And the most fundamental question concerning the person of Christ
is, is Jesus Christ really God? Not merely is He Divine, but is He
actually God? When I was a boy, to say you believed in the Divinity
of Christ, meant that you believed in the real Deity of Christ, that
you believed that Jesus was actually a Divine person, that He was God.
It no longer means that. The Devil is wise, shrewd, subtle, and he
knows that the most effectual way to instil error into the minds of
the inexpert and unwary is to use old and precious words and put a new
meaning into them. So when his messengers masquerading as "ministers of
righteousness" seek to lead, if possible, the elect astray, they use
the old precious words but with an entirely new and entirely different
and entirely false meaning. They talk about "the Divinity of Christ,"
but they do not mean at all by it what intelligent Christians in
former days meant by it. Just so they talk of "_the atonement_," but
they do not mean at all by the atonement the substitutionary death of
Jesus Christ in our place, by which eternal life is secured for us.
And oftentimes when they talk about Christ they do not mean at all
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the actual historic Jesus of the
four gospels, they mean an ideal Christ, or a Christ principle. So our
subject this morning is not the Divinity of Christ, but the Deity of
Christ, and our question is not is Jesus Christ Divine, but is Jesus
Christ God? Was that person who was born at Bethlehem nineteen hundred
and twenty-one years ago, and who lived thirty-three or thirty-four
years here upon earth as recorded in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John, who was crucified on Calvary's cross, who rose from
the dead the third day, and was exalted from earth to heaven, to the
right hand of the Father, was He God manifested in the flesh, was He
God embodied in a human being? Was He and is He a being worthy of our
absolute faith, and supreme love, and our unhesitating obedience, and
our whole-hearted worship, just as God the Father is worthy of our
absolute faith and supreme love and unhesitating obedience and our
whole-hearted worship? Should all men honour Jesus Christ even as they
honour God the Father (John 5:23)? Not merely is He an example that we
can wisely follow, or a Master whom we can wisely serve, but is He a
God Whom we can rightly worship?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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