The Work of Christ in the Present

“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven” (Heb 1:3).

After Jesus’ resurrection, he visited with his disciples off and on for 40 days. Then “he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight” (Acts 1:9). He ascended into heaven and sat down at the right hand of his Father (Heb 1:3).

So what is he doing now? Is he retired? Is he just killing time until the Father sends him back? No, Christ has a very active role. Let’s look at three things he is doing right now.

First and foremost, Christ is reigning with his Father.

God has “raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come” (Eph 1:20-21). Being seated at the right hand is a position of authority.¹ The Son now shares in the Father’s rule. “All authority in heaven and on earth” has been given to him (Matt 28:18). That little word “all” is very interesting. It means ... all. Everything in the universe is under his control just as it was before his incarnation. There is no part of his creation that is out of his control -- not hurricanes, nor viruses, nor demons. And everything is dependent on him; he sustains all things by his powerful word (Heb 1:3, Col 1:17). Everything continues to exist only because Christ wills it. My Savior, the one who loved me and gave himself for me is running the universe. What have I to fear?

And one day, we will reign with him. The scriptures say that we have been “seated ... with him in the heavenly places” (Eph 2:6). God’s plan is that we should rule with our elder brother to the praise of his glorious grace (Eph 2:7).

Second, Christ is representing us to his Father. Christ is our mediator with God (1Tim 2:5). He intercedes for us to his Father (Heb 7:25, Rom 8:34). He is our advocate with the Father (1John 2:1). The one who became a man, who was tempted as we are, who then covered our sins with his blood stands between God and man as our great High Priest.

“Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Heb 4:14-16).

Third, Christ is preparing a place for us. The night that he was betrayed, the Lord told his disciples, “My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” (John 14:2-3).

Tony Evans says, “The ascension is vitally important to our hope for tomorrow and for eternity. ... Because Jesus went somewhere, we have somewhere to go. And just as Christ ascended to heaven, you and I will leave this earth someday and ascend to heaven because Jesus is coming back for us. If the ascension is true, then heaven is true.”² Heaven is real, and Jesus wants us to be with him. And Jesus is going to come set everything right. But that’s a topic for another time.

James Montgomery Boice says, “It is always difficult to measure one’s own spiritual maturity. But there is a sense in which one can assess it generally by the dominant image one has of Jesus Christ.”³ He is no longer the baby in the manger; he’s not still hanging on the cross. Christ is now the ruling and reigning Lord. Live like he’s the King of the universe. Pray like he’s interceding for you. Hope like you have been promised an eternal home. “Our destiny has been secured by our conquering hero, the ascended Christ, seated at God’s right hand.”⁴


There’s so much more that could be said. I recommend “The Uniqueness of Christ in His Ascension and Present Ministry” in Tony Evans’ Theology You Can Count On.

1 Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology
2 Tony Evans, Theology You Can Count On
3 James Montgomery Boice, Foundations of the Christian Faith
4 Rick Cornish, 5 Minute Theologian

Image credit: Ronny Overhate from Pixabay

Aside: The Odds of Jesus

“Jesus took the Twelve aside and told them, ‘We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled’” (Luke 18:31).

Everyone is the product of a unique combination of improbable events. But Jesus is special: Those improbable events were foretold hundreds of years before his birth.

The New Testament writers had a broader view of the term “prophecy” than we tend to. They included what theologians called types, similar to foreshadowing in literature. So the apostles saw hints of Christ throughout the scriptures. Sometimes they are things that happened to other people in the scriptures but that still point to Christ. Theologians identify about 200 prophecies about Jesus using this broader sense of the word.

But some prophecies are clear and specific and fulfilled only in Christ. There are prophecies that he chose to fulfill, such as riding into Jerusalem on the foal of a donkey, that demonstrate how Jesus saw himself and his mission. But there are others that no man could have chosen to fulfill.

Pick any eight such prophecies:

• Born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2)
• Rejected by his people (Is 53:3, Psalm 22:6-8)
• Abandoned by his followers (Zech 13:7)
• Badly beaten (Is 52:14)
• Death by crucifixion (Psalm 22:16-17)
• Killed with criminals (Is 53:9)
• Lots cast for his clothes (Psalm 22:18)
• Buried with the rich (Is 53:9)

The odds of Christ’s fulfilling these eight prophecies are 1 in 10¹⁷ or 1 in one hundred million billion; that is a huge number, so an illustration can help make it a little clearer. This is one by Peter Stoner that Josh McDowell uses¹:

Suppose you cover the entire state of Texas with silver dollars two feet deep – that takes about 10¹⁷ silver dollars. Paint one of them red and mix it in good. Now send a blindfolded friend to go anywhere in the state he wishes and randomly pick up one dollar. The odds that he’d get the red one are 1 in 10¹⁷. That is how likely it is for one person to fulfill eight prophecies.

And that doesn’t even consider how his ministry (Is 9:1-2, 61:1-2), miracles (Is 35:5-6), and resurrection (Is 53:10, Ps 16:8-10) were predicted.

The life, death, and life of Jesus were uniquely foretold in detail hundreds of years before he was born, demonstrating that he was no mere man and that the death he died was according to the plan of God.


To get the full effect, read what is sometimes called the gospel according to Isaiah, Is 52:13-53:12, and reflect on how closely this passage written 700 years before Christ describes the death of the savior.

1 Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell, Evidence That Demands a Verdict

image credit: M&R Glasgow, via Creative Commons 

Evidence for the Resurrection

“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared ...” (1Cor 15:3-5).

Christianity alone, out of all the religions in the world, tells you how to prove that it’s false: produce the body. OK, two thousand years later, that would be impossible. But to the modern world we can offer a similar challenge: give us a better explanation for the facts.

What facts? Gary Habermas offers a list of 12 facts that, with one exception, are “accepted as historical by virtually all [90%+] scholars who research this area”,¹ be they evangelicals, liberals, or even non-Christians. He also says that you don’t even need all 12 to prove the resurrection happened. I would use these five:

1. Jesus died by Roman crucifixion.
2. The disciples had experiences they thought were appearances of the risen Jesus.
3. The apostles began teaching the resurrection of Christ very soon afterwards in Jerusalem, the city where Jesus was executed and buried.
4. James, the brother of Jesus and a former skeptic, and Saul (Paul), the church persecutor, became Christians due to experiences they believed were appearances of the risen Jesus.
5. Christ’s tomb was empty. (This is the exception. Habermas says only about 75% accept this as fact.)

Because liberals and skeptics accept these facts, it is not necessary to argue from an inerrant or even inspired Bible. They don’t even think the gospels are all that historically reliable. This is why we can say that even if the gospels are simply ancient religious literature, Christ was raised from the dead and Christianity is true.

Anyone wishing to disprove Christianity simply needs to come up with a better explanation for the above facts than the resurrection. And people have tried. We will look at several alternative theories.

Legendary development: Skeptics often claim that the resurrection only became part of Christian teachings decades after the crucifixion, after the “witnesses” were dead and long after Christ’s body would have decayed beyond recognition. But today there are several noteworthy skeptical NT scholars who agree that the teaching of the resurrection happened within a few months to a few years of the crucifixion. For instance, Bart Ehrman² believes that the creed reproduced in 1Cor 15:3-7 would have been established within 3-5 years of Christ’s death, meaning that the teaching would have begun even earlier. Scholars generally agree that the resurrection was preached at most a few months after the crucifixion. This means those who claimed to see him after his death were the ones teaching the resurrection. So legendary development is not a plausible alternative.

Swoon theory: The idea that Jesus didn’t actually die on the cross comes into fashion every once in a while. It’s interesting that no one suggested this until long after crucifixions were no longer carried out. Experts believe Jesus actually died on the cross because Roman soldiers were very good at killing people. If Jesus had somehow fooled everyone into merely thinking he was dead, the spear in his side would have ended the charade. If by some odd chance he survived the crucifixion and the time in the tomb without medical care, he would then have to get himself out of the tomb (the stone would have weighed tons) and avoid the guards. And after all he had endured (the flogging, the crucifixion, the spear, the time in the tomb), it’s unlikely he would convince his followers he had “conquered death.”

Stolen body: The idea that the disciples stole Christ’s body is the first alternative theory we know about. But the idea that the same men who fled and hid during his arrest would then find the nerve to steal his body from a guarded, sealed tomb and then insist on proclaiming his resurrection even after the deaths of Stephen and James is too ridiculous to imagine. This theory also fails to explain the conversion of skeptics.

Hallucination: What if the disciples only thought Jesus appeared to them? What if they wanted him to live so badly they convinced themselves that he had returned from the dead? As much trouble as they caused with their preaching, the Jewish leaders or the Romans would have simply trotted out the body. But the tomb was empty; how did that happen? And even though people can have such hallucinations, people cannot share hallucinations. One disciple might think he saw the risen Christ, but not a dozen, much less 500 of them. Additionally, skeptics like James and Paul would not be susceptible to those hallucinations.

Copy of pagan myths: Some claim that the Christian resurrection story was copied from pagan myths of dying and rising gods. When the similarities are closely examined, though, they quickly fall apart, and the more similar the mythic element is, the more likely it is to have appeared after Christianity. And, ultimately, no amount of similarities to these myths explains the historical data.

History has shown that skeptics are endlessly creative when it comes to alternative theories to explain away the resurrection, but in the end they all fail to adequately explain the historical facts. “But no theory is as implausible as the idea that someone rose from the dead.” In a naturalistic world, that would be true. But if God can create a universe out of nothing, he can certainly reanimate a corpse. And as long as miracles are possible, a resurrection is a much better explanation for the historical facts.

We need to be confident that Christ was raised from the dead. “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

“But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1Cor 15:17-20).


For more on this topic, including more skeptical alternative theories, I recommend The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus by Gary Habermas and Michael Licona.

1 Gary Habermas, The Risen Jesus & Future Hope
2 Bart Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?

image credit: JeffJacobs1990 via pixabay

Facets of the Atonement

“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

What happened at the cross? Over the centuries theologians have proposed numerous ways of understanding what Christ accomplished on the cross. People have argued vehemently in support of various “theories of the atonement.” In recent years, though, most theologians are realizing that there is an element of truth in many of these theories and that we should consider them together to get a complete understanding of the atonement.

“Not all theories of the atonement can be justified biblically. Some are incompatible with others, and many, while having an element of truth, are not adequate explanations of how salvation is accomplished. All of them, however, are illuminating and in some way widen our knowledge of this profound subject.”¹

The atonement is like a fine diamond; it has many sides, many facets that gleam differently as we turn to look at it first from this angle, then from another. So we’ll look at a few of the prominent theories and see how the different facets reflect God’s glory and grace to us.

The death of Christ as an example. “To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps” (1Pet 2:21). Jesus taught that we should turn the other cheek and go the extra mile. He said, “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness” (Matt 5:10). He showed us just how far we should be willing to take that by going to the cross where “when he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly” (1Pet 2:23).

The cross as demonstration of God’s love. “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). The cross shows us just how far God’s love for us goes. Once we understand the depths of our sin, the love shown at the cross should leave us speechless. And it should fill us with confidence. “What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” (Rom 8:31-32).

The cross as Christ’s victory over evil. When the forces of evil coaxed Man to sin, they gained a foothold on the earth and authority over humanity. “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph 6:12). At the cross, Christ took all of that back. “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross” (Col 2:15). Then God “raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come” (Eph 1:20-21). Though for now sin and death and the dark powers that are loose in the world can still harm us in their death throes, the war is over, and we have victory in Christ Jesus.

The cross as payment of our debt to God. Substitutionary atonement, the idea that Christ died to satisfy the wrath of God, to pay the penalty for our sin, is frequently attacked today as not only bloody and petty but also as new. Though the modern formulation has its roots in Anselm’s satisfaction theory, it really only became what we know today in the time of the Reformation. But that doesn’t mean the idea of Christ paying for our sin hasn’t been part of Christian teaching since the beginning.

Jesus was introduced as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). In Hebrews, the death of Christ is likened to the Day of Atonement (9:1-15). Peter said of Jesus, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1Pet 2:24). And one of the earliest statements of faith of the fledgling church was “Christ died for our sins” (1Cor 15:3). Christ and the apostles pointed to Isaiah’s prophecy of the suffering servant in relation to Christ’s death: 

But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed (Is 53:5).

“... [S]ubstitution is not a ‘theory of the atonement.’ Nor is it even an additional image to take its place as an option alongside the others. It is rather the message of each image and the heart of the atonement itself.”²

Together, these facets give us a fuller understanding of the atonement than any one theory can. Erickson sums up the picture created:

In his death Christ (1) gave us a perfect example of the type of dedication God desires of us, (2) demonstrated the great extent of God’s love, (3) underscored the seriousness of sin and the severity of God’s righteousness, (4) triumphed over the forces of sin and death, liberating us from their power, and (5) rendered satisfaction to the Father for our sins. All of these things we as humans needed done for us, and Christ did them all.³

This brief article can barely scratch the surface. I recommend John Stott’s The Cross of Christ to everyone.

1 Norman Geisler, Systematic Theology
2 John Stott, The Cross of Christ
3 Millard Erickson, Introducing Christian Doctrine

image credit: OpenClipart-Vectors

The Work of Christ in His Death and Resurrection

“He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification” (Romans 4:25).

The death and resurrection of Christ was the central act of human history. It’s also the foundation of Christian theology, so we’ll be spending some time digging into this topic.

Why did Christ have to die? Human rebellion had to be paid for, and “the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23). “In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Heb 9:22). Rebellion against God is a capital offense, but God, in Christ, was willing to take that punishment upon himself.

So Christ went to the cross. Many today want to dismiss the notion that God sent Jesus to die. They say that he came here to teach and inspire, but we killed him. The apostles disagree: “This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross” (Acts 2:23).

Some today object that this constitutes “divine child abuse.” They have a weak understanding of the Trinity. The Father and the Son are separate persons, but there is one God and there was one plan whereby God would take the penalty on himself. The Son was not forced into a role by the Father; this was their plan. “We must not, then, speak of God punishing Jesus or of Jesus persuading God, for to do so is to set them over against each other as if they acted independently of each other or were even in conflict with each other. We must never make Christ the object of God’s punishment or God the object of Christ’s persuasion, for both God and Christ were subjects not objects, taking the initiative together to save sinners.”¹ Jesus said, “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again” (John 10:18).

Which brings us to the resurrection. In the epistles, the authors will often speak of Christ’s death or of his resurrection, but in most cases they have both in mind. His death and resurrection are two parts of the same event. “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification” (Rom 4:25).

It’s common for skeptics to claim that this belief developed later, long after everyone who knew Jesus was dead. Today, though, even non-Christian NT scholars (yes, that’s a thing) find themselves agreeing that this belief is very early. 1Cor 15:3-7 is held by many scholars to be an early creedal statement that Paul quotes in his letter. It says, “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, ... he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures....” According to Jesus Seminar founder Robert Funk, this creed was probably set within three years after Christ’s death.² Note that both his death “for our sins” and his resurrection are included in this formula.

Today “progressive Christians”* often teach that the resurrection of Jesus was a “spiritual resurrection,” that is, that he “rose” in his followers’ hearts or perhaps that he continued in a spiritual existence after his death. In his massive The Resurrection of the Son of God, NT Wright has shown in exhaustive detail that a non-physical resurrection would never have even entered into the minds of either Jews or Greeks of that time period. Resurrection meant the body getting back up and walking off. That is part of what made the Christian message so hard for the Jews and Greeks to believe. “The resurrection is particularly significant, for inflicting death was the worst thing that sin and the powers of sin could do to Christ. In the inability of death to hold him is symbolized the totality of his victory. What more can the forces of evil do if someone whom they have killed does not stay dead?”³

The teaching of the apostles was that Christ physically rose from the dead and so will we. Christ was “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1Cor 15:20). Because he had victory over death, we will have victory over death. Not only will we live again, we will live better than we ever have — we will have a resurrection body (eg, 1Cor 15:51-54) like his.

But the victory of the resurrection isn’t just for after we die. Through Christ’s resurrection, we have victory over sin’s power right now. “When you accepted Christ you were identified completely with Him, both in His death and in His resurrection. So when Christ was raised from the dead, you also were raised to a new way of life.”⁴ Through Christ’s death, the chains of sin were broken. Through his life, we have the power to not sin. It’s a power we don’t use well or often enough, but we can get better with practice.

The death and resurrection of Christ are not just an event to commemorate. It’s supposed to transform us. We should live differently because of the price paid for our sins and because of Christ’s victory over death. Let us commit to living, through the power of the Holy Spirit, lives worthy of the risen Savior.


For more on this topic, I recommend “The Uniqueness of Christ in His Resurrection” in Theology You Can Count On by Tony Evans.

1 John RW Stott, The Cross of Christ
2 Robert Funk and The Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus
3 Millard Erickson, Introducing Christian Doctrine
4 Tony Evans, Theology You Can Count On

* The term here refers to a religious perspective rather than a political movement. I put the term in quotes because the extent to which these people teach Christianity is in serious question.

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The Work of Christ in His Mortal Life

“Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people” (Matt 4:23). 

Why didn’t Jesus go straight to the cross? What was the point in his hanging around for 30 years before even starting his ministry? What was he doing in that time? Because the Apostles’ Creed jumps from “born of the Virgin” to “suffered under Pontius Pilate” we “might be tempted to draw the false inference that what happened in between these two terminal events in the life of Jesus is unimportant for Christian belief.”¹ The truth is this period is very important for Christian faith and practice, so I want to look at two things Jesus did during his mortal life. 

The first and most important thing Jesus did in his earthly life was to live perfectly. Jesus literally dared his challengers to prove he had ever sinned (John 8:46). That would be insane for any other human being to do. We know, even if we don’t like to admit, “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” But Jesus never sinned. The apostles maintain that he was without sin (eg, 1Pet 2:22, 2Cor 5:21, Heb 4:15), something that was never claimed for Abraham, Moses, David, or any other revered figure. 

This means that Jesus always did what he was supposed to and never did what he wasn’t supposed to. He loved God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength. He loved his neighbor as himself. He never lied or stole, never lusted or hated. He fulfilled every letter of the Law of Moses, and he also lived out the spirit of it. Had he sinned, he would not have been an acceptable sacrifice (cf, 1Pet 1:19). 

But he was certainly tempted to sin. We have the story of the wilderness temptation by Satan (eg, Matt 4:1-11), but he was tempted more than that. Hebrews says, “We do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin” (4:15). 

People may say, “But he didn’t sin, so he doesn’t really understand temptation.” CS Lewis replies, “Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. ... A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means....”² 

Another common response is that Jesus didn’t sin only because he had the power of God. But he “emptied himself.” He had given up independent usage of his divine nature. So how did he refrain from sinning? By depending on the Holy Spirit. Jesus resisted temptation via the same means that is available to all Christians. The God who said, “Be holy for I am holy” (1Pet 1:16), showed us how it’s done. He desires that we follow his example, knowing that God “will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it” (1Cor 10:13). Of course, we will fail often. He knows we are wedded to a fallen nature; he “remembers that we are dust” (Psalm 103:14). The same grace that took him to the cross is with us when we sin now: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9), but he desires to see us growing in holiness for his name’s sake. 

The second thing I want to discuss about Jesus’ earthly life was his proclaiming, and living, the inauguration of the Kingdom of God. The “Kingdom of God” is, very briefly, God setting everything right — including a broken creation, rebellious humans, and a world in which wickedness rules. Jesus came to say and to show that God was bringing an end to all of it. NT Wright says Jesus “was not a teacher who also healed; he was a prophet of the kingdom, first enacting and then explaining that kingdom. ... When Jesus announced the kingdom, the stories he told functioned like dramatic plays in search of actors.”³ Our Lord wants us to be those actors. He wants us to live out those teachings about the Kingdom of God. 

“But everything hasn’t been put right!” True. But the process has started. It will be completed. We live in what theologians call the “already but not yet.” The kingdom is already here, but it is not what it will be. Right now Christ wants to show the world what the kingdom looks like through his Church. So he taught us to forgive, to take care of the poor, to defend the weak, and to speak the truth in love to a world that does not know God. 

One day the process will be complete. Everything will be made new. “There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Rev 21:4). But in that day, it will be too late for the lost to join in the Kingdom of God. So we are to live it out now, to show them what could be and to call them to repentance and to trust in Jesus. 

For more on Christ and the Kingdom of God, see NT Wright’s The Challenge of Jesus. 

1 I. Howard Marshall, A Guide to Christian Beliefs 

2 CS Lewis, Mere Christianity 

3 NT Wright, The Challenge of Jesus

The Incarnation

“Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men” (Phil 2:5-7 NASB).

What was the most amazing event in history? The creation of the universe? Alexander conquering the world? The resurrection of Christ? Putting a man on the moon? No.

The most amazing event in history is this: God became a man. The infinite wrapped himself in the finite. The eternal was born. It’s one of the most controversial aspects of Christian theology, but it’s clear that it had to be this way.

The image of God had broken itself. God’s representatives abandoned and turned on him. That could not be allowed to stand. Athanasius likens it to a king “who has founded a city, so far from neglecting it when through the carelessness of the inhabitants it is attacked by robbers, avenges it and saves it from destruction, having regard rather to his own honour than to the people’s neglect.”¹

And how is God to fix this situation? Human rebellion required recompense that humans could not pay, because the wages of sin is death — paying our debt would destroy us. According to Anselm, “no one can pay except God, and no one ought to pay except man: [so] it is necessary that a God-Man should pay it.”² The only way this would work is if God and humanity merged somehow.

But how? We don’t really know. All we can say on the authority of scripture is that the Son “emptied himself” (Phil 2:7). This is called the “kenosis.” Of what did he empty himself? Of his divinity? Not hardly. Even if it were possible, it would ruin the equation. Theologians speculate that he gave up the independent use of his divine power; that is, he depended on the Holy Spirit for every miracle. And he temporarily gave up (or perhaps "veiled" is a better term) his glory (cf, John 17:5, 17:24).

But the Son never ceased to be God. Instead, he added human nature to his divine nature. The two natures coexist in perfect harmony. It is not a divine nature with a little taste of humanity thrown in. It is not a human nature with a little bit of the divine on top. We say that Jesus is 100% God and 100% man. “But that’s 200%!” Yes, but it gets the message across that in Christ the complete divine Son was united to a complete human nature. And these two natures are “perfectly united with no mixture, confusion, separation, or division”³ with, as the Chalcedonian Creed says, “each nature retaining its own attributes.”

Erickson offers an analogy: Picture the world's fastest sprinter entering a three-legged race. His physical capacity is not diminished, but his performance is limited by his decision to restrict himself.⁴ Christ's divine and human natures worked together to achieve one goal, but the divine nature was voluntarily bound to human limitations.

What does it mean to say God became man? This God-man had the complete human experience. He was born. He got tired. He got lonely. He saw people he loved die. He felt fear. He experienced rejection. He was tempted. He died. He went through everything that humans go through.

What does it mean to say Christ was God in the flesh? It’s important to address a common error. From ancient times to the present day, false teachers have tried to say that Christ was only the exemplar of what we all can be. Sometimes it’s the idea that we all can become christs. More often today it’s that Christ only expressed the spark of the divine that exists in all of us. However it’s stated, it’s wrong. Christ was the unique God-man. The incarnation was a once for all event that will never be repeated.

Christ was not a man who was special. He was and is God made flesh. “The Bible from Genesis to Revelation presents a stupendous view of God, and then it tells us that Jesus Christ is all that God is.”⁵

The glory of the incarnation is that we do not serve an aloof God who watches from on high. We serve a God who came down and got in the muck with us. He knows what it means to be a human being, so he understands us, sympathizes with us, and advocates for us. That is a God who deserves our adoration.


For more on this topic, the classic text is Athanasius’ On the Incarnation. Be sure to get an edition with the introduction by CS Lewis which is worth the price of the book on its own. The works by Anselm and Machen (both quite short) are also very much worth your time.

1 Athanasius, On the Incarnation
2 Anselm, Cur Deus Homo (or Why God Became Man)
3 RC Sproul, Everyone’s a Theologian, emphasis in original
4 Millard Erickson, Introducing Christian Doctrine
5 J Gresham Machen, The Person of Jesus 

Image credit: Rollstein via Pixabay

The Virgin Birth

“Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly” (Matt 1:18-19).

A virginal conception is impossible. A woman cannot get pregnant without the involvement of a man. Everyone knows this. Joseph certainly knew this — that’s why he assumed Mary was unfaithful. Virgin births don’t happen. And yet one did.

It’s hard to say that the virgin birth of Christ is an essential doctrine. People can be saved without ever having heard of it. They can be saved without believing it. Two of the gospels don’t mention it. Millard Erickson points out that the evangelistic sermons in Acts never mention it.¹ Yet I will maintain that it is still a primary doctrine. The creeds insist that all Christians everywhere must believe it. Why?

Before we get into why it’s important, we should be clear about what we mean. Muslims distort our teaching that Jesus is the Son of God as meaning we believe that God the Father and Mary had a physical union, like something out of a Greek myth. When Mary was told, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (Luke 1:35), what was meant was that the Spirit would make something in her body that was not previously there. No one “entered” Mary by the conventional meaning of the term. But God created. Some skeptics will try to equate the conception by the Holy Spirit as something akin to rape, but this was not forced upon Mary as an unwilling victim. Her response to the angel was: “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled” (Luke 1:38). She was a willing participant in a supernatural, not physical, event.

So why is the virgin birth important? In telling us how the incarnation came about, the scriptures assure us of Christ’s full humanity. He did not just appear; he was born of a woman. He was not only a spirit — Mary gave birth in quite the usual way, so docetism is untrue. JI Packer says, “The Fathers appealed to the virgin birth as proof, not that Jesus was truly divine as distinct from being merely human, but that he was truly human as distinct from merely looking human as ghosts and angels might do.”²

But it also tells us his conception was special, so he was not a mere man who became the Christ as various heresies such as adoptionism have suggested. Moreover, since his beginning was unique, he is unique. We cannot become christs like the Ebionites taught.³

So the virginal conception of Christ puts boundaries on our theology. It keeps us from wandering onto the wrong path, so we have to hold onto it.

We also have to hold onto it because it’s true. The gospels tell us that Jesus was conceived by a virgin, so we believe it.

The only reason people reject the virgin birth is that they’ve allowed naturalism to creep into their theology. They simply cannot accept this miracle. Why do they doubt it? Because it’s impossible? Many things in the Bible are “impossible.” That’s pretty much the definition of a miracle. Which is the problem.

Rarely does it stop with the virgin birth. People who reject this teaching typically soon reject every other miracle in the scriptures. If the other miracles are untrue, then the Bible is full of lies. And if miracles don’t happen, Christ was not raised from the dead. “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins” (1Cor 15:17).

As Packer points out, “The Bible says that the Son of God entered and left this world by acts of supernatural power.”² The supernatural forms the bookends of Christ’s earthly life and fills much in between. What do we do with that? We own it. We embrace it. If Genesis 1:1 is true, if God created the universe out of nothing, any other miracle in the Bible is a parlor trick. We shouldn’t be ashamed of a miraculous birth because “miraculous” is what God does. And the same power that formed Jesus in the womb of a virgin, the same power that raised him from the dead, lives in us. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

As for the virgin birth, J Gresham Machen said it well: “Even if the belief in the virgin birth is not necessary to every Christian, it is certainly necessary to Christianity.”³


For a detailed defense of the virgin birth, see J Gresham Machen’s The Virgin Birth of Christ.

1 Millard Erickson, Introducing Christian Doctrine
2 JI Packer, Growing in Christ
3 J Greshem Machen, The Virgin Birth of Christ

image credit: Christopher Cook

Did Jesus Claim to be God?

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ... The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:1, 14).

Did Jesus teach his divinity? It’s trivial to show that the various authors of the New Testament called Jesus God. John 1:1-3 is the example that immediately springs to most people’s minds, but it’s throughout the writings of the apostles. (If anyone wants to take a brief tour, John 1, Col 1, and Heb 1 cover the bases well.) But what if they imposed that notion on Jesus after he was gone? That is what many people today allege — that Jesus did not claim to be God and would have been appalled at the notion. So we’re going to look at examples of Jesus claiming deity.

You won’t find Jesus saying, “I’m God” in scripture. Besides the fact that he wouldn’t have been properly understood, it would have landed him charges of blasphemy. But he did claim to be God. How?

Bowman and Komoszewski, in Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ, demonstrate that Jesus (and the apostles, on his behalf) laid claim to the prerogatives of God. They organize the evidence using the acronym HANDS:

• Honors: Jesus shares the honors due to God.
• Attributes: Jesus shares the attributes of God.
• Names: Jesus shares the names of God.
• Deeds: Jesus shares in the deeds that God does.
• Seat: Jesus shares the seat of God's throne.

If I were trying to convince a skeptic or doubter of the deity of Christ, I would prefer to cite examples from Mark or the material common to Matthew and Luke (that allegedly from the hypothetical earlier document called “Q”) because skeptics and liberals believe that to be older material, allowing less time for legendary development. (They tend to ignore the fact that Paul’s letters, with much higher Christology than the gospels, probably predate the gospels.)

Jesus claims the honors due to God: Jesus allowed himself to be worshiped, something no angel ever permits (eg, Rev 19:10), for example

• “Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him...” (Matt 28:17).
• “Thomas said to him, ‘My Lord and my God!’” (John 20:28).

Jesus claims (or demonstrates) the attributes of God: Jesus was (and is) a man, so that complicates his sharing the attributes of deity, but he still claimed or demonstrated several, including:

• Jesus claimed pre-existence: Matt 23:37, John 8:58
• Jesus demonstrated omniscience: Mark 2:6-8, John 4:17-18
• Jesus claimed omnipresence: Matt 28:20

Jesus claims the names of God: Jesus never said, “I’m YHWH,” but he did the next best thing in John 8:58 — “I tell you the truth,” Jesus said, “before Abraham was born, I am.” He was claiming to be the “I AM WHO I AM” of Ex 3:14, and the Jews of his day knew it, which is why “they picked up stones to stone him” (John 8:59).

Then, in the Great Commission, Jesus changes the Jewish bapismal formula. His followers would not baptize in the name of YHWH. They would baptize in the name (singular) “of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt 28:19).

Jesus claims to share in the deeds that God does:

• Jesus claims to be able to forgive sins: Mark 2:5
• Jesus controls the elements: Mark 4:35.41
• Jesus claims to be able to give new Law or change the old: Mark 10:2-12, 13:31
• Jesus claims to be the one who will judge humanity: Matt 16:27 (also see below)
• Jesus claims to be able to do anything for his followers: John 14:13-14

Jesus claims to share the seat of God's throne: That is, he claims that he will rule as and/or with God. Jesus frequently referred to himself as the Son of Man. There is a little bit of ambiguity in that name. It could just mean “human.” Or it could refer to the supernatural entity Daniel saw who walked into the throne room of God Almighty and sat down (Dan 7:13). He finally made it perfectly clear that he meant the latter:

Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?”

“I am,” said Jesus. “And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”

The high priest tore his clothes. “Why do we need any more witnesses?” he asked. “You have heard the blasphemy. What do you think?” (Mark 14:61-64)

See also Matt 11:25-27, 25:31, 28:18.

As it turns out, Matt 28:16-20 contains an example of every one of these classes. Mark 2:1-12 contains at least three.

Dan Brown made the claim that no one thought of Jesus as divine before the 4th Century. The truth is that the earliest debate over the nature of Christ was whether he was really human. You hopefully now see why. The early church had no doubt that Jesus claimed to be God, and they worshiped him as such from the very beginning.

So the one who “became flesh and made his dwelling among us” was the true God, the maker of heaven and earth, who became a man for the sole purpose of dying on the cross to rescue us from the consequences of our rebellion against him.


For more on this topic, see William Lane Craig, “The Self-Understanding of Jesus” in Reasonable Faith.

The History of the Deity of Christ

“The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation” (Col 1:15).

Was Jesus only declared God because of politics? That’s another claim that skeptics will bring up. It reached the public's imagination in the 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. There are many historical inaccuracies used as plot points in the book. One was a claim by a character, Ian Teabing, that until the Council of Nicea (AD 325) “Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet … a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless.” At Nicea, he says, Jesus was declared divine by “a relatively close vote.” Many readers of the novels have assumed its many statements of “fact”, including this one, were true. Is it?

William Lane Craig points to the work of several scholars as demonstrating that “within twenty years of the crucifixion a full-blown Christology proclaiming Jesus as God incarnate existed.”¹ It is clear that Paul, who died around around AD 64-68, taught the deity of Christ (eg, Col 1:15-17, Phil 2:6-11). And it was not long before heresies appeared. The earliest we know of actually appears in the New Testament. A form of docetism, these people believed that Jesus only appeared to be human. This seems to be directly addressed by 1 John 4:2 ( “This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.”) and possibly by some of Paul’s writings (eg, 1Tim 3:16).

There were groups who questioned the deity of Christ, though. One, the people that prompted the Council of Nicea, was called the Arians. Arius taught that Jesus was not fully God. Rather, he was the “firstborn over all creation” — the first and greatest of God’s creatures, a perfect being, but not equal to God the Father. Note that this is far from being a mere man. Arius revered Jesus but simply thought he was not quite God. In fact, his goal was not to “demote” Jesus but to treat the scriptures and the honor of God with respect. And his ideas found a lot of supporters. (They survive today in the Jehovah's Witnesses.)

The resulting drama was so divisive that Emperor Constantine insisted that the church leaders get together and work things out. So the Council of Nicea was called together. In a first for the Church, her leaders gathered together as guests of the Roman Empire with all the pomp and luxury that implies. Despite the claim of modern conspiracy theorists, the historical record shows that Constantine’s instruction to the assembled churchmen was basically “fix this” — not instructions on how to deify Christ.

After lengthy debates, the assembled bishops agreed on the terminology that we still use today, that the Son is of the same essence as the Father. Far from being a “close vote,” it was something like 300-2 (two sources disagree over exactly how many bishops were in attendance).²

We absolutely cannot let skeptics rewrite Church history. Though it was not entirely without debate, belief in the deity of Christ appeared early and was a part of Christian teachings for 300 years before Nicea and most certainly was not an invention of Constantine. It was a product of the teachings of the apostles and the Lord himself.


For more on this topic, Roger Olson and Adam English’s Pocket History of Theology offers a relatively short summary.

1 William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith
2 Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church vol. 3

Image via Pixabay

Did Jesus Exist?

“In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene— during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness” (Luke 3:1-2).

Is Jesus a myth? That is, did a person named Jesus of Nazareth actually live? A few decades ago the question would be too ridiculous to address; today, thanks to the internet, which allows everyone to spread their ideas no matter how baseless or bizarre, we have to take it seriously. Though there are very few actual scholars who hold this position, there are countless websites that spread the idea that Jesus never existed.

The “mythicist” views vary quite a bit, but their basic position is that Christianity was based on a mythological Christ figure. The gospels were allegories or, perhaps, a later attempt to make their mythical Christ appear to have been a real person. One version has him being some kind of sun god. They may even claim that the gospels were written hundreds of years after the time period in which they are set.

Thankfully, there are actual scholars who can rebut their theories. Even Bart Ehrman, a self-described “agnostic with atheist leanings”, famous for promoting the idea that the New Testament is corrupted, that the gospels are hopelessly contradictory, and that Jesus never claimed to be God, wrote a book aiming to prove that Jesus existed. Why? “As a historian I think evidence matters.”¹

Pilate stone

Ehrman doesn’t believe any of the gospels are eyewitness accounts. And that’s not a problem for him. “The absence of eyewitness accounts would be relevant if, and only if, we had reason to suspect that we should have eyewitness reports if Jesus really lived.”¹ But there is almost no evidence for government officials and other such people you expect to find accounts of from first century Palestine. There are no contemporary accounts of Pontius Pilate. In fact, outside of accounts that mention him in connection to Jesus, we have one inscription with the name of this Roman governor. This is not uncommon in history. We can’t demand contemporary accounts of someone who was an itinerant preacher in a small Roman backwater province. But what we have is not bad, as history is judged.

Mythicists don’t accept the New Testament as evidence (a topic we’ll return to), so we’ll look first at the extra-biblical evidence for Christ. Josh and Sean McDowell helpfully divide the historical sources into “sources of little or no value,” “sources of limited value,” and “sources of significant value”.² Of limited value are the brief mentions by Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, and a few others. The more significant sources are Tacitus and Josephus. Tacitus wrote about the incident where Nero blamed Christians for setting Rome on fire. He said of the Christians, “Their name comes from Christ, who, during the reign of Tiberius, had been executed by the procurator Pontius Pilate. Suppressed for the moment, the deadly superstition broke out again, not only in Judea ... but also in the city of Rome.”

Josephus mentions Christ twice, once when he recounts the execution of James “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ.” The other is a highly controversial passage known as the Testimonium Flavianum. It’s almost certain that some Christian copyist doctored the passage, but scholars today tend to believe they can extract something like what the original must have said:

At this time there appeared Jesus, a wise man. For he was a doer of startling deeds, a teacher of people who receive the truth with pleasure. And he gained a following both among many Jews and among many of Greek origin. And when Pilate, because of an accusation made by the leading men among us, condemned him to the cross, those who had loved him previously did not cease to do so. And up until this very day the tribe of Christians (named after him) has not died out.²

Craig Blomberg sums up the description of Jesus that can be drawn from non-Christian sources.

“Jesus was a Jew who lived in Israel during the first third of the first century; was born out of wedlock; intersected with the life and ministry of John the Baptist; attracted great crowds, especially because of his wondrous deeds; had a group of particularly close followers called disciples (five of whom are named); ran afoul of the Jewish religious authorities because of his controversial teachings sometimes deemed heretical or blasphemous; was crucified during the time of Pontius Pilate’s governorship in Judea (AD 26-36), and yet was believed by many of his followers to have been the Messiah, the anticipated liberator of Israel. This belief did not disappear despite Jesus’ death because a number of his supporters claimed to have seen him resurrected from the dead. His followers, therefore, continued consistently to grow in numbers, gathering together regularly for worship and instruction and even singing hymns to him as if he were a god (or God).”³

The extra-biblical evidence paints a pretty accurate picture of Jesus. To discount all of this requires either a massive conspiracy whereby ancient Christians inserted Jesus into all of these texts or for the ancient Romans and Jews to completely miss the fact that Jesus, like the central figure of all the pagan mystery religions, was not a real man.

Now back to the New Testament. Is it fair to exclude the New Testament documents from the evidence? Ehrman says no:

“Whatever else you might think about the books of the Bible—whether you believe in them or not, whether you consider them inspired or not—they are still books. That is, they were written by people in historical circumstances and contexts and precisely in light of those circumstances and contexts. ... To dismiss the Gospels from the historical record is neither fair nor scholarly.”¹

Whether we treat the New Testament documents as historical records or not, there is no basis for believing that Jesus did not exist. The “Jesus myth” theory is the myth.


For more detail on this topic, I recommend "The Historical Existence of Jesus" in Evidence That Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell.

1 Bart Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, emphasis in original
2 Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell, Evidence That Demands a Verdict
3 Craig Blomberg, “Jesus of Nazareth” in Douglas Groothuis, Christian Apologetics

image credits: The Pilate stone, SA-2.0, creative commons
"The Eye of Providence", by de:Benutzer:Verwüstung, public domain

Introduction to Christology

“Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone” (Eph 2:19-20).

Now we come to the core of Christianity, the person and work of Jesus Christ. It may seem odd to say that it is Christ, not God, who is the core of our faith, but it is what Jesus did — his work — in which we place our trust, and his character and teachings are the ultimate revelation of God. As William Lane Craig said, “The Christian religion stands or falls with the person of Jesus Christ. Judaism could survive without Moses, Buddhism without Buddha, Islam without Mohammed; but Christianity could not survive without Christ.”¹ That’s probably why God the Father is covered in two lines of the Apostles’ Creed while it takes ten lines to cover the fundamentals about Jesus. The Nicene Creed goes into even more detail:

“[I believe] in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made. Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.”

People today have as many misguided ideas about Jesus as they do about God. Everyone wants to have their own personal Jesus. Pop culture, New Agers, and political parties all want to give you their version of Jesus. Their version always looks an awful lot like them. It’s fine if everyone wants to have their own take on the Tooth Fairy, but we have to base our beliefs about Jesus on the real man and the life he really led. We are no more entitled to our own personal Jesus than we are to our own personal Abraham Lincoln. The facts have to be our guide, in this case the facts as recorded by his friends and followers. That some people don’t like the facts does not make them any less factual.

The scriptures say that Christ is the chief cornerstone of the Church. He determines the shape of what she can be. When we try to build something out of line with him, the whole structure falls apart. History has shown that to be true time and again. So we’re going to spend some time learning about the real Jesus of history as revealed by the apostles who knew him and their disciples.


1 William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith

image credit: Cornerstone, R Miller used by Creative Commons

Humanity: God’s Image Restored

“For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.” (Rom 8:19).

God is not content to leave his image marred in humanity.

God had a plan, conceived before the foundation of the world, whereby he would rescue his rebellious, broken images. The first big truth about humans is that we are immensely valuable to God. The second is that we are all in rebellion against God and so deserve destruction. The third is that God plans to set all that right at great cost to himself.

Tim Keller writes, “The Christian gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone.”¹

People who think that Christianity is down on people have not listened to the whole gospel. Not only does God want to rescue us from the consequences of our sin, he plans to make us more than we ever were. The image of God will be repaired when his people are united with him through Christ. Don’t read that too quickly. United with him through Christ.

He is not going to just fix us. We’re getting an upgrade. We’ll go deeper into this later, but God’s plan is that those he redeems should become his children, “heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ” (Rom 8:17, cf Tit 3:7, Gal 4:7, 1Pet 3:7), who will “participate in the divine nature” (2Pet 1:4). CS Lewis wrote:

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal."²

God’s plans for redeemed humanity are glorious. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him” (1Cor 2:9). Until that day, we wait patiently for the restoration of all things and work to make sure that as many people as possible are in the company of the redeemed.


For more on this topic, I recommend “The Weight of Glory” by CS Lewis.

1 Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism
2 CS Lewis, “The Weight of Glory” in The Weight of Glory, emphasis in original

Humanity: The Broken Image

"The LORD looks down from heaven on all mankind
to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God.
All have turned away, all have become corrupt;
there is no one who does good, not even one" (Psalm 14:2-3).

Humans are born at war with God. How did we go from the image of God to enemies of God? The answer is the fall.

In Genesis 2 we learn that God put his humans in a beautiful garden that supplied their every need, then he gave them one rule. In chapter 3 we see them break that one rule. Some people want to deny that those events are literal history, but in some way or another, human beings learned to sin. More than that, they rebelled. And when they did, the image of God was broken.

Nature was designed such that everything reproduces after its kind, and for humans that meant passing on that new, fallen nature. Now, the human heart “is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jer 17:9). So sin comes naturally to us. We don’t have to teach children to sin; they figure that out on their own. It’s often said, we aren’t sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners. This is called “original sin” — what GK Chesterton called “the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.”¹

So what exactly is sin? Erickson defines it as “any lack of conformity, active or passive, to the moral law of God.”² It is the things we do and the things we don’t do. It can be found in our actions or our intentions. It’s anything in which we deviate from God’s character. And we do it as easily as breathing.

The result of our sin is alienation. We are alienated from nature, from God, from other people, and from ourselves.³ The world is broken because of us; we were cast out of paradise into a world that wants to hurt us. We cannot have peace with other people or even ourselves for very long. And we are at war with God. This is the second truth we have to grasp. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23).

All of this doesn’t mean that we’re completely wicked. But it does mean that everything about us is tainted. Theologians call it the doctrine of total depravity. It says that there is no part of us that isn’t touched by sin. That doesn’t mean we are only terrible all the time. We can follow God’s law when it seems like a good idea to us. But doing “good” for our own reasons isn’t honoring God; we’re still rebelling. That is why even our righteous deeds are like filthy rags to God (Is 64:6).

It gets worse. When we sin, we join in the devil’s rebellion. We are committing treason. And the penalty for treason is death. When Paul said “the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23), he wasn’t being melodramatic. Sin introduced death to the human race, spiritual and physical, and eternal death is the just penalty for treason against an infinitely holy God.

These are hard truths, but they are truths we need to embrace. People don’t go to the doctor unless they think they’re sick. But once they know they’re sick, the treatment is precious to them. Human beings are desperately sick, and they need to know it.

But this isn’t just for lost people. Christians are still sinners, and we have the same problem. When we lose sight of our sin, the cross loses its beauty. Meditating on our sinful condition helps us appreciate the gospel. It also yields the humility that the Lord desires in us (Is 57:15). And it makes the cross shine forth in all the glory of the grace of God.⁴

People have never liked hearing they are sinners, but it’s probably even worse now. We cannot be ashamed of this truth. Refusing to tell a sinner he’s a sinner is no different than a doctor refusing to tell someone with a tumor he has cancer. We have the cure for the disease. They need to know they’re sick.


For more on this topic, I recommend “The Nature and Source of Sin” in Millard Erickson’s Introducing Christian Doctrine.

1 GK Chesteron, Orthodoxy
2 Millard Erickson, Introducing Christian Doctrine
3 RC Sproul, Everyone’s a Theologian
4 Richard Phillips, What's So Great About Total Depravity?

image credit: Fractured Sand, Brian Williams

Humanity: Made in God’s Image

“So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27).

What are human beings? What makes them more valuable than anything else in God’s creation?

Genesis 1 tells us how God created the earth. Again and again God said, “Let there be ...,” and it was. Then God begins to make humans, and things change. The pattern is broken. God says, “Let us make mankind ...” and then “So God created mankind...” (Gen 1:26-27). Gen 2 goes into more detail: “the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (2:7). God didn’t speak humanity into existence. He got his “hands” dirty. He crafted humans. No other part of creation receives that kind of attention.

It also says, “God created mankind in his own image.” There is nothing else on earth that is described as being created in God’s image. “When the Creator of the universe wanted to create something ‘in his image,’ something more like himself than all the rest of creation, he made us.”¹ Throughout the scriptures, and throughout history, this has been taken to mean that humans, just by virtue of being humans, possess a special dignity. This is why murder is a capital crime (Gen 9:6).

What does it mean to be made “in God’s image?” Theologians debate whether it means that humans are created with certain characteristics that make us like God or whether we were created to be God’s special representatives on earth. I think it’s probably both. RC Sproul says, “The image is a unique ability to mirror the character of God such that the rest of the world should be able to look at humans and say, ‘That gives us an idea of what God is like.’”² We were meant to oversee this planet as God’s regents in a way that reflects him.

But we weren’t just made to represent him; we were made to know him. In Genesis 3 we find that God visits his humans in the evening after their work is done. Again and again in the scriptures we see that God desires intimacy with the people he has made. God did not make us to be pets or employees; he made us to be friends.

So the first truth we need to grasp is that humans are very valuable to God. We are special in a way that nothing else on earth is special. God cares for all of earth’s creatures, be we alone are made in his image. We alone were made for fellowship with God.

There are some implications we need to make clear.

First, all humans are made in God’s image. All humans are descended from these first two. There is no human being who is not of inestimable value. All of the artificial divisions we have created in the human race, all of the “us versus them” fighting, is a result of sin and losing sight of this truth. In the same way, “male and female” are both made in God’s image. There was never supposed to be one human who was less “the image of God” than another, and everyone you meet should be treated like an image bearer.

Second, “because humans are God’s creation, they cannot discover their real meaning by regarding themselves and their happiness as the highest of all values, nor can they find happiness, fulfillment, or satisfaction by going out in search of it. Their value has been conferred upon them by a higher source, and they are fulfilled only when serving and loving that higher being.”³ Or, as Augustine said in his Confessions, God has made us for himself, and our hearts are restless until they can find rest in him.

Finally, we have already seen that God exists in community, so it shouldn’t surprise us that, when the man was made first in the image of God, it was “not good” that the man was alone (Gen 2:18). We were never meant to be solitary creatures because we were made like the triune God. Not everyone is called to be married and raise a family, but everyone needs other people.

Spend some time reflecting on this: You were created to represent, resemble, and know the God of the universe. You are immensely valuable to him simply because of how he made you.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him? (Psalm 8:3-4)

Yet the God who measures the heavens with his hands, who calls the stars each by name, cares deeply about you.

1 Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, emphasis in original
2 RC Sproul, Everyone's a Theologian
3 Millard Erickson, Introducing Christian Doctrine

image credit: Michelangelo, The Creation of Adam from the Sistine Chapel

Introduction to the Doctrine of Humanity

"My soul finds rest in God alone;
my salvation comes from him.
He alone is my rock and my salvation;
he is my fortress, I will never be shaken" (Psalm 62:1-2).

There is no religion with a higher view of humanity than Christianity, but to get it right you have to consider three important truths.

I said we were going to use the Apostles' Creed as the organizing principle for this project, but that left me with a quandary: Where do I put Anthropology (ie, the doctrine of humanity)? There really isn't much in the Apostles' Creed about mankind. The Nicene Creed, the next in the line of creeds from the early church, answered the question. It says that the Lord Jesus

"For us and for our salvation,
came down from heaven,
and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin..."

And that makes sense to me, to consider why Jesus had to come for us before we go into detail about his nature and work.

So we're going to look at what God intended us to be, where we went wrong, and what God wants us to become. Then we'll be ready to talk about what God did to address our problem.

God is not a Monster

“When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations ... and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy” (Deut 7:1-2).

A lot of people read the Bible and decide God — if he exists at all — is a horrible, horrible person. Some today decide the God in the Old Testament must be different from God the Father of Jesus in the New Testament, just like the early heretic Marcion, because the two seem to act so differently. In The God Delusion, “new atheist” Richard Dawkins famously summed up the complaint:

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty, ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

The most frequent example they offer is the “genocide” of the Canaanites. (Here “Canaanites” is a short-hand referring to the people who lived in the land given to Israel before them, “the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites”.) YHWH told Israel “destroy them totally” as quoted above. They weren’t supposed to conquer them. They were supposed to wipe them out. Is that cruel? Is that evil?

To answer that, we have to remember who we’re dealing with. This is the God who made heaven and earth. He is the owner of everything and everyone. God decides when everyone dies; no one dies before God decides they will, and no one dies after God says they will. He is also the Lawgiver; he has standards by which he expects people to live. And he is the Judge when they fail to do so.

What does all of that have to do with this question? The Canaanites were horrible, horrible people. Everyone’s a sinner, but some people are wicked beyond belief. Some revel in immorality to such an extent that it turns the stomach of even immoral people.

One of the many gods the Canaanites worshiped was the “detestable god” (1Kings 11:5) Molech (aka Moloch or Molek). Molech was worshiped by child sacrifice. And they didn’t just kill their children. They were burned alive.

Because of this and other immoral things they did, God was giving Israel their land and requiring their execution. God told them, “It is not because of your righteousness or your integrity that you are going in to take possession of their land; but on account of the wickedness of these nations, the LORD your God will drive them out before you” (Deut 9:5). God didn’t just want to take the land away. If they were left alive “they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the LORD your God” (Deut 20:18). (Which is exactly what happened, cf, Judg 3:5-7, 1Kings 11:5-6.)

So this was not a case of “a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak” calling for an ethnic cleansing. This was capital punishment.

And, yes, God did other things like this: the Flood, the plagues in Egypt, Sodom and Gomorrah, and, eventually, Israel. God punishes wickedness. But that’s not his preference:

“Rid yourselves of all the offenses you have committed, and get a new heart and a new spirit. Why will you die, people of Israel? For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign LORD. Repent and live!” (Ez 18:31).

You remember the story of Jonah, the prophet who didn’t want to preach to Nineveh. Remember why: He knew if they would repent, God would forgive.

“Isn’t this what I said, LORD, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity” (Jonah 4:2).

God wants people to repent. He gave the people before the Flood 120 years to repent (Gen 6:3). He gave the Canaanites 400 years to repent (Gen 15:13-16). He sent a prophet to Nineveh, and we know how he pleaded with Israel:

“Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD:
“though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool” (Is 1:18).

And that sounds very much like the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.


If you’d like to read more about the Canaanite question, here’s a link to Clay Jones, “We Don’t Hate Sin so We don’t Understand What Happened to the Canaanites: An Addendum to ’Divine Genocide’ Arguments,” Philosophia Christi n.s. 11 (2009): 53-72.

image credit: "Offering to Molech", illustration from the 1897 Bible Pictures and What They Teach Us by Charles Foster