Sunday, August 4, 2013

PERSON AND NATURE OF CHRIST - A THUMBNAIL SKETCH


The following essay is part of my exam for Systematic Theology as is the preceding essay An Overview of the Ministry of the Holy Spirit.  



    The person and nature of Christ, very simply put, is He is 100% God and 100% man. John 1:1 tells us that in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. John further explains, in verse 14, that the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us. The Gospels of Luke and Matthew demonstrate the human ancestry of Christ while the Gospel of John and most of the New Testament writers demonstrate the deity of Christ. As demonstrated above, John specifically declares that Jesus is God in the flesh.

We find in the person of Christ all the attributes of God that are exclusive to God.
In His omniscience, Christ knows all things as demonstrated by Jesus revealing His knowledge of the Samaritan woman in John chapter 11. In His omnipresence, Christ is all places at all times as demonstrated in Matthew 18:20 when He declared that when 2 or 3 are gathered together, He is in their midst. If two or three are gathered in multiple places, then Jesus would have to be in more than one place at at a time in order for this to be truthful. In His omnipotence, Christ is all-powerful.
This is revealed to us in Matthew 28:18 when Jesus Himself declares that “all power is given unto me.” Paul also testifies to the power of Christ in relation to his own weakness, in 2 Corinthians 12:9. In His immutability, we see that Christ does not change. Hebrews 13:8 tells us that Jesus is the same “today, yesterday, and forever.”


These attributes are exclusive to God and all attributable to Christ, demonstrating that He is indeed God. His humanity cannot be denied due to the fact that He is born of a woman, descended from a specific family line traceable back to Adam, the fact that He is shown eating and drinking, the fact that he suffered pain and the fact that He was killed. All the evidence of scripture demonstrates that Jesus is God and man in every sense. 

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