Jesus Christ
1. Question: "Isn't it idolatrous for Christians to worship Jesus as God?" Answer: It would indeed be the height of foolishness and blasphemy for people to worship any mere man, because true worship belongs only to God Himself. Man seemingly has a perverse streak in himself which is continually manifesting itself in some form of idolatry. Actually, by worshiping an image of his own making—whether it be the wooden idol of a pagan or the mental "model" of cosmic law constructed in the imagination of the philosopher—he is fundamentally worshiping himself.
This is why history has seen over and over again the phenomenon of multitudes of people actually worshiping some man, receiving his words as absolute truth and his commands as absolute law. Even in our enlightened current times, millions have worshiped such men as Hitler, Stalin, Mao-tse-Tung, Jim Jones, "Reverend" Moon, Hirohito, Nkrumah, and even Elijah Muhammad! The Bible says there is a time that is coming when there will be a great world government and a tremendously powerful and attractive man at the pinnacle, and that "all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb, slain from the foundation of the world" (Revelation 13:8). By worshiping a great superman, one thus actually rejects his Creator and worships a creature (Romans 1:25), subconsciously worshiping himself. This is the greatest and worst form of idolatry.
When people claiming to be Christians regard Jesus as merely a great human teacher and example and then proceed to sing songs of praise to Him and to pray in His name, such a religion is indeed absurd and even blasphemous. If Jesus is only a man, He certainly should not be worshiped.
As a matter of fact, if He is merely a man, He does not even deserve to be honored, because He then must have been either a lying deceiver or a crazy fanatic, and thus not even a good man! This conclusion follows inescapably from the fact that He claimed again and again to be God's only and unique Son, and to have rights and powers which belong only to God.
Consider, for example, a few of His remarkable claims: "I am the light of the world; he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life" (John 8:12). "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away" (Matthew 24:35). "I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father except by me" (John 14:6). "The Son of man hath power upon the earth to forgive sins" (Luke 5:24). "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth" (Matthew 28:18). "For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the Son" (John 5:22). "Ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven" (Mark 14:62).
These and many other like claims were made by Christ Himself. If such statements were ever made by any other man, he would immediately be branded as either a lunatic or a charlatan, but from the lips of Jesus Christ they sound appropriate and prophetic. For two thousand years, He has been the Light of the world, and His words have not passed away! Millions of people of all times and cultures, and of all degrees of wealth and education, have accepted Him as Savior and Lord, and have invariably been satisfied that His claims were vindicated and His promises were true.
Finally, He alone, of all the men who ever lived, conquered death itself. By all rules of evidence, His bodily resurrection from the grave can be adjudged the best-proved fact of all history. "I am the resurrection and the life," He said, "Because I live, ye shall life also" (John 11:25; 14:19).
Thus, although Jesus was certainly a true man—indeed the one perfect Man in all history—He was also God, the second Person of the eternal Trinity. It is completely wrong, even idolatry, to worship Him while believing He is only a great man. But it is perfectly fitting to bow down and worship Him as our "great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ" (Titus 2:13). Indeed, such acceptance and worship of Him, recognizing Him as Creator and Redeemer, is, as He said, the one and only way to forgiveness and salvation and eternal life.
2. Question: "How do we know that Jesus was the Messiah?" Answer: The word "Messiah" means "Anointed One," the name given to the promised Deliverer who would some day come to the people of Israel as their great Savior and Redeemer, "anointed" as Prophet, Priest, and King by God Himself. Some, of course, are still looking for the fulfillment of these Old Testament promises in the future, when the "Messiah" will come to establish a world kingdom of peace and justice centered around the chosen nation, Israel.
On the other hand, the group of Jewish believers who became the first founders of Christianity were convinced that Jesus of Nazareth was their promised Messiah. The name "Christ" is the Greek equivalent of "Messiah," so that the name Jesus Christ really means "Jesus the Messiah," or "Jesus the Anointed." They preached this truth with such conviction and power that not only many Jews but, later, a still greater host of Gentiles, believed on Jesus, both as the Christ and also as the Lord and Savior of all men.
And indeed they had good reason for such faith. The Old Testament messianic prophecies were found to be uniquely fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ. There are hundreds of these prophecies, so that the possibility of their accidental convergence on any ordinary man is completely ruled out by the laws of probability.
Some of the prophecies are so framed, in fact, as to preclude their fulfillment by anyone living after the first century A.D. For example, the patriarch Jacob said, in Genesis 49:10, "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come." The name "Shiloh" is a title of the Messiah, and the prophecy states that Judah's tribe would remain the chief tribe in Israel, in particular providing their kings, until Messiah would come. The prophecy must have been fulfilled prior to the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem in A.D. 70, by which time certainly all semblance of a sceptre had departed from Judah.
Similarly the promise was given to King David that the Messiah should be one of his descendants, as the King eternal, the one of whom God said, "I will stablish the throne of his kingdom for ever" (II Samuel 7:13). Isaiah said, "There shall come forth a rod out of the stem (literally 'stump') of Jesse (that is, David's father), and a Branch shall grow out of his roots" (Isaiah 11:1). This is another name of the Messiah, and indicates that, even after it would appear that the family tree of Jesse has been cut down, yet one Branch will grow out of the stump. Evidently the very last one who could be known to have come of this lineage would finally prove to be the promised Messiah!
This was fulfilled uniquely in Jesus. His foster father, Joseph, was in the royal line from David and thus held the legal right to the throne (Matthew 1:1-16). His mother, Mary, was also a descendant of David, as shown by her genealogy in Luke 3:23-31. But ever since the time of Jesus, it would be quite impossible to establish the legal or biological lineage of any pretender to David's throne, as all the ancient genealogical records were destroyed soon after that.
An even more striking prophecy is given in Daniel 9:24-27. There Daniel was told explicitly that Messiah would come 69 "sabbaths" (that is, 69 sabbatical years—a total of 483 years) after the decree was given to rebuild Jerusalem, which at that time lay in ruins after Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, had destroyed it.
Such a decree was given later by the Persian emperor. Although the exact date of the decree is somewhat uncertain, the termination date of the prophecy must have been some time in the first century A.D. In fact, it must have been before the destruction of the city and the temple by the Romans in A.D. 70, because the prophecy said quite explicitly: "After (the 483 years) shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself; and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary" (Daniel 9:26). Not only must Messiah come before this destruction, but He was also to be "cut off," rejected and killed, before it came.
It is obvious that no one but Jesus could have fulfilled these prophecies. The prophecies absolutely preclude any still future Messiah, except that even that hope also will find its fulfillment in the second coming of Christ.
And then, of course, there are still hundreds of other prophecies, all of which were fulfilled by Jesus Christ: His virgin birth (Isaiah 7:14); His birth in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2); His sacrificial death (Isaiah 53:5); His crucifixion (Psalm 22:14-18); His bodily resurrection (Psalm 16:10); and many others. All of these unite in their witness that "Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God" (John 20:31).
The probability that hundreds of such specific predictions, each quite independent of the others, could all be fulfilled concurrently in one individual, is unlikely in the highest degree, especially in view of the miraculous nature of many of them (e.g., the virgin birth, the resurrection, etc.). No rational conclusion seems possible except that Jesus is all He claimed—Messiah, Savior, Lord and God.
3. Question: "What did Jesus look like?" Answer: One of the most remarkable features of the gospel records is that they give no information whatever about the physical appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ. Whether He was tall or short, lean or heavy, dark or light in complexion, bearded or clean-shaven—no one knows. The only real information we have about Christ and His life is in the four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—and these writers simply do not say one word about His appearance! This in itself is evidence of divine inspiration. They wrote in considerable detail about His words and deeds, and it would seem almost certain that any writer dealing specifically with such biographical material would include some kind of physical description of the one of whom he was writing. But these writers were all constrained somehow not to do so.
We do not even know that His features were "Jewish" in character. Although He was born in the family of David, it must be remembered that neither of His earthly parents was connected with Him genetically. He was "conceived by the Holy Ghost" and simply placed in the womb of the Virgin Mary.
Now, since the Holy Spirit, in His work of inspiring the Holy Scriptures, has carefully refrained from satisfying our curiosity about Jesus' human appearance, it is utterly futile for men to speculate about this matter. The commonly accepted representation of His features, as expressed in countless paintings and images over the centuries, has no basis in fact and is quite misleading. Certain supposed verbal descriptions of Him that have come from extra-Biblical sources are likewise generally known to date from long after the apostolic period.
There is a very good reason for this divine reticence about the physical aspects of Jesus. He is the Son of man—the representative Man, the divine Substitute for all men of all times and places. If we knew that He had been a tall man, for example, then we would subconsciously sense that God preferred tall men and that it was somehow a mark of God's disfavor for a man to be small in stature. The same sense of pride or resentment would tend to attach itself to the possession or lack of any other specific physical characteristic known to be part of Christ's human aspect.
A second reason for the Lord's refusal to allow a description of Himself in the Scriptures is man's perverse tendency to idolatry. Man is continually "changing the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things" (Romans 1:23). Because of the root sin of pride and unbelief in his soul, he rebels at the thought of submitting himself in faith to his Creator, and instead desires to submit himself to a god of his own making, one he has either constructed in his mind (the mental "model" of ultimate meaning postulated by the philosopher) or else constructed with his own skills (the brazen "model" of God in the pagan temple or even the canvas "model" of the Son of God that human artists have contrived). The Apostle Paul has warned: "We ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device" (Acts 17:29). The last words of the Apostle John in his epistle were" "Little children, keep yourselves from idols" (1 John 5:21).
John the Baptist, as he introduced Christ in his message, said: "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him" (John 1:18). The invisible God is seen, therefore, not in the bodily incarnation of Himself in Christ, but rather through Christ's "declaration" of His character in His words and deeds. The human body of Christ finally was offered up as a sacrifice, to suffer and die in the bitterest agony, "... His visage so marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men:..." (Isaiah 52:14), in order that sinful and hell-deserving men might be redeemed as He died in their place.
We are not, therefore, to continually think of Jesus as He once was, but rather to worship Him as He now is, the risen Lord of life, who rose from the dead and ascended back to heaven. We must forever praise and thank Him for His unspeakable gift of salvation, in living as our perfect Example and dying as our all-sufficient Savior, but we must also believe His Word and obey Him as our eternal Lord. Some day, probably very soon, we shall ourselves be made like Him, "...for we shall see Him as He is" (1 John 3:2).
In the meantime, we do have one description of His visible appearance in the Bible, not as He was when He walked in Galilee, but rather as He is now in heaven. John saw, in his great vision of the return of the Lord, "... one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the breast with a golden girdle. His head and His hairs were white as snow; and His eyes were as a flame of fire; and His feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and His voice as the sound of many waters. And He had in His right hand seven stars: and out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: and His countenance was as the sun shining in His strength" (Revelation 1:13-16).
This is the Lord Jesus Christ as we shall see Him some day, either to "rejoice at his coming" (1 Thessalonians 2:19), if we now trust Him as our Lord, or else to cry out to "hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne" (Revelation 6:16), if we have rejected Him and His Word.
4. Question: "Could Jesus have sinned?" Answer: That Jesus was truly a man, and not a superhuman angelic being of some kind, is evident from many passages of Scripture. "For verily He took not on Him the nature of angels; but He took on Him the seed of Abraham. Wherefore in all things it behooved Him to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people" (Hebrews 2:16, 17).
As a true man, He was subject to all the physical infirmities of human flesh, such as hunger, fatigue, pain, and finally death. On the other hand, He was not genetically connected by direct heredity to His parents, since He was miraculously placed in an embryonic form into Mary's womb by the Holy Spirit, thus entering the world by virgin birth. A perfect human body was created for Him, and thus the eternal "Word was made flesh" (John 1:14). "Wherefore when He cometh into the world, He saith... a body hast thou prepared me" (Hebrews 10:5).
The question now at hand is whether, in His perfect humanity, He could have yielded, not only to the physical infirmities of human flesh (as He actually did when he died on the cross) but also to the temptations of sinful flesh. There is no doubt that God sent His own Son "in the likeness of sinful flesh" (Romans 8:3), but could He actually have sinned?
We know He did not sin, of course. This was the uniform testimony of all who knew Him. Those who were His closest companions, who knew Him best of all, and who therefore would be best acquainted with His weaknesses, agree completely on this. John, the closest of the apostles to Jesus, said, "In Him is no sin" (1 John 3:5), and Peter, the spokesman for the apostles, said, "He did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth" (1 Peter 2:22).
Not only His close friends, but even His enemies, those who hated Him and finally caused His death, agreed on His moral sinlessness. The one who betrayed Him, Judas, cried out in remorse, "I have betrayed innocent blood" (Matthew 27:4). The governor who condemned Him to be executed, Pilate, said, "I find in Him no fault at all" (John 18:38). The charge against Him by the priests that led to His condemnation was solely that of blasphemy. "The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of God" (John 19:7). Though blasphemy is indeed a grievous sin, Jesus was, of course, not really guilty of it, because He was truly the Son of God as He claimed.
Thus He was absolutely sinless in every respect, the only man who ever lived who never sinned: "Wherefore, as by one man (i.e., Adam) sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned" (Romans 5:12). Every man other than Jesus Christ was under God's condemnation because of sin; Christ alone was fully righteous and thus was able to become a perfect sacrifice for sin. "For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Corinthians 5:21).
This would have been impossible had Jesus Himself become a sinner. If He had ever sinned, even in the least degree, He also would have fallen under the condemnation of God, and thus could never have died in substitution for the sins of others. All men would then have died with no further hope of salvation. If God Himself, incarnate in His only Son, could not measure up to the standard of His own holiness, then it is utterly futile to search elsewhere for meaning and salvation in the universe.
Since it is impossible that the omnipotent God could be fully defeated in His own purpose for the world and mankind, however, and since the consummation of that purpose required the offering of a perfect sacrifice for sins in the person of His own eternal Son, it is therefore completely impossible that Jesus could ever have sinned. He was the "Lamb without blemish and without spot,... foreordained before the foundation of the world" (1 Peter 1:19, 20).
Though He was completely man, He was also completely God. "The Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). He is "the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ" (Titus 2:13). By very definition, what God does is right; God therefore cannot sin, and Jesus Christ is God! "God cannot be tempted with evil" (James 1:13).
Jesus is not half God and half man, but fully God and fully man. Neither is He man part of the time and God part of the time. The divine and human natures are united in Him in perfect unity, forever.
Although He had (and has) a human nature, it must be remembered that He has a perfect human nature! He is Man as God intended man to be. The perfection of His human nature was assured by the miraculous conception, so that He did not in any wise inherit a fallen, sinful nature from Adam, as have all other men.
Because He possessed a perfect human nature from the very beginning, He did not need to be "converted," as do other men. He told Nicodemus, the most moral and religious man of his day, "Ye must be born again," but He did not say, "We must be born again." He was as perfectly sinless in His human nature then as He is now. "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and for ever" (Hebrews 13:8).
What does the Scripture mean, then, when it says, He "was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15)? How could there be real temptation, if it was impossible for Him to sin? He was, in fact, "forty days tempted of the devil" (Luke 4:2), and this temptation was undoubtedly the most severe temptation to which any man was ever subjected. But how could He really be "tempted" if it was not at all possible for Him to yield to any temptation?
The really essential aspect of a temptation, however, is that of a "testing," and only secondarily need it involve a "solicitation to do wrong." A test may be quite real and valuable, even though there is no possibility of failure, because it demonstrates to the skeptical observer the invulnerability of the object tested. Thus the perfect holiness of Jesus Christ was openly demonstrated to men and angels and devils, when He was tempted (that is, "tested") in all things, yet without sin.
Furthermore, because He has personally experienced the whole gamut of Satanic testing, He perfectly understands every temptation and trial to which we may ever be subjected. Therefore He is able to provide perfect comfort and deliverance in all things. "For in that He Himself hath suffered being tempted He is able to succour them that are tempted" (Hebrews 2:18). "Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:16).
5. Question: "Must a Christian accept the doctrine of the Virgin Birth?" Answer: For some reason, both ancient and modern skeptics have based much of their attack on Christianity on the Biblical teaching that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary. The Virgin Birth, of course, in addition to requiring a biological miracle, would also imply that Jesus Christ was absolutely unique among men and would be consistent with His later claims that He was the only begotten Son of God. These claims are repugnant to the natural man, and therefore men have sought to destroy them by first attacking their foundation, namely, the doctrine of the Virgin Birth.
It is not surprising that materialists would reject this teaching, but it is sad in our modern era to see so many liberal religious leaders doing the same thing. The latter tend to regard it as unimportant, not affecting the idea of the incarnation or the spiritual meaning of the birth of Christ.
Nevertheless the Biblical record does lay great stress on the literal Virgin Birth of Christ, making it an integral part of the whole plan of God to redeem and save lost men. Immediately after man first sinned, and God placed the Curse on man and his dominion, the first promise of the coming Redeemer was given. Of this One, God said, in effect, "The seed of the woman shall crush the head of the serpent" (Genesis 3:15). Thus the coming Deliverer, who would vanquish Satan, would be, not of man's seed (though, biologically speaking, all people are normally of the seed of the male) but of the woman's seed.
This prophecy was clarified, much later, in the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14. "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." The definite article ("The" virgin), which is in the original text, indicates that a very specific virgin was in mind; most logically this refers to the "woman" of Genesis 3:15. The birth was to be unique, since it was a "sign" from the "Lord himself" (hardly applicable therefore to an ordinary birth) and was to bring forth One who would be "Immanuel" (which means "God with us").
The Hebrew word for "virgin" in Isaiah 7:14 occurs only six other times in the Bible. Although its exact meaning has been debated, its usage is always consistent with the meaning "virgin," and in some cases this is the only possible meaning. The scholars who translated the Old Testament into the Greek Septuagint version used the standard Greek word for "virgin" in translating Isaiah 7:14. So did Matthew when he quoted this prophecy (Matthew 1:23) as being fulfilled in the Virgin Birth of Christ.
Isaiah 9:6, 7, speaks of the "child born" as One who is also "The Mighty God." Micah 5:2 says that the One who would be born in Bethlehem would also be One "Whose goings forth have been from everlasting"! Such prophecies surely require an absolutely unique kind of entry into the human family.
It was promised that the coming Redeemer would be a descendant of Shem (Genesis 9:26), then of Abraham(Genesis 22:18), then Isaac (Genesis 26:4), Jacob (Genesis 28:14), Judah (Genesis 49:10), and finally David (II Samuel 7:12, 13). The line of Judah's kings extended from David through Jechonias (also called Coniah), but the extreme wickedness of the latter led God to pronounce judgment: "No man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of the house of Israel" (Jeremiah 33:17).
The Bible's seeming contradictions and paradoxes are always harmonious and satisfying upon deeper study. This one finds its solution in another superficial discrepancy, the apparently contradictory genealogies of Christ in Matthew 1:6-16 and Luke 3:23-31. Matthew gives the legal and royal lineage from David through Solomon and Jechonias (the last man to occupy Judah's throne) to Joseph, the foster father of Jesus. Luke gives the true biological line from David through Nathan to Heli, the father of Mary. To have the legal right to the throne of David, Jesus must be the legal son of Joseph, but he could not be the true son of Joseph because of God's judgment on Jechonias. And yet he must be actually of the "seed of David" to occupy that throne. The Virgin Birth resolves this impasse.
There is no reason, except naturalistic prejudice, for anyone to doubt the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke, and these make it very plain that Mary was still a virgin when she brought forth her firstborn son. The Gospel of John further makes the profound statement that the eternal "Word," which "was God," "became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:1, 14). This is an implicit reference to the prophesied coming of "Immanuel." It seems far more difficult to believe that the God of eternity would become a man by natural human procreative processes than to believe that He would be miraculously conceived and virgin-born!
There are many other references in the gospels and epistles from which the Virgin Birth, even though not explicitly mentioned, is clearly inferred. For example, Paul says: "When the fulness of time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman" (Galatians 4:4).
The objection of the modern liberal that such an event would be impossible because it is contrary to biological law is quite vacuous. This is the whole point—the Virgin Birth was a mighty miracle and was accomplished directly by the power of God Himself! To say that such a miracle is impossible is to either deny the existence of God or else to deny that He can control His creation.
Not only is the Virgin Birth true because it is clearly taught in the Bible, but also because it is the only type of birth consistent with the character and mission of Jesus Christ and with God's great plan of salvation for a lost world. It is altogether fitting that the One who performed many miracles during His life, who offered Himself on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for the sins of men, and who then rose bodily from the dead in vindication of all His claims, should have begun such a unique life by a unique entrance into that life.
If He is truly our Savior, He must be far more than a mere man, though also He is truly the Son of man. To die for our sins, He must Himself be free from any sin of His own. To be sinless in practice, He must first be sinless in nature. He could not have inherited a human nature, bound under the Curse and the bondage of sin as it must have been, as do all other sons of men. His birth, therefore, must have been a miraculous birth. The "seed of the woman" was implanted in the virgin's womb when, as the angel said: "the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God" (Luke 1:35).
The first Christmas (meaning "Christ-sent") thus climaxed the greatest event in all history since the creation itself. Certainly true Christians must believe and rejoice in the historical fact of the Virgin Birth of their Lord and Savior.
The Bible Has the Answer.
This is why history has seen over and over again the phenomenon of multitudes of people actually worshiping some man, receiving his words as absolute truth and his commands as absolute law. Even in our enlightened current times, millions have worshiped such men as Hitler, Stalin, Mao-tse-Tung, Jim Jones, "Reverend" Moon, Hirohito, Nkrumah, and even Elijah Muhammad! The Bible says there is a time that is coming when there will be a great world government and a tremendously powerful and attractive man at the pinnacle, and that "all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb, slain from the foundation of the world" (Revelation 13:8). By worshiping a great superman, one thus actually rejects his Creator and worships a creature (Romans 1:25), subconsciously worshiping himself. This is the greatest and worst form of idolatry.
When people claiming to be Christians regard Jesus as merely a great human teacher and example and then proceed to sing songs of praise to Him and to pray in His name, such a religion is indeed absurd and even blasphemous. If Jesus is only a man, He certainly should not be worshiped.
As a matter of fact, if He is merely a man, He does not even deserve to be honored, because He then must have been either a lying deceiver or a crazy fanatic, and thus not even a good man! This conclusion follows inescapably from the fact that He claimed again and again to be God's only and unique Son, and to have rights and powers which belong only to God.
Consider, for example, a few of His remarkable claims: "I am the light of the world; he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life" (John 8:12). "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away" (Matthew 24:35). "I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father except by me" (John 14:6). "The Son of man hath power upon the earth to forgive sins" (Luke 5:24). "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth" (Matthew 28:18). "For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the Son" (John 5:22). "Ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven" (Mark 14:62).
These and many other like claims were made by Christ Himself. If such statements were ever made by any other man, he would immediately be branded as either a lunatic or a charlatan, but from the lips of Jesus Christ they sound appropriate and prophetic. For two thousand years, He has been the Light of the world, and His words have not passed away! Millions of people of all times and cultures, and of all degrees of wealth and education, have accepted Him as Savior and Lord, and have invariably been satisfied that His claims were vindicated and His promises were true.
Finally, He alone, of all the men who ever lived, conquered death itself. By all rules of evidence, His bodily resurrection from the grave can be adjudged the best-proved fact of all history. "I am the resurrection and the life," He said, "Because I live, ye shall life also" (John 11:25; 14:19).
Thus, although Jesus was certainly a true man—indeed the one perfect Man in all history—He was also God, the second Person of the eternal Trinity. It is completely wrong, even idolatry, to worship Him while believing He is only a great man. But it is perfectly fitting to bow down and worship Him as our "great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ" (Titus 2:13). Indeed, such acceptance and worship of Him, recognizing Him as Creator and Redeemer, is, as He said, the one and only way to forgiveness and salvation and eternal life.
2. Question: "How do we know that Jesus was the Messiah?" Answer: The word "Messiah" means "Anointed One," the name given to the promised Deliverer who would some day come to the people of Israel as their great Savior and Redeemer, "anointed" as Prophet, Priest, and King by God Himself. Some, of course, are still looking for the fulfillment of these Old Testament promises in the future, when the "Messiah" will come to establish a world kingdom of peace and justice centered around the chosen nation, Israel.
On the other hand, the group of Jewish believers who became the first founders of Christianity were convinced that Jesus of Nazareth was their promised Messiah. The name "Christ" is the Greek equivalent of "Messiah," so that the name Jesus Christ really means "Jesus the Messiah," or "Jesus the Anointed." They preached this truth with such conviction and power that not only many Jews but, later, a still greater host of Gentiles, believed on Jesus, both as the Christ and also as the Lord and Savior of all men.
And indeed they had good reason for such faith. The Old Testament messianic prophecies were found to be uniquely fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ. There are hundreds of these prophecies, so that the possibility of their accidental convergence on any ordinary man is completely ruled out by the laws of probability.
Some of the prophecies are so framed, in fact, as to preclude their fulfillment by anyone living after the first century A.D. For example, the patriarch Jacob said, in Genesis 49:10, "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come." The name "Shiloh" is a title of the Messiah, and the prophecy states that Judah's tribe would remain the chief tribe in Israel, in particular providing their kings, until Messiah would come. The prophecy must have been fulfilled prior to the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem in A.D. 70, by which time certainly all semblance of a sceptre had departed from Judah.
Similarly the promise was given to King David that the Messiah should be one of his descendants, as the King eternal, the one of whom God said, "I will stablish the throne of his kingdom for ever" (II Samuel 7:13). Isaiah said, "There shall come forth a rod out of the stem (literally 'stump') of Jesse (that is, David's father), and a Branch shall grow out of his roots" (Isaiah 11:1). This is another name of the Messiah, and indicates that, even after it would appear that the family tree of Jesse has been cut down, yet one Branch will grow out of the stump. Evidently the very last one who could be known to have come of this lineage would finally prove to be the promised Messiah!
This was fulfilled uniquely in Jesus. His foster father, Joseph, was in the royal line from David and thus held the legal right to the throne (Matthew 1:1-16). His mother, Mary, was also a descendant of David, as shown by her genealogy in Luke 3:23-31. But ever since the time of Jesus, it would be quite impossible to establish the legal or biological lineage of any pretender to David's throne, as all the ancient genealogical records were destroyed soon after that.
An even more striking prophecy is given in Daniel 9:24-27. There Daniel was told explicitly that Messiah would come 69 "sabbaths" (that is, 69 sabbatical years—a total of 483 years) after the decree was given to rebuild Jerusalem, which at that time lay in ruins after Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, had destroyed it.
Such a decree was given later by the Persian emperor. Although the exact date of the decree is somewhat uncertain, the termination date of the prophecy must have been some time in the first century A.D. In fact, it must have been before the destruction of the city and the temple by the Romans in A.D. 70, because the prophecy said quite explicitly: "After (the 483 years) shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself; and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary" (Daniel 9:26). Not only must Messiah come before this destruction, but He was also to be "cut off," rejected and killed, before it came.
It is obvious that no one but Jesus could have fulfilled these prophecies. The prophecies absolutely preclude any still future Messiah, except that even that hope also will find its fulfillment in the second coming of Christ.
And then, of course, there are still hundreds of other prophecies, all of which were fulfilled by Jesus Christ: His virgin birth (Isaiah 7:14); His birth in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2); His sacrificial death (Isaiah 53:5); His crucifixion (Psalm 22:14-18); His bodily resurrection (Psalm 16:10); and many others. All of these unite in their witness that "Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God" (John 20:31).
The probability that hundreds of such specific predictions, each quite independent of the others, could all be fulfilled concurrently in one individual, is unlikely in the highest degree, especially in view of the miraculous nature of many of them (e.g., the virgin birth, the resurrection, etc.). No rational conclusion seems possible except that Jesus is all He claimed—Messiah, Savior, Lord and God.
3. Question: "What did Jesus look like?" Answer: One of the most remarkable features of the gospel records is that they give no information whatever about the physical appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ. Whether He was tall or short, lean or heavy, dark or light in complexion, bearded or clean-shaven—no one knows. The only real information we have about Christ and His life is in the four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—and these writers simply do not say one word about His appearance! This in itself is evidence of divine inspiration. They wrote in considerable detail about His words and deeds, and it would seem almost certain that any writer dealing specifically with such biographical material would include some kind of physical description of the one of whom he was writing. But these writers were all constrained somehow not to do so.
We do not even know that His features were "Jewish" in character. Although He was born in the family of David, it must be remembered that neither of His earthly parents was connected with Him genetically. He was "conceived by the Holy Ghost" and simply placed in the womb of the Virgin Mary.
Now, since the Holy Spirit, in His work of inspiring the Holy Scriptures, has carefully refrained from satisfying our curiosity about Jesus' human appearance, it is utterly futile for men to speculate about this matter. The commonly accepted representation of His features, as expressed in countless paintings and images over the centuries, has no basis in fact and is quite misleading. Certain supposed verbal descriptions of Him that have come from extra-Biblical sources are likewise generally known to date from long after the apostolic period.
There is a very good reason for this divine reticence about the physical aspects of Jesus. He is the Son of man—the representative Man, the divine Substitute for all men of all times and places. If we knew that He had been a tall man, for example, then we would subconsciously sense that God preferred tall men and that it was somehow a mark of God's disfavor for a man to be small in stature. The same sense of pride or resentment would tend to attach itself to the possession or lack of any other specific physical characteristic known to be part of Christ's human aspect.
A second reason for the Lord's refusal to allow a description of Himself in the Scriptures is man's perverse tendency to idolatry. Man is continually "changing the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things" (Romans 1:23). Because of the root sin of pride and unbelief in his soul, he rebels at the thought of submitting himself in faith to his Creator, and instead desires to submit himself to a god of his own making, one he has either constructed in his mind (the mental "model" of ultimate meaning postulated by the philosopher) or else constructed with his own skills (the brazen "model" of God in the pagan temple or even the canvas "model" of the Son of God that human artists have contrived). The Apostle Paul has warned: "We ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device" (Acts 17:29). The last words of the Apostle John in his epistle were" "Little children, keep yourselves from idols" (1 John 5:21).
John the Baptist, as he introduced Christ in his message, said: "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him" (John 1:18). The invisible God is seen, therefore, not in the bodily incarnation of Himself in Christ, but rather through Christ's "declaration" of His character in His words and deeds. The human body of Christ finally was offered up as a sacrifice, to suffer and die in the bitterest agony, "... His visage so marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men:..." (Isaiah 52:14), in order that sinful and hell-deserving men might be redeemed as He died in their place.
We are not, therefore, to continually think of Jesus as He once was, but rather to worship Him as He now is, the risen Lord of life, who rose from the dead and ascended back to heaven. We must forever praise and thank Him for His unspeakable gift of salvation, in living as our perfect Example and dying as our all-sufficient Savior, but we must also believe His Word and obey Him as our eternal Lord. Some day, probably very soon, we shall ourselves be made like Him, "...for we shall see Him as He is" (1 John 3:2).
In the meantime, we do have one description of His visible appearance in the Bible, not as He was when He walked in Galilee, but rather as He is now in heaven. John saw, in his great vision of the return of the Lord, "... one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the breast with a golden girdle. His head and His hairs were white as snow; and His eyes were as a flame of fire; and His feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and His voice as the sound of many waters. And He had in His right hand seven stars: and out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: and His countenance was as the sun shining in His strength" (Revelation 1:13-16).
This is the Lord Jesus Christ as we shall see Him some day, either to "rejoice at his coming" (1 Thessalonians 2:19), if we now trust Him as our Lord, or else to cry out to "hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne" (Revelation 6:16), if we have rejected Him and His Word.
4. Question: "Could Jesus have sinned?" Answer: That Jesus was truly a man, and not a superhuman angelic being of some kind, is evident from many passages of Scripture. "For verily He took not on Him the nature of angels; but He took on Him the seed of Abraham. Wherefore in all things it behooved Him to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people" (Hebrews 2:16, 17).
As a true man, He was subject to all the physical infirmities of human flesh, such as hunger, fatigue, pain, and finally death. On the other hand, He was not genetically connected by direct heredity to His parents, since He was miraculously placed in an embryonic form into Mary's womb by the Holy Spirit, thus entering the world by virgin birth. A perfect human body was created for Him, and thus the eternal "Word was made flesh" (John 1:14). "Wherefore when He cometh into the world, He saith... a body hast thou prepared me" (Hebrews 10:5).
The question now at hand is whether, in His perfect humanity, He could have yielded, not only to the physical infirmities of human flesh (as He actually did when he died on the cross) but also to the temptations of sinful flesh. There is no doubt that God sent His own Son "in the likeness of sinful flesh" (Romans 8:3), but could He actually have sinned?
We know He did not sin, of course. This was the uniform testimony of all who knew Him. Those who were His closest companions, who knew Him best of all, and who therefore would be best acquainted with His weaknesses, agree completely on this. John, the closest of the apostles to Jesus, said, "In Him is no sin" (1 John 3:5), and Peter, the spokesman for the apostles, said, "He did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth" (1 Peter 2:22).
Not only His close friends, but even His enemies, those who hated Him and finally caused His death, agreed on His moral sinlessness. The one who betrayed Him, Judas, cried out in remorse, "I have betrayed innocent blood" (Matthew 27:4). The governor who condemned Him to be executed, Pilate, said, "I find in Him no fault at all" (John 18:38). The charge against Him by the priests that led to His condemnation was solely that of blasphemy. "The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of God" (John 19:7). Though blasphemy is indeed a grievous sin, Jesus was, of course, not really guilty of it, because He was truly the Son of God as He claimed.
Thus He was absolutely sinless in every respect, the only man who ever lived who never sinned: "Wherefore, as by one man (i.e., Adam) sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned" (Romans 5:12). Every man other than Jesus Christ was under God's condemnation because of sin; Christ alone was fully righteous and thus was able to become a perfect sacrifice for sin. "For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Corinthians 5:21).
This would have been impossible had Jesus Himself become a sinner. If He had ever sinned, even in the least degree, He also would have fallen under the condemnation of God, and thus could never have died in substitution for the sins of others. All men would then have died with no further hope of salvation. If God Himself, incarnate in His only Son, could not measure up to the standard of His own holiness, then it is utterly futile to search elsewhere for meaning and salvation in the universe.
Since it is impossible that the omnipotent God could be fully defeated in His own purpose for the world and mankind, however, and since the consummation of that purpose required the offering of a perfect sacrifice for sins in the person of His own eternal Son, it is therefore completely impossible that Jesus could ever have sinned. He was the "Lamb without blemish and without spot,... foreordained before the foundation of the world" (1 Peter 1:19, 20).
Though He was completely man, He was also completely God. "The Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). He is "the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ" (Titus 2:13). By very definition, what God does is right; God therefore cannot sin, and Jesus Christ is God! "God cannot be tempted with evil" (James 1:13).
Jesus is not half God and half man, but fully God and fully man. Neither is He man part of the time and God part of the time. The divine and human natures are united in Him in perfect unity, forever.
Although He had (and has) a human nature, it must be remembered that He has a perfect human nature! He is Man as God intended man to be. The perfection of His human nature was assured by the miraculous conception, so that He did not in any wise inherit a fallen, sinful nature from Adam, as have all other men.
Because He possessed a perfect human nature from the very beginning, He did not need to be "converted," as do other men. He told Nicodemus, the most moral and religious man of his day, "Ye must be born again," but He did not say, "We must be born again." He was as perfectly sinless in His human nature then as He is now. "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and for ever" (Hebrews 13:8).
What does the Scripture mean, then, when it says, He "was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15)? How could there be real temptation, if it was impossible for Him to sin? He was, in fact, "forty days tempted of the devil" (Luke 4:2), and this temptation was undoubtedly the most severe temptation to which any man was ever subjected. But how could He really be "tempted" if it was not at all possible for Him to yield to any temptation?
The really essential aspect of a temptation, however, is that of a "testing," and only secondarily need it involve a "solicitation to do wrong." A test may be quite real and valuable, even though there is no possibility of failure, because it demonstrates to the skeptical observer the invulnerability of the object tested. Thus the perfect holiness of Jesus Christ was openly demonstrated to men and angels and devils, when He was tempted (that is, "tested") in all things, yet without sin.
Furthermore, because He has personally experienced the whole gamut of Satanic testing, He perfectly understands every temptation and trial to which we may ever be subjected. Therefore He is able to provide perfect comfort and deliverance in all things. "For in that He Himself hath suffered being tempted He is able to succour them that are tempted" (Hebrews 2:18). "Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:16).
5. Question: "Must a Christian accept the doctrine of the Virgin Birth?" Answer: For some reason, both ancient and modern skeptics have based much of their attack on Christianity on the Biblical teaching that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary. The Virgin Birth, of course, in addition to requiring a biological miracle, would also imply that Jesus Christ was absolutely unique among men and would be consistent with His later claims that He was the only begotten Son of God. These claims are repugnant to the natural man, and therefore men have sought to destroy them by first attacking their foundation, namely, the doctrine of the Virgin Birth.
It is not surprising that materialists would reject this teaching, but it is sad in our modern era to see so many liberal religious leaders doing the same thing. The latter tend to regard it as unimportant, not affecting the idea of the incarnation or the spiritual meaning of the birth of Christ.
Nevertheless the Biblical record does lay great stress on the literal Virgin Birth of Christ, making it an integral part of the whole plan of God to redeem and save lost men. Immediately after man first sinned, and God placed the Curse on man and his dominion, the first promise of the coming Redeemer was given. Of this One, God said, in effect, "The seed of the woman shall crush the head of the serpent" (Genesis 3:15). Thus the coming Deliverer, who would vanquish Satan, would be, not of man's seed (though, biologically speaking, all people are normally of the seed of the male) but of the woman's seed.
This prophecy was clarified, much later, in the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14. "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." The definite article ("The" virgin), which is in the original text, indicates that a very specific virgin was in mind; most logically this refers to the "woman" of Genesis 3:15. The birth was to be unique, since it was a "sign" from the "Lord himself" (hardly applicable therefore to an ordinary birth) and was to bring forth One who would be "Immanuel" (which means "God with us").
The Hebrew word for "virgin" in Isaiah 7:14 occurs only six other times in the Bible. Although its exact meaning has been debated, its usage is always consistent with the meaning "virgin," and in some cases this is the only possible meaning. The scholars who translated the Old Testament into the Greek Septuagint version used the standard Greek word for "virgin" in translating Isaiah 7:14. So did Matthew when he quoted this prophecy (Matthew 1:23) as being fulfilled in the Virgin Birth of Christ.
Isaiah 9:6, 7, speaks of the "child born" as One who is also "The Mighty God." Micah 5:2 says that the One who would be born in Bethlehem would also be One "Whose goings forth have been from everlasting"! Such prophecies surely require an absolutely unique kind of entry into the human family.
It was promised that the coming Redeemer would be a descendant of Shem (Genesis 9:26), then of Abraham(Genesis 22:18), then Isaac (Genesis 26:4), Jacob (Genesis 28:14), Judah (Genesis 49:10), and finally David (II Samuel 7:12, 13). The line of Judah's kings extended from David through Jechonias (also called Coniah), but the extreme wickedness of the latter led God to pronounce judgment: "No man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of the house of Israel" (Jeremiah 33:17).
The Bible's seeming contradictions and paradoxes are always harmonious and satisfying upon deeper study. This one finds its solution in another superficial discrepancy, the apparently contradictory genealogies of Christ in Matthew 1:6-16 and Luke 3:23-31. Matthew gives the legal and royal lineage from David through Solomon and Jechonias (the last man to occupy Judah's throne) to Joseph, the foster father of Jesus. Luke gives the true biological line from David through Nathan to Heli, the father of Mary. To have the legal right to the throne of David, Jesus must be the legal son of Joseph, but he could not be the true son of Joseph because of God's judgment on Jechonias. And yet he must be actually of the "seed of David" to occupy that throne. The Virgin Birth resolves this impasse.
There is no reason, except naturalistic prejudice, for anyone to doubt the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke, and these make it very plain that Mary was still a virgin when she brought forth her firstborn son. The Gospel of John further makes the profound statement that the eternal "Word," which "was God," "became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:1, 14). This is an implicit reference to the prophesied coming of "Immanuel." It seems far more difficult to believe that the God of eternity would become a man by natural human procreative processes than to believe that He would be miraculously conceived and virgin-born!
There are many other references in the gospels and epistles from which the Virgin Birth, even though not explicitly mentioned, is clearly inferred. For example, Paul says: "When the fulness of time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman" (Galatians 4:4).
The objection of the modern liberal that such an event would be impossible because it is contrary to biological law is quite vacuous. This is the whole point—the Virgin Birth was a mighty miracle and was accomplished directly by the power of God Himself! To say that such a miracle is impossible is to either deny the existence of God or else to deny that He can control His creation.
Not only is the Virgin Birth true because it is clearly taught in the Bible, but also because it is the only type of birth consistent with the character and mission of Jesus Christ and with God's great plan of salvation for a lost world. It is altogether fitting that the One who performed many miracles during His life, who offered Himself on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for the sins of men, and who then rose bodily from the dead in vindication of all His claims, should have begun such a unique life by a unique entrance into that life.
If He is truly our Savior, He must be far more than a mere man, though also He is truly the Son of man. To die for our sins, He must Himself be free from any sin of His own. To be sinless in practice, He must first be sinless in nature. He could not have inherited a human nature, bound under the Curse and the bondage of sin as it must have been, as do all other sons of men. His birth, therefore, must have been a miraculous birth. The "seed of the woman" was implanted in the virgin's womb when, as the angel said: "the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God" (Luke 1:35).
The first Christmas (meaning "Christ-sent") thus climaxed the greatest event in all history since the creation itself. Certainly true Christians must believe and rejoice in the historical fact of the Virgin Birth of their Lord and Savior.
The Bible Has the Answer.