.

When they came back into the land, idolatry as far as the actual worshiping of pagan idols was not the issue as it was before when they went there, right. They had under Nehemiah and Ezra a little bit of a revival. They found the Word of God and it was read to the people. And Ezra and the scribes gave the sense and the meaning of the Scriptures and they rejoiced and had tears, right. And they even began to mourn, but what did Ezra say? Don't mourn, this is the time for rejoicing. Eat the fat, drink the sweet. This is the day that the Lord has made. We're gonna rejoice and be glad in it, right. So that preparation was needed.

That was the preparation of God's people, Israel, in the Old Testament, who would then become the wellspring of the church, right. So that was a preparation there, but there was also greater preparation taking place.

In the intertestamental period, the 400 years between Malachi and Matthew, you have a period of history where Alexander conquered all around the Mediterranean. And when he did so, he unified that whole region and they learned to speak in one language for the first time since Babel. They spoke Koine Greek. They still spoke their own native tongue, but they learned the universal language of commerce was Greek, and that prepared the way for the gospel to spread like wildfire in the first century, right.

After his domain fell, the Roman Empire took over. The Roman Empire fought many wars and conquered many people, but by the time that Christ was born, there was universal peace for the most part. They called it the Pax Romana. All their enemies were vanquished for the most part, all their enemies were conquered. And so now there's a time of trade, a time of rest — a perfect time for the Messiah to be born, for the gospel to be spread forth, starting with the 12 Jewish disciples of Christ and then the 120 Jewish disciples in the upper room, right. And from there, from Jerusalem to Judea, to Samaria, to the uttermost parts of the world. A preparation was needed.

Galatians 4 speaks of this. Verses 3 through 5 say, "Even so, when we were children, we were in bondage under the elements of the world." In context, he's not talking about paganism there. He's actually talking about the empty rituals of the Jewish religion. He says, "And when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons."

So He sent forth His Son to be born like us, born of a woman, to be born under the law. In other words, under the old covenant we were required to obey God, right, to keep that. And He was born underneath that, right? He's the only Person that ever kept the old covenant, right? And in keeping the old covenant, He's able to offer us the new covenant in His blood, right? It says, "To redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons." We can be the very children of God, even us Gentiles, who the original revelation of God didn't come to — special revelation — but it's through Christ. The two can be made one. Romans 5:6 says, "For while we were still helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly."

The application for number two is this: trust in God's timing, that it is always perfect.

God knew the exact right time this world needed the Messiah, right? And what a wonderful time it was, and how the church has flourished. We tend to be a little bit myopic sometimes. We think, well, we don't see the church doing so hot here, maybe in our community or in America, but think about the big picture — that we have Christians all over the globe.

There's not a continent in this earth that does not have fruit-bearing, Bible-believing Christians, right? The gospel has gone forth and the gates of hell will not prevail.

Bible point number three: incarnation means coming in the flesh — that's the first blank. It may be a big word, but it simply means coming in the flesh. The Son of God added a perfect human nature to His divine nature in the incarnation in order to save humanity. Mankind owed — that's the second blank — owed a debt that only God could pay. Jimmy, I know you know the song, that He paid a debt He did not owe, I owed a debt I could not pay. I needed someone to wash my sins away. That someone is the one mediator, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ came to the world as our mediator — that's the third blank — to reconcile God to man and man to God. The purpose of the incarnation was the atonement, right? The purpose of Christ coming into this world was to die for us, His great love for us. As we all know, John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life."

Look at John 1:14 and then 16 and 17, these three great verses on the incarnation. "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." If you remember when we studied theology proper and we talked about the nature and attributes of God, one of the attributes about God is that He's invisible, right? He doesn't have a body like us. We can't see God, but in Christ we have a tangible God, right? Christ lived a flesh and blood existence to show and display the very character and love of God for humanity, right?

"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." "And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." The law could never save us, right? But Christ, who perfectly kept the law, He can save us, right? So through Him we have grace, and that grace and truth is only found in Christ Jesus.

1 Timothy 2:15 — "For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." Christ had to take flesh in order to save us. He had to pay that price. He couldn't just let humanity go unpunished, or He would not be a just judge, right? So He took on humanity and became our sacrifice.

Acts 4:12, "Salvation exists in no one else. For there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." It's only Christ who can save us, because only He is the God-man, only He is truly God and truly man.

The application for number three: be thankful to Christ for paying our debt. That's the response that we should have. Remember the parable that Jesus told of a man who owed a great debt to a king?

Debt that he could never pay. And the king was going to throw him in debtor's prison, basically, and he begged for mercy. And so the king forgave him of that debt, right?

Then he went and he found another person who owed him a much smaller amount. And that servant who had been forgiven did not show grace. He threw him in prison till he could get every last penny that was owed to him. And when the king found out about it, he was righteously angry, right?

And he cast that man into the debtor's prison. We have been forgiven so much by Christ, our heartbeat should be gratitude, and that should show in our forgiveness towards others, right? Someone slights us — think of how we've wronged our Savior, and think of what our Savior did to redeem us and to purchase us. So that should be our very heartbeat: gratitude for what Christ has done for us, and it should show its fruit in our lives.

Bible point number four, the precise manner of the union of the divine nature and the human nature in Christ — first blank is divine, second blank is human. The precise manner of the union of the divine nature and human nature in Christ is unrevealed to us and is beyond our comprehension.

That simply means the way that Christ came to us in the incarnation is not something we're explicitly told. It's part of the mystery. It's as great a mystery as indeed the Trinity is. Some things we just have to accept. We're finite beings and God is above us. As Caleb said a couple of weeks ago, He's ineffably sublime, right? He's high above us and words can't describe it. So we sing that in that hymn, right? In the same way, some things are unrevealed to us and beyond our comprehension. The incarnation is as great a mystery as the Trinity. That's the third blank.

And this was apparent even in Jesus' time when He spoke with the Pharisees. Look at Matthew 22:41 through 46. This is while the Pharisees were gathered together. They had been asking Jesus questions, okay? They've been trying to trip Him up. So now Jesus turned the tables on them and He's gonna ask them a question. "Jesus asked them, saying, 'What do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is He?'" The Christ means the Messiah, the one that was prophesied by Isaiah that would save the people from their sins, that would turn Israel back to God.

They said to Him, "The Son of David."

He said to them, "How then does David in the Spirit" — recognizing David's inspiration when he wrote Psalm 110, which He's gonna quote from here — Psalm 110 is the most quoted Psalm in the New Testament. It's a great Christological Psalm. It's quoted more than any other Psalm in the New Testament. "Then how does David, in the Spirit, call Him Lord, saying" — and here He quotes from Psalm 110 — "The Lord said to my Lord, sit at My right hand till I make Your enemies Your footstool. If David then calls Him Lord, how is He his son?" And no one was able to answer Him a word, nor from that day on did anyone dare question Him anymore.

Because what He is saying is this: David calls the Messiah his Lord, but we know that Christ comes from the lineage of David — He's David's Son. So how can He be both David's Son and also David's Lord? This tells us that Christ was not just Messiah, was not just man, but He was who? God. He was the God-man, right? Fully God and fully man.

The application is this: hold in awe — that's the blank, awe — that Christ came in the flesh.

We should always be filled with the joy and wonder of Christmas, with the virgin birth, with the incarnation. These things are a true treasure for us, just as Mary hid these things in her heart. So should we. We should be in awe of the incarnation, that Christ came in the flesh.

Bible point number five: the early church struggled with controversy and heresy that came from misunderstanding the person of Christ.

All Christological controversy hinged on denying the reality — that's the first blank — the integrity — that's the second blank — or the union — that's the third blank — of the divine and human natures in Christ.

All Christological controversy hinged on denying the reality, the integrity, or the union of Christ's natures, and I'm gonna explain those to you with some examples. I think that'd be an easier way to explain them to you. Flip over on the back. I'm gonna show you the six main Christological heresies that plagued the early church.

The first one is the Ebionites. They were from approximately 107 AD — some church historians actually date them prior to that. Remember when Jesus in Matthew 24 says that when you see the city of Jerusalem surrounded with a siege wall, flee the city. That actually happened in 67 AD, and there was a flight of all the Christians from Jerusalem to a city called Pella. You can read about this in Josephus. In Pella, we know that the Ebionites were there. So some scholars will actually date them before 107, but 107 is when it really reached its crescendo. They said that Christ was merely man. In other words, he wasn't God and man. He was just a righteous dude. He was just merely man — a good man, a good teacher, a prophet, a rabbi, but just a man.

This was essentially Judaism within Christianity, right? Because didn't the Jews say, well, Christ is a rabbi, he's a good teacher, but they would not call Him God, right? And when He made claims to be one with the Father, what did they do? They wanted to kill Him, right? When the high priest says, "Tell us plainly, are you the Christ?" He says, "You said it." What did the priest do? He ripped his clothes, right? Crucify Him, crucify Him. They had to put this guy to death because he was, in their view, a heretic. They denied His divinity. And that's what the Ebionites did.

This is an example of denying the reality of the persons. In our definition, we said that all Christological heresies dealt with denying either the reality of the persons, the integrity of the persons, or the union of the persons. This is an example. They said, well, he was really man, but he wasn't really God, right? He was really human, but he wasn't really divine.

Another very early controversy was the Docetists — the Docetae — from 70 to 170 AD. They had a very long period where they had a heyday, if you will. And they would say that Christ only appeared to be man. You may, in your studies of Paul's epistles, have come across inklings of what Paul may have been dealing with in an early form of Gnosticism. Gnostics were Docetists.

They basically said that Christ appeared to be man, but he wasn't really man. He was God, but His appearances were a theophany. They were just like a specter, if you will. He wasn't really man; he was just God. So he appeared to be a man, but he wasn't really human. This was essentially paganism in Christianity, was it not? They believed that the gods could come down and make appearances as men. So they denied, not His deity, but what did they deny?

His humanity, right? He wasn't a real man. They denied the reality of His humanity while upholding the reality, in many cases, of His divinity. So both the Ebionites and the Docetists, they both are examples of folks who rejected the reality of the two natures, that either they said He was human and not divine, or He was divine and only appeared to be human.

Look at the next one, the Arians. The Arians said that Christ was not fully divine, but a divine creature with an origin. The Arians were condemned in 325 AD by the Council of Nicaea. What they said was this. They said that He was indeed God, but He was less than God. He was a created God, if you will. He was above man, but He was created by God. He didn't eternally exist. He had a beginning. So kind of like He was the firstborn of creation. They would say He was the first created being, a divine being. This kind of goes back to maybe you studied in Greek mythology — demigods, right?

The offspring of gods, that's the way that they looked at Christ. And this was condemned by Nicaea in 325 AD.

And the reason why they held this was simply this — you could argue he had good intentions. He wanted to protect God's divinity because he could not see how the divine could suffer in the person of Jesus Christ. He held, as most theologians do, that the Godhead is impassible, that God is the ever-blessed God, that He doesn't — God can't suffer.

He only knows joy. He reigns as the King of the universe. So he couldn't get past that God could suffer in the person of Jesus Christ. So what he said was He was not truly fully God. He was a little bit less than God. He was a created God, if you will. So they denied the integrity of the divinity of Christ. They said, yeah, he's divine, but not fully divine, a little bit less than divine, if you will.

The Apollinarians. We touched on the Apollinarians a little bit when we discussed mankind, when we discussed anthropology, when we discussed man's essential makeup. The Apollinarians held to a Platonic view of trichotomy, that man, instead of being just two parts — the material and the immaterial, the body and the soul — was three parts: that he had a spirit that related him to God, he also had a psyche, which was his animal spirits, and then he had a body or a soma. These three parts made up man.

Well, they used that to try to make their Christology palatable. They said simply that the divine Logos took the place of man's pneuma, or man's spirit. And so Christ was not fully human in this sense. His humanity was not intact, whereas we have a body and soul. They said Christ's manhood was God's Logos — the Logos of God, the reasoning of God — taking the place of man's reasoning, or man's reaching toward God. And so as a result, Christ was not fully man.

And a man who's not fully man — can that person atone for our sins? It's like this weird hybrid is what he was essentially coming up with. And this was condemned in Constantinople in 381 AD, along with trichotomy as a whole. Trichotomy did make, as we talked about in anthropology, an appearance and a resurgence along with the charismatic movement in the early 1900s, and it's kind of wormed its way back into evangelicalism. And there are some good people who hold to trichotomy, but there's a reason why it was condemned. It tends to lead to heresy.

So this is another example — the Apollinarians — of folks who doubted the integrity of Christ's nature, whether it was His human nature or His divine nature.

Then we have the Nestorians. And the Nestorians are an example of folks who doubted the unity of these two natures in the person of Christ. They argued that the divine and human natures in Christ are not an organic union. And what we mean by organic union — that may be a weird word for us — but simply put, an organism is one whole, consisting of individual parts that function reciprocally.

A great way to explain this is in a marriage, right? You got a husband and you have a wife. There are two individuals, but they come together as one, as a married couple, right? And they function reciprocally. The wife lives for the husband, the husband lives to protect and provide for the wife, and together they glorify God, right? So it's one whole composed of individual parts that function reciprocally. They denied that Christ's human nature and His divine nature coexisted for each other in the person of Christ.

Instead, this is what they said. It's merely a moral union or alliance, that Christ is very near God, but he's not truly God in the sense that they argued for two different persons essentially. That instead of one Person with two natures, they argued that He had two natures and two persons. In other words, there were two individuals within Christ. There was Christ and man. But that's not what Scripture tells us. Scripture tells us He was one Person, and everything He did carried with it the full weight of humanity and the full weight of divinity, right?

Nestorius was removed from his office. He was the Patriarch of Constantinople. His teachings were condemned by the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD.

So he was denying the integrity of this union — that it's not a real union, it's just two people, a divine person and a human person, that are very close to one another and they're cooperating, but they're not truly one in Christ Jesus.

Then the last one is the Eutychians. It's a hard one to say. They denied the distinction and the coexistence of the two natures, and instead said they are mingled. What they said was this. They said that the human nature of Christ and also His divine nature mixed together and formed a third nature. And this third nature was not fully human, nor was it fully God.

I can explain it a little better chemically. I run a pool business, and sometimes I will wash out a salt cell with acid. You put it in a vial of acid and let it clean it. Well, then you've got acid. What are you gonna do with the acid? You take baking soda and you put it in the acid to neutralize it. And what does it turn into? Water and salt. So two different things become something else altogether. That's essentially what the Eutychians believed. They believed that Christ was neither God nor man, but he was something else — he was a third thing, if you will. This was condemned at Chalcedon in 451 AD.

Now, I bring up these examples because these combinations — how people got it wrong — are at the root of pretty much every single cult and false conception of Christ today. What is old is new, and what is new is old, right? Almost every single cult will seek to deny either the divinity of Christ or His humanity, or the union of the two, or they'll deny the integrity of the human and the divine nature. Well, he's a created God. He's the first of the angels, and his brother is Satan, co-equal with him, right? You hear stuff like that, and it's wild, and it goes against the historic creeds. It goes against what Scripture says, right?

Flip back over on the front. The most important thing for us to remember when it comes to these questions is what's exemplified for us in Matthew 16.

When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples — He's not asking the Pharisees who were antagonistic towards Him. He's asking His disciples. "Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?" And they said, some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah, one of the prophets. Wouldn't be a bad thing to be listed in that company, all right? He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter answered and said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."

You're the Messiah. You're the Son of the living God. You're fully God. You're fully man. You are the one that has been long promised to come into this world. That's the most important thing for us to get out of this. Who do you say that Christ is? He's fully God, and He's fully man. He came to this world to be our Savior.

The application for number five is this: can you explain to a non-believer who Christ is?

Can you explain that Christ was the Son of God? Christ eternally existed before this world was ever made. In fact, all things are made by Him and for Him, and by His will, all things exist.

And because of God's great love for humanity, Christ came into this world in the incarnation. He took on flesh. He added humanity to His divinity to live as a human, to suffer as we do, to hunger as we do, to perfectly obey the Father, because we weren't able to obey God. We broke His commands at the very beginning in Adam, and we continue to rebel against Him today. Every single one of us has broken His laws. But Christ lived a perfect life to be our substitute, to die on the cross in our place. He's the only one who can save us, the only mediator, the only one who's truly God and truly man, because that's what was required for us to be saved. He died, He was buried, He rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures, and whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.

Can you explain that, right? Because that's why we study Christology in part, is to be a faithful witness, is it not? And if we can't explain it to an unbeliever — let me back that out. You might want to even say, "Can you explain to a five-year-old who Christ is?"

I had a theology professor who used to tell us, if we cannot explain our theology to a five-year-old, it's worthless. We gotta be able to break things down in simple terms, right? That's why we study Christology — it's not to know all these terms and know history and to pat ourselves on the back thinking we're smart. It's simply to be able to preach Christ and to preach Him correctly, right?

Bible point number six: in opposition to all these errors, the correct doctrine holds that in the one — that's the first blank — one Person, Jesus Christ, there are two natures, a divine nature and a human nature.

So one is the first blank, two is the second blank. Each nature is complete and perfect. His humanity is perfect, not like ours. Our humanity has fallen. Christ is not born of Adam, right?

In the incarnation, He's the head of a new humanity. So the two natures are complete and perfect. These two natures are organically and indissolubly united, meaning that not only are they united perfectly together, but they can never be separated.

So even in heaven, Christ is incarnate. He's in a human body in heaven right now.

It says, so that no third nature is formed. Of course, this is going against the Eutychians, right, that we just read about. This was made known throughout the world at Chalcedon in 451 AD. It's called the Chalcedonian Definition.

So all the churches got together and they sent their bishops and they said, we've got these heresies, we need to hammer this out so we can all be on the same page, if you will.

It is no coincidence that all the major Christological heresies were closed and settled as a canon of Scripture was recognized. If you recall, it took about 300 years or so for all the churches universally to accept all the books. They were practically accepted, but for them to come out with a list of what we would call the defined canon — a fallible list of infallible books — once that was brought to pass, these Christological heresies, poof, right? Because you had a standard.

You had God's Word that you could point to and they were in agreement over this. Scripture forbids us to either divide — that's the third blank — to divide the Person, to say that Christ was sometimes God and He was sometimes man. Can't divide that. He was always fully God and always fully man, okay?

Or confound the two natures of Christ. Confound means to confuse or to get wrong the two natures of Christ. We can't say that the integrity of those two natures was in doubt — that He was deity, but a little lower deity, or that He was not fully man, some strange hybrid, right? So we can't either divide the Person or confound the two natures of Christ.

Psalm 119 says, "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path."

We look to God's Word to be the basis of our theology. That's the application. Let God's Word direct your theology, right? And that's simply what the councils did. If you'll flip over on the back, I wanna read to you the Nicene Creed.

The Nicene Creed got its start in 325 AD at the Council of Nicaea. And over the next hundred years, it was refined over the various councils, the second Council of Nicaea, and then finally at Chalcedon. And it simply lays out what Scripture says about the triune God. As Baptists, we oftentimes are a little bit afraid of creeds. You may have heard someone say, "No creed but the Bible," right?

Isn't that a creed, though?

The earliest creed among the church was "Jesus is Lord," right? And so creeds, used correctly, are not in the place of Scripture, but they help frame scriptural truths if used rightly. And there's no perfect creed, but the Nicene Creed is accepted by pretty much every true Christian denomination as laying out who Christ is. Start here, let me read this to you. "We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible."

In the second paragraph, we get to the Christological focus. "And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten and not made, of the same essence of the Father. Through Him, all things were made. For us and for our salvation, He came down from heaven. He became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and was made human. He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried. The third day He arose again, according to the Scriptures. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead. His kingdom will never end."

Then the third paragraph, speaking of the Holy Spirit. "And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life. He proceeds from the Father and the Son, and with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified. He spoke through the prophets. We believe in one holy, catholic, and apostolic church" — does not mean the Roman Catholic, but that simply means a unified church with common belief in a Trinitarian God.

"We affirm one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look forward to the resurrection of the dead and to the life in the world to come. Amen."

So you can see the fine attention and detail that was crafted in their statement of Christology. It lines up perfectly with Scripture. You won't find anything to fault in the Nicene Creed when it comes to Scripture's testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ. So that could be a helpful thing for us to follow, but we always let God's Word direct our theology.

And so as we study Christology — I know we've raised a lot of questions rhetorically but haven't provided the answers for them yet — we will. Next week, we're gonna study the names of Christ and we'll go in depth into the names of Christ. Following that, we'll look at the humanity of Christ, the divinity of Christ. Then we'll look at how the human and divine nature in Christ are held together. So we've got a lot ahead of us. This is gonna be a great study and I pray that it will strengthen your faith.