4 posts tagged “alistair begg”

In Jesus, God became man.  The infinite became finite.  The eternal entered time.  The Creator became the created one.  John 1:14 "The Word became flesh."  He became what He was not without ever ceasing to be what He was, namely God.  And in becoming man, Jesus was not exchanging his divinity for His humanity; he wasn't suspending or surrendering His divine attributes or prerogatives in order that He might be come real and active.  The divine Word did not relinquish His deity, but added to it.

Jesus had ordinary human affections.  He had His close friends/disciples, and loved His mother.

Jesus had a human faculty of choice.  Jesus was making real choices.  Jesus chose NOT to make stones in to bread, and chose NOT to throw Himself down from the pinnacle.

Jesus (not ONLY but ALSO) had a human intellect.  He "learned his times tables."  "Mary taught Him His colors."  God chose not to reveal to Jesus the time of His return.

Jesus: TWO Natures in One Person
When we say JESUS, we're speaking about One in whom is found all that can be found of God and all that can be expressed in man.

The first 400-500 years of the early church wrestled with these ideas.

Constantine became a Christian in 312 A.D. and he put together the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. in order to wrestle with the issue of who Jesus was in relationship to the Father and the Holy Spirit.  But it wasn't until 381 A.D.  in the Council of Constantinople, they finally determined together that Christ was not a created being.

How then can the divine and human coexist in this person?  How can you have one person with two natures?

They ruled out the idea that Jesus was two personalities under one skin.  They also ruled out the idea that divinity swallowed humanity.  (That His humanity was an unreal notion, and that he was truly divine and a bit of a phantom.)  They also ruled out the idea that instead of there being two distinct natures within one person, that these two natures were fused and interwoven in a 'mongrel' existence.

Council of Chalcedon: Jesus Christ acknowledged in two natures inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably.

The Westminster Confession:
Two whole perfect and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined within one person, but without conversion, composition, or confusion.


Without conversion: The divine is not changed into the human nor is the human transmuted into the divine.

Without composition: The divine and he human do not coalesce so as to form a third entity

Without confusion: and neither are these two distinct natures mixed.

Jesus lived His divine human life in and through His human mind and body at every point.  He did, and endured everything, including His sufferings on the cross, in the unity of His divine human person.

The natures are not separated, or commingled, but coexist in the one person.

1 Timothy 3:16

2 John 1:7

John 1:14 - the Word is introduced in the proceeding 13 verses.

The Word is eternal.
There was never a time when He was NOT.
When creation took place, the Word was already in being.
It is unoriginated, uncaused, and independent of any other form of existence.

The Word is Creator.  John 1:3
Everything in the Universe ultimately a coherent expression of the Word's creative power.  "Through Him all things were made."  There is nothing beyond the Word.

The Word is God.
To say less than this is to move beyond the realm of historic Orthodoxy.

"Who is He in yonder stall,
at whose feet the shepherds fall."

"Tis the Lord, oh wondrous story
Tis the Lord, the King of glory
And at His feet, we humbly fall
And we crown Him, crown Him Lord of all."

Luke 22

Verses 35-38

Verses 49-51

Verse 28, Jesus ignores his disciples character defects and calls them, "those who have stayed with me in my trials."  You feel like He's always looking for the good in them.

Verse 32, and He cares for them, and prays for them.

(Note to self: I need to sit somewhere that is a LOW traffic area; especially on Thursday!)