My Journey Through Chistology
My Journey Through Chistology
When I became a Christian I was obviously really drawn
to Jesus, but I also remember being really confused by him as well. He
would say things like in John chapter 10, "The Father and I are one",
and in chapter 14 "anyone who has seen me has seen the Father". And
what made me confused was that Jesus was human and he would sneak off to
deserted places to pray to God. If he and the Father were one, who was he praying
to? Why did he need to? I continued to be drawn to Jesus, but it seemed like
the more I tried to understand him the more mysterious he begame.
I went
to university and took classes in Christian history and then later in seminary
I took classes on Christology, which tries to understand Jesus. I started to
realize that when I became a Christian I drifted through numerous heresies.
I remember being fascinated in my classes because I had lived these debates.
These debates and counsels had taken place in my soul. Reading about others that had struggled with
who Jesus was and is was reassuring and exciting because it showed me I was not
alone.
Humanity
had a very powerful experience when it came into contact with the teachings
and person of Jesus. It was such a powerful experience that it took the church generations
to begin to realize the depth of that experience. And I think if we are honest,
we as the church are still unpacking our experience of Jesus (Hobberman Sphere).
… Perhaps you have had an experience like this. Have you ever had an
experience with God that took you weeks or even years before you felt like you
understood it? … And if you think back on that experience I bet the meaning
of that experience is clearer to you now. The details of that experience might
not be crystal clear, but as you have reflected and unpacked that experience
you have understood its meaning more clearly.
As
the church attempted to more fully understand their experience with Jesus they
inevitably bounced from one extreme to another. Those extremes began to be
called heresies. We all struggle with heresy as we attempt to grow in our
understanding of Jesus. We have a natural desire to follow an idea to its
extreme. So, for example, some couldn't
understand how Jesus could be a divine
being and be human being. Some
wanted him to be 100% human, and not God at all. They could accept him
as a teacher, or a prophet. Others wanted him to be 100% God, and not
human at all. To them there was something very unholy about human flesh. It's
messy. Humans have to go to the bathroom, which isn’t very dignified for God.
So, they started to say that Jesus only looked human. It was as if Jesus
was a holographic projection sent from heaven with a message for us.
There
were those that believed Jesus was a divine being, but not God. Jesus
was an incarnated being. A powerful being, but a created being. There was a
point in time when The Son did not exist. He was a creature created by God, and
therefore is not God.
Most
Christians agreed that Jesus was God, but the difficulty was in understanding
exactly how that worked - how exactly is Jesus God? Was Jesus 50% human and
50% God? Was he some kind of hybrid? Maybe instead of a human mind,
Jesus had God fill that space that was usually filled with a human mind. But
others wondered if Jesus was still human if he didn't have a human mind. Wouldn't
that make him a third kind of being, neither God nor human, but some hybrid?
And would Jesus still be able to save us if he was only ‘sort of’ human?
Others
started to wonder in what way Jesus was God and they imagined that God the
Father left heaven and became incarnate in the baby Jesus. But some started
to ask who kept everything in existence while the baby Jesus was sleeping. And
when Jesus died on the cross, who kept the universe going? Did God really die
and suffer of the cross? And who was Jesus praying to? What was Jesus speaking
about when he spoke about the Father?
It
seemed like each time they came to a conclusion, they had more questions to
deal with. They started to wonder if Jesus was 100% human and 100% divine, then
was how exactly did that work? Was there a divine Jesus and a human Jesus?
Could the divinity overpower the humanity?
Now we
just blew through a few hundred years of thought on Christ. If you've never
dealt with any of this your head might be spinning a little. It is a difficult
subject. Some of you might have never thought about any of this, and some of
you might be wondering what you believe about Jesus at this point. Some of you
might be thinking that this is a lot of silly theology about things we really
have little clue about. We might as well discuss how many angels can dance on
the head of a pin. However, these beliefs mattered and still matter. What is
at stake is how salvation works, if we pray to and worship Jesus, and whether
we can trust Jesus or not. That's why they struggled so hard with these
issues. And these opinions are not just deep in history covered by ten feet of
soil. They all exist here and now. Walk down the street and ask people
who Jesus is and all these opinions are still present in our world.
There
are those who still believe Jesus was just a human teacher, nothing
more. There are those who believe that he came from some distant planet
to teach us. There are those who believe that Jesus was just a vision
received while someone was on hallucinogenic drugs. The Jehovah's Witnesses
believe that Jesus is the incarnate Archangel Michael, a creature of
God, but not God. The Mormons believe that Jesus is a god on his own,
separate from God the Father.
These
positions weren't and aren't acceptable because they aren't supported by the Bible,
you have to ignore chunks and twist scripture to make it work. And these
positions don’t make sense in terms of the Church's historical experience of
Jesus. They change who Jesus is, and so in a sense set up a
different Jesus. That's why the church cared so much about attempting to
get it right. Each time the Church heard
an idea they kept coming back to the scriptures that were handed on to them.
They kept going back to what they were taught by those who were with Jesus.
This didn't mean that all Jesus' mysteries were explained. What the Church was
trying to do was set boundaries on how we talk about Jesus. At what point do we
stop talking about Jesus of Nazareth? Well, when we deny that Jesus was a human
being we have stopped talking about Jesus and are really talking about
something else. When we deny that Jesus was God we have stopped talking
about Jesus of Nazareth and are really talking about something else.
One
of the places in Scripture that was returned to again and again during these
controversies was the Colossians reading we heard today. Most scholars
believe that chapter 1 versus 15-20 was an early Christian hymn that Paul
incorporated into his letter to the people of Colossae. The letter is believed
to have been written in the 50's or early 60's. We're talking 20 or 30 years
after Jesus had died. That means this hymn is dated even earlier than that.
Listen to this hymn again and think about what kind of a person we are
talking about- who is Jesus?
15He
is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
16For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth,
visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all
things were created by him and for him. 17He is before all things,
and in him all things hold together. 18And he is the head of the body,
the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that
in everything he might have the supremacy. 19For God was pleased to have
all his fullness dwell in him, 20and through him to reconcile to himself
all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace
through his blood, shed on the cross.
He is
"the image of the invisible God". Imagine that being said of a human
being. "by him all things were created". Close your eyes,
now think of something... Jesus created that. Okay now close your eyes again,
think of something else, ... Jesus made
that too. (We could do this all day.) All
the atoms and energies of this universe- Jesus created it all.
But not only did he create
everything, everything was created FOR him. It's hard to even imagine
what that means. Okay close your eyes
and imagine something ... that was made for Jesus.
And then we read that "in him
all things hold together". Okay so close your eyes and
imagine something... you know why that thing doesn't stop existing? Jesus. All
things were created by him. Go back to the beginning and Jesus is there. Go to
the end where all creation is heading and Jesus is there. And right now
everything is being held together by him. … "God was pleased to have all
his fullness dwell in [Jesus]". All God's fullness is in Jesus. This is
not something that can be said of someone who was only a human being. That
can't even be said of an angel. No angel has all God's fullness dwell in him.
This is
a difficult place to use words. If Quantum Mechanics is difficult to grasp then
how much more the deepest nature of God. And just because it is difficult to
understand doesn't mean it's not true.
Jesus
is 100% God. He shares God's nature with the Father and the Spirit. He is
fully God- along with the Father and the Spirit. Jesus is also 100% human. God the son
took onto Himself human nature. A human being has been incorporated into who
God is. And because he is both fully God and human, he has brought broken
humanity back into relationship with God through his life, death on the cross,
resurrection, and ascension.
He is fully human, so he
understands your struggles. He understands how difficult life can be. And being
God he brings that understanding into God as a human being speaking for us, as
one of us. As one of us he resisted Sin and defeated evil. That is a human
victory as well as a victory of God. This means we can benefit from the spoils
of that battle.
If
Jesus is God then we can pray to Jesus and worship him without being
polytheists. If Jesus is God then God sacrificed himself on the cross
for us, taking on the full power of evil to show His love for us. He didn't
send one of his poor creatures to endure the cross for our sake. He endured it
for us. If Jesus was just a creature, then we are still reaching up
towards God while stuck in the mud. But, if Jesus was God then God has reached
down to us to pull us up. If Jesus is God, then we can trust what he says about
God, because he is God. He isn't a creature giving us good guesses. He is God
himself revealing himself to us. In Christ, God did for us what we could
never do for ourselves.
It's a
hard thing to talk about. Partly because it's technical, but also it is
difficult to talk about because it is true. Evil and darkness and suffering is
easy to talk about. But the reality of Jesus as the union between humanity
and God isn't easy because I can never get the words beautiful enough. I
can never convey the grandeur of the God of the universe being present in a
human baby in his mother's arms. I'll never have the language to truly
communicate the love felt for you as he drew his last breath on the cross. And
I'll never really be able to fully describe the human being now present as God
in the realm of heaven looking at us all here as we worship him. I'll never
have words beautiful enough.
As a
new and growing Christian I sat and had conversations with a variety of people
about who Jesus was and is. As I got to know Jesus in my prayer and through my
Bible I started to recognize Jesus, but I continued to struggle. And there are
some things I continue to struggle with, but I was continually drawn to him and
the closer I got the harder it got to squeeze him into a box so I could
understand him. I still want to speak about him in ways that honour Jesus
because I desire to love him with all my mind, as well as my heart. But, as
hard as it can be to understand Jesus we can rest assured that we are not saved
by understanding every intricate detail of who Christ is. He sees us longing
after him. and we long after him because he is the "image of the invisible
God". In seeing him we have seen God. Ultimately our salvation rests in
the fact that Christ knows who we
are. And because it depends on him we can grasp onto him with a childlike
faith-
Jesus loves me this I know,
for the bible tells me so,
little ones to him belong,
they are weak but he is strong,
yes Jesus loves
me, yes Jesus loves me, yes Jesus loves me,
the bible tells
me so.
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