Home Topics Index Download
Transcript 394A — Is Jesus Part of the God-Head?
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Good evening. Recently I read an article about a group of British theologians who are trying to make Christianity more saleable (I guess, you'd say) to modern man, by changing Christ's status from the Son of God to a great teacher, and not divine. And they produced a book called, I believe, "The Myth of God Incarnate." In conversation with a friend of mine about this, who is supposedly a man learned and a Christian individual, he actually, surprisingly enough, tended to agree. He said that references to the word Trinity specifically are not found in the Bible, which I guess I agree with.
However, he went on to say that the reference to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as mentioned in, for instance, Matthew 28:19 in the King James Version, is not found in the original text from which the Bible was translated. Now it appears that my friend wasn't denying that Jesus could be called the Son of God, but rather he was indicating that he doubted that Jesus and the Holy Spirit were equal parts of the Godhead, so to speak. Now this struck me as being rather surprising, because I had always looked at things like John 1:1, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God." I was wondering, what is your opinion about this?
HC: Well, I could almost answer kind of sarcastically, and I don't like to be sarcastic, but I could almost say, "What else is new?" For 2,000 years people have tried to downgrade Jesus Christ as being someone else than Eternal God Himself. The Jews of His day, the Pharisees and the Sanhedrin, put Him to death because He claimed that He was God. The Bible is very clear, absolutely clear, that He is Eternal God. There is no question at all about this.
But men go to the Bible and find verses that they think add up to what they want to believe and simply do not let the whole Bible speak to the question, and then they arrive at the conclusion that He is not God. Well, that's their privilege to believe anything they want to believe. But that doesn't change the fact of the matter.
The fact is, if He were not Eternal God, we would have not a Savior. If He were not Eternal God, how could He as a super-man of some kind, quite a bit more holy than the rest of us, endure, take upon Himself all of our sins, the sins of everyone who would ever believe on Him, and then endure the wrath of God to such a degree that it became the equivalent of an eternity in hell for all of us? This of course was required in order that God's justice be completely satisfied.
They can downgrade Jesus. Many people try to do this. But in so doing they are without a Savior, altogether without a Savior. Now in Titus 2:13, for example, the Bible speaks of "the great God and our Savior, Jesus Christ.'' Now that's not language that you can struggle with. It's saying it very plainly. And there are many verses of this nature in the Bible, where it is emphasized.
In Titus 3:4: "After that the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared." And it goes on and discusses the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. In verse 6 of that same passage: "which He shed on us abundantly, through Jesus Christ our Savior." Jesus Christ is the Savior and the Savior is God. So Jesus Christ is God. There's no way out of it.
We can find abundant references in the Old Testament and in the New Testament that relate to this.
CALLER: Do you suppose if I point some of these verses out I will run into the rebuttal, "But that's not in the original text"?
HC: You will experience this. If you point out certain verses, there are some that they will try to rationalize by saying they're not found in the original text, or that that means something different, or whatever. There will be some that they will not give answer to. They'll simply look at you and wait for you to go to the next verse, because those who deny the Bible invariably cannot speak to every verse in the Bible. And therefore they will simply not answer when you come to certain verses that are especially troublesome. And you, in your enthusiasm and in your trust in the Bible, will go right on to some more verses, until they can find one more that they can rationalize. But they will not face the verse after verse after verse. They simply will not square off on each and every verse that you would offer.
CALLER: Very good. Thank you very much.
HC: You're welcome. Good night.