Tag: Jesus

Jesus is Both God and Man

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn DevotionalsLeave a comment

Have you ever wondered the scriptural evidence for the claim that Jesus is 100% God and 100% man? Even though it is a mystery as to how this is the case, Scripture is clear Jesus is both God and man. Let’s look at what it has to say.

Jesus is God

There are several Scriptures that tell us Jesus is God. Here are just a few:

  • Titus 2:13 says Christians are “looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus.”
  • In John 20:28 – Thomas, in speaking of Jesus, cries out, “My Lord and my God!”
  • In Hebrews 1:8 God gives a direct testimony of Christ and He says “But of the Son He says, ‘Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever.’”
  • In John 1:18 Jesus is called “the only begotten God.”

We also know that Jesus is God because He has all the attributes of God.

  • He knows everything (Mt 16:21; Luke 11:17; John 4:29)
  • Is everywhere (Matthew 18:20; 28:20; Acts 18:10)
  • Has all power (Mt 8:26, 27; 28:18; Jn 11:38-44; Lk 7:14-15; Revelation 1:8)
  • Depends on nothing outside of Himself for life (Jn 1:4; 14:6;8:58)
  • Rules over everything (Mt 28:18; Rev 19:16; 1:5)
  • Never began to exist and never will cease to exist (John 1:1; 8:58)
  • Is our Creator (Colossians 1:16).
  • In other words, everything that God is, Jesus is. For Jesus is God.

Jesus is Man

Jesus is not only God, but He is man as well.

  • John 1:14 says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Telling us that Jesus is God incarnate.
  • 1 John 4:2 and 2 John 7 tell us that anyone who denies Jesus is man is of the spirit of the anti-christ.

We also know that Jesus is man because He possesses the attributes of man.

  • He was born as a baby from a human mother (Luke 2:7; Galatians 4:4)
  • He became weary (John 4:6), thirsty (John 19:28), and hungry (Matthew 4:2).
  • He experienced the full range of human emotions such as marvel (Matt. 8:10), weeping, and sorrow (John 11:35).
  • These attributes show that He lived on earth just as we do.

Conclusion

As God incarnate, Jesus did not lose any attributes of His divinity, nor did He lose any attributes of His humanity, so that He was 100% God and 100% Man. It is a mystery as to the exact details of how this worked itself out, but Scripture does give us proof Jesus was both God and Man.

Resource

How Can Jesus be both God and Man? You can read this excellent article from Desiring God ministries by clicking here.

The Proper Motivation for Christian Obedience | Part 1

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Devotionals4 Comments

In my next few posts, I want to cover what drives our obedience to God. In this first post, I need to lay the theological foundation before talking about what does and does not motivate our obedience.

In John 15:4-5 we are told that the branch cannot bear fruit unless it abides in the vine. In this parable, Jesus represents the vine and we represent the branch, which means we cannot bear spiritual fruit unless we abide in Christ; we cannot obey His commandments unless we abide in Him.

What Does it Mean to Abide in Christ?

In means that we are His disciples; that we believe His gospel message and in so doing, we enter into a relationship with Him. But more than that, it means that we are in union with Christ. We are joined together with Him, so that who He is we are.

Two types of Unions with Christ

There are two ways in which we are in union with Christ. The first is a representative union and the second is a living union. In order to understand the living union, we must first discuss the representative union. Today, we will look at our representative union with Christ and in a future post I will discuss our living union with Him. My hope is that a proper understanding of our representative and living unions will be what drives, or motivates, our obedience to God’s commands.

Representative Union

Romans 5 is especially clear in that both Adam and Jesus are representatives (Rom. 5:12-21 especially 18 & 19). What do they each represent?

Adam represents all that is:

  • Sinful
  • Corrupt
  • Imperfect
  • Unrighteous

As a representative, all those whom Adam represents are also sinful, corrupt, imperfect, and unrighteous. As such, their relationship with God is hindered because a holy God cannot have a relationship with sinful man.

Jesus represents all that is:

  • Holy
  • Sinless
  • Perfect
  • Righteous

As a representative, all those whom Jesus represents are also holy, sinless, perfect, and righteous. As such, they have fellowship with God, whereas those whom Adam represents do not.

Who Do They Represent?

If Romans 5 tells us both are representatives, who then does Adam represent and who does Jesus represent?

  • Adam represents all those who are not redeemed by the blood of Christ. In other words, he represents the entire human race apart from those in Christ (Rom. 5:12, 17, 19)
  • Jesus represents all those who profess Him as their Lord and Savior (Rom. 5:18-19, 21).

Imputation

2 Corinthians 5:21 tells us that Jesus’ righteousness is credited to us. The verse reads as follows:

For our sake He (God) made Him (Jesus) who knew no sin to be sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God. 

So we see that Jesus, the one who knew no sin, took our sin on Himself, so that those who are “in Him” who are in union with Him, who believe in Him as their Lord and Savior, will become righteous. In theological terms, we would say that Jesus’ righteousness is imputed or attributed to us on the basis of our belief in Him as our Lord and Savior.

When we enter into union with Jesus, He becomes our representative instead of Adam. When God looks down on us, instead of seeing what Adam represents – sin, death, unrighteousness, rebellion, etc – He sees what Christ represents – sinlessness, perfection, righteousness, obedience, etc. As a result, we are reconciled to God and we experience fellowship with Him (2 Cor. 5:20b; 1 Jn 1:2-3)

Implications of the Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness to Us

If we are made righteous by Jesus’ righteousness being attributed to us and by no other way, what are the implications?

(1) We are not saved by our works

Only through Jesus’ work on the cross are we saved because sinful man can never do enough to make himself holy. It took the perfect sacrifice of Christ being credited to our account to make us holy. In other words, we are only holy because Christ’s blood covers our sins. Since we cannot offer a perfect sacrifice, nor are the works of sinful man seen as worthy, we cannot ever work our way to God.

(2) Our works cannot earn us favor with God 

God accepts Christ based on His righteousness, and Christ’s righteousness is attributed to us, when we believe in Jesus as our Savior. This means God doesn’t love us anymore than He does right now and always no matter what we do for Him because God loves Christ perfectly and His account has been credited to us. There is nothing more we can do to earn His favor or earn more of His Grace. We are given Christ’s righteousness, and Christ’s righteousness is perfect.

However, we often live as if we can earn God’s favor. What are some things we do that we might believe will earn favor with God?

  • Show more love to our wife
  • Not have a lustful thought
  • Participate in Foreign Missions or Home Missions
  • Serve the church
  • Give away money, time, or resources
  • Read Bible, Pray, Come to Church
  • Volunteer in the city
  • Etc.

Try as we might, these things do not earn us favor with God. The only way we earn favor with God is through our union with Christ. Since Christ is perfectly favored and accepted by God, we are perfectly favored and accepted by God.

(3) We are fully accepted by God in Christ

We do not have to earn God’s acceptance. God perfectly accepts Christ, and being in union with Christ as our representative means God perfectly accepts us as well.

Summary

We learn from these three implications of Christ’s righteousness imputed to us that our works do not earn our salvation, our works do not earn us favor with God, and our works do not earn us acceptance with God.

Conclusion

The Gospel tells us that in Christ, there is nothing we can do that would make God love us more, and nothing we have done that would make Him love us less. Only by abiding in Christ are we made righteous because only then is He our representative head and only when He is our representative are His attributes and works attributed to us.

In my next post, I will discuss how our obedience to God is motivated out of a sense of gratitude, which stems from a proper understanding of  and reflection on our salvation.

Resources

Jerry Bridges, The Transforming Power of the Gospel, Ch. 1, 4, 5

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Don’t Hide Your Sin, Expose It

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Devotionals4 Comments

What if you did not have to hide your sins? What if you could expose your sins, admitting them to God and one another? These questions and their answers do not have to be hypothetical.

Christians Can Expose Their Sins

As Christians, we really can expose our sins. We do not have to hide them from God or one another, which allows us to honestly evaluate ourselves. When we are freed to honestly examine ourselves, we can evaluate where we are doing poorly and where we are doing well. In other words, we can determine what sins we need to work on, so we can knock down those strongholds in our lives.

Christians are Saved by Grace

The reason we can honestly evaluate ourselves is due to the nature of our salvation. As Christians, our works do not save us, merit us favor with God, nor keep us in a saving relationship with God. As Christians, we are saved by God’s grace. God’s grace is given to us as a free gift. We do not have earn it, repay it, or work to keep it.

Christians have Jesus as their Advocate

Along with God’s grace, we, as Christians, also have Jesus as our Advocate. 1 John 2:1-2 tells us that those who are truly saved have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous One.

Advocate carries the idea of someone coming alongside of you and pleading your case for you. When Jesus acts as our Advocate, He comes alongside of us, and He reminds the Father of His person (He is the Christ and the Righteous One) and His work (His death on the cross for our sins, taking God’s wrath on Himself, removing our defiling sin, and imputing His righteousness to us) and our profession of Him as our Lord and Savior, when we sin. When we realize this, we are free to evaluate ourselves.

Think about it like this:

Say you are called into your bosses, principal’s, or teacher’s office and asked to evaluate your work. To tell them where you believe you are doing well, and where you believe you are doing poorly.

Before they ask you to evaluate yourself, they say, “No matter what you tell me, your shortcomings will not be held against you. You will not be fired, demoted, or given a bad grade.”

When you hear those words, that you are going to be accepted no matter what you tell them, no matter how poorly you have done in your work, you are at that moment freed to honestly evaluate yourself. You don’t have to feel like you need to hide anything from them. You can lay it all out on the table, honestly evaluating what you have done, so that you will know what areas still need work.

Because we are accepted by God based on Jesus’ work, we don’t have to hide our short comings from God either. Rather we can honestly evaluate ourselves to see where we are doing well and where we are doing poorly, to see what sins and idols we are still allowing to affect our lives, so we can work to remove them.

A Cover Up

However, when we do not realize God’s grace is free and that Jesus stands as our Advocate when we sin, then we will never truly be free to examine ourselves. When we are not free to honestly examine ourselves, we will cover our sins up, thinking maybe God will not notice.

The reasons we cover our sins up are many, but most fall into a misunderstanding of God’s grace, which leads to people thinking we have to earn, repay, or keep our salvation through our works. If our works are subpar, then earning, repaying, or keeping our salvation is not going so well. Which means, instead of honestly looking at ourselves, we make things out to be better than they really are.

Conclusion

You see, based on Jesus’ work, we are always accepted by God no matter what we have done in the past, what we do right now, and what we are going to do in the future. That does not give us a license to sin. Rather it gives us a license to honestly evaluate ourselves, and to confess our sins to one another.

If we do not see ourselves as accepted by God through Jesus’ work alone, then we will never be freed to evaluate ourselves. And we will never truly grow in holiness. But when we have a right view of our salvation, we can honestly evaluate our sin and deal with it in a healthy manner. As we deal with our sin, we become more holy.

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How Do We Live Like the Elder Brother?

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Devotionals2 Comments

In my last post, I made some observations from the parable of the prodigal son. In doing so, I highlighted the Gospel as the third way to live, with the other two ways to live being the way of the Relativist and the way of the Moralist. You can read my post here.

In the parable, the younger brother represents the Relativist, and to him everything is about self. The elder brother represents the Moralist, who lives outwardly for God, but inwardly his heart has not changed. In an effort to help us see how we live like the elder brother, so we can correct our thinking and actions, I want to ask and answer the question: How do we live like the elder brother?

We Act Like The Elder Brother:

When we believe we are saved by our works

  • This manifest itself in the following ways
    • We do this so, so we get salvation type thinking
    • When we do not think of our sin as being offensive to God.
    • When we think we are not that bad saying, “Sure Christ died for me, but I really was not that bad.”
    • Comparing ourselves to others saying “I needed God’s grace, but not as much as this person over here does. Look at their sin and look at mine.”

When we believe our works earn us favor with God

  • This manifest itself in the following ways:
    • We show up to church every time it is open thinking if we miss a service we are not in God’s favor.
    • When we believe we may get in a car wreck, or lose our job, or fail a class, or that one of our kids will not turn out right, if we are not consistent with our quiet times because somehow God will pay us back for not spending time with Him.
    • When we believe God will not use us or bless us if we are not reading His Word or doing Christian type activities often.

When we believe we must pay Christ back for our salvation

  • This manifests itself when we say things like: 
    • Christ died for you, witnessing to others is the least thing you can do for Him.
    • Christ suffered for you, the least you can do is read your Bible and pray to Him everyday.
    • Christ went to the cross for you, the least you can do for Him is go on a missions trip, part with some of your resources in order to help the church, or show up to services on Sunday.

When we believe God owes us for being such a good Christian.

  • This manifest itself when:
    • We do not receive the recognition we thought we should have received at church for helping with a ministry project, serving the church, attending regularly, and we get mad about it.
    • When we get jealous when another person who obviously has not done as much as we have gets recognized or asked to help with another ministry/task even though we said we wanted to serve as the chairman of that committee, teach that class, or serve those people.

The Christian disciplines mentioned throughout this post are good, but they can become corrupted when we believe they: 

  • Earn us salvation
  • Earn us favor with God
  • Become a way to pay Jesus back for what He has done for us
  • When they are done because we want to gain things such as recognition, or opportunity.

Should we stop coming to church, serving the body, doing our quiet time, praying, teaching a class, etc? 

  • No, we should not. The reasons we do them though should change.

The Gospel: A Third Way

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Devotionals1 Comment

The parable of the prodigal son found in Luke 15:11-32 is directed at two types of people. The relativist (younger brother) and the moralist (elder brother).

The Relativist

The Relativist lives how he wants. He does the things he wants to do because he does not believe it is important to follow God’s commands. He does not believe it is necessary to give God His rightful place, which is the Lord of His life. In doing so, he shows he believes he does not need a Savior.

In the parable, the younger brother represents the Relativist. He asks for and receives his inheritance from his father before his father’s death. He turns his inheritance into cash and leaves home to seeks fulfillment and joy in living how he pleases. Even though he thought living his own way would bring him joy, it brought him nothing but despair and enslavement.

The Moralist

While the Relativist does not obey God’s commands, the Moralist strictly seeks to obey God’s commands and please Him. He is at church every time it is open. He reads his Bible everyday, prays, and does a host of other things that look Christian. Even though he does and says all the right things, his heart is not right. He believes his good works earn His salvation and favor with God.

In the parable, the elder brother represents the Moralist. While, he did not ask his father for his inheritance early, turn it into cash, and leave home to seek his own desires, he still seeks to serve himself by staying home and serving his father faithfully.

Even though, his actions looked noble righteous, they did not stem from a righteous heart. He believes he should receive good things for his good works. Notice in the parable the complaint of the elder brother. He believes his father should have given him a young goat to celebrate with his friends because of his dedication in serving him.

Instead of living to glorify God, the Moralist does good, in order to attempt to control God.  Not only does he believe his works earn him salvation and favor with God, but his good works are an attempt to control God.

A Third Way

Jesus tells this parable not only to point out the error of the Pharisees in living like the elder brother, and the enslavement and joylessness that comes from loose living, but also to show us the gospel, which is the third way we can live. In the gospel, we are not accepted based on our works, but by God’s grace, and His grace is not something we can earn. It is something freely given to us.

In the gospel, we do not seek to please ourselves, or we do not obey God, in order to control Him and get our way. Rather we live a righteous life because we have been freed and empowered to do so.

Our belief in Jesus as our Lord and Savior serves to change our hearts, and with it our desires. Not only are we given a new heart and new desires, but we are empowered through the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives to live out our righteousness. In other words, we do not perform good works to earn our salvation or favor with God, but we perform good works because we have been freed and empowered to do so.

Conclusion

In this parable, we do not see two ways to live, but rather three. We can live either like the Relativist, the Moralist, or we can rest in the gospel. For it is only in the gospel that we are truly free to worship and serve God, rather than ourselves.

Confessing Sin the Key to Vertical & Horizontal Fellowship

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Church Life, Discipleship, Practical7 Comments

This last Sunday, I preached over 1 John 1:5-10. Part of John’s message is that admitting we are sinners and confessing our sin is the only way we can experience true fellowship with God (Vertical) and with one another (Horizontal). In 1 John 1:7,9 we read:

But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin…If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

John tells us that we have fellowship with one another if we walk in the light. The same light that God Himself walks in. A light we are able to walk in by confessing our sins. Let’s look at this one piece at a time.

Confession of Sin

In order to confess our sin, we have to first understand sin. Sin is more than just breaking the commandments of God, even though it is that. Sin is more heinous though. It is an outright attack and denial of who God is. It is to follow ourselves rather than to follow God. Now that we understand the heinousness of sin, we can answer the question:

What does it mean to confess sin?

It means that we first recognize we are a sinner, that we have rebelled against God to seek after the things of the world, thinking ourselves to be wiser than God.

Second, it means that we confess to God our rebelliousness against Him. We confess that we have tried to go at it on our own because we thought that our wisdom was greater than His. And in doing so we have sinned against Him.

The Cleansing Blood of Christ

When we confess our sins, Christ acts as our propitiation. He removes our sin and the wrath of God from us. In doing so, He is our substitute, standing in our place, taking the punishment we deserve because of our sinfulness.

Once we confess our sins, Christ’s blood cleanses us from all unrighteousness. When God looks down on us, He sees Christ’s blood and not our sin. This results in our relationship with God being reconciled.

It also shows that Christ’s blood is the only way we are cleansed from our unrighteousness, meaning our works will not do. Thus, confessing our sin, not performing works, is the only way we can be reconciled to God

Walk in the Light

Our confession of sin results in a changed heart and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (Jer. 31 & Acts 2). Our changed heart and the Holy Spirit empowers us to live in accordance with the commandments of God, as well as we are able to walk in the light with Him.

Because of Christ’s cleansing blood, we are freed from the bondage of sin. Where we once lived for ourselves, we now have the ability to live for God. Where we once used one another for personal gain, we now have the ability to love and serve each other. This means that the cleansing blood of Christ not only results in us having fellowship God, but it also results in us having true fellowship with one another.

Conclusion

When we confess our sins, recognizing Christ is our Savior – that He is the one who took our punishment for us – then we are cleansed from all our unrighteousness and our relationship with God and one another is restored. John’s message then is that true fellowship with God and one another only happens when we confess our sins. There is no other way. May we all recognize this truth, confess our sins, and be saved from all unrighteousness, which results in true fellowship with both God and one another.