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To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: (I Cor 1:2)

And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption… (I Cor 1:30)

Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (I Cor 6:9b-11)

…even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. (Eph 1:4)

And by that will, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Heb 10:10)

Praise you, Father, for you have placed me in Christ and in doing so have made me holy. I am yours because in Christ you have set me apart for yourself.

Martin Luther hammered 95 theses on the church door at Wittenberg and ignited the Reformation. This event is what most people think of when they think of Luther. Luther, however, did so much more than begin the Reformation. He pastored churches, shepherded leaders, taught theology, and wrote voluminously on both theological and practical matters.

David Robinson played basketball for the San Antonio Spurs. He won two NBA titles and a Most Valuable Player award on the way to a Hall of Fame career. These facts are what most people think of when they think of David Robinson. Robinson, however, did so much more than play basketball. He provided college scholarships to at-risk kids, founded a private school for low-income students, proclaimed Christ to San Antonio youth, and much more.

When we think of famous people, we tend to think only of the famous stuff. I suppose that’s natural, but it can be limiting, especially when we come to Jesus.

Most people who know anything about Jesus know that He died to save us from our sins, that His death on the Cross was the punishment for our sins, bringing forgiveness and salvation. Jesus, however, did so much more than bring salvation. He conquered death; He defeated Satan, and He sanctified us through and through. Now “sanctify” is a Bible word that means something like “to make holy, righteous, pure; to set apart for God.” This means that Jesus did more than the famous stuff — more than bring salvation.  Jesus came to make us new, clean, holy, blameless.

The holiness of God that is in Christ is given to all who are also in Christ. This means that the foundation for holy living is not in our attempts at moral behavior. It is not in our good deeds or our repentance. It is not in anything we do. The foundation for holy living is Jesus.

In Him, we are holy. The writer to the Hebrews tells us that “we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb 10:10). It is a past event and it is once for all. Paul writes to the church in Corinth and addresses “those who were sanctified in Christ Jesus” (I Cor 1:2). He sees sanctification as a completed deed in Christ.

Holiness is not something we manufacture. It is a gift of God that we already have in Christ just as salvation is a gift of God that we have in Christ. Holiness is not something we strive for apart from Christ. It is something we rest in when we are in Christ. We are called to live a holy life (I Pet 1:15-16) because we have been made a holy people. Holiness is part of our identity in Christ. It’s who we are.

We are holy because our old self has been crucified with Christ (Rm 6:1-11). We have died with Him (Gal 2:20; Col 3:3). God punished our sin through the shedding of the blood on the Cross. Consequently, the just punishment has been served, and we have access to forgiveness. But God also eliminated the source of our sin through the death of our old self on the Cross. In Christ, the sinful you is dead. You have a new you. This is part of the work of Christ. He has made a new race, and He Himself is the head (I Cor 15:20-23; 45-49).

Of course, we are to live out the new life God has given us, and that “living out” involves practical things like telling the truth, fighting greed, remaining sexually pure, and controlling our temper.  Sometimes people think of these practices as sanctification, and in one sense they are correct.  But in another sense, sanctification in Christ precedes the practices.  The practices are the consequence of what Christ has done.  We remain sexually pure because we are holy.  Trying to live a holy life is no good unless it is first grounded in the real sanctification that we already have in Christ. If we try to live a holy life apart from Christ, it is like trying to spend a million dollars when we have only five hundred in the bank. But if we rest in Christ and in the finished holiness He has procured for us through the Cross and Resurrection, suddenly we find that we have billions of dollars in the account. Holiness is ultimately not a work of ours but a work of grace. We were saved by grace, and so we are to live our daily life by grace as well. “Having begun by the Spirit, are [we] now being perfected by the flesh?” (Gal 3:3) The entire life of the follower of Jesus is a gift of grace that we access through faith in the finished work of Christ. Salvation comes that way, but so does sanctification. A holy, righteous life comes from Jesus. It does not come from us.

It is important for us to acknowledge this aspect of the work of Christ, for it is woefully neglected in the common preaching and writing of the contemporary church. Jesus is not just our Savior. He is also our Sanctifier. He does not just forgive sins. He frees us from sin itself — from its power, its grip. We can live a new life because He has made us a new creature. Or to put it another way, we can live a new life because we are in Him. He has made us holy in the sight of God. That is simply who we are.

He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” (Matt 16:16-17)

Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” And Jesus said, “I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.” (Mk 14:61-2)

[Jesus] said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. (Lk 24:25-6)

The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.” (Jn 4:25-26)

Father, you have sent your Son, foretold through the prophets, to be the long-awaited Messiah of the Jewish people, and thus, to be their king and mine.

Jesus was a Jew. Peter was a Jew. Paul was a Jew. James, John, Thomas, Phillip and Silas were all Jews. Almost all of Jesus’ first followers were Jews. Jesus came to the Jewish people with a distinctly Jewish message, and the entire New Testament oozes Judaism. There can be no question that faith in Jesus is Jewish.

I know. It sounds weird. Some people think I am contradicting myself — trying to pass off some religious version of a round square. But they do not understand Jesus. The babe in Bethlehem is not chapter one of the story. It is the continuation of a story that had been going on for thousands of years. And that story is distinctly Jewish. Even the very word “Christ” is merely the Greek translation of the Hebrew word “Messiah” or Anointed One, the long-awaited Hebrew king. Whenever you say that so-and-so is a Christian, what you are really saying is that she is part of something distinctly Jewish.

Jesus was a Jew who came to the Jews. He gave them a completely Jewish message and claimed for Himself a uniquely Jewish identity. When He did so, He divided His own people. Some loved Him and gave their lives to follow Him; some bitterly opposed Him. Many came to see a miracle; many came to hear Him teach; but some came to trap Him. Few who heard Him were neutral. He inspired adoration and anger. A Jew living in Galilee or Judea in AD 30 had an opinion one way or the other about the rabbi Yeshua.

To the Jewish people, certainly the central question surrounding the identity of this new rabbi was this: “Is he the promised Messiah?” The squabble over that question was an entirely internal Jewish affair. It was like a great big family disagreement. Have you ever seen family argue?

“Sam, why did you stay home when I needed you to come? You don’t love me.”

“Of course I love you, Mandy. That’s why I didn’t come. My presence would not have helped you. It’s time to grow up.”

The family may argue over whether Sam loves Mandy, but much of the argument centers on this question: “How do you define love?” Sam and Mandy disagree on that definition, but it is the key to whether or not Sam shows love to his sister. Something like this is going on between Jesus and the Jewish people of his day. On the surface, the question looks like “Is he the Messiah?” In reality, the question is “What defines Messiah?”

To the Jewish people, Messiah could mean different things, but perhaps the most popular concept of Messiah in Jesus’ day was that of a conquering political or military leader who would deliver his people from the oppression of pagan nations. He would be a king, the son of David.

Any plain reading of the gospels shows that this rabbi Jesus considered Himself to be Messiah. But his concept of Messiah was bigger than the popular concept. To Jesus, Messiah had to suffer. This idea was foreign to the popular notion and understandably so. Conquering kings are not generally portrayed as suffering and dying. But to Jesus, the idea of a suffering Messiah came from the Jewish Scriptures. Isaiah 53 speaks of a suffering servant who brings peace and healing to Israel through his suffering, a man who bears the sorrows and sins of the people and who is crushed as a guilt offering. Though he is rejected, he will be called great. To Jesus, this man is Messianic. To Jesus, this suffering does not negate the fact that the Messiah is a conquering king. To Jesus, Messiah is big enough to encompass both categories. That is why he can call himself Messiah and still say that he will die.

To many first century Jews, Jesus’ crucifixion was evidence enough that he could not have been Messiah. No Messiah would ever die such a death. To Jesus and his followers, however, the crucifixion was part of the evidence that he was Messiah. Through His death He delivered his people from a bondage greater than that of Rome. And his Resurrection from the dead conquers a foe much stronger and more significant than any king could ever imagine. Jesus went through death in order to vanquish it. This is not the popular Jewish concept of Messiah. It is much more surprising. It is also greater.

But the suffering that Jesus said Messiah would endure is not the only problem that many Jews had with him. To Jesus and his followers, Messiah was also the Son of God (Mt 16:16). At one level, this claim is more compatible with common Jewish ideas, for many Jews believed that Messiah would have supernatural origins. In fact, Psalm 2 expressly identifies Messiah as God’s Son.   But the Jewish people did not imagine anything like Jesus’ claim to be God in the flesh. That idea would have been foreign to most Jewish thinking. In this sense, Messiah is more exalted than the popular Jewish notions.

Thus, the picture that Jesus paints of Messiah is of a servant who suffers and dies (Mt 16:13-23) and of a glorious figure coming on the clouds of heaven (Mk 14:61-2). To Jesus, Messiah is at the same time lower and higher than the most popular Jewish notions of him. Jesus took the idea of Messiah to a new level, or perhaps I should say to multiple levels. But he certainly did not fit the box. In fact, when certain Jews tried to make him king by force, he rejected the attempt (Jn 6:15). He was not that type of king.

Indeed, even his followers did not fully understand. They saw his miracles, heard his teachings and believed on that basis, but that did not mean that they comprehended what they believed. The claim of the New Testament is that the real Messiah transcended all human expectations of him. Jesus was much more humble and glorious than anyone ever thought Messiah could be.

Thus, Christianity is Jewish. But it is more than Jewish. It is for the world. The promised Messiah was to be a light to the Gentiles (Is 49:6). The God that the Jews worshipped has revealed himself to all peoples, but he has done so in a distinctly Jewish way. We bow before the king of the Jews.

She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. (Mt 1:21)

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. (Jn 3:17)

And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. (I Jn 4:14)

I was dead but now I live. And I live because of my Savior. Hallelujah!

When a two-year-old girl falls into a river, she is in trouble. Unless someone saves her, she has just a few minutes to live. When a man is trapped on the tenth floor of a burning building, he is in trouble. He has no power to put the fire out, and he dies if he jumps. Someone needs to help him, or he is gone.

The Scriptures plainly teach that our plight is much like that of the two-year-old girl and the man in the burning building. We are in grave trouble, and unless someone saves us, we have no hope. The reason we are in grave trouble is that we have often disobeyed God, and we cannot escape His judgment. But the Scriptures also teach that we do have a person to save us.

Jesus is that person, and the term His followers use to describe this aspect of Him is “Savior.” A savior is simply a person who saves someone. The man who rescues the girl from the river is her savior in a real way, and the fire department that rescues the man from the building is his savior because it saved him from certain destruction.

Now when Jesus saves us, He does not save us from the river or the burning building. He does not save us from an oncoming army or a pestilence or a thief or environmental destruction. To be sure, these things are real, but as serious as these problems might be, you and I have a deeper problem still. When Jesus saves us, He saves us from our sin.

The reality is that, apart from Jesus, you and I stand before a holy and righteous God, and we do so with sin on our hands and in our hearts. When seen from the perspective of eternity, the consequences of that sin are more dire than the consequences of the river or the fire. The river can kill the body but cannot harm the soul. A just God, however, can destroy both body and soul in hell. Our sin is a disease we cannot overcome and a disease that brings a calamity such as earth has never seen nor ever will see.

But we don’t see it. We make light of it. We sleep as we live. The two-year-old girl doesn’t understand the danger she is in. Sometimes that’s how she got in the water in the first place. She doesn’t know that she needs a savior. She doesn’t see that her life is about to end. But it is. Whether she sees it or not. Unless someone rescues her.  So it is with so many who never see the seriousness of their sin.  They will perish even if they never see their danger.

Jesus is our rescuer, our savior. He became our savior through the Cross. Sometimes a government will send special forces behind enemy lines to rescue citizens who have been kidnapped and are being held prisoner. We are those prisoners, held captive by our sin. Jesus is God’s one-man SEAL team, and the Cross is the rescue plan. The Cross wipes away sin. It crushes its power. Those who come under the Cross are rescued. They are saved.

Our savior, by virtue of the Cross, brings us to God. He allows us to fulfill the purpose for which we were made. He makes us clean. And free.  And whole. And full of life.

The proper response to a savior is joy. You were lost but now are found. You were blind but now you see. You were dead but now you live. This is why God’s people sing. They have been rescued from the pit. They have seen the ugliness of their sin, but they have also seen the beauty of their salvation. God’s people rejoice in their savior Jesus Christ. They do so because they see.

A second proper response to a savior is gratitude. We would think ill of the man rescued from the burning building if he felt no gratitude toward his rescuers. We would think his heart calloused. The follower of Jesus owes Him a great debt. Consequently, God’s people feel the significance of what Jesus has done for them and are grateful from the heart.

…because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Rm 10:9)

For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. (II Cor 4:5)

And as Jesus taught in the temple, he said, “How can the scribes say that the Christ is the Son of David? David himself, in the Holy Spirit, declared, ‘The LORD said to my Lord, “’Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.’” David himself calls him Lord. So how is he his son? (Mk 12:35-7)

Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe. Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” (Jn 20:27-28)

Why do you call me “Lord, Lord,” and not do what I tell you? (Lk 6:46)

If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed. Our Lord, come [Maranatha]! (I Cor 16:22)

Lord, You are king.  I have no other.  Praise to Your name.

The most basic and common proclamation of a follower of Jesus is that “Jesus is Lord!” That simple statement is the foundation of a life lived for God, for in simplest terms, a follower of God is one for whom Jesus has become Lord. The New Testament could not be clearer. Jesus is declared “Lord” more than any other name, and the title is early and widespread. When Paul writes to the Greek-speaking church of Corinth in the mid-50s, he quotes, in Aramaic, a saying that goes back to the original Aramaic-speaking church. He writes “Maranatha,” which means “Our Lord, come!” He does not translate it but refers to it as if everybody knows what it means. Indeed, the New Testament declares Jesus “Lord” so many times, that the term has actually become another name for Jesus.

Here’s what the word means. In the Bible, sometimes the word “Lord” is a blatant reference to God, as we see in phrases like “Thus says the Lord” and “the day of the Lord.” Other times, the word refers simply to a person in authority. One might use the word to describe a king, a commander, a business owner, the head of a respected house, or the master of some slaves, but no one ever called the garbage man “Lord.”

In the New Testament, the word is used of Jesus in both ways, but at its lowest common denominator, both ways still get at one common idea, for no matter which meaning a passage uses, it is still saying that Jesus has authority. Therefore, when people say that Jesus is Lord, what they are saying is that He is king and has every right to demand our allegiance and obedience. In other words, if Jesus is Lord, we have to do what He says. That’s what “Lord” means.

Many people like Jesus but dislike the Lord part. To them, Jesus is a wonderful teacher and a great role model, but “Lord” is going a bit far. Let’s make no mistake. A follower of Jesus follows Jesus. Disciples are not just attracted to Jesus; they are committed to Him as Lord. To Jesus, attraction without commitment is phony. Jesus is not looking for people who merely like Him. He is looking for people who will lay down their lives. That’s what “Lord” means.

When people trust Jesus, He changes their lives. You will often meet people who say they trust Jesus but whose lives haven’t changed. They say they belong to Him, but they live no different from everyone else. It is quite possible that what they thought was faith was not faith. Perhaps it was attraction; perhaps it was a warm, fuzzy feeling. True faith trusts Jesus, and “Lord” is simply who Jesus is. The problem with these people is that Jesus is not their Lord. They may call Him Savior.  They may call Him wonderful.  They may see beauty in His words.  But He isn’t their Lord because if He was, they would actually follow Him. That’s what “Lord” means.

If Jesus is Lord, it affects life. Submitting to Him is not just about church and worship. It includes work, food, sex, money, talents, desires, family relations — everything. If Jesus is Lord, He gets to decide how we spend our money, how we use our talents, which desires we pursue and how. He directs our career, our family planning, and our sex life. He tells us when to fast, when to sleep or get up, and what to say or not say to our relatives. I don’t mean He micromanages every word or detail. I do mean that if Jesus is Lord, He has authority in all these areas of our lives — and more. That’s what “Lord” means.

“’But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’” — he then said to the paralytic — ‘Rise, pick up your bed and go home.’” (Mt 9:6)

 “So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.” (Mk 2:28)

 “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.” (Mk 10:45)

 “And the high priest stood up in the midst and asked Jesus, ‘Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?’ But he remained silent and made no answer. Again the high priest asked him, ‘Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?’ And Jesus said, ‘I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.’” (Mk 14:60-62)

 “For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.” (Lk 9:26)

 “No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.  For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (Jn 3:13-16)

Father, I cannot comprehend the glory or the humility of the Son of Man. Be gracious to me and help me see the beauty of Jesus, the Son of Man.

In one sense, Jesus is like you and me. He was a man. The most common title Jesus used to refer to himself was Son of Man, and on the surface, the bare title, without any context, seems to imply nothing more than that Jesus was human. Of course, He certainly was human, and that idea is included in the title, but “Son of Man” is a rich phrase with multiple meanings. It carries with it the idea of glory, authority, suffering, and humility.

When Jesus says “you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven,” or when He talks about the Son of Man coming in his glory or descending from heaven, He is referring to a specific context. The prophet Daniel wrote this:

I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed. (Dan 7:13-14)

When Jesus speaks of the glory of the Son of Man, He is saying that He is the Son of Man Daniel saw in his vision. He is saying that He will come on the clouds of heaven, that He receives authority and a kingdom, that all people shall bow before Him, and that His kingdom shall not end. All these things are tied up in the title “Son of Man,” and none of them deals with mere humanity.

Sometimes the ideas “Son of Man” and “Son of God” are used in the same context to refer to the same person (Mk 14:60-62; Jn 3:13-16). The terms may not mean exactly the same things, but they can at times be used interchangeably.

When Jesus says that “the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (Mt 9:6) or that the Son of Man is lord even over the law that God gave (Mk 2:28), He is claiming an authority beyond that of a normal human. This authority is bound up in the identity of the Son of Man. Jesus has authority over the law, authority to judge the world, and authority to forgive sins because He is the one like a son of man who receives authority and a kingdom that shall never end, before whom all people shall bow. He has this authority because He is the son of man in Daniel 7. Jesus identifies Himself as such.

And yet, the term Son of Man carries another meaning as well. It entails humility and suffering. “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mk 10:45). Jesus may have the glory and authority of Daniel’s son of man, but for a time, He laid it aside and took up the sufferings of a man. Jesus did not think it robbery to be equal to God. Nonetheless, “he made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Ph 2:7-8). At times, the title “Son of Man” refers to this great act in which Jesus stripped Himself of His glorious prerogatives and became nothing. The glorious son of man in Daniel died on a cross. He did so because He was in a real way a son of man.

Jesus identified with us, for “the Son of Man came eating and drinking” (Mt 11:19), and “the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Lk 9:58). The Son of Man is one of us. He became one of us that He might give His life for us. The Son of Man has full right to represent the human race. He has that right because He was a man.

And yet He was so much more.

“All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” (Mt 11:27)

“He was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said ‘This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.’” (Mt 17:5)

“And the high priest stood up in the midst and asked Jesus, ‘Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?’ But he remained silent and made no answer. Again the high priest asked him, ‘Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?’ And Jesus said, ‘I am…’” (Mk 14:60-62a)

“And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High” (Lk 1:31-32a)

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (Jn 3:16a)

Father, may we see your Son and see Him clearly, that we may enjoy His beauties and that our lives may be transformed by His.

Christianity is unique, and Jesus is the reason why. He is the center of our faith.  He is the reason why people are Christians, and He is also the reason why others are not.  Everyone does something with Jesus, even if it is to ignore Him.  You will stand before God clean or unclean, according to what you do with Jesus. That is a radical claim, but it is the heart of Christianity.

Jesus claimed for Himself a position and authority that no sane man would ever claim.  Jesus is not like you or me. He is the Son of God. This phrase, “Son of God,” or some equivalent phrase (the Son, Son of the Most High, etc) occurs more than 120 times in the New Testament and always in reference to Jesus. It is one of the most basic proclamations that a follower of Jesus makes. Jesus understood Himself to be the Son of God. He acknowledges that fact in all four gospels.

Now when the Bible calls Jesus “Son of God,” it is not saying that He is like Hercules whose mother was human and whose father was Zeus. God the Father did not come to earth and have sex with Mary. Sometimes Muslims think this is what Christians mean by “Son of God.” They are wrong. That understanding of “Son of God” has no Biblical warrant, even in the Annunciation narrative.

In addition, when the Bible calls Jesus “Son of God,” it does not mean that Jesus is merely a son of God, as you or I might call ourselves children of God. Jesus calls Himself something different. He is the Son of God. He is the only one, the only begotten. In other words, He is unique.

Finally, when the Bible calls Jesus “Son of God,” it does not mean that Jesus had a beginning and that the Father existed before the Son. This is what Jehovah’s Witnesses believe. Instead, the Bible is using a human picture to describe a divine reality. The picture of father and son is a reference to a shared nature and inheritance. As a son has the same nature as his father, so does Jesus have the same nature as His Father, and as a son owns His Father’s inheritance, so does Jesus own everything that God owns. In addition, the picture is also a reference to how the two beings relate. The love and intimacy between Jesus and the Father is something like what you might see in a good father/son relationship. The voluntary submission of Jesus to the will of the Father is something like the voluntary submission of a good son to his father. Fathers and sons have the same nature but different roles. That is the picture of the Son of God. He is the same as His Father in terms of His nature, but He differs from His Father in terms of His role.

This means that Jesus is no ordinary man. He has the power of God. He commands demons to flee, sickness to be gone, and death to die. His death on the Cross saves all peoples in all times because He is the infinite, eternal Son of God. The love He demonstrates through the Cross is the inexhaustible love of God. His righteousness is God’s righteousness; His mercy is God’s mercy; His authority God’s authority.

Jesus does not have these things imputed to Him as gifts from God. He has them on His own by virtue of His nature. He is God. He is the glory of God on earth, the exact imprint of God’s nature (Heb 1:3).   He is the Creator (Jn 1:3; Col 1:15; Heb 1:3). He is wondrous. As wondrous as God Himself.

He has an intimacy with the Father that we can never have on our own. The Father is his Abba, his Daddy, in an original sense. We can taste that intimacy through the Son of God, but we can never experience it apart from Him (Mt 11:27).

He knows God and the ways of God because He is God. He knows heaven because He has come from heaven. He does not know these things by virtue of someone teaching Him. He knows them as an insider. Heaven is His turf.

No other person in history is like Jesus. Get to know Him, and you will find yourself discovering depths you never dreamed of — the marvels of the Son of God.

He is the image of the invisible God (Col 1:15)

Father,  Help us see you by showing us Jesus.

God wants you to know Him. That is a radical thought. It is something like saying that you want this grub worm to know you … only the gap between us and God is greater. Yet it is true. God wants you to know Him. For us to know God, however, He must reveal Himself to us, for if God does no revealing, we shall have no knowledge. God’s revelation comes in at least three forms.

The first form is that of nature. The heavens declare the glory of God (Ps 19:1), and we can learn something of God’s “invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature” (Rom 1:20), by looking at creation. This should not surprise us, for we can infer things about Monet by looking at Water Lilies or Michelangelo by viewing the Sistine Chapel. In fact, the revelation we receive from nature is so plain, that, to God, people who reject Him are without excuse.  But the information nature can give us about God is limited; therefore, we need more.

The second form of God’s revelation is the Bible. Nature can tell us of God’s power, creativity and glory, but it doesn’t get specific.  The Bible puts God’s communication into words. The advantage of words is that God can go into more detail. He can give specifics about what He likes and does not like, about how He works and does not work. Nature cannot do this just as Water Lilies cannot tell us how Monet treated his wife.

The third form of God’s revelation is that He came to earth. That is what Jesus is about. He is Emmanuel, that is, God with us. Jesus is God’s most specific and clearest revelation of all. It is as if, in the Bible, God sent a personal letter, but in Jesus, He paid a personal visit. The life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus on earth is the centerpiece of God’s revelation. Jesus brings God into focus. He is the image of the invisible God, and in Him the fullness of the Deity dwells in bodily form (Col 1:15; 2:9). When you look on Jesus, you are getting a glimpse into the heart of God. Therefore, if you want to know God, it is important to look at Jesus. So for the next several months, we’ll take a look at who Jesus is.

Sometimes we judge importance by length. We shouldn’t. I have written many blogs discussing the depths, mysteries and intricacies of God, but I am going to take only one blog to talk about His simplicity. You see, we need to see God as simple. God, vast and deep as He is, is simple enough for a child to understand, and any honest treatment of the nature of God must do justice to this fact.

But first, let me illustrate something about God by using math. Consider the following equation:

∜[a_0+∑_(n=1)^∞ (a_n  cos⁡ nπx/L + b_n  sin⁡ nπx/L ) ] = 1.

In attempting to solve the equation, we are prone to think the left side more important and will spend more time on it. Yet the equal sign is just that. It means that the two sides are the same. One side may be complex and one side simple, but neither side is more important. They are equal to one another. We spend more time on the left because it is more complicated, not because it is more important.

God is like the equation above, for God is both simple and complex, and all of his complexity equals His simplicity. God is, on the one hand, the most involved mathematical expression you ever saw. In fact, He is unsolvable. On the other hand, He is as simple as the number one. And both those aspects are equal to one another.

So let’s talk a bit about God being simple. I do not mean, of course, that he is fully comprehensible, for some things are so simple they are profound. Nor do I mean that he is simplistic, for his simplicity is both natural and mature. What I mean is that God may be full of mystery, but He is also the sort of being a child can understand.

God is a whole, and a whole is simple. Children understand this. They may not comprehend the atonement or the Trinity or the intellectual depths of predestination (for that matter, I suppose I don’t either); but they know that God is good, that He loves them, that He cares about a right life, that He is just and strong, and that He is all these things in one. In other words, children know that God is God. They are willing to take God as God and not divide him up into a million seemingly contradictory parts and then conclude that He must not be because the parts don’t make sense.   In the end, their “childish” approach is more sensible than we think. It is the common approach everyone takes toward most of life. No one ever divides his mother into a thousand different emotions, motives, and habits (many of which seem quite irreconcilable) and then concludes that Mom must be a figment of his imagination because he cannot make sense of her. No. Rather, we take Mom to be Mom, and we relate to her as a whole person. When we eat pizza, we do not analyze the chemistry of the dough or the physics involved in lifting the slice to our mouth. The notion that the subatomic particles in our pizza are behaving randomly does not trouble us. We never say, “The traits of the particles which are the foundation of my pepperoni are irrational. I just can’t see how this pizza can be what it is.”   No. We just eat it. The same can be said for throwing a ball, smelling a rose, or taking a nap. Most people take the childlike approach to most things in life. And when we do so, we have the great advantage of seeing things as wholes. A rose becomes a rose and a sausage a sausage. It is this approach, and this approach only, which sees God as God.  There may be different persons in the Godhead, and we may describe different aspects of God’s character; but God himself is a single whole just like any other being, and his character is indivisible. This fact is part of what simple means.

God is pure, and purity is a simple thing. Pure water bubbling up from a mountain spring is far simpler than the waters of Lake Erie. Purity means that there are no mixtures. God is purely God. His love is pure love; his patience pure patience; his wrath pure wrath, and so on. He never has mixed motives for what he does. He may have multiple reasons for doing something, but His reasons are never in conflict. There is no taint to God as there is to us. We muddy simplicity with our mud, but God lacks the mud and exists in his own purity. And because He is pure He is simple.

God is perfect, and perfection is simple. Distortions, imperfections, and weaknesses complicate things. A perfect sphere is simpler than a crushed one. Perfect love is simpler than tarnished love. Wherever we look, perfection is simpler than imperfection, and God is perfect. His character is never distorted or skewed. His anger never gets in the way of his patience; his courage never diminishes his wisdom. His affection is never maudlin; his justice never cold. He does not grow; he does not learn; he does not change. He is steady. He is what he always has been.  Simple.

God is humble, and humility is simple. Indeed, God is the most humble being of all. I realize that some people say God is arrogant because He demands unequivocal allegiance, glory and worship, but such people forget who they are talking about. They want to think about God the same way they think about men. If you or I were to demand what God does, we would be devils indeed, for reality would not back us up. We would be a rat demanding the lions to bow before him or a janitor claiming that the kings of the earth owed him their allegiance. But God can demand such things. He is God. He can desire glory for the plain reason that it is right. In us self-centeredness is sin because in truth we are not the center of everything. But in God things look different. If there is any self-centeredness in God, it is because God, properly speaking, is the center of everything. God can demand glory, worship and allegiance without being arrogant. On a smaller scale, we understand this principle. A mother can demand that her children show her respect. An admiral can demand that a seaman show him honor. An employer expects his employee to follow instructions. The mother, admiral and employer do not have to be arrogant to demand such things. They may merely be right. And so it is with God.

God is humble, and his greatness highlights his humility. He is not showy, though, of all beings, he alone has the right to be. He has a respect for our choices and will let us drink the potion we choose, though, of all beings, He alone could disallow all choices save His. He has every right to the most extravagant glories imaginable, yet He willingly entered the world in a stable, submitted Himself to the authority of a carpenter, owned nothing except a single tunic, and took upon his back the filth and guilt of the entire human race. He bled and died like a dog, yet He has more glory than the galaxies. Scripture describes it this way: “being in very nature God, (he) did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross” (Ph2:6-8). That is what humility is. That is God. And He is simple.  He is a pure, humble, perfect whole.

Our job is to view Him as such. Only when we begin to do this will we begin to see Him. Those who lose His simplicity lose God. If you think God so complex that you can know nothing of Him, then you shall know nothing of Him.

Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? (Ex 15:11)

 Father, You are incomprehensible. No other god, no other person can compare. You surpass the nations, and You exceed the boundaries of our knowledge. Truly, You are worthy.

Over the past months, this blog has discussed many attributes of God — love, justice, wrath, mercy, omniscience, omnipotence, Trinity, and more.   After reading these descriptions, two things ought to strike us. First, God has revealed a great deal about Himself. Second, God has not revealed everything. He is far bigger and greater than what He has revealed. The past blogs briefly touch only a smattering of things God has revealed, but the hidden attributes of God may far exceed the revealed ones, and the infinite nature of the revealed ones makes them fathomless. There is much more to God than even the angels can tell.

Now, after reading about these attributes of God, you may be tempted to separate them in your mind and possibly even make them fight each other. You know, how can a loving God send someone to hell? How can God forgive and show justice? How can God be all-knowing and almighty and allow evil? These sorts of questions tend to compartmentalize God’s character, as if God’s justice and mercy were somehow separate entities. This kind of thinking is a mistake. God is not the sum of His attributes. Let me try to illustrate.

In basketball sometimes a team of five good players can beat a team of five “superstars.” The good players play well together as a team while the “superstars” all wish to remain superstars. When put together, the good players add up to more than the superstars. Coaches call this chemistry. The attributes of God have a kind of chemistry, but it is of a different sort. It is certainly true that God is greater than the sum of His attributes. But to be correct, we would have to say that there can be no such thing as the sum of His attributes, for the attributes are not, properly speaking, parts of God which can be put together. They are more like a whole that radiates from God. Of course, we cannot be perfectly precise by using natural examples, but if you think of the relationship between God and His attributes more like that of the sun and its attributes, you will be closer to the truth. The attributes of God are the spiritual characteristics that flow from God. He is not what they add up to be. Rather, they are what He is. They are simply God radiating. They are God being Himself just as light, heat and energy are nothing more than the sun being itself. And when the sun is being itself, the light, heat and energy come as a package. Scientists may talk about light, heat, and energy separately to help us understand something about them and about the sun, but in real life, they are a whole. Something like that is true of God. His attributes exist as a unity. His omnipotence is holy, His justice omnipresent, His love infinite and His infinity loving. His forgiveness never contradicts His justice; His wrath never works against His love. When God acts, He never sets aside one aspect of His character in favor of another. Each of His actions is purely God being God in a specific circumstance. All His deeds are holy, gracious, just and loving all in one. Sometimes circumstances may highlight one aspect just as summer in Alaska highlights the light above the heat of the sun, but the other attributes are still present.

Secondly, God’s attributes are not high-octane versions of ours. God is not a human taken to infinity. He is certainly quantitatively superior to us, but He is also qualitatively superior to us. God is a different sort of Being from us. Even in heaven, when we are at our best, there shall be only one God. We shall then be perfect humans, but the canyon between a perfect human and God is a colossal leap indeed. This qualitative difference does not deny that we are created in His image. We can still be like Him in limited ways. Though His love is of a different sort from ours, our love can give a faint picture of His. It is like His in some ways, yet never completely. He is still qualitatively superior and will forever be different from us. That is what holy means.

Think of it this way. The anatomy of a fruit fly and that of a human may be alike in certain respects, yet who would deny that there is a vast qualitative difference between the two. We are not bigger and better fruit flies. And yet we might actually learn something about humans by studying fruit flies. So it is with God. We might learn something about God by looking at human love or human morality, but God is not just a bigger version of us.

We are, thus, faced with a God who astounds us, a God more overwhelming than a million suns, yet with depths deeper than those in our own impenetrable hearts. We cannot probe Him. He is God. One test for knowing whether our thoughts of God may be off target is to look at whether God ever stumps us. If we allow for no mysteries because we cannot understand them, if we demand that everything about God fit into our brains, if we never allow God to surprise us, we have the wrong ideas about God. Of course, being surprised and stumped is no guarantee of truth, but if we have God in a box, we have something more like Zeus than God.

God is love. (I Jn 4:8)

 ‘Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. (Mk 10:7-8)

 Paul, an apostle — not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead … (Gal 1:1)

God, I praise you not just because you are beyond my understanding but because your mystery helps me understand other mysteries.

We’ve been talking about the Trinity — the Father, Jesus, the Holy Spirit. All three are unique persons, and all three are one God. I have tried to give some help understanding the Trinity, but today I want to talk about how the Trinity helps us understand other aspects of Christian theology.  The Trinity may be a mystery, but it is a mystery that has explanatory power.

Let’s begin with love.  Scripture says that God is love (I Jn 4:7-8), but love requires more than one person. I can love my wife and kids. I can love my friends. I can even love my enemies. But I cannot love a void. One person living alone cannot be love. In order to love, he needs someone to love. But God is love from eternity. He did not just begin loving when He created the human race. God does not need the creation in order to love. Rather, His love for you and me is rooted in His very nature. The Father loves the Son from eternity, and the Son loves the Father, and the Spirit the same. Love is the nature of a Trinitarian God in a way that it cannot be with Allah.

Similarly, the Trinity explains why God is relational, for He is so by nature. Relationship is grounded in His Trinitarian character. God has never been lonely. He never sat in the sky moping for the right person to come along. He did not create people because He needed relationship. He had perfect relationship from eternity. He did not need us, but He did want us. In addition, our human desire for relationship finds its source in the nature of God. The Trinity provides the foundation for the human hunger for meaningful relationships. We enjoy relationship because God does, and He made us in His image.

The Trinity models the Biblical concept of equality with submission. Jesus considered Himself equal with God (Jn 10:30; 14:9). Yet Jesus delighted to do the will of His Father (Jn 4:34; 6:38; Heb 10:5-9). Normally, we think that equality and submission cannot coexist, but Biblically, they are sometimes friends. On Earth, Jesus willingly submitted to His Father, yet His submission was not a statement of inequality but an expression of His love, and a picture of His role. His submission does not deny His equality with the Father. This fact sheds much light on what God says about marriage, for Scripture clearly says that men and women are equal in God’s sight (Gen 1:27; Gal 3:28), yet Scripture also calls wives to submit to the leadership of their husbands (Eph 5:22-4; Col 3:18; I Pet 4:1-6). If you are not a Christian, then the comparison of the Trinity to a marriage may make no sense to you. You may say that they both are bunk. But if you are a Christian, then you accept the equality of the Father and the Son, and you also accept the submission of the Son to the Father. And you know that the submission and the equality stand together. Submission does not nullify equality.  You accept this. Well. If you can accept this with the Trinity, why can’t you accept the same thing within marriage? Submission within marriage is not what most Western people think it is.

The Trinity models Biblical marriage. When a man and woman marry, are they two or are they one? Of course, when you count heads, you see two, but to God they are one flesh (Gen 2:24). How can this be? Is “one flesh” just a metaphor for sex? Sex is part of it, but it is so much more. Paul says that when a man loves his wife, he loves his own body (Eph 5:28-31), and this body-love is more than just sex. It is that a husband and wife are one in a sense in which Scripture can say that she is part of his own body. When a man loves his wife, he actually loves himself. The Trinity helps illustrate this, for just as God is three distinct persons in one God, so is a marriage two distinct persons in one flesh.

Finally, the Trinity helps explain how God can die for our sins and yet remain alive. When Jesus died on the Cross, God died. Consequently, His death becomes a punishment that pays infinitely. Yet the Father did not die, so in that sense, God did not die. The Father raised Jesus from the dead (Gal 1:1; Eph 1:17, 20). The Trinity helps explain the Resurrection of Jesus.

We could perhaps go on, but what I want you to see is that Biblical theology is interconnected. Your view of God affects your view of many other things like marriage, relationships, and the Resurrection.