Philippians 2:5-11: Is Jesus God?

Is Jesus God? Yes.

Like every Christian, I affirm that Jesus is God. This is a non-negotiable in Christianity and it is an important question. If you go to a church or have someone show up at your door talking about religion, I encourage you to ask her this very question: Is Jesus God? Simply put, if the person cannot answer with an unequivocal yes, then she is not a Christian.

Jesus Christ is ‘truly and properly God’ (TSA d.4). ‘He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made’ (John 1:2-3). The character and being of God were fully present in the life of the man Jesus, for ‘He who has seen me has seen the Father’ (John 14: 9). In the Gospel of John we read that ‘the Word became flesh and lived for a while among us’ (John 1:14). In Philippians, Paul expresses this truth when he describes Christ as ‘being in very nature God’, and yet ‘taking the very nature of a servant’ (Philippians 2: 6-7). In Hebrews, Jesus Christ is referred to as ‘the radiance of God’s glory and exact representation of his being’ (Hebrews 1:3). At the Council of Chalcedon in 451, a statement was formulated which embraced the twin truths that Jesus Christ is one integrated person, with a divine and a human nature, ‘without confusion, without change, without division, without separation . . . at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man’ (from the Chalcedonian Definition). In the person of Jesus we see humanity fully open to divine grace and we see God revealed to us. (Salvation Story: Salvationists Handbook of Doctrine, pp 37-38).

Jesus is God and as Jesus died and returned to life, he is the Lord of both the living and the dead and sooner or later every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Romans 14:9-11, cf. Isaiah 45:23) for 'Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved' (Acts 4:12).

So then as Jesus is God, the question for us today is will we serve Him both now and forever in His Kingdom to come?

More daily blogs at

https://salvogesis.blogspot.ca/

---

[1] Based on the article by Captain Michael Ramsay, Is Jesus God? Nipawin Journal (28 May 2008) On-line: http://sheepspeak.com/sasknews.htm#G_d Is Jesus God?

Comments

Hosanna! The Triumphal Entry into Holy Week (Matthew 21:1-11)

Today is Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday is when we commemorate the Sunday before Jesus’ death. Jerusalem was occupied then, like it is now; now it is occupied by the Israelis, then it was occupied by the Romans. The Judeans in the first century didn’t like being occupied then any more than the Palestinians like it today. The Romans were harsh, not nearly as brutal as modern Israel, but harsh enough that the first century had their version of … (Remember the suicide bombers of the ‘70s and ‘80s?) …suicide bombers: the Sicarii (zealots), Judean terrorists / revolutionaries would walk into crowds with daggers looking for Romans to kill –. One of Jesus’ followers, Simon, was arguably a Sicarii or zealot. Passover is the commemoration of ancient Israel’s birth as a nation. The Angel of Death passed over Egypt and the nations of Isreal and Judah were created through the Exodus. Passover, in the Roman period, was a time when many people of Judean descent descended upon Jerusalem. I ...

Lanterns (Matthew 25:1-13, Psalm 146)

The topics I chose from our Lenten list for today are “God has rescued us from the Dominion of Darkness”; “He has Freed Us from the Power of Sin”; the Kingdom of God is at hand. Do we believe that? Do we live that? In theology we use the term ‘prolepsis’ to refer to the time when the Kingdom of God begins, which is now, the time between the resurrection of Christ and His return at the eschaton. This is the time in which we are living and as Christians it is our responsibility to be willing instruments of God to display what it means that He has rescued us from the Dominion of Darkness; He has Freed Us from the Power of Sin, that the Kingdom of God is at hand. But do we even actually believe that He has already done this? And if He has why does it not seem that the Sin and Darkness still reign? We know the parable of the bridesmaids (holy ones) in the Bible who needed to keep their lanterns lit – because lit lanterns were to be there when the Bridegroom Jesus returns...

Bah Ram You Shaggy Goat (Daniel 8)

This book is written in a couple of different languages as we have it tod ay. Ch apter 7 that Susan looked at with us is the last Aramaic chapter - if that is on purpose then chapter 7 probably concludes the first section of Daniel rather than beginning the next section but Ch apter 8 that we are looking at today (and everything flowing from it) is obviously connected to Chapter 7 as Da n iel refers to the first dream when relaying the second one. Chronologically speaking, Chapter 8 and Chapter 7 take place before C hapters 5 and 6. In Chapter 5, Babylon falls, Belshazzar is killed and the Persians take over. None of that has happened in Chapter 8 which we are about to read . Verses 1-4 8 In the third year of King Belshazzar’s reign, I, Daniel, had a vision, after the one that had already appeared to me. 2 In my ...

Salvogesis

Search This Blog