The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers 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. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Philippians 2:5-11:

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature[a] God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature[b] of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

Christ’s divinity is one of the great mysteries of the Church.

“I think there is a difference or distinction between paradox and mystery, however, that needs to be clarified. Let me start by saying that all paradoxes are mysteries, but not all mysteries are paradoxes. A paradox is a seeming contradiction. A mystery is a hidden truth of some sort, or some truth unable to be grasped by a finite mind.”

Nobody goes to that restaurant; it’s too crowded.
Don’t go near the water ’til you have learned how to swim.
If you get this message, call me, and if you don’t get it, don’t call.
I can resist anything but temptation.

What we have here is a mystery and not a paradox. Christ is fully human and fully divine.

As J.I. Packer has said: “Here are two mysteries for the price of one–the plurality of persons within the unity of God, and the union of Godhead and manhood in the person of Jesus. …Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the Incarnation,”

It is the starting point and central truth of Christianity. Without it we are left with a moral code that leads to death. We are lost in the universe.

In a sense, we have so diluted the meaning of the word divine that the issue of the divinity of Jesus is not what it once was.

“The Divine Miss M: Bette Midler”
Divine means pleasant or delightful.
A divine is a member of the clergy
We have divinity schools
Divine can even mean the art of divination by which we intuit or guess.
Divinity candy
I had an absolutely divine trip

Jesus was “divine” in the same way we experience it today. He was delightful and pleasant. He had, like all of us, a spark of divinity in him that made him unique – but not God.

It does not mean totally outside our experience and understanding. It means something that is better than normal but still natural. Maybe that’s a paradox in itself? We have reduced divine to human.

2.  The divinity of Jesus is a revelation – and not an argument or puzzle to be solved. If words and ideas could comprehend it then it would be complex and difficult but it would not be a mystery. There are some things that are either revealed or simply taken on faith.

Matthew 16:13-17:

13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” 14 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” 15 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” 16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” 17 Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven.

3.  For three hundred years this was an issue in the church. Thousands of Christians did not believe in Christ sharing the nature of God. It was only settled in 325 AD by the Council of Nicea convened by the Emperor Constantine in response to the heresy of Arianism. There were many different interpretations within the early church about the divinity of Christ and many heresies. It’s hard to believe the church could have survived without more agreement than it had on these matters. There were different interpretations and many outright heresies.

a. Docetism: Jesus only seemed to be human but he was not.
b. Monophysitism – Jesus had two separate natures that were joined together at birth.
c. Adoptionism: Jesus was a human being adopted by God at his baptism
d. Nestorianism: Jesus had two natures – human and divine – which remained separate in his lifetime.
e. Apollinarianism: Jesus was not a real man and not totally divine either.
f. Arianism: Jesus was a special creation by God – not fully God.
g. Priscillianism: Denies Christ’s divinity and real humanity. Human souls were united to bodies in punishment for their sins.

The list is even longer than this but these are the main heresies that unsettled the church for centuries. We sometimes think the early church was in total agreement but they weren’t. Many of the heresies were originated by the leaders of the church and they often built significant numbers of followers. While we don’t hear much about heresies today, the conditions are probably as good as they have been in many, many years.

There is, as we said last week, a growing consensus that religious beliefs are private and individual.

There is a general misinterpretation of what “priesthood of all believers” really means. It does not mean I can believe and practice what I choose and no one can tell me what to do.

There is a growing ignorance of both Scripture and doctrine. Baptists are proud of being people without creeds but there is a downside to that. We follow strong personalities instead of doctrines.

The quick dissemination and acceptance of innovative thinking about Scripture has never been more possible.

There is no Council that could be convened to determine what is doctrine and what is heresy. We would all resist it. We would say, as kids say today, “You are not the boss of me.”

4.  Why is it important to believe Christ is divine if it is a mystery and, frankly, has so little to do with my day to day life?

a. Because only a perfect sacrifice would satisfy God and redeem us. Human perfection is still flawed by original sin. A person could be almost completely sinless but the virus of original sin would make them flawed. A person could have divine characteristics and be the best human nature can produce but would not be sufficient. God provided His own sacrifice – just as He did in Genesis 22 with Abraham and Isaac.

b. Because in several places Jesus says he is and if he is not then we are left believing in a self-deluded liar. “I and the Father are one.” “If you have seen me you have seen the Father.” As well, we believe because the earliest disciples – despite the heresies – believed that Jesus was divine and not simply a better human being. If they did not believe it why would they perpetuate it? What did they get out of it? Most heresies benefit the leaders of the heresies. Here is the way Peter Kreeft puts it:

“Here is what they got out of their hoax. Their friends and families scorned them. Their social standing, possessions, and political privileges were stolen from them by both Jews and Romans. They were persecuted, imprisoned, whipped, tortured, exiled, crucified, eaten by lions, and cut to pieces by gladiators. So some silly Jews invented the whole elaborate, incredible lie of Christianity for absolutely no reason, and millions of Gentiles believed it, devoted their lives to it, and died for it—for no reason. It was only a fantastic practical joke, a hoax.”

c. Because it says that the immortal is not in opposition to the mortal. God is not content to be an abstract idea or, as many believed, the material world is evil and God could not dwell in the flesh or in a material world. God said, “it is good” on the final days of creation and the divine becoming flesh says something important about the material world. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

d. Because all we can know about God the Father is in Christ. He is the image of the invisible God. This does not mean that God looks like Jesus – 5’7″ with a beard. That is the problem with the ever changing images of Jesus. Every generation has an image they want to produce. South America has the absolute worst images of Jesus I have ever seen. Just the opposite of that are some of the “pleasant and delightful” images we have produced to keep from scaring children and to make Jesus more appealing to us. It is one of the flaws in the formula “What would Jesus do?” So much of that depends on our image and interpretation of Jesus as a man.

Jesus is not a picture of God. He shares the very nature of God – the DNA of God. This is what Paul means in Philippians 2 when he says, “who being in very nature God.” Jesus was not a compressed version of God. He was not a size gazillion God pressed into a size 42 regular body. He shares the very nature of God – and we sometimes get that confused with size. What happens when matter is compressed is eventually a black hole – not the image of God.

Unlike other great teachers, there is nothing left out, nothing to improve, nothing left unsaid or to be changed in a later edition. There are no words to be regretted later.

He did not evolve in his thinking or speaking. He did not need to practice or perfect what he said. It was perfect the first time and that is why he could say, “When you stand before rulers do not worry about what you are going to say.”

In other words, only God himself could adequately reveal Himself.

e. Because it assures us that we will never become divine ourselves. We are created and flawed. We are not perfectible. There is only one divine man and, in a sense, that relieves me of the burden of trying to become divine. It also keeps me from ever being tempted to believe anyone else can or should become divine.

There is a great temptation to believe the definition of “divine” means we can become almost godlike ourselves. We can so perfect ourselves that we begin to share in the divine nature of God and become little Christs through our own efforts. Many great people have believed this. In fact, Martin Luther King believed it. To him, Jesus was a great example – perhaps the greatest example of what a man could become – but he was not divine in the sense we understand it.

“Yes it was the warmness of his devotion to God and the intimacy of his trust in God that accounts for his being the supreme revelation of God. All of this reveals to us that one man has at last realized his true divine calling: That of becoming a true son of man by becoming a true son of God. It is the achievement of a man who has, as nearly as we can tell, completely opened his life to the influence of the divine spirit.”

If Christ is not divine, then human sacrifice is sufficient. He is a sacrifice but he is not a savior. Heaven and creation are not reconciled and there is no peace with God. As Hebrews says, the sacrifice needed to be repeated over and over again because it was imperfect. If Christ was not sufficient then we have to keep repeating the sacrifice over and over again ourselves.

f. If Christ is not divine then he cannot mediate perfectly between God and man. He could be Moses but he cannot be God. He could be the best we can produce but he could not be God. He could perform supernatural acts but not be God. He could do things no other human being could do but not be God.

5.  Let me close with this.

“But a mere man who wants you to worship him as God is not a good man. He is a very bad man indeed, either morally or intellectually. If he knows that he is not God, then he is morally bad, a liar trying deliberately to deceive you into blasphemy. If he does not know that he is not God, if he sincerely thinks he is God, then he is intellectually bad—in fact, insane.”

C.S. Lewis puts it this way: “I am trying to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I am ready to accept Jesus as the great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a boiled egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

If Christ was not sufficient then we need to sacrifice over and over again because God will never be satisfied. If Christ is not risen then our faith is futile and we are still in our sins. As Paul says, “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.” Christ is not the greatest of all teachers or examples or leaders. He is God – and that is a mystery.