What do you think about the Christ? What you think about Christ is the key to entering heaven. We are saved by faith, but in what and in whom? Who is that Christ?
Christology, that is, the study of “who is Christ?” is not just an exercise for pastors and professional theologians, but for you. It is closely connected to the previous question in the Gospel text that the Pharisees asked Jesus. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And He said, Love God and love your neighbor.
Love is the summary of the two tables of the 10 Commandments. Many people would say, “well I have tried. I have done better than others.” Maybe others would say: “Well, do I really need to? Isn’t God merciful, loving, and all that, anyway?”
What does that even mean to love?
In the biblical sense: love is not just an emotion but an outpouring activity. It is that to which you are willing to give of yourself, your all.
Whom do you love above all? Is it God? If you are honest, it has not been God. It has not been your neighbor. It has been yourself and the things of this world.
How does that fit into the subject of Christ? Nobody has loved God and their neighbor as they should have, and if you admit that you have not loved God or your neighbor, then you should also know that you deserve God’s wrath. You have sinned and you deserve eternal damnation, and you should repent.
This is where the Christ comes in. The One who came to do what we humans could not. This was the whole message and purpose of history throughout the Old Testament and the prophecies God sent: to point to, to lead to, Christ. Who is the Christ? A man? A god? “Somewhere in between?”
A survey before the pandemic in 2020 found that 52% of Americans believe that Jesus was a great teacher but not God. 30% of those considered Evangelicals agreed that Jesus was only a great man and teacher and NOT God. 40% of those who see themselves as Christians, believe that Christ was created by God; that He may have had some God-ness in Him, but Jesus the Christ was a creature!! These numbers are terrible and I am sure have only gotten worse.
If you think that Jesus, the Christ, was created by God, that He was only part god, or that He wasn’t God at all, you are wrong and that thinking has serious consequences.
The false teachings about Christ are very old. At the time of Jesus there were misunderstandings and false beliefs. In the early Christian church, “Christology” was at the root of all heresies and arguments. We see it today in the major disagreements between denominations. Most don’t even realize it. There is a “What do you think about the Christ?” problem. They may in their creeds confess that they believe that Jesus was the Son of God and true God and true man, but then they turn right around and in their practice and in their teaching effectively deny that Jesus is true God and true man.
Let us take the Sacrament of the Altar as an example. Most Protestants will say that the “Lord’s Supper is just an ordinance,” a law that Jesus said to do. They do not believe that Jesus is present in the bread and the wine with His body and blood. It is true that they may say that Jesus is there in a spiritual sense, but they deny that His flesh or His blood could be present in a sacramental but very real way. Why? Because they have a weak Christology.
Now wait up. Don’t get upset. Hear me out. Again, I am not saying that they are not Christian, but their dogma is dangerous. The reason why they cannot say that Jesus is there in that “real more than spiritual presence” is because Protestant/ non-Lutheran theology has been heavily influenced by the false teaching which says that “the finite cannot comprehend the infinite.” (repeat) What that means is that they believe that because Jesus was true man, His human body cannot be in many places at the same time. His body is ascended but to a literal location and that location alone. Therefore, in this belief system, the sacrificed and raised body of Jesus Christ cannot be present in the Eucharist meal in many places around the world at the same time. In this, they are actually limiting the Divinity of Jesus. They are saying that Christ cannot be where He says He can be and promises to be. Ultimately, they are confessing that the literal body of Jesus has not been given the full exercise, glory, and power of Christ’s Divinity even now that He has ascended into heaven. The problem really is finite human reason which limits the Divine mysteries to formulas of philosophy.
This is the problem for all of us, when we go above and beyond Holy Scripture which gives us all the objective truth that we need. We can comprehend God only by understanding Him through Jesus Christ who is God Himself.
Jesus the Christ is true man according to the flesh, Son of Adam, son of David all the way forward to son of Mary. Why did the Christ have to be true man?
Get ready, because here comes a list:
1st: It was necessary that He be true man and have a human body and soul, in order to do what we could not: namely keep God’s Law here in time, in the flesh, overcoming all temptations without falling into sin.
Secondly: It was necessary, that the Christ be fully man, to receive in His righteous and perfect flesh, the full penalty of the sins of mankind: receiving in His own bodily flesh, God’s righteous wrath upon sin, allowing Himself to die upon the cross.
Thirdly, it was necessary that He be True man so that He would then rise bodily from the dead, rising from the grave to show that His sacrifice was acceptable payment for humanity’s sin. Also, in His resurrection, we see the hope and promise for all those who believe in Him, a literal resurrection of the body with the soul.
Fourthly it was necessary for us, that we recognize that Jesus in His body had human needs, feelings, and we can be further assured that He and God know what we are going through in the human experience.
But what about His being true God, why must we reject limits to His power or the denial of His Divinity?
It was necessary that Jesus was and is true God equal to the Father and the Holy Spirit, because:
As true God, Christ was able to be born without original sin.
As True God, Jesus was able to endure all bodily torments, temptations, and sufferings in His earthly life, even death on the cross, without sinning.
As True God, His sacrificial death on the cross could pay the sins of the world.
Having been exalted in Heaven as True God and True man: Jesus Christ now reveals God to us in all His love and mercy.
As true God, Christ had and has authority to judge and forgive sins.
As true God, Christ is able to be with us and believers, spiritually, but also physically according to His promise.
As true God, Christ hears the prayers of His people and intercedes for us before the Father.
As true God, Christ rules over creation and the Church.
For a time, Jesus had humbled His divinity during His earthly life and ministry, not fully exercising it but now that He has been crucified and raised, He glorified that earthly body by assuming it into the Divinity: giving unto His earthly body all the power, glory, and authority of His Divinity as He showed even in His resurrection appearances. He still retained His earthly flesh and blood: eating with the disciples and being able to be handled and touched. But He showed His mastery over physical law, by rising before the stone was rolled back from the tomb, by appearing on the way to Emmaeus, vanishing only to appear in the locked upper room with the disciples, twice… among other appearances.
You cannot separate Jesus from God. You cannot separate God from Jesus. Can Jesus as the Son of God be present without His body? No.
You cannot separate His Divinity from his humanity. This is what we confess in the creeds and the Formula of Concord. This is biblical. It is right here in the text of Matthew as Jesus is speaking. This is what Jesus was trying to get the Pharisees to see. Scripture is clear. The Christ which David foresaw was both true God and true man. His natures not separated nor mixed but unified by His Divine power. This we confess once a year in the Athanasian Creed: Although Christ is God and Man; he is not two, but one Christ. One; not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh; but by assumption of the Manhood into God. One altogether; not by confusion of Substance; but by unity of Person. God and Man is one Christ; This is the catholic/universal faith; which except a man believe truly and firmly, he cannot be saved.
Take heart and rejoice in this truth! God loved you enough to join Himself to human flesh for all time. Now and forever. He died on the cross for you. To free us from ignorance and unbelief, rescued from false teaching and all that would cloud the message of who Christ is for you and me. He is your Savior and God!
The blood of Jesus is the blood of God, which pays for your sin and washes it away. It is truly present in the sacrament of the Altar for us to eat and drink. Through His coming to us in His Sacraments, He desires to join us into the fellowship with the Trinity, receiving His holiness, His spiritual gifts, His love. We in turn can love Him and love others here, witnessing to the truth of who He is for the world. A God who does not desire the destruction of all but has sent Himself to be our Savior in Jesus, the Christ. Amen.
Pr. Aaron Kangas