Archives For Who is Jesus Christ

The 'only-ness' of Jesus

May 31, 2010

…the only Son from the Father… (John 1:14)

Jesus (the Word) was with God in the beginning (John 1:1-2) and all things were created through him (John 1:3). Therefore we should not think of the ‘sonship’ of Jesus as coming about due to being born or created from the Father. The Son is a person distinct from the Father (Mark 1:11) but he is God and always has been.

Which all means that the phrase ‘only Son from the Father’ is not primarily saying that Jesus is born of the Father (as the KJV implies) but rather refers to the uniqueness of Jesus. He is the Son of God in that he is exactly like the Father in all his divine attributes. He is the ‘only Son’ in that he is unique, only Jesus is the Son of God, just as Isaac was the ‘only’ son of Abraham (Genesis 22:2) in the sense of being fully and uniquely the son of Abraham, born of Abraham’s wife, Sarah.

Jesus is the unique Son of God who knows all of his Father’s will, he is the only one who gives life (John 1:4), he is the only one who is the light (John 1:5), and he is the only one who can give the right to become children of God (John 1:12). Jesus is only way by which we can come to the Father (John 14:6) and he is the only one who makes known the Father’s will to us (John 15:15). Jesus is the only way we are reconciled to God (Romans 5:6-11) and the only source of the free gift of righteousness and justification for all (Romans 6:17-18).

There is only one Christ, and in Christ alone we have life and salvation. In a confused and darkened world, people do not like the idea of Jesus as the only way of salvation, as the only source of truth. But disliking or even hating the truth does not make it any less true. Jesus Christ is the only way, but he is the way for all.

Are you prepared to suspend your dislike of the exclusive claims of Jesus in order to consider the all-welcoming generosity of those same claims?
In Simple faith
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The Word became flesh

May 25, 2010

By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. (1 John 4:2)

If you find your mind filling with protestations, rationalizations and evidences against the belief that Jesus Christ was God incarnate, then be aware that these do not come from God and are attempting to deceive you. Even the very academic apostle Paul considered the incarnation of Christ to be a mystery, something true, but beyond our ability to understand (1 Timothy 3:16).

It is a common experience for us to ‘suspend disbelief‘ in order to enjoy a story, novel or a movie without constantly nitpicking over minor inconsistencies with reality as we know it. I invite you to do this regarding the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. This is not faith, it is simply approaching the gospel with a willingness to at least hear the whole story before deciding whether to believe it or not.

While our minds may seek an explanation of how God could become a baby, born of a virgin, the New Testament writers simply state that he did and emphasize instead their amazement at what this means. Perhaps the best example of this is  Philippians 2:5-11 in which Paul walks us through the significance of what Jesus did in his incarnation, with no explanation of the mechanics of how exactly it all worked. And so we come to John’s blunt statement:

The Word became flesh and dwelt amoung us (John 1:14)

It happened. Give John the consideration you would give your favourite author and read what he has to say. Maybe God will speak. Also remember that those disbelieving thoughts might be lies!

In Advent ,
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The hidden light

May 22, 2010

Pondering the curious situation in which Jesus, who is the “light of the world”, needs John the Baptist to go ahead of Him as a witness to the light.

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The source of eternal life

May 17, 2010

The opening verses of John’s gospel are clearly alluding to the account of creation in Genesis 1. Compare  John 1:1-5 with  Genesis 1:1-4. As I have already commented, we see that in the beginning was Jesus who is God, he created, and there was darkness. In  Genesis 1:3 God creates light, in  John 1:4 we are told that the life which is in Jesus is light.

This light which John refers to must be more than the light of Genesis 1:3 because Jesus is God, he is not created and John is saying that the light he is talking about is in Jesus in that it is of the life that is in Jesus — life that is uncreated. It follows therefore, that the light of Jesus is likewise uncreated, in other words, eternal.

Jesus refers to himself as being the light of the world (John 8:12). The life of Jesus is the light of men, and we also know from  1 John 5:11 that God has given us eternal life, which is in Jesus. It is consistent with John’s use of language to think of the ‘light of men’ as being the eternal life we receive from Jesus. In fact reading the entire prologue of John’s gospel (John 1:1-18) makes this quite clear.

Other posts in this series
  1. Who is Jesus Christ?
  2. Jesus Christ is our Creator
  3. Overflowing, extravagant, glorious life
In Simple faith
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Overflowing, extravagant, glorious Life

May 12, 2010

Our experiences as individuals make us sensitive to different aspects of who Jesus Christ is. For me, with fifteen years of working in biochemistry labs behind me, the statement, “In him was life” (John 1:4) hits me with an explosion of glory and wonder. I have painstakingly pulled apart cells and molecules searching out the mechanisms which sustain life, but life itself remains elusive.

John simply states:

In him was life (John 1:4a)

Jesus is not only a means or channel of life, it is in him, life does not exist apart from Christ. Life is in the Word and therefore there is life in his creation (John 5:26).
This was imprinted on my memory one day when I stood on Okarito beach in Westland National Park where, from the sea behind me, the stones under my feet, the seaweed on the beach, the grassy dunes, the scrub beyond and then the lush, vibrant rainforest cloaking every hill and mountain right up to the snow came a grand testimony to God’s love of life and living things. It is in Him that we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28), we should be very glad the life that is in the Word is indestructible (Hebrews 7:16) because the life inherent in Jesus Christ is our hope.

John has a lot to say about the life that is in Jesus, so I will consider this topic in plenty of future posts also.

References used in writing this post

The Gospel According to John by Leon Morris, p73.

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