for Sunday May 2nd
If Jesus is not God He is not our Savior!
Our second question to ask when reading a book to discern good teaching from bad is to ask, what do they do with Jesus? Is He God? Is He God in the flesh, resurrected from the dead? Is He the wrath-absorbing Son of God? Or is He a just great moral teacher; a great ethicist; someone we should follow and emulate? Because if you leave off that He is God, you’ve left Christianity. Now, why do I say you’ve left Christianity? If Jesus is not God He cannot be our savior. Our salvation rest on two pillars and if either one or both of these pillars is removed then we are still in our sins and separated from God; we are still under His just and holy wrath that must be poured out on all sin. The first pillar is that sin must be punished. God Himself has established that the “wages of sin is death”. If God was to “blow-off” our wickedness He would violate His own holiness and righteousness. Therefore, Jesus, who is also God, put on a human body so that He could stand in your place and be punished for your sin. If Jesus is just a great moral teacher but is not God then he too is a sinner and needs a savior. Only as God in the flesh can He stand in our place as the sinless God/man and bear the wrath of God against my sins. The second pillar of our salvation is that to live in the presence of God we must be 100% righteous. Our sins are taken away in Jesus death but that doesn’t make us righteous. Jesus took on flesh so that He could live life as a man and perfectly obey God, as you and I should have done but didn’t, and then gives that perfect obedience to all who put their faith in Him. So, Jesus bears the punishment for our sin (pillar one) and gives us His perfect righteousness (pillar two) and here’s where His being God is essential, since Jesus is the infinite God He can save an infinite number of people. If Jesus is not God He can save nobody! Who Jesus is has eternal implications, so listen carefully when someone is telling you who Jesus is.
Pastor Don.
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Greetings Pastor Don
ReplyDeleteThere is absolutely nothing in Scripture which states that "If Jesus is not God He cannot be our savior".
Cannot GOD Almighty choose how He will save mankind & by what means He will save mankind?
Therefore, Romans 5, shows that GOD provided a sinless man to be the Savior of the world. It is through this man that salvation has come!
Romans Chapter 5 makes it clear that seeing that through the disobedience of a man namely Adam, sin & death came into the world;
it took the obedience of another man, namely, Jesus of Nazareth to bring about righteousness and eternal life.
So a sinless man qualified as the sinless spotless lamb of GOD. And that sinless man was Jesus the Son of the ONE GOD.
[Matt 16.16, John 1.34-36]
Jesus' sacrifice was accepted before GOD, because Jesus totally obeyed the ONE GOD, his Father, even to the death of the cross.
Therefore, GOD vindicated His Son by raising him from the dead, and made him
both Lord & Christ to the glory of the ONE GOD, the Father.
[Phil 2.8-11, Acts 2.36]
Remember, GOD Almighty alone possesses immortality.
[1 Tim 6.16]
Immortality means "One cannot die"
So GOD CANNOT DIE!!
So it was not GOD who died for our sins,
but rather His human sinless Son,
the man Christ Jesus,
the one mediator between GOD & mankind.
[1 Tim 2.5]
Jesus the Messiah, GOD's Son, died for our sins.
GOD Almighty then raised him from the dead, glorified him and set him at His own right hand.
So scripturally,
a sinless obedient man qualified as the perfect sacrifice for our sins,
and that man is Jesus the Messiah our Lord,
the ONE GOD's own Son.
For more info on this wondrous subject,
I recommend this video:
The Human Jesus
Take a couple of hours to watch it; and prayerfully it will aid you in your quest for truth.
Yours In Messiah
Adam Pastor