3 God the Son: His Identity and Birth
3
God the Son
His Identity and Birth
We come now to the second major section of the creed. Our attention shifts to Jesus Christ and brings us to the heart of the Christian faith.
The Ideas Explained
A. Jesus Christ, his only Son
The focus of the creed is the name and the relevance of Jesus Christ. It is generally thought that the creed represents an expansion of a very simple and basic confession of faith: “Jesus is Lord!” At the center of the Christian faith lies the person of Jesus Christ.
The core of the Christian faith is a person, not a set of abstract ideas or beliefs. We must resist the temptation to speak about Christianity as if it were some “ism,” like Buddhism, Freudianism or Marxism. These are essentially abstract systems that have become detached from the person of their founder and reduced to sets of ideas or doctrines. All that Marx did was to introduce his concepts; Marxism is now quite independent of him. The relationship between Jesus and Christianity is very different. To begin with, Buddha, Freud and Marx are all dead—yet Christianity knows its head as living and risen from the dead.
Christians have always insisted that there is something qualitatively different about Jesus that sets him apart from all other religious teachers or thinkers. There is a vitally close connection between the person and the message of Jesus. It is what Jesus did and the impact he made on those who encountered him that make his message important. From the very beginning Christians realized that Jesus just could not be treated as an ordinary human being. In Jesus the message and the messenger are one and the same. Jesus’ message is given weight and status because of who we recognize Jesus to be.
The name Jesus Christ needs some explanation. Strictly speaking, we ought to write it as “Jesus the Christ.” Christ is actually a title rather than just a surname. The very name Jesus gives a clue to his importance: “You are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). The name Jesus literally means “God saves.” That this name was fully justified is demonstrated by the New Testament accounts of his death and resurrection and the new relationship between believers and God that became possible as a result.
In calling Jesus “the Christ,” the New Testament writers are pointing to Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah. (Christ is the Greek version of the Hebrew word Messiah; see John 1:41.) The Messiah was the long-awaited deliverer of the people of God, promised within the pages of the Old Testament. Although there were many understandings of what the coming of the Messiah would be like, many linked his coming with prophecies such as Malachi 3:1, which spoke of someone coming to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord. This prophecy was held to be fulfilled through the appearance of John the Baptist (Mark 1:1-8). So when Peter recognizes Jesus as “the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16), he is identifying Jesus with the long-awaited Messiah.
Messiah literally means “the anointed one”—in other words, someone who has been anointed with oil. In Old Testament times, the anointed person was regarded as having been singled out by God as having special importance. Thus 1 Samuel 24:6 refers to the king as “the Lord’s anointed.” The basic sense of the word Messiah could be said to be “the divinely appointed King of Israel.” As time passed, the term gradually came to refer to a deliverer, himself a descendant of King David, who would restore Israel to the golden age the nation enjoyed under the rule of David. It is for this reason that New Testament writers stress that Jesus was a descendant of David (for example, Matthew 1:1-17; Romans 1:3).
What do Christians believe about Jesus Christ? It is certainly true that Jesus was a first-century Jew who lived in Palestine in the reign of Tiberius Caesar and was executed by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate. The Roman historian Tacitus refers to Christians’ deriving their name from “Christ, who was executed at the hands of the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius.” The historical evidence for his existence is sufficient to satisfy all but those who are determined to believe that he didn’t exist, whatever the evidence may be.
But here we must pause to reflect. The Christian faith certainly presupposes that Jesus existed as a real historical figure and that he was crucified. Yet Christianity is most emphatically not about the mere facts that Jesus existed and was crucified. Christian faith is not just the assertion that a man called Jesus really existed.
The creed explains why Jesus is of such central importance to the Christian faith. It identifies a number of key beliefs that allow us to understand why he matters so much to Christians. The first reason it identifies is that Jesus is the “Son of God.” What might this mean?
In the Old Testament this phrase is occasionally used to refer to angelic or supernatural persons (see Job 38:7; Psalm 82:6; Daniel 3:25). The Old Testament also refers to the coming Messiah as the “Son of God” (2 Samuel 7:12-14; Psalm 2:7; 89:26-27). In the New Testament the term is used to highlight the unique nature of the Son-Father relationship between Jesus and God (for example, Mark 1:11; 9:7; 12:6; 13:32; 14:61-62; 15:39). Jesus directly addresses God as “Father,” using the very intimate Aramaic word Abba (Mark 14:36). In John’s Gospel the importance of the Father-Son relationship is brought out with special clarity (John 5:16-27; 17:1-26). Here we find a remarkable emphasis on the identity of will and purpose of the Father and Son, indicating how close is the relationship between Jesus and God. In the words of Jesus himself, as in the impression that was created among the first Christians, Jesus is clearly understood to have a unique and intimate relationship to God, which the resurrection demonstrated publicly (Romans 1:3-4).
Although all believers are children of God in some sense of the word, Jesus is singled out as the Son of God. Paul distinguishes between Jesus as the natural Son of God and believers as adopted “sons” (Romans 8:23; 9:4; Ephesians 1:5). Our relationship to God is quite different from Jesus’ relationship to him, even though both may be referred to as “sons of God.” Similarly, in 1 John Jesus is referred to as “the Son,” while believers are designated as “children.” There is something quite distinct about Jesus’ relationship to God, as expressed in the title “Son of God.”
In the creed, stating that Jesus is the “Son of God” amounts to saying that Jesus is God. We shall explore why this is the case later in this book. This idea is often referred to as “the incarnation”—in other words, that God became man in Jesus Christ (John 1:14). But why is this belief important? Two examples will illustrate.
It is central to the gospel that we are saved through Jesus Christ: “Salvation is found in no one else” (Acts 4:12). You may know that a fish came to be a symbol of faith to the early Christians, because the five letters spelling out “fish” in Greek came to represent the slogan “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.” The New Testament states that Jesus saves his people from their sins (Matthew 1:21); he is the Savior born in Bethlehem (Luke 2:11); in his name alone is there salvation (Acts 4:12). Yet the Old Testament insists that it is God, and God alone, who can save and redeem his people (see, for example, Isaiah 45:21-22). Unless Jesus is God, it is impossible for Jesus to save us.
Again, it is obvious that the first Christians worshiped and adored Jesus Christ—a practice that continues today. Thus 1 Corinthians 1:2 refers to Christians as those who “call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,” using language that reflects the Old Testament formulas for worshiping or adoring God himself (as in Genesis 4:26; 13:4; Psalm 105:1; Jeremiah 10:25; Joel 2:32). Yet as every reader of the Old Testament knows, it is God and God alone who is to be worshiped (Exodus 20:3-7). And as Paul reminded the Christians at Rome, there was a constant danger that people might worship creatures when they ought to be worshiping their Creator instead (Romans 1:23). If Jesus were just another human being, a creature like the rest of us, the New Testament writers would be guilty of worshiping a creature! The insight that Jesus is the Son of God, however, disposes of this difficulty. Jesus ought to be worshiped and adored—precisely because he is God.
B. Our Lord
Having already defined him as the “Son of God,” the creed continues its description of Jesus Christ by referring to him as “our Lord.”
“Let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36). With these words Peter echoes the common teaching of the New Testament: through the resurrection of Jesus, God has established his credentials as both Messiah and the Lord. We have already looked at the implications of the term Messiah or Christ; the term Lord now needs unpacking.
It is difficult to open the Old Testament without coming across the word Lord It is used time and time again to refer to God (as in Genesis 12:1; 15:6; 17:1; 39:2; Exodus 3:2). The Old Testament writers were reluctant to refer to God directly. God’s name was regarded as too holy to be bandied about. When it was necessary to make reference to God, they generally used a “cipher” of four letters, YHWH (often referred to as the Tetragrammaton). This group of letters, which lies behind die King James Version’s references to God as “Jehovah” and the rather cryptic references in other translations to God as “Yahweh,” was used to represent the sacred name of God. When the Old Testament Scriptures were translated from Hebrew into Greek, the Greek word kyrios—“the Lord”—was used to translate the sacred name of God. Thus the historian Josephus tells us that the Jews refused to call the Roman emperor kyrios, because they regarded this name as reserved for God alone. Long before the New Testament period, the word Lord thus came to refer to God himself.
Lord is used in this same way in the New Testament. Jesus refers to God as “the Lord” on several occasions (for example, Matthew 4:10; 22:37). But an astonishing new development has taken place: now Jesus himself is regularly referred to as “the Lord” (for example, Philippians 2:11; 3:8; Colossians 2:6). A word that was once used to refer to God has now come to refer to Jesus.
Sometimes the word is used as little more than a polite tide of respect. Thus when Martha speaks to Jesus and addresses him as “Lord’ (John 11:21), she is probably—although not necessarily—merely treating him with due respect. But such uses account for only a small number of the occurrences of the word. The vast majority of them refer to Jesus as “the Lord.” It is obvious that something of vital importance about Jesus’ status is being said. But what? And why?
The confession “Jesus is Lord” (Romans 10:9; 1 Corinthians 12:3) was clearly regarded by Paul as a superb summary of the gospel. Christians are those who call on the name of the Lord (Romans 10:13; 1 Corinthians 1:2). They are those who have “received Christ Jesus as Lord” (Colossians 2:6). Through the resurrection, God has established Jesus Christ as Lord and publicly declared this to all of humanity (Acts 2:36). “Jesus is Lord” means Jesus has been given the same status as God himself. It is an affirmation that Jesus has the right to lordship over us just as God has.
This point is made especially clear several times in the New Testament when an Old Testament reference to “the Lord” (in other words, God) becomes a reference to “the Lord Jesus.” Two examples are particularly interesting.
1. Acts 2:21. In his great sermon on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:14-39) Peter quotes from the prophet Joel: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Acts 2:21). It is obvious that Peter interprets this as a reference to Jesus Christ: God has made Jesus “both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36), and anyone who repents and is baptized “in the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 2:38) will receive forgiveness of sins. Joel refers to a crucial period in the history of the people of God, in which the Spirit of God will be poured out on all people (Joel 2:28). A “great and dreadful day of the LORD” (that is, God; Joel 2:31) is foretold, on which the Spirit of the Lord will be poured out on the people of God; on that day “everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved” (Joel 2:32)—in other words, everyone who calls on the name of God will be saved. But for Peter the “Lord” in question is Jesus. Through his resurrection Jesus has been declared to be the Lord. He now has the status and identity of God himself.
2. Philippians 2:10-11. In this famous passage Paul declares that God has exalted Jesus so that “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow ... and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” Paul is here making use of Isaiah 45:23, in which God himself declares that one day every knee will bow before him and every tongue confess him! In other words, Paul has felt it entirely appropriate, in the light of the resurrection, to take a great Old Testament prophecy referring to the Lord God and apply it to the Lord Jesus.
Many other illustrations of this could be given—for example, Hebrews 1:10, which alters the reference of Psalm 102:25 from God to Jesus. This practice of transferring from one Lord (God) to another (Jesus) is known to have infuriated Jews at the time. So in the second-century dialogue between Trypho the Jew and Justin Martyr, Trypho complains that Christians have “hijacked” passages referring to God, in order to refer them to Christ. There was, of course, no suggestion that there were two “Lords” (in other words, two Gods)—simply that Jesus had to be regarded as having a status equal to that of God, which demanded that he be addressed and worshiped as God.
To believe that Jesus is Lord, therefore, involves more than believing that he has authority over us (although, as we shall see, that is certainly implied); it makes a direct and powerful claim about the divinity of Jesus Christ. To confess that Jesus Christ is Lord is to proclaim his equality with God. It makes a statement about Jesus’ relation to God.
It also, however, makes a statement about Jesus’ relation to us. It affirms that he is, or should be, the Lord of our lives. At this point the application of the lordship of Jesus Christ becomes especially relevant.
C. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary
The creed now changes pace slightly. Having told us what to believe about Jesus, it begins to explore the foundations of those beliefs. An appeal is made to history—to the great acts by which the Christian faith was brought into being. The creed rapidly takes us through the events of Christmas, Holy Week, Good Friday and Easter Day, as it unfolds the historical events on which the gospel is firmly based. First to be noted are the circumstances of the birth of Jesus.
This section of the creed takes up the key elements of two well-known scriptural passages, Matthew 1:18-25 and Luke 1:26-38. There are two components to this familiar statement of Christian belief. On the one hand, Jesus was born of a human mother (Galatians 4:4). He is a human being, like us. He was born into the world, like us; later he would suffer and die, as we must one day suffer and die. Jesus really was a human being, with whom we can identify But on the other hand, he was conceived by the Holy Spirit. From the moment of his conception Jesus was marked out as unique. He is the “Son of God” in every sense of the term. He did not become the Son of God at some point during his career; from the very beginning he possessed exactly this status and identity. The way Jesus was conceived confirms what the crucifixion and resurrection declare—that Jesus is indeed both God and man.
Jesus was both God and man, really divine and really human at one and the same time. This was the conclusion forced on Christians as they reflected on the remarkable story of Jesus. Everything pointed to it. It was a very significant conclusion to draw—yet the first Christians felt the evidence compelled them to draw it. A number of alternative explanations of Jesus’ identity and significance were given careful consideration and rejected. Two are of particular importance.
1. Jesus was a man whom God adopted as his Son; up to that point he was just an ordinary human being like anyone else. Supporters of this theory (known as “adoptionism”) suggested that the moment of Jesus’ adoption was his baptism. For these individuals, the words “You are my Son, whom I love” (Mark 1:11) represented the moment of his adoption as the Son of God. The critics of this theory drew attention to scriptural passages stressing that Jesus was the Son of God from eternity (for example, Colossians 1:15-23; Hebrews 1).
2. Jesus was a divine being who masqueraded as a human being. He just seemed to be human; in reality he was nothing of the kind. His humanity was just an outward appearance, masking the fact that Jesus was a totally divine being. This theory, known as docetism (from the Greek word meaning “to appear or seem”), was rejected as inconsistent with the many biblical texts that point to Jesus’ humanity. Jesus hungered (Matthew 4:2), suffered (Luke 22:44), wept (John 11:33-35), was thirsty (John 19:28) and had real blood running through his veins (John 19:34). He really was a human being like us—he had to be, if he was to save us. The mystery of the incarnation does not involve denying Jesus’ humanity but recognizing that he was at the same time divine (John 1:14; 2 Corinthians 8:9; Philippians 2:5-11).
Note the explicit reference in the creed to the virgin birth. This belief is important for three reasons. First, it makes important connections with Old Testament prophecy (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:22-23). Here, as elsewhere in his career, Jesus brings to fulfillment great Old Testament hopes (compare Matthew 2:5-6, 14-15, 17-18). Second, it stresses that Jesus was divine by nature, not by adoption at a later date. Third, it provided an important defense against early Jewish opponents of Christianity who suggested that Jesus was the illegitimate child of Mary (it is possible that this may be hinted at in John 8:41). Such hostile critics often suggested that Jesus was the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier—thus insinuating collaboration with the foreign army of occupation. It was a clever move, shrewdly designed to discredit Jesus in the eyes of his own people. The New Testament, however, has a rather different—and much more exciting—understanding of who the real father of Jesus was!
Why is it important to insist that Jesus is both God and man, both divine and human? For a start, the evidence demands that conclusion. Christians believe it because it is the only interpretation of Jesus that does justice to him. But it is vitally important in other respects as well. If Jesus Christ was not both divine and human, our redemption would be a virtual impossibility. Let us explore this briefly.
Christians believe that we are saved only through Jesus Christ. What does this actually imply? It is obvious that Jesus is a man, a human being like all of us. But if he is just a man, like the rest of us, he shares our need for redemption—in other words, he can’t redeem us. He is part of our problem, not the solution to it So there must be some essential difference between Jesus and other human beings if Jesus is indeed to be our redeemer. After all, Christianity has always insisted that Jesus is the solution to our problem, rather than part of that problem!
On the other hand, if Jesus is God, and God alone, he has no point of contact with us. He cannot relate to those who need redemption. His humanity provides that point of contact. And so we arrive at the conclusion that Jesus must be divine and human if he is to redeem us.
We could develop the same idea along different lines. Imagine two people—let us call them A and B—who enjoy a close relationship, which breaks down completely over some misunderstanding. A is convinced that it is the fault of B, and B is sure that A is in the wrong. So strongly do they hold their views that they refuse to speak to each other. The situation is, unfortunately, all too familiar from everyday experience—whether it is a matter of personal relationships or industrial or international relations. We all know situations where this has happened; we may even have been unfortunate enough to have been involved with them ourselves. But how can the situation be resolved? How can A and B become reconciled? It is clear that the situation demands a mediator, a go-between. But who is qualified to act in this capacity?
Clearly, the best mediator or go-between is someone whom both A and B know and respect, but who will be impartial. Let us call this mediator C. C must represent A to B, and B to A. He or she must not be identified with either A or B, yet must have points of contact with both if he or she is to be accepted. He or she must be close enough to both of them to represent them both and yet sufficiently different from them both to prevent being identified with either.
The idea of Jesus being the one and only go-between or mediator between God and sinful humanity is deeply ingrained in the New Testament. “For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5). Paul talks about God “reconciling” us to himself through Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 5:18-19). Interestingly, Paul uses the same Greek word to refer to the restoration of the relationship between God and humanity which he had used earlier to refer to the restoration of a broken relationship between a husband and wife (1 Corinthians 7:10-11). Christ is understood to act as the mediator, or go-between, in restoring the relation between God and humanity to what it once was.
And now we can start applying the ideas we discussed in the previous paragraph. This mediator must represent God to humankind, and humankind to God. He must have points of contact with both God and humanity and yet be distinguishable from them both. And so on. In short, the central Christian idea of the incarnation, which expresses the belief that Jesus is both God and man, divine and human, portrays Jesus as the perfect mediator between God and human beings. He, and he alone, is able to redeem us and reconcile us to God.
The Ideas Applied
A. Jesus Christ, his only Son
Suppose we wanted to think about the love of God. We could say that it is infinite, boundless, beyond human telling and so on. But all we would have done is to speak of it abstractly and negatively, explaining what it is not. In fact, we are more or less saying that whatever the love of God may be like, we can’t say anything much about it But the love of God is a rather important and exciting aspect of Christianity, something we would certainly like to be able to talk about! Surely we can say something clear, intelligible, positive and exciting about it.
The basic problem here is that the human mind needs to think visually. It needs to picture God somehow. A picture, as we are often told, is worth a thousand words. Yet what pictures can we use? There is every danger that we will choose something unreliable. But recognizing that Jesus is the Son of God, we can use Jesus himself as a picture of God. In this way we can make a very positive and powerful statement about the love of God for human beings. The love of God is like the love of a man who lays down his life for his friends (John 15:13). Immediately we are given a picture, an image, drawn from human experience. Here is something we can visualize and relate to. In the familiar and moving picture of Jesus laying down his life, giving his very being, for someone he loves, we have a most powerful, striking and moving statement of the full extent of the love of God for us.
We can talk about the love of God in terms of our own experience, and supremely in terms of the tender image of Jesus Christ trudging to Calvary to die for those he loved. It is a moving, poignant and deeply evocative image that we can easily imagine and identify with. In short, it is a statement about the love of God that speaks to us, that appeals to us and that brings home exactly what the love of God is like. No longer need we be at a loss for words when we try to speak about the love of God to our friends or picture it for ourselves.
B. Our Lord
Note that the creed does not just refer to Jesus as the Lord; he is our Lord. Jesus Christ has a right to lordship over our lives. This amounts to a demand for personal obedience and loyalty to Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. If we do not recognize Jesus Christ as Lord, he is not our Lord but someone else’s. He has yet to be acknowledged as Lord of our lives. It is possible to pay lip service to Jesus as Lord yet deny him as Lord by the way we act (Matthew 7:21-22). To recognize that Jesus is Lord is to seek to do his will.
But Jesus Christ is not merely the Lord of our personal lives, he is also the Lord of the church. It is Jesus Christ whom the church must obey. It is to Jesus Christ, and to no one else, that the church owes its faithful obedience. Many Christians have been faced with a real dilemma over conflicts of loyalty. Often Jesus Christ seems to pull in one direction and other influential and powerful individuals or bodies in another. Which is to be obeyed?
This was the choice faced by the German church in the 1930s, when Adolf Hitler came to power. He demanded that he and the government of the Third Reich should have authority over the church and its preaching. Alarmed by this development, representatives of the Protestant churches met at Barmen (May 29-31, 1934). There they issued the famous Barmen Declaration, perhaps one of the finest statements of the lordship of Jesus Christ over his church:
“I am the way and the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). “I tell you the truth, the man who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber.... I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved” (John 10:1, 9).
Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death. We reject the false doctrine, that the church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of her proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God’s revelation.
In other words, the church cannot and must not substitute anything (for example, the state government) or anyone (such as Adolf Hitler) for Jesus Christ. If the church ever loses its Faithful obedience to its Lord, it has lost its life and its soul.
At many points throughout the world the Christian church is under strain to conform to outside pressures. In the West there is pressure for the church to conform to the values of secular liberal culture. In southern Africa and South America there is pressure for the church to conform to the views of authoritarian regimes. But if the lordship of Christ is taken seriously, these pressures must be resisted. The church of Jesus Christ owes its loyalty, its existence and its future to the One who died in order that we might live; and God has declared him—and no one and nothing else—Lord of that church. A sobering thought, perhaps, but one that cannot be ignored.
C. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary
Many of us feel low at points. We find resisting temptation difficult. We are frightened by the thought of suffering and death. It is here that the doctrine of the incarnation has a vital contribution to make. Through Christ, God knows what it is like to be tempted. He knows what it is like to suffer. When we pray in such situations, we don’t have to explain to God what it is like—he already knows. He has been through it himself. He has experienced it firsthand. This is a deeply consoling thought: we have a God who knows and understands our weaknesses. He is someone we can approach in trust.
Suppose someone comes to you and explains that he is going through a difficult time. His mother died recently, and he feels totally lost. Naturally you want to help. You try to imagine what it must be like to lose your mother (your own mother happens to still be alive). You try to think yourself into your friend’s situation. You imagine what he is going through and try to respond accordingly. That is empathy, a very useful tool for counseling individuals.
But now try to imagine a different situation: your own mother died recently. If that is the case, immediately you can relate to your friend. You have shared a common experience. You can say, “I know just how you must feel!” Can you see how much more credible and helpful that makes you to your friend? Can you understand how he will find you easier to talk to as a result? He will feel that you understand him.
That is sympathy—where your care is based on a shared experience. When you are tempted or suffer, remember that God sympathizes with you. God has no need to empathize with you. He has been through it before you (Hebrews 4:14-16). Take comfort from that thought.
Key Bible Passages
A. Jesus Christ, his only Son
Mark 1:1-8: Mark’s account of how John the Baptist prepared the way for the arrival of Jesus
Mark 2:1-12: One of the early incidents that marked Jesus out as really special
John 1:14: John’s understanding of the significance of Jesus’ life on earth
John 5:16-27: How Jesus saw his identity as the Son of God
John 17:1-26: Jesus’ prayer to his Father on the night before he died
Romans 1:3-4: Paul’s summary of the dual human and divine identity of Jesus
B. Our Lord
Matthew 7:21-22: A warning about what it really means for Jesus to be “Lord”
Acts 2:14-39: Peter’s explanation of how a crucified criminal could be Messiah and Lord
Romans 10:9 and 1 Corinthians 12:3: The significance of saying “Jesus is Lord”
Philippians 2:5-11: An early Christian hymn about Jesus
C. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary
Matthew 1:18-25: The circumstances leading up to the birth of Jesus from Joseph’s viewpoint
Luke 1:26-38: The circumstances leading up to the birth of Jesus from Mary’s viewpoint
Hebrews 4:14-16: One of the implications of the humanity of Jesus
Questions for Group Discussion
1. Begin by reading Philippians 2:5-11 together. Then use the passage as a basis for prayer together.
2. What do we mean when we call Jesus by the title Christ?
3. How does the truth that Jesus is the Son of God help us to understand and explain more clearly what God is like?
4. In what way is the statement “Jesus is Lord” a superb summary of the Christian gospel?
5. What does it mean in practice for you to show personal loyalty to Jesus as Lord? Are there areas where you are merely paying lip service to him?
6. Why is it so important to insist that Jesus is both fully divine and fully human?
7. How does it help you to know that God understands exactly what it’s like to be human?
For Further Reading
Fernando, Ajith. The Supremacy of Christ. Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 1995. A clear and helpful guide to the full significance of Christ.
France, R. T. Jesus the Radical. Leicester, U.K.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1989. Provides many insights into the impact of Jesus on first-century Judea.
McGrath, Alister. Understanding Jesus: Who Jesus Christ Is and Why He Matters. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Academie/Zondervan, 1987. A lucid and easy-to-read guide to the main Christian belief about Jesus as both God and man.