“Father of light, from whom every good gift comes, send your Spirit into our lives with the power of a mighty wind, and by the flame of your wisdom open the horizons of our minds.
Loosen our tongues to sing your praise in words beyond the power of speech, for without your Spirit we could never raise our voice in words of peace or announce the truth that Jesus is Lord.”
Today is Pentecost Sunday the day we celebrate the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the church. Pentecost is also referred to in the Bible as the Feast of Weeks, Feast of Harvest, and the Day of Firstfruits {Ex. 23:16; Num. 28}. Pentecost falls on the fiftieth day from Passover. It was a one-day feast and celebration {Ex. 23:16; 34:22; Lev. 23:15,22; Num. 28}.
The Feast of Passover
was the beginning of the barley harvest and Pentecost was celebrated during the
wheat harvest. The feast was a wave offering to the Lord. It consisted of two
loaves baked with leaven. It was made with fine flour that was sifted in order
to separate the chaff from the wheat. The wave offering was a way for the Hebrews
to exhibit their dependence on God, not only for the harvest but also for their
daily bread, an offering of thanksgiving.
This is of course the first Pentecost, a foreshadow of
the Pentecost in the New Testament. God gave Moses the law on Mt. Sinai written
on tablets of stone. Yet there was a promise from the Lord of a future time
when the law would be written on the tablets of the heart {Jer.
31:31–34}. For thousands of years, people journeyed to Jerusalem to celebrate
Pentecost awaiting the promise of God.
The Feast of Pentecost was fulfilled in Jesus when He was
glorified in the resurrection and seated on the throne at the right hand of the
Father. He sent the promised Helper, the Holy Spirit in the upper room to the
disciples on the Day of Pentecost which was the fulfillment of God’s promise.
Through the Holy Spirit, the Father wrote His precepts on the hearts of all who
placed their faith in Christ. He does this still today for all who come to faith in Christ.
In John’s gospel account Jesus speaks and reveals how He fulfills this feast: “But Jesus answered them by saying, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit’” {Jn. 12:23–24}. Jesus is the seed of grain that died for our sin. He is the Bread from Heaven made with fine flour; perfect righteousness.
The feast of Pentecost marked the fifty days between Passover and Pentecost, the New Testament Pentecost was fifty days from Jesus’ resurrection to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the one hundred and twenty in the upper room.
There is so much more to say concerning the symbolism,
types, and fulfillment in Christ concerning the Feast of Pentecost, but
this is sufficient for now. I will write more in the future concerning God’s
Appointed Times because they so beautifully speak to the life, ministry,
death, and resurrection of Jesus our precious Savior.
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I want to continue with the next part of God was in Christ. We have walked through the Old Testament and where Christ, the preexistent Second Person of the Godhead, made many appearances. We also saw the Old Testament prophets their prophecies concerning the Incarnation of Christ. Let us look now to the New Testament to see what Jesus Himself and that He claimed to be God.
Jesus presents Himself through the Gospels not only as a prophet but as the object of prophecy. Jesus acknowledged that He was the Messiah on oath at His trial.[1] His ministry, however, is meaningless unless He firmly believed that He was God’s chosen One to redeem His people. In fact, no sense can be made of Jesus Himself “unless we are prepared to acknowledge that Jesus saw in Himself the culmination of Israel’s law and for salvation and God.”[2]
Jesus claimed His divinity and looked to the Old Testament to substantiate this truth, “It was the Old Testament…the Hebrew Scriptures in which he found a rich tapestry of figures, historical persons, prophetic pictures and symbols of worship. And in this tapestry, where others saw only a fragmented collection of various figures and hopes, Jesus saw His own face.”[3] Christ repeatedly stated to the disciples, Pharisees, and others that He existed with and came from the Father.
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[6] George L. Carey, God
Incarnate (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press., 1977), 11.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Christopher J.H.
Wright, Knowing Jesus Through The Old Testament (Downers Grove:
InterVarsity Press., 1992), 108.
I wrote to you in an earlier post that Christ did not begin to exist at His birth in Bethlehem. He has always existed; the Godhead Trinity are co-equal, co-eternal, one in essence, nature, power, action, and will; all uncreated, and all three are eternal without beginning. Jesus Himself told the Jews that “…Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am” {Jn. 8:58 NASB}, and He said in John 6:62, “What then if you see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before?” (NASB). Not only does Scripture affirm the pre-existence of Christ, but the earliest leaders of the church, from the Patristics to the Reformers, concluded that Scripture taught that Christ eternally existed with the Father (One of the greatest works being St. Athanasius’ On The Incarnation). His pre-existence is revealed throughout the Old and New Testaments, the prophets, and by Jesus Himself, which I will discuss all in later posts. Christ’s divine nature is the very same nature as the Father and the Holy Spirit. Christ, according to His divine nature is immutable, impassible, and neither lessened nor weakened by the incarnation.[1]
Another aspect of the nature of His pre-existence is that He is the Second Person of the Trinity. The implications of this are imperative to His pre-existence. Christ was not only human, but He also claimed to be equal with God; sharing the very same essence of the Father. Jesus prayed in John 17:5, “Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.” This is a clear statement by Christ that He existed before the world. This means Jesus existed before His birth and was as God in nature and attributes.
There are several key events in Scripture that speak to the eternal Second Person of the Trinity. It is these events that solidify His pre-existence. We will examine these events in the next post with the appearances of Christ in the Old Testament.
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Fulfillment Of Prophecy
The Old Testament is a wonderful and beautiful book that contains some of the richest prose and poetry. I love the Old Testament. I am saddened with the trend in some of today’s churches who exhort their flocks to detach from the Old Testament. Without the Old Testament, it is impossible to understand the New Testament.
The Apostle Paul teaches us that “All Scripture is inspired by God and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man or woman of God may be fully capable, equipped for every good work” {2 Tim. 3:16-17 NASB}. When Paul wrote these great words, the New Testament had not been compiled; the Scriptures were the Law and the Prophets—the Old Testament. Yet, he teaches the new church to use them to equip and build up the saints.
Jesus Himself, tells the disciples
that the Old Testament is where to find the writings concerning Him. In Luke,
we find that Jesus after the resurrection told the two weary disciples on the
road to Emmaus, “beginning with
Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning
Himself in all the Scriptures” {24:27
NASB}. Again in John’s Gospel, He spoke of the Old Testament that “It
is they that bear witness of me” {Jn.
5:39}.
The Old Testament contains nearly three hundred references to the coming Messiah, all of which were fulfilled in Jesus Christ. The chance that Jesus is the fulfillment of all three hundred references is overwhelming. In his classic book, Science Speaks, Peter Stoner calculated the chance of any man fulfilling just eight of the three hundred prophecies concerning the coming Messiah to be 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000 (10 to the 17th power) or one hundred quadrillion.[1] Yet the Bible affirms that Jesus did fulfill the prophecies concerning Him (Lk. 24:32).
The
first Messianic prophecy or the Protoevangelium is found in Genesis
3:15: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your
seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on
the heel.” This prophecy is fulfilled in Matthew
1:18 and Galatians 3:16, 19 refers to Jesus as being the promised seed of the
woman.
The Incarnation was predicted in the Old Testament and is the
fulfillment of prophecy. {I wrote about the fulfilled prophecies
in Jesus previously}. It was part of
God’s perfect plan. The prophet Isaiah predicted that the Messiah would be both
human and God: “For a child will be born to us, a son
will be given to us; And the government will rest on His
shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty
God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace” (Is. 9:6). These
names refer simultaneously with the Father, indicating that the Father and the
Son are One.
Many years ago, there was a beautiful song recorded by Aaron Jeoffery concerning who Jesus is in every book of the Bible {Find it here}. This is an old song but a beautiful one that speaks to the symbolism of Christ throughout the Old and New Testaments:
In Genesis, He’s the Breath of Life
Jeff Silvey
and Jeoffrey Keith Benward, He Is (Brentwood and Nashville:
Birdwing Music (Capitol Records), and Shepherd’s Fold Music (EMI),) 1995.
[1] Peter Stoner, Science Speaks (Chicago: Moody Press., 1963), 104.
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Jesus Did Not Begin To Exist
The message of Christmas is that God
became flesh and came in the form of the Holy Child in a humble stable in Bethlehem.
The book of Luke describes the supernatural, prophecy-fulfilling birth of Jesus
Christ; through His messengers, God sets forth the significance of this event.[1]
The whole of the angelic hosts
proclaimed to the shepherds that the Savior had been born (Lk. 2:11). This was God’s
way of enacting His salvation plan. However, though He was born in Bethlehem,
He preexisted the event. John 1:15 states, “John testified
about Him and cried out, saying, ‘This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes
after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me’”
(NASB). His birth in Bethlehem does not mark the beginning of the Son of God,
rather it is when He entered the world to dwell among His creatures. John
Murray writes, “The doctrine of the incarnation is vitiated if it is conceived
of as the beginning to be of the person of Christ. The incarnation means that
he who never began to be in his specific identity as the Son of God, began to
be what he eternally was not.”[2]
Jesus is the preexistent Second Person
of the Godhead. He existed before time began, before there was any matter before anything had been made—before majestic mountain ranges, deep blue raging
oceans—Jesus was. “In the beginning was the Word,” so, there at the
beginning, when those things were brought into being, He was there
already.
“…Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am” {Jn.
8:58 NASB}.
Christians rest their belief in the eternality of the Son in
part in John 1:1-2: “In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He
was in the beginning with God.”
Christ was at the beginning with the
Father, “And now You, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with
the glory which I had with You before the world existed” (Jn. 17: 5
NASB). His position was of One who transcends time and preeminent over all
creation. Scripture speaks of the previous glory that He shared with the Father
before time began. He left the majestic, beautiful, glory when He came to
tabernacle among us.
The Lord Of The
Ages Is God
When the prophet speaks these words,
The time of fulfillment is still 700
years away.
But so deeply is the prophet
immersed
In God’s thoughts and decisions
That he speaks of the saving hour,
As if he has already stood in
worship at the manger of Jesus.
“Unto us a child is born.”
We who don’t know what will happen
next year, how are we to understand
Someone looking over the centuries?
This voice of a single person,
Gently ringing down through the ages
Joined now and then by another
isolated voice of prophecy,
Chimes in at last with the shepherds’
midnight adorations
And cries out in jubilation:
“For unto us a child is born, unto
us a son is given.”
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Mystery of Holy Night
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[1] Andreas J.
Köstenberger, L. Scott Kellum, and Charles L. Quarles, The Cradle, The
Cross, And The Crown (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2009), 270.
[2] John Murray, John
Frame, ed., Systematic Theology: An Introduction to
Christian Belief (Phillipsburg: P & R
Publishing, 2013), 883.
A true Christology will bring God in at the beginning, realizing that in the life of Jesus from the start there was no independence of God.[1]
For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and
immaterial Word of God entered our world. In one sense, indeed, He was not far
from it before, for no part of creation had ever been without Him Who, while
ever abiding with the Father, yet fills all things that are. But now He entered
the world in a new way, stooping to our level in His love and Self-revealing to
us.[2]
The Deity And humanity, in One Glorious
Person, is a concept that I cannot grasp or understand. Though, if I could, I
suppose He would not be God. For how can one fathom God? How can one understand
Him? The Advent season the time we await the Christ child, the one born in a
manger in the quiet of the wee hours of the night in a cave for livestock in
Bethlehem many moons ago, while the world slept. A few sleepy shepherds. A
multitude of angels. The God of the universe left the glorious position of
heaven to become a man for the world which He loved so much. He did not appear
in glorious triumph, but in the lowly human coat of flesh and bones like those
He came to save.
God is not ashamed of human lowliness.
He enters right into it. He chooses a human being to be his
instrument
And works his wonders where they are least expected.
Where else are we to seek mercy
For all our betrayals, all our weak faith, all our failures,
But in the lowliness of God in the manger? ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer
John’s Gospel account eloquently describes the mysterious incarnation,
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him not even one thing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of mankind. And the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not grasp it…And the Word [God the Son] became flesh [incarnate], and dwelt among us; and we saw His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (Jn. 1:1-5, 14 NASB emphasis added).
Jesus of Nazareth was—and is— the Son of God, who while remaining fully divine, took on human nature so that He could redeem the world. How did this once and for all union of God and man happen? Can the divine nature and human nature coexist within one person? How can our glorious Lord Jesus be both God and man at once? First, Scripture tells us that Jesus is God and that He has all the divine attributes of God:
He is the image of
the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things
were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and
invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all
things have been created through Him and for Him. He is
before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also head of the body, the church; and He
is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will
come to have first place in everything. For it
was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to
dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile
all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His
cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things
in heaven (Col.
1:15-20).
This
union of the divine and human natures (the hypostatic union) have the
personal subsistence in the Godhead, as
distinguished from their common essence or substance (ousia) as God.[3]
The hypostatic union is not a conflation or a mixture of two people. Jesus is not
part human and part divine. The biblical teaching on the full deity and full
humanity of Christ has been believed from the earliest times in the history of
the church.[4]
Both
the Old and New Testaments, present Jesus Christ as having the divine nature
and human nature in a single undivided
personality (John 1:1–18; 9:48–59).[5]
The Apostle Paul rightly taught that “In Christ
all the fullness of the Deity lives in
bodily form” (Colossians 2:9 NIV). This means that the divine nature
penetrates and perfects every aspect of the human, and the human is permeated
by the divine. In the Son, the divine participated in the human and the human in the divine without blurring or
confusing either. The idea of Jesus being both fully human and fully divine is
not a concept that can be understood logically, because it is an event that can
only be performed by a transcendent God who exists outside of time and space.
The Incarnation is truly a mystery that our human, finite mind cannot grasp. This
mystery of true divine nature and true human nature is the very heart of our
faith. It is definitely the heart of my faith, which without, I would be very
lost.
“In Christ, something has taken place which is so new that it is
related to our ordinary knowledge only at its extreme edges; if it is to be
apprehended by us it must be apprehended from outside the limits of our
ordinary human experience and thought.” [6]
Any theology or ideology that diminishes His humanity or His divinity is denying the Incarnation of Christ. For thus is the Incarnation of the Word of God—that He took on flesh yet with all His divine attributes of God.
The Christian story is precisely the
story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion being that what is beyond
all space and time, which is uncreated, eternal, came into Nature, into human
nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again, bringing Nature up
with Him.
~ C.S. Lewis, The Grand Miracle
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[1] D.M. Baillie, God
Was In Christ (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948), 93.
[2]
Athanasius, On
The Incarnation (Yonkers: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press., 2011), 33.
[3]
Thomas C. Oden, Classic Christianity (New York: HarperOne, 1992), 306.
[4] Wayne Grudem, Systematic
Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 553.
[5] Ibid., 302.
[6] Thomas F.
Torrance, Incarnation: The Person And Life Of Christ (Downers Grove: IVP
Academic, 2008), 83.
