Continuous Discipleship - Christ

Prayer: Loving God, you sent your only son, Jesus Christ, to live among us, teach us, and die for our sins. Open our hearts and our minds as we seek to understand Jesus more fully and see the power of his presence in our lives.

“Jesus is Lord,” is probably the first confessional statement that the church made. When we say that Jesus of Nazareth, son of Mary and Joseph, is Lord we are saying that Jesus deserves our obedience, and that Jesus is God. Lord is a word that the Old Testament used to designate God. When it is applied to Jesus, it probably was meant to express the idea that Jesus was divine.

This understanding came at the end of Jesus’ life. When the early church looked back at the way that Jesus showed forth God and God’s will, it was obvious to them that this wandering rabbi was the Son of God. But Jesus was also fully a human being.

The Apostles Creed states: “I believe in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the virgin Mary …” The Nicene creed speaks of the Son as being “of one substance with the father.” And Chalcedon says that Jesus Christ is “Fully divine and fully human.” Two natures united in one person without confusion, change, division, or separation.

The Bible does not explain how Christ could be human and divine. Since we don’t understand how there can be two natures in one person, we tend to let go of one side of the two-natured Christ. We usually turn Jesus into one who is wholly God. This is the ancient heresy of Docetism which says that Jesus was God who only seemed to be human. (John 1:1-14 and Galatians 4:4 for passages that counter this idea.) If this is so then Jesus was only pretending to be with us in the sinful world. He really and truly wasn’t like us if he was not fully human, and therefore could not substitute for us and take our sins upon himself in any meaningful way.

Yet no human being alone can save us. If Jesus is not God with us, if the forgiveness he offers isn’t God’s forgiveness, if his love is not God’s love, then he cannot be our Savior. Christian faith must proclaim both the humanity and the divinity of Jesus. This is a divine mystery that cannot be explained with our limited minds.

When we look to the saving work of Jesus Christ we see that the New Testament presents not one but several pictures of Christ’s atoning work.
  • Victory - One is Christ the Victor. Here we have pictured the force of God and the forces of evil doing battle. By his cross and resurrection Christ defeats the powers of evil and frees human beings from captivity.
  • Satisfaction - Another picture is the satisfaction theory in which Jesus, the sinless one, dies for us to satisfy the justice of the holy God.
  • Moral Influence - In the moral influence theory Christ shows God’s love in such a compelling way that we respond in love, obedience, and gratitude.
The fact is that the Bible contains all three of these. No one theory can fully explain the wonder of God’s love for us in sending Jesus to be our Savior.

Prayer: God, you sent your son to be the light of the world. Help us feel his light surround us and fill us, and let us be a beacon of light to others. We praise you for your gracious gift of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.