If he was not a man, he cannot identify with us nor be touched with the feelings of our infirmities.
If he was not a man, he could not have experienced death and separation from God the Father and God the Spirit. Furthermore, if he was not God, he could not have paid the penalty for the sin of the whole world, as the Bible tells us, and satisfied the eternal penalty of sin and guilt. If he was not God, he could not intercede on the behalf of millions of people who may even pray to him at the same time. Only God could intercede on behalf of all of those at the same time. He would have to be omniscient and omnipresent and omnipotent. In Romans 1-4, Paul reveals that Jesus was declared the Son of God in power, not just by what he taught, but by rising from the dead.
What does this mean for us? It confirms that Jesus isn't just a historical figure. He's the living Messiah and the Lord overall.
If you've ever wondered what sets Jesus apart from every other religious figure, stay tuned. Our text for today is Romans 1, verse 4. Speaking of Jesus Christ, it reads, Who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord. A couple of generations ago, a man by the name of G. Campbell Morgan wrote a commentary, and he commented on this text by saying these words.
Follow this carefully. Jesus Christ was the God-man, not God-indwelling man. All Christians are that. And not man who has become God.
Of such there have been none, except in the myths of pagan religions. But God and man combining in one personality two natures, a perpetual mystery baffling the possibility of explanation. And I agree.
Having agreed it is impossible to explain it, I will nevertheless now spend 30 minutes trying to explain it. And I will do it because truth is still truth whether or not we understand it, right? Truth about the nature and the person of the second person of the triune God, our divine redeemer.
Truth that is too deep to fully grasp, but too wonderful to not try. Let's begin at the beginning of Paul's opening sentence. In fact, you've probably noticed his first sentence is verses 1 through 7. So you can follow along if you'd like, but I'm going to read an amplified version that I have come up with based upon our study and try to be correct to the text. It would read this way, Paul, a devoted slave of love to Christ Jesus, appointed not by men, but by God, an apostle, set apart and surrendered with total passion for the sake of the gospel whose source is God. This gospel which is not new, but was promised long before by the prophets and the holy scripture as they delivered the good news that God's son was born a direct descendant and legal heir to the throne of David according to the flesh.
That's where we have been studying and what we have learned thus far. These verses reveal several things about the subject of the gospel who is Christ. Number one, if you're following along, he is the legitimate heir to the throne of David. Now, he had to be more than just a legitimate heir to the throne of David.
Surely there were other heirs coming from that tribe. And so the second point would be even more important, and that is this. He is the second person of the Godhead. Now, you might notice two different verbs which are used of Jesus Christ. And circle them with a pencil or a pen, verse three, who was born. Verse four, who was declared.
Those two verbs are very important. They speak of Christ's two natures. He was born, a baby, that refers to his human nature. He was declared, that refers to his divine nature. Jesus Christ has always been the son of God from time past, but he at some point became the son of man. When God, the second person of the Godhead, the son of God, took on flesh and dwelt among us. Now, it's interesting that the biblical record never hesitates to give us both sides of Jesus Christ in the record of scripture. It doesn't hesitate to combine the truths of his humanity with his deity, does it? As you read through especially the gospels. I can think of one classic passage where of course Jesus is hanging on the cross. And he said those words, it is finished, or that word in the original language, tetelestai.
It meant paid in full. He was in effect saying that he had paid in full the penalty of the sin or for the sin of the whole world. Only God can pay the penalty for sin and the sin of the whole world at some moment in time. And yet he also said on the cross, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? That is Jesus the man now undergoing the agony of separation from God the father. So you have in one historical moment both God speaking as the son of God and the son of man in agony over his separation from God. I love the story in one of the other gospels where Peter got his bill, his tax bill.
I love that story. He owed a half a shekel. And so all the leaders came up and said, now are you going to pay your taxes, Peter?
Of course I am. And they said, well, what about your master? Does he pay his taxes? And so Peter scratched his head.
He thought, I don't know. So he went over to the Lord and he said, what are we going to do here? Do you pay your taxes too? And the Lord said, yes.
As a man he was subject to that civil authority. Yes, we will pay taxes. However, Peter, get your fish and pole, go to the lake, drop a hook in, get a fish, and the first fish you catch is going to have a shekel in his mouth. Pay our taxes with that.
What a system. Jesus the man had to pay his taxes, but Jesus as creator God could so order that fish to pick up a shekel from the bottom of the lake and come to the hook and have itself caught, and then Peter could take out of its mouth a shekel and pay the taxes on both Jesus and Peter. He is God and he is man. Well, we probably struggle more with some of the passages that seem to disagree with his deity than those that seem to speak of his humanity, so let's spend some time there. How do we know that he was truly divine? Well, for one thing, he's introduced by Matthew as Immanuel, which means God with us.
Guess what? God is here with us. That's what the name means. In John chapter 1 and verse 1, we read of the word that was with God, and the word was God. In John chapter 14, he claimed to have been one with God the Father. In John 8, an interesting passage where he claimed to pre-exist humanity. He told the leaders, and it so infuriated them because he told them what they could not miss. He said to them, before Abraham was, I am. Ego ami. I am. And that was such a critical choice of words by our Lord, and they understood the significance of it so that they began to gather stones to put him to death.
Why? Well, you have to go all the way back to Exodus in the Septuagint, or the Greek translation of the Old Testament, where God is meeting with Moses. And Moses says, now, you want me to go back and lead the people? Fine, but they're going to ask me who I've just met with. What is your name?
Can you give me a name? And God said, yes, tell them, Ego ami. Tell them I am. That I am, as it's translated. In fact, that verb translated back into the Hebrew gives us the verb from which his name Yahweh comes. Tell them I am Yahweh. And so Jesus Christ here says to these leaders, oh, by the way, before Abraham existed, the father of this entire nation, I am Yahweh.
What a claim. No wonder they picked up stones, because he's either truly God, or he is a deceiving, lying, dishonorable, blaspheming Jewish man. Just before the crucifixion in John 18, the soldiers came. You remember that story, and they were accompanied by all the chief priests and leaders. They were accompanied by Judas. All of the mob comes, and Jesus walks toward them, and he says, who are you looking for? And they said, we're looking for Jesus the Nazarene. And Jesus said, Ego ami, I am. Now, your English translations add the word he to try to clarify, because it makes more sense to us, but it actually muddies it a little bit.
I am. And the text tells us that that entire crowd of soldiers and Jewish high priests and leaders fell flat on their backs. And I imagine Jesus had to stand there and just sort of wait for them to stand back up and get their spears and swords and collect themselves.
And you see, he was not forced by arrest up to Gaugathah's Hill. He led them there, and one breath of his omnipotence, one peeling back of that humanity to reveal that he was Yahweh, one word that revealed his deity, and they fell flat on their faces like every man and woman will do when in the presence of God fall down. That was just one expression, one demonstration of who he was. He was God in the flesh. There is a question raised in the Old Testament.
Listen to these questions. Who has ascended into heaven and descended? Who has gathered the wind in his fists? Who has wrapped the waters in his garment?
Who has established all the ends of the earth? Now listen to this right out of Proverbs chapter 30 verse 4. What is his name and what is his son's name?
Wow. What a great verse. The answer is given in Romans 1 and other passages. This eternally existent one who has been declared, Romans 1 and 4 says, by the demonstration of his resurrection, his name is, the latter part of verse 4, Jesus Christ our Lord. It is not one person plus one person plus one person equals three gods. It is one times one times one equals one God. And I stand in the shadow of Daniel Webster who over a hundred years ago said to an agnostic who was berating him for believing in the Trinity, he said, listen, I do not even fully pretend to understand the arithmetic of heaven. We speak it today because it is the truth of scripture, not because we understand it, but because it is delivered. And in Romans chapter 1 verse 4, you discover four significant names of this preexistent one.
Let's very quickly go through them. The first one is Son of God. And this name reveals his eternal coexistence with God the Father. By the way, these names or titles reveal the purpose of this Son of God and these other names. The term son gives us the image of a little boy who grew up in heaven and he has a father and they play together and that's our understanding.
This is a term that does not relate to procreation but to preexistence. They understood this when you talked about a son and a father as being equal in essence. In fact, the word begotten could literally refer to this unique status and be translated thus. So in John 3.16 you can read, For God so loved the world that he gave us one and only his unique son, so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life. The second designation or name is Jesus, Iesus. This is a name that reveals his redemptive purpose. You remember the promise the angel came to Joseph in the night and said, Listen, I know you're thinking about putting Mary away privately, but I want you to know she has been overshadowed by the Holy Spirit.
That which has been conceived in her is by God. And when that baby boy is born, a son of man, I want you to give him a name, Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. So the name Jesus was significant because it literally meant redeemer. It's Hebrew counterpart is Joshua.
The word Yeshua and Iesus are counterparts of the two different languages. And it refers to the one who will redeem, who will deliver, who will be a savior. Luke said he came to seek and to save, to be a savior to those who were lost. It's interesting in Matthew's account that Pilate referred to him on a couple of occasions, I believe, as Jesus, the one who is Christ.
Why did he have to so designate that? Because during the days of Jesus, there were a thousand little Jesus's running around. It was a very common Jewish name, Iesus. So he had to be distinguished. Jesus simply meant deliverer and many parents named their boys after Joshua, the great hero of the Old Testament, in hopes that that little boy would grow up and be a man of God, a man of deep character. And so Jesus was a common earthly name that hinted at his redemptive purpose.
And so you think, well, okay, back to the question. Doesn't a common name suggest that Jesus was a mere mortal, that by his faithful life was elevated to special status as deity? Arianism taught that formally at about the third century. And Arianism has been taught ever since in repackaged forms in our generation or in our day in its repackaged form called Mormonism, basic Arianism, that Jesus was procreated by God, and by virtue of his faithful life, he achieved divine status.
He became worthy of deified status. Well, doesn't it say in Philippians chapter 2 that God hath highly exalted him? That's true, and if you stick with that one phrase, you might be confused unless you go back earlier in that paragraph and you learn that Jesus and his equality with the Father was not a thing to be grasped. So he was equal with God the Father before his human birth, not after.
In fact, that would be a good passage to go to. Would you take your Bibles and hold your finger here, but turn to Philippians. Look at verse 2. I want to give you four condescensions of this Son of God, the pre-existent one, so that hopefully we can understand exactly what he gave up. Did he give up his deity, or was he less than deity?
No. The first thing, he condescended to no longer live like God. In Philippians chapter 2 verse 6, we read, speaking of Jesus Christ, who, that is Jesus Christ, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped or clung to. See, the implication here is that he had equality with God the Father. It says it clearly, but it says that it wasn't something that he would hang on to, that he would grasp. So he emptied his hands of that rite or that prerogative, and he became, verse 7 tells us, a bondservant.
Imagine leaving the splendor of heaven and eternity with the adoring hosts of heaven, the angelic choirs that adore and worship you and come to earth and live like a man. Although he had equal privileges and honors as being equal with the Father, he emptied his hands of that and literally gave up that favored position and condescended to live like a man. Secondly, he condescended to no longer act like God. Now there were times when he displayed his power as we've just talked. Theologians talk about the fact that he gave up the independent use of his attributes. That is, he didn't use his attributes, his power, like we would probably expect him to use them. We would have used that power to make life more comfortable, to change the weather. It's a little warm in here, the people in the center section say.
So we'll change it in the side section and say, no, it's cold or under the vents, by the way. But you can imagine just snapping your finger and at least maybe for your little sphere changing the climate. He could have smashed his way through history, anybody that treated him wrongly. Imagine the power that he has underneath that flesh as God the Son. Think of the business he could have done for his father, his adopted father. Why slave over a carpenter's bench and work with a saw and a plane and a hammer when he could just snap his finger and voila, there it is.
That chest of drawers is finished, the grass is cut. Well, that's my problem, but imagine what he could do at just the thought. Why not? I would have, because he condescended. He didn't grasp equality with the father. And he was so ordinary that once he finally declared who he was, even his half brothers and sisters said, you? God?
No way. Third, he condescended to no longer look like God. Last part of verse seven, being made in the likeness of man. You see, before his incarnation as equal with the father and spirit, which he remained in the flesh, however, here something's changed. He had lived in the divine splendor of heaven as an invisible personality. Before he took flesh, he would be as invisible as God the Father and God the Spirit. But now he's robed himself in flesh and blood. And the result is that God the Son looks like any descendant of Jewish heritage. Now, I posed this question a number of years ago.
If you were there, you may remember it. But imagine if you were God and you could choose, as Jesus could, how you would look. Imagine if you could choose the way you could look. Would there be any changes?
A few here and there, maybe slight. What if you could choose the shape of your nose, the color of your hair or hair? The size of your waist. I think we'd all stop traffic. I mean, imagine you could pick. You could choose it. You would choose to be attractive. You would choose to be distinctive.
Wouldn't he? There's only one description of Jesus' physical form in the Bible. It's in Isaiah 53.
And for the sake of time, don't turn, but I've written in my notes, it says this. He had no stately form or majesty that we should look upon him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to him. He chose to not only be a man, but he chose to be an unattractive Jewish man. He didn't turn any heads. Nobody said, no, that person looks distinctive. We ought to listen.
No. He was so ordinary, no halo, nothing unusual. You know what he did? He condescended in an amazing way. Fourth, he condescended in not being treated like God. Verse 8 goes on, being found in appearance of a man, he humbled himself in becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. What Paul seems to highlight here is that he became obedient to death even, if you can imagine it, death on a cross.
Why? So he could fulfill the meaning of his name. He is the Redeemer. And his arms were stretched out on that cross as if to imply the universal invitation, whosoever will may come. He was the Redeemer come.
Now, back to Romans 1. There's another name. It's the name Christ. It's a name that reflects his messianic anointing. In fact, Christos means anointing.
We know from history that there were numerous false messiahs. There was a man named Theudas. Theudas was a Jew who believed that he was the messiah and he gathered a following. With his teaching, he claimed to have power from God being God in the flesh. And he took his following one day to the Jordan River and he said, I have the power to divide the river.
And everybody believed him. And he took out his rod and he smacked the water and he commanded it to divide. And it didn't divide. And he smacked it again and commanded it to divide. And, of course, it didn't divide and by then people were fidgeting and looking around and murmuring and wondering and he smacked it again and people began to leave and he exiled himself in disgrace and his followers disbanded. He was not the true messiah.
Simon, the magician. You remember in the book of Acts he appears. He tries to buy the power of the Holy Spirit from Paul and Paul rebukes him. He probably wasn't a believer. Church tradition says that he actually later in life announced himself as the messiah, that he had power from God. In fact, he was so self-deceived that he went to the very temple where Jesus had gone during his temptation and he climbed to the pinnacle as well and he, with his crowd of followers beneath him, was going to prove that he was indeed the messiah and he jumped and as he fell he supposedly quoted Psalm 91 and he will give his angels charge over thee lest you dash your foot against a stone.
That was the last verse he ever quoted. He was not the true messiah. Have the Jewish people stopped looking?
No, they look today. Those who have not received this messiah. Just a few years ago a rabbi named Schneerson was being hailed by many as the true messiah. He claimed to have special power. He predicted the future and his believers believe some of it has come true and even after having a stroke at age 91 and being paralyzed, unable to speak, the Friends of Israel Ministry calculated that over 300,000 Jews believed he was the messiah. In the last couple of years, I don't know the exact date, he did die.
I saw a picture, in fact, just this past week of his tombstone that is littered with flowers and is surrounded by faithful gatherers who are expecting him to come back to life. Is it any wonder then that after Paul declares that Jesus Christ is a human being of flesh and blood, that he is a rightful heir to the messianic throne, that he delivers the next part of the gospel that sets him apart from any other claimant. Look again at verse 4 of Romans 1. Did you see the uniqueness of him? Who was declared the son of God with power?
You could render that. Who is declared the powerful son of God by virtue of his resurrection from the dead? There it is. That is the distinction of this one who is the true messiah. He's not dead, he's alive.
Nobody visits his tomb and wishes it was empty. And so we read the gospel of God came on the heels of this declaration that the son of God who is all powerful conquered sin, conquered Satan, conquered death. Well, there's one more name. The last name found in Paul's introduction of the gospel truth is Lord. This is the name that refers to his exalted supremacy. And I want you to know, men and women, as Paul wrote to the Corinthian believers in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 verse 3, he said, You cannot name him as Lord apart from the Holy Spirit. You can't wake up one day and say, I think I believe that he is supreme.
It's one of the evidences that you have the Holy Spirit within you where you can say, in effect, that I believe that Jesus Christ is indeed Adonai. He is indeed Lord. And if you've never accepted Jesus Christ as your redeemer, don't worry about calling him Lord.
Don't even try. He can't be until you know him as Savior. And so you have all three names used, in fact, throughout the epistles.
The Lord, Jesus, Christ. And when combined, this name delivers the gospel truth that Jesus was both human and divine. He was both fully man and he is fully God. He is both Messiah and he is both supreme Lord. And is it important that he be both human fully and God fully?
Let me summarize again. If Jesus Christ had not been human, he lied. And the Messiah of God will not lie. He could not be a son of David then, could he? Were he not man and occupied the throne of Israel? If he was not a man, he cannot identify with us, nor be touched with the feelings of our infirmities. If he was not a man, he could not have experienced death and separation from God the Father and God the Spirit. But if he was not God, then he lied again.
Or he was not Yahweh. Furthermore, if he was not God, he could not have paid the penalty for the sin of the whole world, as the Bible tells us, to satisfy the eternal penalty of sin and guilt. If he were not God, he could not have overcome Satan and sin and the world. But he would have been at the mercy of Satan and sin and the world as every man is apart from him. If he was not God, he could not intercede on the behalf of millions of people who may even pray to him at the same time in different parts of the world.
Only God could hear those prayers all around the world and only God could intercede on behalf of all of those at the same time. He would have to be omniscient and omnipresent and omnipotent. If he were not God, he could not do that. If he were not God, he could not create a heaven. He must be fully man. He must be fully God. We do not understand it. But we believe the Gospel truth, delivered by the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter 1 verse 4, that Jesus Christ was a man, the son of David, and at the same time he was God, exalted as the Son of God in power by virtue of the resurrection, and he reigns even today as supreme Lord.
That was Steven Davey and this is Wisdom for the Heart. This message is called A Forest of Truth. The resurrection is more than a story. It's the ultimate proof of who Jesus is. He's not just a teacher or prophet.
He's the Son of God with power, alive and reigning. So live in the light of that truth every day. If you're looking for encouragement and practical wisdom, sign up for Friends of Wisdom. Each week Steven sends an email filled with helpful insights, answers to Bible questions, and resources to strengthen your faith. And as a thank you, you'll receive two free booklets right away. It's free and easy, and everything you need is at wisdomonline.org forward slash friends. Join us again next time.
