The deity of Jesus Christ

I want to go with you to the word of the Lord in the Epistle to the Colossians, Chapter 1 verses 15 to 20.

The word of the Lord says: “..he is the image of God invisible - evidently referring to Jesus Christ - ... he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation because in him, that is to say in Jesus Christ, all things were created, those that are in heaven and those that are on earth. earth, visible and invisible, be they thrones, be they dominions, be they principalities, be they powers, everything was created through him and for him. And he, Jesus, is before all things and all things subsist in him and he is the head of the body that is the church, the one who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead so that in everything he may have preeminence by how much it pleased the Father that all fullness should dwell in him and through him reconcile all things with himself, both those that are on earth and those that are in heaven, making peace through the blood of his cross.”

The Lord bless his holy word. Perhaps some of you who have a good memory will remember that many months ago I began a series of messages that we could title something like 'great truths from the word of God'. My intention when I started this series was, and still is, to expose my brothers to different teachings, different doctrines, or aspects of Christian doctrine that are essential, I believe, for spiritual health as a church and as individuals, as God desires for us. . There are truths from Scripture that we cannot ignore that we need to embrace and know and understand in order to be healthy Christians.

And I started with various things, I spoke for example about salvation by grace and we talked about the God who is a God of justice and love and mercy but who is also a God who condemns those that they do not obey his commandments and that he does not really want everyone to proceed to salvation but that he is also often forced to do so despite the fact that his desire is to have grace towards everyone.

We talked about the need to evangelize the world because only through Jesus Christ is there salvation for men. And then I went into the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and I realized immediately that there was so much important teaching in that area of the Holy Spirit, of the gifts of the spirit, of the spirit-filled life, that I stopped there and we spent several months talking about of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit with all its different ramifications.

And now I want to continue with that series of messages, returning to a slightly less intensive pace, and I want to talk this afternoon about a subject that would actually take me, I think, even longer than what took me the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and is the deity of Jesus Christ.

When I say deity I mean the divinity of Jesus, his divine nature, the fact that Jesus Christ is God and that doctrine has been taught in the church of Jesus Christ through the centuries. The Church of Jesus Christ has considered it one of the pillars, the props of Christian doctrine, and many heresies and many false Christian trends have attacked that doctrine through the centuries, but the Church has always insisted that the belief in Jesus' divinity is not something negotiable.

There are many things we can say, well, each one there in the Bible there is for theological preferences, right? For example, some believe that the great tribulation will be after the antichrist, others believe that it will be before the antichrist, or rather the rapture, excuse me, that the rapture will be before the antichrist or after the antichrist. And there are good Christians, very theologically strong who believe one thing or who believe another. There are different ideas about the millennium as well. And there are different nuances, let's say, of these doctrines and I think there are many things, we can allow ourselves some freedom, but there are doctrines that are absolutely essential for the health of the church and the health of the Christian, which is important for us to be clear about. about it and let there be no doubt or hesitation about them and the deity of Jesus Christ is one of those doctrines.

I believe that no one will ever be able to do full justice to something as mysterious as the nature of Jesus Christ. The fact that God in all his power and a perfect man can cohabit, as it were, within the framework of a humanity, of a body, we will never be able to understand that, how God could incarnate in the womb of a woman and acquire human form and dwell among men, we cannot understand. How God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit constitute not three deities, nor three gods, but one God and yet be three, let's say essences that we can recognize in different functions, and yet be different but be the same thing. The human brain was not built to process such deep mysteries. The problem is not God, the problem is the machine that we have here, this computer does not have enough power to handle that truth completely.

But in any case, Christ is a reality, he dwelt among us and God wants us to understand something about his Son and about his nature. So the church of Jesus Christ has no other choice than to even clumsily, even toss around and sometimes make mistakes, I'm sure, we have to talk about it, we have to teach about it.

But one thing I do want us to be clear about, brothers, is that the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus is absolutely essential for the health of the church of Jesus Christ, which is something that we should never negotiate or compromise. Any religion that calls itself Christian but questions the divinity of Jesus must already be suspect to us because that is a teaching that Scripture upholds in so many different ways. In fact, the letter to the Colossians was written, according to Bible scholars, specifically to defend the doctrine of Christ as God, as the only one, to defend a teaching, a heresy, a doctrine that was entering the church of Colosse that diminished the stature of Christ, who put him as one among other gods, who tried to include other rituals and other beliefs in order to strengthen the person of Jesus a little, and add other things that complemented the work that Jesus Christ did.

And the Apostle Paul, led by the Holy Spirit when he was informed that this church in Colosse that was also going and that it was a blessed church, was beginning to waver a little bit as to the deity of Jesus Christ wrote this letter, to unambiguously declare the true nature and true role of Jesus in the Kingdom of God, in creation and with respect to God himself.

And I always see that in Scripture the Apostle Paul did that on several occasions. The epistle to the Galatians, another of the New Testament letters, was written by the Apostle Paul for the same reason, although in a different situation. The church in Galatia was kind of accepting teachings from Jewish Christian groups that stated that in order to be truly saved one not only had to believe in Christ as the Son of God, the Messiah, but also had to keep the rites of Jewish law. . And so Paul wrote that letter to the Galatians and said, you are complete in Christ Jesus, you don't need the rites of the law to complete what Christ did on the cross, you just need to believe by faith because salvation is by grace, for the work that Christ carried out on the cross of Calvary and it is not like Christ more works are going to be saved.

Now, after one is saved, God expects there to be works of justice in our lives. They understand? But works do not make us saved. So, the Apostle Paul in something as subtle as that, wrote a whole letter to defend the salvific character of Jesus Christ alone.

See why, there is something that the Holy Spirit does not like that the figure of Jesus is in some way diminished or that in some way he comes to share his power and his work with other elements. I always see in Scripture exalting and raising the name of Jesus, putting it on high, declaring the exceptionality, the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and that is why God the Father, we remember this scene when the Lord is baptized, it says that a dove perched, that is, the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, on that scene at that moment and it is interesting because there we have a presentation of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, the Son being baptized, and it says that a voice was heard from heaven. You remember that he said, this is my beloved Son, listen to him, in him I am content, listen to him. So, there we see the Father bearing witness to the Son and the Holy Spirit supporting that scene with his presence.

But what interests me about that scene is the Father pointing to the Son and saying, hey, deal with him, he's the one who has the upper hand. And the Lord Jesus Christ himself, he didn't hesitate to present himself that way. The only one who has the right to speak of himself as Jesus Christ spoke is himself. Because the Lord Jesus Christ spoke of himself in very exclusive terms.

For example, he said, I am the way and the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me. And he also said, I am the light of the world, he who walks in me will not walk in darkness. He said, whoever believes in me, rivers of living water will flow from within.

Do you see? He was always pointing at himself. Because? Not because he had some kind of personal pride in himself, but because he clinically knew that the health of human beings, the health of his church, depends on having a proper relationship with him, because in him there is power, in him there is virtue. in him there is life.

The word says that God assigned life so that in Christ Jesus there may be life. He is the only one who can give life, Jesus. The only one who has life in himself, and that is why the Lord points to himself, what he is doing and saying, look, I am essential. There is something in me that you cannot find in anyone else.

You remember the dialogue with Nicodemus, the teacher of the Pharisee religion who approached Jesus and the Lord related an event from the Old Testament when the Israelites were attacked by a plague of poisonous snakes in the desert and many of them were stung by those snakes, they were dying, and God commanded Moses to make a bronze serpent and set it on high so that everyone who looked at that serpent could be healed. And the Lord Jesus Christ took that scene from centuries ago in the history of Israel, and told Nicodemus, just as Moses raised up the bronze serpent for the Israelites to be healed, so it is also necessary for the Son of man to be raised up before the men, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

What we see through Scripture, and that's why the theologians of the church, I think they were kind of pushed into a corner toward the conclusion that Jesus Christ is God. I do not believe that the church, as some critics of Christian theology have wanted, I do not believe that the church first considered the divinity of Jesus Christ and then proceeded to justify it using the Scriptures and looking for verses to justify the divinity of Jesus Christ. I believe that it was the opposite, the church, by dint of reading the Bible, by dint of reading the Scriptures, was little by little led to the conclusion that Jesus Christ is God. Because there are many passages that we don't have time to analyze all of them where we clearly see that this idea that Paul presents here. Look at verse 15 that we just read from the Colossians Chapter, "...he is the image of the invisible God..."

That is one of those passages where he clearly declares the equality of Christ with God, and I'm going to unpack that a little more later, but we're going to look at other verses because I just want to do a very brief tour of the different verses that tell us about that.

Right there in Colossians Chapter 2 verse 9, it says, “...for in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily...”

What is he saying? over there? Where is everything that is in God, everything that contains the personality of God, the essence of God? It is in Christ. So if all that God is and has is in Christ, what is the conclusion then? That he is also God, that he has the same substance, the same essence that God has.

Come to Hebrews and as I say, it's just a few of many different, Chapter 1 of Hebrews, in verse 3 talking about Jesus. It says in verse 2:

“... in these last days God has spoken to us through the Son whom He appointed heir to all and through whom He also made the universe, which, He says, being the splendor of his glory and the very image of his substance...”

Look at what it says there, right? That Christ is the radiance of the glory of God. In other words, it is like Christ embodies and reflects the shekinah glory of God, the power, the majesty, the magnificence, all the might of God is projected in the person of Jesus Christ. And he is the very image of his substance. The word that the original Greek uses is aikon, which means, it is a copy, a photocopy of God. Today we would say he is the photocopy, as many people say, that baby is the photo of the father, it is the same face of the father, well, that can be said of Jesus Christ, he is the very image of the substance of God, that is to say , the essence of God. What is the substance of God? Well, he is divine, he is almighty, he is omniscient, he is omnipresent, all those things are the substance of God, the essence of God, they can be applied to Jesus Christ as well.

Follow me right there in verse 8 of Hebrews 1, talking about the difference and Christ and the angels, it says, “...more of the Son God says, your throne O God for ever and ever ....”

How interesting, isn't it? Speaking about the Son, what is he referring to? Your throne oh God for the century of the century. In other words, here again we have another very strong suggestion about the deity of Jesus Christ.

Look at another one right there in verse 10, Hebrews 1:10, speaking of Christ it says, “...you, O Lord, in the beginning founded the earth and the heavens are the work of your hands ...."

Now, what does it say, Genesis Chapter 1, verse 1, the scholars here of the word, "...in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth...."

Who created the heavens and the earth? And what did God create? The heavens and the earth, right? Now, and what is he saying here in this passage, according to Hebrews Chapter 10, who founded the earth and the heavens which are the works of his hands? The son. So what do we have to conclude, either the writer of Hebrews or Genesis was wrong, one of the two, or is it that he is implying that there is something, there is an identity between the Son and the Father that leads us logically inevitably drags us to that idea that there is something mysterious, there is a mysterious identity between the Son and the Father.

The church has had to deal with texts like these through the centuries. For example, another passage when Christ says, "...before Abraham was, I am..."

Look what I said, it doesn't say I was, but I am. What does Jehovah mean? I am. And do you know what happened when he said before Abraham was, I am? What did the Pharisees who were around him who knew the biblical text well do? They told him, ok, no problem. No, they picked up stones to stone him. Because? Because they understood the intention of what he was saying, they understood that he was equating himself to God at that moment and that he was saying, I am who I am, I am God. and for that reason they wanted to stone them.

There are so many verses, John 1:16, “...in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God...”

And we could spending many hours looking at different ones, a single verse by itself does not constitute the doctrine of the deity of Christ, but when you put them all together, and when you look at the cumulative language of Scripture regarding Jesus, the fact that he received adoration when only God, nor the angels receive adoration. Every time in Scripture that you see an angel being worshiped by a person who is surprised to see an angelic vision, what do the angels say to you? No, worship God, don't worship us.

When Thomas doubts Jesus Christ and the Lord tells him, well, look, put your hand in my side, look at my signs on the hands of the cross, what does Thomas do? He says, he knelt before him and adored him. And you know what he said? My Lord and my God. and the Lord did not contradict him.

That is to say, there is a whole accumulation of teachings that lead us to the inescapable conclusion that there is something mysterious. I will never be able to tell you exactly what this identity between Christ and the Father and the Holy Spirit consists of because there are no human words, nor was human language made to process such profound things. But we obediently point to a mystery and say, don't ask us exactly what the details of that mystery are, but what we see is that there is a divine essence that manifests itself in a Father, a Son, and a Holy Spirit, and the Bible says no. they are three gods because God is one, and therefore our conclusion is somehow mysterious and strange and difficult to explain, that God manifests himself in three persons and those three persons are one God. And that is the doctrine.

The Bible is very clear on this, and wherever we have seen heresy and bad doctrine we have seen the figure of Christ being minimized and being pushed aside, and being covered with foliage in addition to what should be he just standing still. And it is very important that we never share, brothers, the person of Jesus with any other element in our faith. Christ must be there, he is sui generis as they say in philosophy, he is in a genre by himself. And we have to give him a very, very preferential place.

The devil will always want to subtly take the church away from the focus on the deity of Jesus Christ and his unique character, and will want to add other components, if not remove Christ completely from the picture, he will want to add other things that they are compromising it and diminishing its unique function. And we will always have to resist that and we will have to have a very sharp nose to detect anything that wants to change that special role of Jesus Christ.

At the very beginning of the Christian era, the Gnostic doctrine, Gnosticism, arose. It was a teaching that came mixed from Asia and from Greece and the Mediterranean and that included a little bit of Judaic flavor and a little bit of merely intellectual philosophy and mixed all those things and developed as a doctrine syndrome that was called the Gnostic doctrine. . And essentially what the Gnostic doctrine was doing was precisely trying to dilute the person of Jesus, to turn him into a semi-God, to add knowledge, where the word Gnostic comes from, to knowledge, and to try to provide knowledge as the way to reach God.

And she immediately stood up against that doctrine, she fought against it because it was a very strong doctrine that almost encompassed the Christian church and the doctrine of the deity of Christ and from there came the codified teaching for the rest from the story on the part of the Christian church that Jesus Christ is God. And that is one of the hallmarks of the Christian church.

As you know there are different groups in the world today that are very sincere, very noble people and I even feel embarrassed sometimes to talk about these things because it sounds like one is insulting people of faith, but I think we always have to be clear, we respect different doctrines, but let's say, for example, Jehovah's Witnesses, one of the reasons why the rest of Christianity has serious differences with Jehovah's Witnesses, and look what there are many healthy people, there are many noble and serious people. I have met some of them and I am surprised many times by the dedication of these people to the Lord, but the reason why the vast majority of Christianity does not receive Jehovah's Witnesses as members of the church of Jesus Christ in its diversity is Because Jehovah's Witnesses do not recognize the deity of Jesus Christ. They believe that Jesus Christ is the most exalted creature that God has created, but he is a creation, he has a date of creation and from then on he is eternal, but what the Bible teaches us is that he exists before time, or beyond of time, beyond space, and that is why when he said, before Abraham was I am, he was alluding to his eternity.

Christ incarnated in Mary but what Christ is existed long before Mary. That is why I do not say this with the rest either, we do not believe as the Catholic brothers say that Mary is the mother of God, no, she is the mother of Christ in his human incarnation, but God does not have a mother, God is, it sounds strange even saying it God is our father and our mother. God is God, God is eternal. That didn't go well for me.

Mary was used as the womb that assigned God a human nature but she was not his mother, quite the contrary, God created her too and before Mary was, Jesus Christ was.

So what we have to understand is that Jesus Christ does not know time, does not know space, does not know beginnings. He is eternal. And we have to see him in that way and we have to see him as Lord of all things.

Now, here in this passage, in Colossians, Paul lays out three ways in which the deity of Jesus Christ is manifested, with respect to the Father, with respect to creation, and with respect to the church.

Look first, he is the image of the invisible God. In other words, we have said that, that Jesus Christ is a perfect reflection of God's presence. In another passage, in John, Chapter 14, the Lord Jesus Christ says, 'he who has seen me has seen the father'. In other words, it is not that Jesus Christ was the physical reflection of the Father, but the one who sees Christ in his miraculous capacity, the one who sees Christ in his perfect character, the one who sees him in his impeccable behavior, the one who sees him in his dominion over demons, the one who sees it in his ability to work miracles, the one who sees it in his ability to resist tribulation, the rejection of men, loneliness, the struggle of his humanity with his deity, the one who sees resisting the direct temptation of Satan in the fight in the desert, whoever sees his love for a Samaritan woman or a plunder, whoever sees the perfection of Jesus in his behavior is seeing the beauty and character of the Father, the attributes of the Father.

So in that sense Christ reflects. He is the image, he is the stamp, he is the essence of the Father manifesting himself and in that sense, with respect to the Father, he is the same as the Father. Now, regarding creation, the Apostle Paul says, "...for in him all things were created, those that are in heaven and those that are on earth...."

In other words, again the same thing, God created the heavens and the earth. Here it is clearly reflected that Christ was present and involved in the act of creation. He is creator along with the Father, along with the Holy Spirit he is involved in creation as well. That is to say, that he is above all created things.

And the Apostle Paul adds here, "...whether visible or invisible..."

In other words, brothers, not only the material was created by Christ but also even the spiritual, that is why the Apostle Paul also in Philippians Chapter 2 says that one day every knee of what is in heaven, on earth and under the earth, he has a name that is above every name, above all that exists, and Paul adds, may they be principalities, may they be powers, may they be authorities, whatever. Mysteriously, Christ is the creator of the angels, the archangels, the cherubs and still, we do not understand how, but those evil spirits that are the origin of evil in the university are created.

The church believes that they are angelic spirits that rebelled against God and that God then cast them out of his presence and are what we call demons today, fallen angels. But even those powers, even Satan himself, Lucifer, the most exalted creature that God created who rebelled against God, all those principalities, all those powers, all those spirits were created by Jesus Christ and that is very important, that is why he tells us us that if he created them he is above them. He is powerful over them, he has authority over them. There is no power on this earth that can resist the name of Jesus. And that is why when we battle against principalities, against powers in our lives. We can relate to them from a perspective of authority and trust because they are under Christ Jesus, they are under the lordship of Christ, he created them, and we enjoy the authority of Christ and therefore we can exercise in the name of Christ. of Jesus authority over principalities and powers.

This morning I was praying with a sister from the congregation and she was talking to me precisely about her struggle with spirits that she has had in the past and the story is long but my advice to her was, sister, you at Being a daughter of God and having the spirit of Christ in your life, you do not have to be tormented or persecuted by evil spirits, you have authority over them. Use that authority. And we prayed there for her and I trust in the name of the Lord that every attack from the enemy was neutralized there, because the church of Jesus Christ has the authority that Christ has over demons, because he is the creator of everything that exists.

And it says here that everything was created through him and for him and he is before all things and all things subsist in him.

That means, brothers, that the universe is sustained by Christ Jesus. If the atoms of matter itself are kept in order to produce a chair or a body or a sunset or the sound wave that reaches your ears in terms of music or whatever, if the cells in your body are healthy and If your nervous system or your heart system works properly, it is because all of that is subsisting in Christ Jesus. Christ is the unifying element of all that exists.

All creation is kept in order because the Lord is, because the Lord lives. And the Apostle John when he wrote in John 1:1 about in the beginning being the verb, using the word logos, he was borrowing a word from Greek, Platonic philosophy where the Greeks believed that the logos was... they didn't They believed in Christ, they did not believe in the God we know, but God enlightened this culture enough to understand that there was a principle that governed the universe, there was something, there was a force that gave coherence to everything that existed. It was like the hub of a wheel and everything revolved around that hub. And they understood that if the universe had meaning it was because there was something, a deity, a God, a governing principle, something of coherence that gave order to the universe and that ordering principle they called logos.

Then the Apostle John trying, trying to explain what Jesus was, took that concept from Greek philosophy and said, in the beginning was the logos, and the logos was with God and the logos was God, referring to Jesus Christ.

And now Paul here in this passage directed by the Holy Spirit says the same thing, he is before all things and all things in him, in the logos, in the ordering principle, in the sustaining principle , in Christ they subsist.

I wonder, if the Bible didn't want to suggest the deity of Jesus Christ, would it have used such exalted language, would it have used language that almost forces us to assume the deity of Jesus Christ? I believe that God is a much better teacher than that. he would have taken another less exalted word or vocabulary to refer to his Son, however the Holy Spirit again and again uses a language that only suits God himself, the deity. And that is why we always have to defend and lean on that principle of the deity of Jesus Christ.

So we have, Christ God regarding the Father, Christ God regarding creation, and look what it says regarding the church, verse 18 and with this we are finishing: < p>"... and he is the head of the body, which is the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that in everything he may have preeminence..."

Christ, the head that fale, the head of the church. and we are the body. You know, brother, the word visualizes the church as a body. Here we are many different bodies, but mystically, spiritually we are united in one body. And when the church moves and moves in the spirit, the church moves as a body, and the church initiates things and makes decisions and moves things and carries out programs and executes a number of things, but all of that requires that is submitted under the direction of Christ Jesus, that there is a direction, a coherence that Christ Jesus imparts and that is a very important implication and it is that we always have to go to Christ for all our initiatives.

The church of Jesus Christ must always seek the model that Christ establishes. What would Christ do? What does Christ want? What does the spirit of Christ desire? Are we ministering and serving according to the spirit of Jesus Christ? Is the church manifesting the love of Christ? Is the church manifesting the power of Christ? Is the church living according to the word of Jesus Christ?

It is NOT according to the world's models, it is not according to the style of the 21st century with its insistence on marketing and satisfying the needs of the people, etc. No, always our model to make the church is Christ Jesus, his character, his teachings, and wise is the church that is based on Jesus Christ. That is why this word is so important, that this afternoon we renew our awareness of Christ Jesus, that we know that everything else is totally secondary.

I'm going to ask the musicians to come over here. And may we always remember that, we are founded on the deity of Jesus Christ. Any other belief that takes you away from that, you have to go back again to ground yourself in Jesus, in the morning you have to focus on the person of Jesus Christ and remember, I am tied to him, I am linked to him, I am rooted in he.

The Lord Jesus Christ said, apart from me you can do nothing. He who abides in me will bear much fruit. Whoever separates from me dries up and must be taken out and thrown away like branches that have broken off from the tree and no longer have life. We have to recognize that in Christ Jesus there is something mystical, there is a supernatural power, there is a unique nature and in prayer we have to go and connect with the person of Jesus.

It's not so much that we read about Jesus Christ, it's not so much that we're in an environment where Jesus is mentioned. There is something that we have that like a sick person who needs a dose of medicine every day, we have to re-inject ourselves with the energy that only comes from Christ Jesus, remain focused on him, remain in his divine nature and remember that God has done it through he Lord and king and source of all life for his church.

This afternoon we are going to stand up for a moment and we are going to recognize that deity of Jesus, the lordship of Christ in our lives, we are going to point to Christ, we are going to lift him up this afternoon in a society that on many occasions he has tried to minimize the name of Jesus and to take away from the church its dependence on Christ and to make the church depend on programs, or physical plants, or theology or whatever. This afternoon we are going to declare that we depend on the energy that comes out of the person and the name of Jesus Christ.

Hallelujah! And that we are a church anchored in Jesus.