Monday, March 31, 2014

Session Three: Jesus


The God/Man

Scripture teaches that Jesus is unique in many ways!   This includes His very nature – for he is not JUST a human being (what we obviously can see) but He is also God! 

He is a real “flesh and blood” human being, the son of Mary, a Hebrew descendent of Abraham, a Jew of the line of Judah and David (Galatians 4:4, John 19:34, 1 Timothy 2:5).  But He is also the “incarnate” Second Person of the Trinity (John 20:28, 1 John 5:20).  At His conception, the Second Person “became flesh” (incarnate) in the person of Jesus – so that He is altogether BOTH God and Man (the Two Natures of Christ).  Fully both.

These natures are united and inseparable but not blended into one.  The “interplay” of these two natures (called “The Communication of Attributes”) is difficult stuff beyond the scope of our study here – but it’s enough to say that sometimes we see Jesus primarily in one nature or the other, but we must never forget He was/is always and fully both since His conception. And what applies to His divine nature also applies to His human nature.   This can be pretty “heavy” stuff – we’ll need to wait for Christianity 201 (or maybe 301!) for that.

Embracing that Jesus is BOTH fully man and fully God of course embraces that two realities can be fully true at the same time.  Obviously, there’s a mystery there!  Obviously, where God is present, the rules of physics will not suffice.  There is always a human temptation to make things logical, to “connect the dots,” to explain things in terms of human stuff like science and philosophy.  It’s a temptation to resist…


Without sin

Because Jesus is ALSO God and God is without sin, one of the “functions” of the communication of attributes is that Jesus is completely without sin – He IS morally perfect and DOES fulfill the Law – He is the only human example of that.  This sinlessness of Jesus is an important teaching of the New Testament (Hebrews 4:15, John 8:46, John  8:29, John 17:19, John 18:38, Matthew 27:19, Luke 23:41, Matthew 27:4, 2 Corinthians 5:21, etc.).   We’ll later see why this is so important.

By His two natures, Jesus has all the attributes of God and all the attributes of man – except for sin. 


The Messiah/Savior!

But the important thing is that He is our Savior!  We’ll talk more about that in the next Chapter, but Christianity is centered in the affirmation that Jesus IS the Savior!

“You will give him the name Jesus for he will save the people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21).  “Jesus is the Savior of the world” (John 4:42).  “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven by which we are saved” (Acts 4:12).  “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son Jesus, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but has everlasting life” (John 3:16).  “I am the way and the truth and the life, no one comes unto the Father except by me.”  It’s understandable that we spend FAR less time and effort on metaphysical stuff about Jesus and far more time celebrating what He did and does!  He is the Savior!

A Word about Mary…

As is often the case, Lutherans hold a “middle ground” here. 

The Bible actually says very little about the mother of Jesus, but we are told that all generations will call her “blessed” and we read about Her profound example of faith and obedience.   And, of course, Jesus loved Mary – and so it’s appropriate for us to do the same. For these reasons, Lutherans hold Mary in high esteem – more so than is common in Protestantism.  Lutherans historically have referred to Her as “Our Lady” and “the Mother of God” (remembering that Jesus is also God). 

On the other hand, there are a number of dogmas in the Roman Catholic Church that we do not embrace as such.  These include the Perpetual Virginity of Mary (that Mary remained a virgin all her life, proclaimed in 681 AD), the Immaculate Conception of Mary (that she was conceived without original sin, 1870), the Assumption of Mary (that she was bodily received into heaven upon her death, 1950), the Mediatrix of All Graces (that she also is the mediator between God and man, 1904), and a few others.   We find no biblical confirmation for any of these ideas, the tradition is late and biblically unfounded, and indeed some of them seem to Lutherans biblically problematic and perhaps largely irrelevant.  Mind you, we don’t declare these ideas to be wrong, but we don’t affirm them as dogmas either.

It should be noted that Luther (and most of the early Lutheran “fathers”) embraced many of these teachings we now associate with Catholicism (a point Catholics often bring up).  Luther was Catholic for about half his life and he lived in a world VERY focused on Mary – and his spirituality reveals this.  Especially early on, Luther reveals a very passionate Marian devotion (that lessened with time).  But they were embraced as “pious opinions” not dogmas.  Pious opinions are views about which Scripture is silent (neither affirming or denying) but have strong historic and ecumenical embrace; these we are permitted but not required to embrace.  Like Luther, some Lutherans today embrace some of these things – but as pious opinion. 


Footnotes, questions and discussions…

1.    The Two Natures of Christ was another of the huge early debates (the Trinity being the other biggie).  This was a similar issue:  sometimes Jesus is presented as fully human, other times as fully God.  WHICH is true was a hot debate!  Some argued that He is fully God but only LOOKED like a human being (rather like a ghost), others that he was fully human but simply represented God on earth (a kind of divine Apostle).  Early Christians prayed, studied Scripture, debated and prayed.  Lots of philosophical theories were presented.  In the end, the embrace was simply that BOTH are equally true, and physics or philosophy just can’t explain it.  Scripture is to be taken at face value – even if we don’t understand it.  He is BOTH – inseparately.   His two natures BOTH exist (not some blending of the two, as if put into a mixer). We accept this – and just stop where Scripture does, leaving our questions as our questions. This was finally affirmed at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD (although this consensus was much older than that).  What wisdom do you see in this approach to this question?

2.    This session is about JESUS – the centerpiece of Christianity, and yet it’s probably the shortest session in our study!  The reason is simple:  Christianity is not so focused on the essence or nature of Jesus as on the work of Jesus – what Jesus did!  For us!  We’ll study that – at length – in the next chapter!


3.    Some Protestants and Catholics like to argue about Mary.  Lutherans find ourselves a bit on the sidelines.  We see Mary as a Christian of amazing faith and obedience – to be esteemed, and obviously she’s important as the Mother of Our Lord!!  On the other hand, we simply don’t want to dogmatically proclaim things not known to be true (and perhaps rather irrelevant anyway) or to suggest anything that detracts from Jesus as THE Savior.  We share some of the Catholic admiration and spirituality, but share the Protestant concern and emphasis on this point.  But we don’t like the fight  over Mary!  In what ways to you think Mary could help and/or harm our faith and discipleship?

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