"For a child has been born for us, a son given to us: authority rests upon His shoulders; and He is named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God."

We come today to one of the most controversial truths of the Christian faith.  It is a truth that is hated by Muslims and Jews and branded as blasphemy.  It is a truth that liberal Christians seek to water down and belittle.  It is a dangerous truth, for it ultimately got Jesus killed on a cross.  

Yet it is the truth that is at the core of the Christian faith - it is the truth that that gives Christmas the reason for being.  What is this truth?  It is that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh.  

To be sure it is a great mystery, and I know that I will fall well short of being able to convey the power and scope of God being flesh fully to you this morning.  But it is a fantastic truth, and I know if we are able to grasp even a portion of it, it will enliven our faith, deepen our devotion and strengthen our obedience to His word.  

I know that to many it does not sound logical.  If Jesus Christ is God, then He cannot be a man; if He is a man, He cannot be God.  Some say it is not logical.  But to say such a thing though, we have to assume that we know all there is to know about God and all there is to know about humans.  Who could claim such a thing?  We also would have to assume that God could not do anything outside the realm of what we consider to be possible.  But that is not the kind of God that is revealed to us Scriptures - not the majestic, all-powerful King of the universe.  To be sure, it is a great mystery, but it is not one to be dismissed because we cannot fully understand it.  That's what makes it a mystery.  It is to be approached with awe and thanksgiving, yet with a desire to know and comprehend as best we can.  

Now there are some in our world who readily accept Jesus as the wonderful Counsellor, a good man who taught powerfully and persuasively but they will not accept Him as Mighty God.  I pray that you will not be such a person today.  

Is Jesus Christ God?

Yes, He is.  This fact is the essence of Christmas - the fact that God stepped out of heaven and became a man.  This act is called "incarnation".  God incarnated Himself in a body, was born in Bethlehem, lived in Nazareth and Galilee, and died on the cross.  That person was Jesus of Nazareth.  

This is the central truth of the Christian gospel.  You must accept and admit, confess and acknowledge and adhere to and rely on the fact that God was incarnate in Christ.  He was Deity; He was humanity.  Jesus was fully God and fully man, and you must confess this if you expect to be saved and go to heaven.  

That is as clear as I know how to make it.  The deity of Jesus Christ is the center of Christian belief.  It is not a side issue - it is the issue itself.  

The fact of Jesus Christ's divinity is of utmost importance.  

Why is it so important?  It is important because if Jesus is not God, then His sacrificial death has no power - He is just another man dying on a cross, and it is not an act of sacrifice for our sins.  You and I are still left in our sins. We can repent all we like, but it will do us no good if that wasn't God hanging on the cross for our sins.  

It is important because if Jesus wasn't God, then God remains unaware of our human condition and is unable to understand the human situation and human feelings.  

More personally, it is important for our worship and our obedience to Him.  Imagine someone coming up to you on the street and saying, "You are seriously ill and you will die unless you receive medical treatment."  

How you respond depends on who said this to you.  If it is the bus driver or garbage collector, you are unlikely to take any notice.  If it's an insurance salesman, you'll be suspicious.  But if it's a top-ranked medical specialist, you'll listen.  So it is with the gospel we have in our hands.  

When God speaks, we need to listen.  When God acts, we need to take notice.   When Scripture says that the Lord of all creation did something for us, we need to sit up and pay attention!

Do you see why the doctrine of incarnation is so important?  If He is not God we not need to listen.  Isaiah says that the messiah will be Mighty God.  

Was Jesus God?  Yes!  How do I know?

Well let's put the question before a jury.  You be the jury and I'll call the witnesses.  The first witness is Jesus Himself.  What does He say concerning His deity?  What is His testimony?  In a recent article in the Toronto Sunday Star, Tom Harpur, previously the religion editor, says that Jesus never claimed to be God.  Is that true?  No - Tom Harpur is wrong.   Consider John 14.  Here Jesus is seeking to comfort his disciples about His eminent departure.  Telling them that He is going to prepare a place for them with the Father in heaven.  

Thomas is a little slow and he says we don't know where you are going, so we don't know the way.   Jesus answers,

"I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.  If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him."  (John 14:6-7) (NRSV)

And Philip wakes up at this point, having heard the word "seen"  and says, "That's it, Lord, that's what we need - to be able to see God.  Show us the Father and that will be enough for us."  

And pay attention to Jesus' answer,

"Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'?  Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?"  (John 14:9-10) (NRSV)

What is Jesus' testimony about His divinity?  He is divine; God and Jesus are one.  He states it plainly in John 10:30 as well, saying

"The Father and I are one." (John 10:30) (NRSV)

Or consider his words in Revelation 22:13 where he says,

"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end." (Revelation 22:13) (NRSV)

Jesus says He is the Alpha (that is the first letter of the Greek alphabet) and the Omega (the last letter of the Greek alphabet).  That is, He is the whole alphabet.  He's the whole book.  He's the whole chapter.  He's' the complete and consummate story, and everything God had to say about Himself He said in Jesus Christ.  He's the word of God living in a body.  Jesus is God incarnate.  

I could produce all sorts of Biblical evidence that point to the divinity of Jesus Christ.  He possesses attributes that belong to God alone.  He has power over nature (Mark 4:39), power over physical disease (Mark 3:10), power over spirit world (Luke 4:35), and over death (John 11:43-44).  But let me just focus on one, and that is He claimed the authority of God.  

Think of the authority He claimed to forgive sin.  The Old Testament teaches us that this authority belongs to God.  "It is God who will redeem Israel from all their sins", we read in Psalm 130:8.  And yet here is Jesus saying to the woman caught in adultery and to the man sick with paralysis (John 8:1; Mark 2:1) "Your sins are forgiven you".  And you can feel the shock waves ripple through the Jewish crowd so that the Pharisees ask, "Who can forgive sins but God alone?"  That is precisely the point! Jesus was laying claim to that which God alone does because He was God in the flesh.  

So, that is the first witness.  Jesus Himself says, "I and the Father are one."  Well you might say, "That's not a very credible witness, since we are talking about him.  Of course he wants us to believe he is God."  

Okay, well let's call a second witness.  Let's call the Apostles.  Let's call the apostle John.  What does he say about the divinity of Jesus?

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God." (John 1:1) (NRSV)

And so that we understand who the Word is, He says in verse 14,

"And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth." (John 1:14) (NRSV)

The truth is that for 33 years God, whom no one had ever seen before, chose to reveal Himself in hair and skin and flesh and blood and human personality to whom we could identify and relate.  So when Jesus Christ came, the Word became flesh.  Jesus Christ then, says Scripture, is no ambassador for God, no representative from God or spokesman about God.  He is absolutely, and has always been, fully God in a human body.  The invisible God is made tangible in flesh and blood.

You know, we have two revelations of God.  We have the written word, the Bible and the living word, Jesus Christ.  In the written word, we have God in a book.  In Jesus, we have God in a body.  In the Bible, God is on a page; in Jesus, God is in a person." ¹ 

But consider another apostle who states it very plainly for us.

"For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form." (Colossians 2:9) (NIV)

In that same book Paul says that by Jesus Christ,

"All things were created: things in heaven and on earth". (Colossians 1:16) (NIV)

But we all know that Genesis 1:1 says that God created the world.  Now either there were two creators or the God of Genesis 1 is the God of Colossians 1.  I believe Paul is saying they are one in the same.  

Paul makes it plain for us again in Hebrews:

"He is the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word." (Hebrews 1:3) (NRSV)

Oh, you say, those witnesses are too close to the situation - give us someone different.  Well, then let's call on the testimony of those who despised Him, and were His sworn enemies - even they recognized His deity.  Let's call to the witness stand the demons who do Satan's work.  And so we turn to Matthew 8:29 and here is Jesus walking in the region of the Gadarenes, when two demon-possessed men come to him from the tombs and shout,

"Suddenly they shouted, "What have you to do with us, Son of God?  Have you come here to torment us before the time?"(Matthew 8:29) (NRSV)

Or in the town of Capernaum we read of a demon-possessed man who cried out,

"What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?  Have you come to destroy us?  I know who you are, the Holy One of God." (Mark 1:24) (NIV)

They know Christ's divinity!

There you have it.  I've called all the witnesses, testimony after testimony - that Jesus is God.  Now what say you the jury?

You could say that Jesus is a good man.  But let me say, that is a rather modern idea.  People of Jesus' day never thought of calling Him that.  

They were terrified of Him: they believed Him, or they sought to kill Him.  But nobody patronizingly said of Him, "What a splendid preacher we had in the synagogue last Sabbath.  You must come along and hear Him some time." ²

It is a modern idea, but you could think of Jesus as a good man - but I would urge you to stop thinking of Him that way.  If you think He was only a good man, then Satan has won in your heart, for then Jesus demands nothing of you and has nothing to offer you.  

There is no grace for you.  There is no love for you.   You cannot be awed by the wonder of what truly is Christmas for the miracle of the incarnation is lost on you.  

You cannot truly worship God, for there is nothing to move you to wonder love and praise as you consider God stepping out of heaven all the glories of heaven, and into the mire of earth.  

All of that is lost on you during Christmas, all it is a time for little lights and silly looking fat man in a red costume.  

But if Jesus is God, then consider what a full and wonderful revelation of God we have.  No longer is God hidden and unknown.  No longer do we have to guess about what God is like.  We have only to look to Christ.  

If Jesus is God, then you realize the unending love that is yours, for He left heaven for your sake.  

And think - we no longer have to worry about whether or not God understands our situation.  Whether or not God is aware of how bad it feels to hurt to experience loneliness, or heartbreak or despair.  We no longer have to worry about that because He's experienced it all in the person of Christ.  

And is His death effective for saving us from sin?  Of course it is.  For no longer do we think of Jesus as simply a good man - but we see Jesus as God who in perfect holiness and purity offered the perfect sacrifice for us.

If Jesus is God in your heart then the unfathomable grace that is yours - Emmanuel - God with us to turn the night of sin and sorrow into the brilliancy of forgiveness and wholeness.  God with us to lead us on through the devious and the difficult paths of life.  God with us in the trials and the temptations that bear down upon us.  God with us, as the all-sufficient, all-embracing friend, guide and Saviour.  

If Jesus is God then what keeps you from giving him your will, your life, your all?

Copyright MBC and Tom Cullen - December 2001

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