THE DOCTRINE OF THE DEITY OF CHRIST IS ESSENTIAL FOR OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH OUR LORD

The doctrine of the Deity of Christ should impact us in the most profound and necessary ways. It is not acceptable before God to believe that Jesus is a created being or a mere manifestation of God, even if this being or manifestation died for our sins. These two alternatives fail to convey what God wants us to understand about Him – for one thing, that He profoundly loves us:

·       But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! (Romans 5:8-10)

Our Lord wants us to fully understand the extent of His love. However, if Jesus was created for the Cross (Arianism), this would not convey God’s love for us. Why not? Because God could have created 10,000 Christs in a moment with just a word, and without any cost to Himself!

Likewise, the belief that Christ is just a manifestation of God (modalism) would also fail to convey God’s love. A mere manifestation of God’s death also fails to demonstrate His love to us. A dying manifestation doesn’t even suffer for us.

Why does Christ’s deity matter? It mattered profoundly to me. I had been suffering to such a great extent, I had felt as if God was a sadist who created us for His entertainment. As much as I tried to shake off this thought, I couldn’t. If God was a sadistic deceiver, He was able to deceive me into believing a grand deception. How could I be sure that this He wasn’t a deceiver?

One evening, many years ago, as I was praying, everything was changed. I realized that God Himself had humbled Himself to die for my sins, even while I was His sworn enemy. Only this could possibly prove that He really loved me. I knew that a sadist would never do such a thing. Never again did I seriously doubt His love.

Afterwards, the logic of Romans 5 impacted me. I began to understand that if God had paid the supreme price for me when I was His enemy, He certainly would now protect His investment now that I had become His friend – forgiven, cleansed, and sanctified.

I was later amazed to discover that the Cross had been God’s most carefully guarded secret (1 Corinthians 2:7-9), as His precious jewel, the moment of His greatest glory:

·       And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. (John 12:23-24; 13:31)

Astonishingly, the moment of God’s greatest glory wasn’t when He created the world or even when He will subdue His enemies, but at the greatest act of love and humiliation imaginable. He had literally been dying to disclose this revelation to us at just the right time, even though He had been exposing Himself in cryptic ways throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. This revelation was so precious and central to the heart of God that it was the only thing guarded by the threat of death (Exodus 33:20; Leviticus 16).

The deity of Christ is necessary for us in other ways. Nothing short of the suffering and death of God Himself could convey another vital truth – the deadly seriousness of our sins. In OT times, God had “forgiven” sins, but this only represented a passing-over or covering-up of sins through the substitutionary sacrifice of animals. They still hadn’t been eradicated. As a result, His death was necessary and had to be applied retroactively to the sins of the OT believers (Hebrews 9:13-15) because the sacrificial animals could not remove sin. Instead, another kind of sacrifice had been hinted (Hebrews 10:1-7; Isaiah 53:1-12).

The death of the Son would not only demonstrate the love of God but also His righteousness, His utter hatred of sin and His need to deal conclusively with it:

·       …[We are] justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. (Romans 3:24-27)

How did the death of the Son reveal God’s righteousness, His abhorrence of sin, which should have consumed us (Romans 6:23)? Well, if God is omnipotent, why couldn’t He simply forgive without the shedding of blood of His beloved Messiah? I think that all that we can understand about this is that His hatred of sin and injustice is so great, that His holy nature requires propitiation, the death of the sinner. This means that all of us, even the “best” of us, deserve death.

The death of His Son means that even our slightest sin is an absolute abomination to the Father. This should serve as a wake-up call to not even consider something that our Savior finds so abhorrent that nothing short of the death of God the Son could possibly suffice for our forgiveness.

Therefore, Romans 3:27 (above) rhetorically asks, where is “our boasting.” The revelation of the righteousness of God in the substitutionary death of God the Son should take away any basis for pride and boasting. Consequently, we need always to be reminded of this truth, lest we succumb to sin or boast.

The fact that we are indebted to God should humble us, like the contrite Prodigal Son, but not punish us. We are free, but we are also debtors, both to our Savior and to others. It is the Cross of God that teaches us these vital lessons.

The lessons of the death of God the Son can impart to us gratitude, confidence, and every blessing in a way that the death of a created being or a mere manifestation of God could never do.  Paul discloses this truth by first presenting a case for Christ’s deity:

·       For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by 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. (Colossians 1:13-20)

Only God the Son could fulfill such a description. However, Paul would not stop there. He had a purpose for this introduction – to demonstrate to us how rich we are:

·       See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ. For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority. (Colossians 2:8-10)

Christ is fully God, and we have Christ. This means that we partake in everything that is His. We are also part of His Body. When I would visit my parents, I was always free to open their frig and take whatever I wanted. In Christ, we will eventually enjoy this same freedom and privilege. As His co-heirs (Romans 8:17), He withholds no good thing from those who love Him. As a result, we can come before Him gratefully, boldly, joyfully, and confidently (Hebrews 10:19-22).

Since in Christ “all the fullness of the Deity lives,” a created being or a manifestation could never have procured these blessings for us. Jesus had even prayed that the Father would spare Him from the Cross (Matthew 26:39). However, this hadn’t been the Father’s will. If Jesus was just a created being or a manifestation, the Father could have simply sent another perfectly made created being or manifestation in His place. However, He wouldn’t. Why not! It is obvious that such a substitution could never have satisfied the Father. Nothing short of the death of God the Son could have sufficed.

The death of God the Son also provides the moral basis for our lives. Paul explained:

·       Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:3-8)

If we are the sons of God, Christ is our example. Even though He is equal to God the Father, He humbled Himself unto the Cross. He is everything but became nothing, having set aside of all His Godly powers and privileges to come to us as a man. We, therefore, must set aside our own comforts to serve those for whom He died, as impossible as this might be by our own strength. However, a created being or a manifestation could not have provided such an example of humiliation for us to imitate. We can only humble ourselves by sacrificing what we already have. A created being or manifestation had nothing to sacrifice. Therefore, they couldn’t serve as an apt model for us.

No greater sacrifice could have been offered that what our Savior has offered to us. I feel that we have only scratched the surface of this once carefully hidden revelation. Even Moses had not been allowed to see the Face of God lest he die (Exodus 33:20). Yet we are to seek His Face, the secret things of God. Therefore, David prayed:

·       One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple…Hear, O LORD, when I cry aloud; be gracious to me and answer me! You have said, “Seek my face.” My heart says to you, “Your face, LORD, do I seek.” (Psalm 27:4, 7-8)

Even now, we can barely perceive the Face of God – the depths of His heart. We are told that we cannot fathom the depths of His love (Ephesians 3:19). However, a time is coming that we will understand Him, since we will see Him as He is (1 John 3:2). Meanwhile, we look upon Him in awe.