Jesus Christ’s identity encompasses both His eternal deity as Son of God – the second Person of the Trinity – and His role after the coming into the world by taking on full humanity and being named “Jesus”. Matthew, Mark, and Luke affirm both aspects of Christ’s nature, presenting not competing views but complementary truths about who Jesus is and how becoming the “Saviour” involved both His deity and His obedient humanity under the leadership of Father God through the power of the Holy Spirit. Only by this way was He able to accomplish our salvation.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] What I’m doing this evening is a bit of an example of what it is to be doing a mixture of evangelism and apologetics. And apologetics is about giving an answer back to people who’ve been criticising either the Christian Gospel or criticising the church. It means to answer back. Apology or apologetic is the idea of giving an answer to somebody else’s objection. And we in the Christian Church are called to be able to give an answer. It’s not always in terms of highfalutin intellectual ideas, but it is in terms of what is our rationale, our reasoning, or maybe our calling to be able to be certain of where we’re going with Christ and of the Christian faith being true. And so tonight is by way of giving a talk that is both the Gospel, it’s largely attached to the Scriptures, so I’m not doing something away from the Bible,

[00:01:08] but it is something that does answer questions that some people have in their minds. And I remember down in Sydney where we once were ministering, one of the people of our church, one of our strong people, was doing an extra subject up at Macquarie University just nearby. And there’s a history department there where some of the chief personnel were Christians and they were giving popular talks. And this girl went to here, and to her surprise the person giving a lecture, one of the lecturers from that department, said that there’s nowhere in the New Testament where Jesus meant to say he was Godson. He had other things in mind.

[00:01:52] the man said something alarmed her, and she came rushing back to the church to ask me, what was that person saying? How come they don’t think that Jesus saw himself as the Son of God? It’s strongly possible that she didn’t quite hear the man’s ideas at the meeting, but nonetheless there are those who say that the whole idea of the deity of Christ is something that we have put onto this Jesus person. He had a lot of good things to do and to say, but we have somehow turned him into what now is understood as the chief conservative doctrine of the Christian church, which has to do with the identity of Jesus as God’s Son. So tonight my first task, first half of what I’m doing, is to bring to you strong gospel evidence from the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, that Jesus did in fact and is presented as such by the Gospels as being God’s Son. And I’m starting with Mark because it’s the simplest

[00:02:54] and the opening up of Mark’s Gospel, the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And as you read through the Gospel of Mark, you realise that he’s meeting in a particular sense of Jesus being Son of God as no other person is. And it’s right there at the start of the Gospel of Mark. So sometimes the people who give lectures though might be concentrating on other Gospels, and it is true that people who go to the Gospels to read how its chief idea is the deity of Jesus often get surprised at the fact that the way things are worded seemed to be saying something as well or other than his deity. And so I’m taking us through some of the verses that we might have a look at this and make up our own opinion as to first of all, what does the Bible teach? Does it teach that Jesus is God’s eternal Son? Now I’m going to go now to all of them, but I won’t include the Gospel of John because it’s so straightforward there. In the beginning

[00:03:59] was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God. I think we all know that one. But I’m going to deal with what I’ve known, Matthew, Mark and Luke. And they’re often put together as Gospels and I suspect that the lecturer that the girl went to hear was one on the synoptic Gospels, synoptic as they seem to be seeing things through the one eye sites. And so Matthew, Mark and Luke where I’m drawing verses, in order to bring out perhaps that it wasn’t a contradiction about the whole idea of the deity of Jesus that she was hearing, but something that was on top of that, something that was extra to that, but something that I’m bringing up this evening. Now we’re going now to Matthew 16. And so we’re switching from from Mark to Matthew. Matthew is the first gospel of our church. We’ve gone a part of the way through it sometime or other. I’d better get back to finishing off the gospel

[00:04:56] of Matthew. But anyway, in this particular chapter, there’s a very famous passage which has got the question of Jesus to the disciples. Who do people say that I am there in verse 13? Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesar Philippi, he asked his disciples, who do people say that the Son of Man is? Now Jesus often referred to him as the Son of Man, which very title raises all sorts of ideas but also questions on this issue about the deity of Jesus. And to some people’s reading, the fact that he called himself the Son of Man was one of the reasons why they say Jesus didn’t call himself the Son of God. And the disciples answered, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, others Jeremiah one of the prophets. He said to them, but who do you say that I am? And Simon Peter replied, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And immediately there Jesus didn’t

[00:06:00] correct Peter and said, well I am the Christ but you’ve gone a bit far, call me the Son of the living God. No, Jesus answered him, blessed are you Simon bar Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father who is in heaven. You’ve had a spiritual revelation as to who I am. So clearly if Peter’s outburst, if Peter’s answer to the question, you’re the Christ, the Son of the living God and it was wrong, Jesus would correct it. But he doesn’t, he says you’ve had a spiritual revelation. And certainly on the basis of how Peter understood who Jesus was as such is why Jesus gives him the keys to the kingdom. By the way that begets a whole lot of comics and cartoons where Peter is up at the pearly gates in heaven and people are knocking on to get in, so the joke continues. Actually the gates to the kingdom of heaven is the opening of God’s work on earth that the Christ

[00:07:04] was prophesied to do. And the steps that Peter, being the person present, when each different group got in to the opportunity of becoming Christians is how he turned the keys to the kingdom and that would be for another story, another sermon. I’ll give you the keys to Kingdom of Heaven, so Jesus is indeed accepting the statement of Peter that he is the Son of the Living God. Whatever you bind on earth should be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth should be loosed in heaven and then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ. And part of the problem of people getting confused by this whole issue about the deity of Jesus is because in their minds they’ve sometimes taken the word Christ to mean Son of God. It doesn’t mean that he’s not the Son of God but it has special meaning. The word Christos comes from the idea of anointing. He’s the

[00:08:01] anointed one to be the Messiah and he’s not only Son of a living God who’s come from eternity or one day go back to eternity, but he’s the one who’s come and taken on humanity to do something that a human person was prophesied to do, he’s going to be anointed of the Spirit so that the Lead that he gives in the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of resource from heaven, will be the Lead that he gives because of that anointing of the Holy Spirit on him. So what was happening here is that Jesus is not denying that he is the Son of God, He’s adding to who he is, that which pertains to his being God-man. He’s God but he’s also now human. And in his humanity, he’s there for the purpose of having the Spirit on him and being the Story of Christ this, the leader of the kingdom of heaven,

[00:08:54] that kingdom on earth that is the resource from heaven, that kingdom that is brought about by the Holy Spirit being on the Messiah. Messiah is just another language for the same word Christ. So what is happening here is indeed the affirmation as to Jesus’ deity, but along with it is also that there’s something else you need to know about him, that is about his being the Messiah, the Christ. We’ll go to another spot, Matthew 1. I’m just bringing to you the evidence, because the evidence is overwhelming actually from all of the Gospels, and I’ve picked on the synoptic Gospels because I think the lecture that God went to was on the synoptic Gospels because they often are given lectures on because they speak from similar understandings, whereas the Gospel of John is written later probably and was so clear about who Jesus was as the

[00:09:46] Son of God. But here in Matthew 16, is that where we went to? In verses 13-20, I’ve got all, did I just do that one? I think I just did that one. Matthew 1, we want, thank you. Matthew 1, 22-23. Now this is right at the beginning where Matthew gives his account of the coming of Jesus into the world being born of the Virgin Mary. And when it happens, all this took place, Jesus’ birth by Mary in the manger, as you know the Christmas story. All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name, here’s the point, Immanuel, which means God with us. So although it’s not a direct statement, very straightforward, Jesus is the Son of God, it carries with it the idea that in his taking on humanity, God has come to be with us, which adds up to the fact of who he is, he’s the Divine. And

[00:10:53] it is Christian teaching that Jesus is both God and man, and you don’t get the full picture that constitutes the Christian Gospel if you just think Jesus is God and that’s it. What is the fullness of the Gospel is that God has come and taken on humanity to be human with us. So he’s the God-man and it is by such an event, the original Christmas, the original idea of him coming and the Holy Spirit overshadowing Mary and bringing to her womb the eternal second person of the Trinity. So he is now human as well as Divine. And that is the extra part that is all the way through the Gospels communicated as they try and spell out who Jesus is. He isn’t just the Son of God. Now that’s a funny statement to make because how could you be? If someone is the Son of God, is there something more one can be? Well that’s what the Gospel says. This one who had such a lofty, glorious existence

[00:12:00] as the second person of the Trinity has come down to earth and taken on humanity to be seen as a human so that God has been come to be with us. And that’s the meaning of that verse. We’ll go to the end of the Gospel of Matthew, I’m picking on the Gospel of Matthew at the moment but this is what is constituted as the final bit of Gospel of Matthew, where you have the Great Commission. And Jesus has told his disciples to meet him up at the top of a mountain so that they go to that place, in Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus directed to them, and when they saw him, they worshipped him.” Now I could give you a whole evening’s message on that little bit. They worshipped him. For the Old Testament makes it extremely clear that worship belongs to God alone.

[00:12:52] And Jesus receives worship. As a matter of fact, he answers some of the tests the devil brought to him in the temptation by quoting some of the Old Testament verses. They shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. But what do you see here? When they saw him, they worshipped him. Some doubted. Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven on earth has been given to me. The person who’s been given the authority is the God-man in his role being human,

[00:13:27] being the Christ, the anointed one, the Christos, also his being the Son of God. All authority has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them. Then there’s a mention of what you do the baptizing in. This is very important in the whole understanding of what baptism is and who doesn’t who. It is in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This passage detailing the triune deity that we have, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is further evidence of Matthew’s picture of Jesus being very God. Otherwise it wouldn’t be that Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Teaching them to observe all that I’ve commanded you and behold I am with you always.

[00:14:20] That’s the end to the end of the age. Certainly Matthew follows Mark in believing in Jesus’ deity. It’s just that his coming to the world has more to be talked about than just the fact that he was that second person of the Trinity. It’s because people keep noticing all these other things that are said about the Christ, who he is, that some people get mixed up to think that it’s a denial of his being the Son of God. It’s not at all. We can go from there to the Gospel of Luke, which is the third place to look. We commented on John, we’ve done Mark, we’ve done Matthew, now Luke. One of the chief places of Luke’s Gospel is where Jesus goes into the synagogue.

[00:15:02] In the synagogue, it’s in his hometown, I think, is handed to him to read the Scriptures for the occasion. And whether, just to the sovereignty of God, the spot he was to read was about him. Or whether he knew where to turn, I don’t know. He read, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me. Now here’s a bit of that extra about who Jesus is. Not just God’s eternal Son, but the fact that he has come and taken on humanity and been anointed from heaven to do the work of the Christ, the Christos, the Anointed One. Because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor, he has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, he sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind,

[00:15:50] to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. It’s the time when you can hear the Gospel and respond and be blessed in it. And so here is Jesus, who’s going on about who he is. He’s more than just the Son of God as he had been in heaven. He’s Son of God who’s taken on humanity, that he might be the Christ. And as the Christ, anointed from heaven by the Holy Spirit, that he might do the work of the Christ. This is amazing. It’s an addition to the whole idea, not a substitute idea. So you think he’s not the Son of God. It’s the fact that he’s come to be the Messiah. And it’s so anointed.

[00:16:38] Now if you had some doubts about that, let’s look back in Luke 3 and verse 38 I think it is. And this is just a little point. You could gloss over this and not notice it, but it’s a great long list of names starting with Adam. No, it starts up with a person that goes backwards. And where it finishes is the Son of Enoth and the son of Seth, that he son of Seth is the Son of Adam, the Son of God. A genealogy, as Luke presents genealogies, is going backwards and finishes up with God. And Jesus is, or Adam is, the Son of God is the one God created, Adam. And so there’s God right at the back, but this is the genealogy of Christ. That in his humanity it’s shown that he’s human, but he also has come from the creation of God, as have all of we.

[00:17:36] We’re all persons, we are in a sense, sons of God, in that human sense that we are the creation of eternal God. And there is something that you’d say that is connected with Godness. Sometimes people use the word divinity. You’ve got to separate the word divinity and the word deity in your understanding. They’re both connected, but divinity is where there’s some of God’s action. And I did a degree in divinity in my second degree. It was a degree that has to do with studying all the ideas about God. But there was nothing, how will I put this, that wasn’t a divine course. They wanted it to be, but divinity means the content is to do with God. But deity means God.

[00:18:28] And here Adam originally has his history back as a son of God. And so there’s a sense in which you and I here sitting tonight, being here tonight, are people who are sons of God, sons, daughters of God, in the sense of our creation by the eternal God. And Jesus also in his humanity is the same. And he had a genealogy that’s tracing him back to Adam. Because he is a creation of God, the Father, as well as being God’s eternal Son who’s come to be that person as we saw about the birth of Jesus. Now if you wondered why that was, why the emphasis of the Scriptures, which is not just in the fact that Jesus is God, sometimes in simplicity that is how we understand him when he’s God, therefore he can do the miracle and flick his fingers

[00:19:23] and do what he likes because he’s God, that’s really missing the extra that these passages are showing. You go, if you’re going you’re wearing Luke, the writer, and Luke did a two-volume work in the second volume is a book of Acts. If you go to the book of Acts, it’s really interesting to see how the Apostles preached about Jesus and who he was and how he should be worshipped and all. And at that great sermon he gave at Mars Hill, or whatever it’s called, the sermon in Acts 17. Here we have the end of the sermon of Paul it is that’s preaching. The times of ignorance God overlooked, the time when people didn’t know who God was and how he was in charge of everything. But now he, that’s God, commands all people everywhere to repent because he has fixed the day on which he’ll judge the world in righteousness. God, this is about the end of times where God will judge everybody and in that day the whole world will be judged in righteousness. But look at the next bit, by a man whom he has appointed.

[00:20:34] This is a part of the Gospel, but the one who will be your judge is a human. But by my saying he’s human is not saying he’s not Jesus, it’s not saying he’s not deity, he is, he’s the God-man. But it is because he is human that he qualifies to be a fair judge in the Western world in our legal setup. We do follow, this is a bit of an example, I don’t know whether originally people understood what they were doing, but this is where it’s come from. Where when you want to give a person a fair trial, you allow them to be tried by one of their peers. And it is in the humanity of Jesus, he faced what it was to live under the laws of God, the Jewish law at that, of all of us, particular type requirements. Jesus lived under the law as a man that he might qualify because he didn’t break it and be a sinless person to therefore go and be a sacrifice for our sins. And his going to the cross was based on the fact that he has lived out under the law of God and not failed like Adam and Eve did or like we do. He was a sinless sacrifice, and by him being a man who had faced what it was to have temptation, it wasn’t an easy rhyme for Jesus, he got tempted by the devil himself.

[00:22:11] You and I probably only got some little demon to trouble us, or maybe just some vague scenario to tempt us. We have enough within our human flesh, a sinful part of us, that still remains until we get to glory, that can create all sorts of temptations. But here is Jesus, and he is a person who is the one who will judge you, he is the one who will be your judge because he went through for him what was an appropriate parallel, a lot of temptations of life. And Jesus did it without failing, and was a sinless sacrifice. And therefore when he judges you, he knows from the point of view of being a human facing temptation, he knows from the point of view of having people against him, he knows from having all sorts of possibilities of getting. He could have got really angry with the Pharisees and sinned as a person in his attitudes, but he didn’t. He could have dodged going to the cross if he wanted to dodge the difficult parts of God’s requirement for his Christian life, but he didn’t. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel the temptation to dodge going to the cross, because that’s the whole business in the garden of Gethsemane, where he prays to the Father as if it’s at all possible, let this pass from me, let me not have to go. But then he says, not my will, but yours be done. Jesus in his righteousness qualifies to be a human who will be your judge. And so when it comes to this issue of the Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which are known as the Synoptic Gospels, some people think they didn’t really assert that Jesus thought he was the Son of God.

[00:24:05] It’s because those God interpreters are not understanding the extra that is being asserted by all the Gospels, that Jesus came to take on humanity, and in that scenario, to bear the punishment for humans, that he would be a fair judge for you one day, as well possibly your Saviour, if you’d accept what he did for you on the cross, and accept him as your Lord and Saviour, is a part of his mission to take on humanity that he might qualify to pay your punishment and then be available to be your personal Saviour. Being your Saviour is something he does because of his humanity as well as his deity. The fact that he faced up to temptation, the fact that he is a sinless sacrifice bore the punishment on the cross. And when he cried out, my God, my God, how you have forsaken me, or why have you forsaken me? It was because there, the extra of his being human, the whole business of his coming to the world, what is the centre of the Gospel isn’t just who he is as the Son of God, but it is here as the Son of God took on humanity and in that condition he went and paid for your punishment and put himself in the hands of the Father, who raised him to life again, and took him back to heaven and then made his name Jesus which was the name given in his yeomanity made it to be the name that bears the highest authority, the name of Jesus every knee to bow. Moments like this in the sermon, I feel like going off in a moment of praise to God for what he’s done in Christ. It’s no little thing that Jesus has accomplished by coming to the world and taking on humanity, paying for our sins, rising from the dead, ascending back to heaven being crowned King of Kings, and now as the Lord of Heaven offers to you and to me the forgiveness of sins,

[00:26:11] and the opportunity for him to be our personal saviour, that happens when we respond to him. Not only as just Son of God, that’s a funny thing to say isn’t it, not only, but certainly he is the Son of God in that fullest sense of his deity. But because he has paid your price, he has done the necessities to be your saviour, and he offers to be that for you. And that happens when we are prepared to accept him in that role as saviour for us. My parents used to be involved in Christian conventions, Dad often being the speaker at them, and so as little kids we would go along. There was one convention, this is in West Australia, which was up at Kalamunda, a place up in the mountain like we have up there, and that place we go for kesec conventions. Anyway, I was so little that me and my brother were put in the children’s tent, and there was a young man who later became a lecturer at the Baptist College in Queensland, but this young man in his teenagerhood, he had charge of looking after little kids, and he took it on himself to give us a gospel message.

[00:27:33] And he said, if you want to ask Jesus into your heart, use that language, put your hand up, and I did. And he led me to say a prayer, I must say, nothing happened, that I know of. But it was my willingness, and when I got in the car, my parents’ cars would go back to where we had lodgings, my older brother told Jimmy, put his hand up and asked to be a Christian or something. But you know, I don’t think anything happened, although God might have noticed my willingness. And then maybe another 6 years later, when I was 9, at the Billy Graham Crusade, God did call me, and I did respond, and I know on that occasion that this one who not only is God, but is God in the flesh, this one who was Saviour, became my Saviour, I’m absolutely certain of it, and have been ever since. And there is a need for us to listen to the Gospel of John, where it talks about Jesus as the Saviour, because it goes on to say, that famous passage, it says, he came to his own, his own world that he made,

[00:28:46] his own people to choose, and his own received him not. But to as many as did receive him, he gave the right to become the children of God. And there is that special sense, not just being a child of God because you’re human, but that special sense of having received Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour, that makes you a child of God in a way that is, you’re not son of God as Jesus is eternal son of God, but you become a son of God. Look it up in John’s Gospel, in the first chapters, three chapters, when you get home, and you’ll see that the whole business of Jesus’ deity, how will I say this carefully? I want to say it’s only half the story, because it’s looking at it from the point of view as his deity. The other half is from the point of view of his humanity, obviously his deity is the most important,

[00:29:46] but in his humanity, it was how he affected becoming our Saviour by dying for us and taking our sins, and being the person who’s available to let you become a son of God, in a special sense of being born again, of being made one of God’s children, in a way that’s more than just Adam and Eve were, or that Adam and Eve lost when they fell. But becoming a son of God because Jesus the Saviour has taken you on board to be someone that he has made you a Christian, who needs you to say yes to him. And if that’s not your case yet, when you get home, you ask Jesus in some silent moment to be son of God, and also the Messiah, the Christ, the Saviour of the world, the one who becomes your personal Saviour, and you will know what it is to have the ministry of Christ happen, being affected in your heart and life.

[00:30:49] If you do that, send me a call or come back next week and tell us, because it’s the beginning of the Christian existence when you let Jesus be the Saviour that he came to be. Let me finish in the word of prayer. Heavenly Father, I thank you for the deity of Christ. Lord, I understand that lecture might have got misunderstood by one of the girls in my church who came back thinking he was teaching, or maybe he was someone who’s been misunderstanding all the liberal scholars who watered down the true gospel. But Lord, I thank you that you are God’s eternal son in a way that no one else is. But I thank you also that you came and took on humanity, that you might be my Saviour. I thank you for that day when I was nine and got in the door with you. And I pray that someone here that will happen for them this day in Jesus’ name. Amen.