Video Transcript: Christ (10:24)

Hi, I'm David Feddes. And this talk is about believing the truth about Christ. The Christian Leaders College and Institute state with the Faith says Jesus, the Promised Messiah of Israel is fully God, and fully man. 

Jesus was born of a virgin, who obeyed God perfectly, worked great miracles, died on a cross, rose from the dead, ascended to heaven, and reigns over all things. Christianity is all about Christ, the focus of our faith is Jesus Christ. And so it's very, very important that we believe the central facts about Jesus. 

Jesus is the Promised Messiah of Israel. Messiah means anointed one. In the Old Testament times, kings were anointed, priests were anointed, and prophets were anointed. And so for someone to be anointed, set them apart to a special position. And when we speak of Jesus as being the Messiah, he's anointed to be our Prophet, our priest, and our King. 

Matthew begins in verse one of his book, Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of David, the son of Abraham, and then gives the genealogy of Jesus tracing back through David, to Abraham. It's an important thing to know about Jesus, that He is the offspring of Israel, the promised seed God had promised Abraham 2000 years before Jesus came, that through his offspring, all the nations of the earth would be blessed. 

Israel's Messiah would be the key to the blessing and salvation of people from all the other nations. When the wise men came from the east and had seen a star that was very remarkable and pointing them to the birth of a king. Their question was, where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? And when Jesus was mailed to across the sign above him, said, King of the Jews, Jesus came from Israel, and he is the one who is the fulfillment of all God's promises to Israel. 

When the angels announced his birth, they said, Today in the town of David, a Savior has been born to you, he is the Messiah, the Lord. So anytime we use the name Christ, it simply means anointed one. Christ is the Greek word for the Hebrew word, Messiah. 

Speaking of Jesus Christ is really just saying, Jesus, Messiah, the Promised One, the Anointed One, God keeps His promises, and all of his promises made throughout all those 1000s of years, working with that chosen people, all those promises come true, in Jesus of Nazareth. And Jesus is fully God and fully man, one's doctrine of the Lord Jesus Christ was always hold on to both of those. 

John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. And then verse 14, says, The Word became flesh, and made his dwelling among us. That is the truth of who Jesus is fully God, fully human. Now, throughout history, there have been various attempts by the devil, to corrupt that belief and deny either that Jesus is fully God, or else that he's fully human or to deny both things. They while he's not quite God is not quite human either. Give you a few examples. 

Ariens, notorious heretic 300 years after Jesus taught that Jesus was the first and greatest of all created things. He was the first being that God made, he was the greatest being that God ever made. And so he was not equal to God. He had a beginning, but he was very great. Jehovah's Witnesses have followed that line of thinking by saying that Jesus is the greatest of all created beings. 

In fact, he is the Archangel Michael, Michael was the first of all created beings. He's not God. It's not human. But he is the greatest of all created beings. And Michael became human in the person of Jesus, or at least lived among us, in the person of Jesus, and then returned to being an archangel. So what you have, in a sense, is a Jesus who is neither He's not God, that's for sure. In Jehovah's Witness teaching, and he's not really human either. 

And so that falls into the problem that the Ariens had of a Jesus who's not God, who's not human, and therefore can't make the connection between God and humanity that we need in a savior Athanasius the great opponent of Ariens said, what we're just gonna lose our salvation. You've got this Jesus, who's not God, and he's not man, whereas the real Jesus is both God and man and brings humanity together with God, and saves us. And so denying either the full deity of Jesus or the full humanity of Jesus is false, not only but also deadly for our salvation. 

Islam has taught that Jesus is the third greatest of all the prophets. Wow, pretty good, huh? If I was called the third greatest of all the prophets that would write me really, really high. But it is not nearly high enough for who Jesus really is not the third, greatest of the prophets, that the God of the prophets, who is himself the second person of the Trinity, Jesus, it may sound impressive to say he's the almost the greatest of the prophets. 

He is a great prophet, of course, but he's God among us, as God's greatest prophet, not only but as God, Himself. And so beware of anything that detracts from Jesus being fully God. And watch out for anything that says Jesus is fully human as well. Hebrews emphasizes both the deity of God, the deity of Jesus and the humanity of Jesus. 

Hebrews says, The Sun is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being. Since the children have flesh and blood, he to shared in their humanity, so that by his death, you might destroy him who holds the power of death, that is the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. It's not angels that he helps, but Abraham's descendants, humans, that's what 

Hebrews emphasizes that Jesus is the radiance of God's glory. And at the same time, he became exactly like us except for sin. He didn't sin, but he came, became fully human, so that he might be one of us and bring God's salvation to us fully God, fully man. That's what the Bible teaches. That's what the Orthodox Creed's of the church emphasize. 

One of the great books of the Bible to read on this book to help us to understand whether we really have eternal life and also to discern false teaching and separate it out from true teaching is first John John's first letter.  First John says Jesus is the life he is the Christ, the Anointed One, the Messiah, he's the son of God, he is without sin. He came in human flesh, to suffer the penalty for our sins, to take away our sins, to destroy the devil's work. And at the end, it says He is the true God, and eternal life. 

If we don't know Jesus as the true God who came in the flesh, we don't have eternal life. Because, as John himself puts it, God has given us eternal life. And this life is in His Son, who has the sun has life, who does not have the Son of God does not have life, we need the one who is truly God, and truly human. And there were some heretics who also denied that Jesus had come in the flesh. 

They said either that he wasn't fully God, and that He came as an angel kind of in human form. Or if someone say, Oh, he was a spirit, but he only seemed to be human, but he really wasn't human. And all such teaching is dismissed by the Bible. All such teaching is dismissed as the teacher of the Antichrist, if it denies that Jesus is God, come in the flesh. 

So, in our statement of faith, we say Jesus is the Promised Messiah of Israel. He's fully God. He's fully man. He was born of a virgin, his holy mother, Mary, had him as a virgin because God the Holy Spirit, brought Jesus into being in that womb perfectly free from all human sin, and ready to become the second Adam, who would save His people. He obeyed God perfectly.And when we trust in Him, His perfect obedience can be credited to us. He worked great miracles, some in the modern world is Oh, miracles don't happen. 

All those stories of Jesus doing miracles are not to be believed. Believe them. God did those great miracles because God As the one who made all things, and it is no stretch at all to think that when God came among us, he could do as he chose including mighty miracles. He died on the cross. He rose from the dead and overcame death. He ascended to heaven, back to the right hand of the Father. He reigns over all things. This is what we believe about our Lord Jesus Christ.