Is Jesus Really God?

Series: Colossians: Greater Than...

 “Let All Things Their Creator Bless” // Message @ JRCC – Sunday, Oct 21, 2018

Text: Colossians 1:15-17 // Series: “Greater Than”

 

This summer, I was out in the back alley minding my own business… I think I was washing the car or something.  When I spotted them.  Or, I should say, they spotted me.  Two women, slightly over dressed for a Saturday.  Walking with a stack of magazines in their hands.  I avoided eye contact but they kept coming closer.  They made their opening comments: “what a wonderful day, isn’t it?”  I mumbled back some kind of polite response but I was pretty clear with my body language and my continued busyness that I didn’t want to engage.  But they persisted “Don’t you think with all this beauty that there must be someone behind it?” I mumbled something about God. “Oh, you believe in God? We do, too!” There were genuinely excited now. Finally I had a cogent response “Well, I hope I believe in God. After all, I am a pastor”.  This usually shuts down these kinds of conversations VERY quickly if not immediately.  But these women, bless their hearts, were doggedly persistent.  “We are here telling people in your neighbourhood the good news about God who created all this for us to enjoy”.  They spotted other people further up the alley so they offered me the magazine and bid me good day and they were off.  So I stood there with a copy of the Watchtower magazine in my hand and then went back to washing my car. 

 

I don’t know about you, but I’m never 100% sure what to do when Jehovah’s Witnesses knock or my door.  I’m not sure if they want to engage in a genuine dialogue or if they want me to yell at them so that they can go back and debrief about how they are being persecuted for righteousness’' sake.  We had one stop by the office one time to try to witness to all of our staff.  It gets a little weird.  Especially when you tell them that you are a pastor or that you go to church.  Sometimes I take the magazine and I leaf through it to see what I can learn that they want to talk about.  Usually it’s stuff about having a good family or in this case, the beauty of creation. But it always ends up in the recycling bin because even when we chat for more than two minutes, we quickly come to an area of impasse.  I’m not sure if you have ever had a chance to probe into what JW’s believe but the 8.5 million or so around the globe, including the Kingdom hall in Willoughby are big on millenarian restorationist non-trinitarianism.  That’s some big fancy words to say that though they will call themselves Christians, The major difference between historic, orthodox global Christianity & Jehovah’s Witnesses is JW’s denial that Jesus is God.  Jehovah’s witnesses believe that because the Bible uses the language of Jesus as God’s son, Jesus is a created being – the highest of the archangels. Powerful, important, but not the second person of the trinity and thus not God.  That puts them out of the bounds of Christianity.    

Today we’re going to look at what the New Testament teaches about Christ and you’ll also learn how to have a positive discussion with a Jehovah’s Witness, should they and you choose to engage in a chartable conversation about issues of faith. 

 

We’re just starting into a teaching series this Oct and Nov at Jericho in the book of Colossians entitled “Greater Than”.  This is because all throughout the book, the author, the Apostle Paul writing under the inspiration of the Spirit to the church in the first century city of Colossae, tells them over and over again that Christ is greater than all of the things they might face or believe.  Last week we talked about how Christ is greater than our past because Jesus has the power and authority to break our bondage to sin and death.  We talked about how Christ is greater than legalism and how rule keeping won’t get you into right standing with God. 

 

And today we’re going to look at three short verses that pack a MASSVIE punch theologically.  In this short section, we see a Cristian theology of creation and care for God’s world, we see a theology of the Trinity developed, and we see a Christology or a focus on the person and work of Christ that is distinct and unique from what the Jehovah’s witnesses preach when they come to your door.  It’s a lot to pack in to 3 verses so let’s dive in.  Turn with me in your Bibles or on your devices to Colossians 1:15-17.

 

The first thing you might notice is that this section of text is off-set in your Bibles a little bit.  What we know about these verses is that Paul is quoting one of the earliest first century hymns or songs or poems that the first century Church had to help teach and instruct people who were not literate in basic doctrines.  So the hymn is designed to answer some core questions like “what is God like?” “Who is Jesus” “What do we believe about the created world?”.  And the first thing we see is a

Christian Theology of Creation

The Bible teaches us that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  Lots of speculation and arguments have occurred down through history about how or when God created all that exists, but that is slightly beyond the scope of this message.  You can go back into our sermon archive and listen to the message series on Genesis if you are curious about that.  But for now, let me simply illustrate this by drawing this big square and the title of this square is “everything that exists”

 

Now I’m going to divide this box into two categories… “All things that never came into being” and “all things that came into being” Now Colossians 1:15 says that “Christ existed before anything was created” we would put God

into the box that says “things that never came into being”.  In other words,

God alone is uncreated

  • The Father, Son and Spirit never came into being

John 1:1-3, speaking of Christ as the Eternal, uncreated Word of God, it says “In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He existed in the beginning with God. 3 God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him.”  So we can see clearly here that Christ never came into being. 

 

But we also see that God created all that exists (seen & unseen)

Back over to our easel here…  We have “everything that exists”, we have the one category “things that never came into being” (GOD) is the only entity that exists that is uncreated.  The Divine first-mover. And then in the “all things that came into being” box, we write “all created things”.  The Scriptures are clear that God created all that exists, seen and unseen.  Which means that Creation is not God. It is beautiful, it is valuable and precious but it is not to be worshiped.  Another way of saying this is that

  • Creation is not divine BUT it is good (Genesis 1)

You might remember for last weekend that the Colossian Christians were really into worshipping all kinds of stuff.  Like many people in the ancient world and around the globe today, they worshipped animals. They grew up in a culture that worshipped the sun, moon and stars.  So Paul writes to offer corrective instruction, telling them that those things are not gods to be worshipped but rather that intricacy and beauty and glory of all of creation ought to point us back to the Creator.  Psalm 19 gives us a picture of this.

 

And then Paul says something really radical. He says that God cared so much about the world and the separation and damage done by sin that

God chose to enter creation (incarnation)

The uncreated Creator of all that exists willingly gave up divine privileges and was born as a human being. Philippians 2:6 “Though He [Christ] was God… he appeared in human form, and died a criminal’s death on a cross”

  • Creation and new creation (redemption) are accomplished by the same agent: CHRIST

The New Testament makes the same point over and over again.  That Christ IS God. Christ not only created and sustains all that exists, but Christ also willingly gave up his life so that he could redeem all of creation. 

 

Let’s pause for a moment and think about the implications of all of that…

One immediate implication that comes to my mind is that how you and I treat creation matters.  Because Christ entering the world and taking on a physical body means that our bodies and the created world are good and not be thought of in dualistic terms.  Some people have a theology that created stuff is bad and spiritual stuff is good.  But I think we need to watch our language.  We are not to worship things that are created but we are to understand that they point us to something, or more appropriately someone.   

  • Practice thinking and speaking of it not as “nature” or “the environment” but as “creation” with all that this implies about the Creator’s love and care

As the old hymn reminds us “This is my Father’s World”.  A Christian theology of creation involves a Creator, it involves Christ creating everything and also coming to earth and making visible in the person of Jesus the invisible Creator!   That’s just the start!  We need to keep moving 

 

The second massive thing we see in this passage and others, is that

Christian Theology is Trinitarian.  What do we mean by this?  This means that Christians

We confess God as one being in 3 persons

“God in three persons, blessed Trinity”.  This is one of the most challenging concerts of us as humans to comprehend.  Jenna walked into my office the other month and said “I’m having trouble coming up with an adequate illustration or metaphor to explain the Trinity to the kids” and I said “Join the club! I’m having a difficult time explaining it to myself and the adults!”  So we should ask “where do we get this idea from?” After all, if you do a word search through your Bible,

  • the word Trinity is not in the Bible but the concept is clearly taught

The language of God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit are often used interchangeably in the same passage.  But instead of a long discussion on what the Trinity is, I think it is actually more important to understand what the Trinity is NOT…   

  • This does NOT mean that we worship 3 gods – they are distinct in personhood but not so distinct that they are different deities.  
  • It does NOT mean that these are ‘modes’ of God (e.g. – Father = wrath; Jesus = love; Spirit = power)

  There are some strains of Pentecostalism that teach this and to be fair, it is sometimes easy to go there in our thinking.  But while distinct, we maintain the essential unity of the Godhead – Father, Son and Spirit.  Christian theology is Trinitarian. 

 

But let’s do a little excursus, here for a moment to talk about language again…  When we use words like “father” and “son” it can give us a slightly skewed impression of God’s nature.  I think it is important to reminds ourselves that God is neither male nor female

  • Although male pronouns are used for God in the Bible, this reflects the limits of human language rather than the notion that God has a gender.

God comforts like a mother, guides like a father… But neither of those means that God is female or male.  We need to recognize that

  • “Metaphors that refer to God as King or Father or Husband no more make God a male sexual being than references to feathers (Ps 91:4) make God a bird” (MB Confession of Faith Commentary & Pastoral Application)

Some of you have been wounded by men or had a challenging relationship with your fathers and thus when you hear God referred to as he and Him or Father, it creates a barrier in that relationship.  Today, my prayer for you would be that you recognize that that is a language issue not an issue of God’s essence or identity.  That can be a massively hard journey to walk out but neither Ariana Grande in her song “God is a woman” or patriarchy with its tradition of referencing God as a man have it right.  God is neither male nor female.  So we would do well to watch our language on this one. 

 

Back to our drawing for a moment and your conversation with a Jehovah’s Witness at your front door.  Once you have drawn this square out, ask them “where would you put Jesus?”.  They will want to put Jesus into the “all things that came into being” category because that is what they have been taught.  That Jesus was the first thing God created.  Some of this comes from language. For example, in the NIV translation of Colossians 1:15 it uses the language “Christ is the FIRSTBORN over all creation”.  That kind of bolsters your JWs friend’s claim that Christ is the first thing that God created.  In fact, their own translation of the Bible the New World Translation says in John 1:1, that “in the beginning the Word was, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god”  But I want you to avoid getting into arguments with your JW friend at the door over Greek words and tenses and which translation of the original manuscripts is most accurate, etc.  I want to assure you that this argument has been going on for a long, long, long time. 

 

You see back in the fourth century, as the early Christian movement was spreading throughout the ancient world, there were some pretty funky ideas that grew up alongside of and inside of Christianity.  There were disagreements over all kinds of stuff, some of which we see right in the pages of the New Testament itself.  The early church disagreed about how to incorporate Gentiles and Jews together into God’s new family.  And there were also disagreements about who Jesus was.  One particular disagreement got strong traction in the 4th century in the city of Alexandria under the teaching of a local church leader named Arius

Arius really wanted to stress God’s unity or oneness, and he did so at the expense of the trinity or God’s Threeness.  Arius said “well, if God is not dependent on anything or anyone else for God’s existence, the Father cannot be dependent on the Son.  They must be of different substance or essence.  The Father must be the creator but the son must be a created being”.  He coupled this with his reading of the language of sonship and “firstborn” and came to the conclusion that Jesus was created by God, and then Jesus employed the power of God, the Spirit, in the creation of all that is.  Sounds like our JW friend’s doesn’t it?  In this picture St. Nicolas is slapping Arius across the face for teaching heresy. Like an ancient meme, which has prompted a few good ones memes (2 of my favorites

 

But here’s the fundamental problem with that theology.  If Jesus is not God, that means that Jesus is just one amongst many demi- or semi-gods to be worshipped.  So it allows for polytheism or the worship of many Gods.  It fundamentally undermines the Old Testament assertion, that the Lord your God is ONE. You shall have no other God’s beside or before Me”.  You might remember from last weekend that the Colossian Christians living in a culture that worshiped all kinds of gods – nature, they were subject to emperor and empire worship, power, greed, sexuality freedom and liberty to do whatever I want were all touted as worthy of followership.  And so if Jesus is just one of many gods to be worshipped, Jesus his uniqueness as the uncreated creator disappears and he becomes just a nice model for life and human ethics, if you’re into that kind of thing.  And if Jesus was just a created human being, like you and me, well, this undermines the biblical drama of redemption.  Because the perfect, sinless nature of the atonement disappears.  If he is only a human being and not God, then Jesus has no right or authority to make the claims he did and to take away the sins of the world by his life, death and resurrection.  This shift is not a small shift.  It is actually a heresy.  

 

Friends, the Biblical claim is that Jesus IS God

  • Jesus shows us what God is like (Colossians 1:15)
  • Jesus is the unique saviour of the world (1:20)
  • Jesus is Lord of the church and the cosmos (1:18)

Pastor Wally is going to pick up this theme next week and teach out the rest of this ancient hymn.  If your JW friend is tempted to put Jesus into the second box, take them to John 1:3. Here’s how Greg Kouhl in his book “Stand to Reason” explains this…  IF you have a JW on your doorstep, draw this out and then ask them where they would put Jesus.

 

But have them drop down to John 1:3 and read it out loud in their own translation.  It says “and apart from him [Christ] not even one thing came into existence”. [In other words]. John says the same thing two different ways for emphasis and clarity: everything that ever came into being owes its existence to Jesus, who caused it all to happen. If Jesus caused all created things to come into existence, then He must have existed before all created things came into existence. Therefore, the Word could not have been created. In other words, if Jesus created everything that has come into being, and Jesus also came into being (as they contend), then Jesus created Himself. He would have to exist as Creator before He existed as a created thing, which is absurd. Therefore, Jesus can’t be placed in the square labeled, “all things that came into being.”  Jesus is God. 

 

But let’s go back to our friend Arius, how did his discussion turn out?  Well, it was one of the largest conflicts in the early Church.  It was so bad that the emperor Constantine called a conference of church leaders from all over the western church. They met at Nicea in 325 and they hammered out a document that outlined that Jesus was God.  The debate continued to rage, however, for almost half a century and so a second ecumenical council had to be called to finally settle the matter.  At that meeting, they wrote out a statement of beliefs that we still use to this day.  It’s called the Nicene Creed.  And it outlines the core convictions of orthodox, global, historic Christianity as it relates to the essence, substance & work of God. 

 

As the worship team comes and we move into our time of response today, I want you to pause for a moment and think about your response to God’s revelation in Jesus. 

What you I believe about Jesus matters! 

  • If Jesus is God, His claims about reality are true
  • He cannot be just a good moral teacher (He claimed to be God)
  • He created, sustains and holds all things together (what in your life feels like it is falling apart right now? Take it to Jesus as sustainer, redeemer, healer, the God of the universe who loves you. 
  • He possesses ultimate authority over all that exists, seen and unseen – what are you facing in your life right now that seems insurmountable? Temptation you can’t kick. Financial challenges that you will never overcome. Oppression or fear that cripples you. God in all God’s fullness lives in Christ, and through Christ, God reconciled everything to Himself, He made peace with everything in heaven and on hearth.  This means that nothing, nothing, can separate you from the Love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.   

As we close our time together this morning with two songs of worship, I want us to stand together and make a public declaration of truth.  This is an ancient declaration that has been uttered for one thousand, six hundred and ninety three years.  It has been tested and tried and has been recited by millions of people across the globe already today.  Stand with me and we will join our voices with the saints of ages past and the global community of faith as we declare the truth of Scripture as experessed in the Nicene Creed.  [After we recite this, prayer team will be at back]

“We believe in one God,

the Father, the Almighty,

maker of heaven and earth,

of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,

the only Son of God,

eternally begotten of the Father,

 

“God from God, Light from Light,

true God from true God,

begotten, not made,

of one being with the Father.

Through him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation

he came down from heaven:

by the power of the Holy Spirit

he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.

 

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate

He suffered death and was buried.

On the third day he rose again

In accordance with the scriptures;

He ascended into heaven

and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again in glory

to judge the living and the dead,

and his kingdom will have no end.

 

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord,

The giver of life, who proceeds from the Father.

With the Father and the Son

He is worshipped and glorified.

He has spoken through the prophets.

We believe in one holy catholic & apostolic Church

We acknowledge one baptism

for the forgiveness of sins.

We look for the resurrection of the dead,

and the life of the world to come. Amen.” Benediction – Explain video benediction (visual prayer)

The question "who is Jesus?" is perhaps the most significant one you will ever wrestle with. People have proposed all kinds of answers but if Jesus IS God, then that changes everything. Join the people of Jericho for a discussion on Creation, Christology and millenarian restorationist non-trinitarianism.

Speaker: Brad Sumner

October 21, 2018
Colossians 1:15-17

Brad Sumner

Lead Pastor

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