JESUS: GOD AND MAN

Theme: “Jesus Christ was born of a virgin and lived a sinless life, being both fully God and fully man.”

The Virgin Birth

The virgin birth is an essential doctrine of Christianity because it establishes that Jesus Christ was both God and man at the same time. Some “modernists” who don’t read or believe their Bibles don’t believe in the virgin birth. But anyone who believes the Bible MUST believe in the virgin birth, because it is taught plainly in the Scripture.

Isaiah 7:14:
Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.

The modern skeptics point out that the Hebrew word used here for virgin (Strong’s #5959) can also be translated maid, damsel, etc., indicating an unmarried woman.  (By the way, the same is true of the Greek word (Strong’s #3933) in the New Testament.) They are right about the word but wrong about the virgin birth, which has other proof. The Hebrew word CAN mean those other things, but it can mean virgin.  If Isaiah 7:14 were just talking about an unmarried woman conceiving and bearing a son, that would not be a “sign” from God, as there are plenty of unmarried women out there conceiving and bearing sons, which is not the plan of God, let alone a sign from Him!

Also Immanuel means “God with us”. This describes what Jesus would literally be – God living among us as a man!

In the genealogy of Jesus Christ in Matthew 1, we see one of the extensive begat-lists that most people find boring.  We will see otherwise shortly because this list contains not one but two proofs of the virgin birth.  You can see that Abraham begat Isaac, who begat Jacob, and so on, but it does not say that Joseph begat Jesus! Those old genealogies were very male-oriented; there is seldom a mention of a woman in them.  But Matthew 1:16 reads: “And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus who is called Christ.”  You can be sure that if Joseph were Jesus’ father, this would have simply read, “And Jacob begat Joseph, and Joseph begat Jesus.” But he didn’t. Jesus was born without an earthly father.  God Himself “begat” Him:

John 3:16:
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son…

But there is a second proof of the virgin birth in Matthew’s begat-list that you should be getting!  It starts here:

Matthew 1:11:
Josiah begat Jeconiah and his brothers about the time they were carried away to Babylon.

Now there’s a verse you probably never thought you’d need to study out, right? What’s the story with Jeconiah? His descendents were the target of a prophetic curse spoken by the prophet Jeremiah.  (There is some confusion over the names of Josiah’s son and grandson here when you get into it, but it won’t affect the main point either way, namely that there was a curse on the family.)  Here’s part of the curse on the Coniah family:  “For none of his descendants shall prosper, sitting on the throne of David, and ruling anymore in Judah.” (Jeremiah 22:30)  This leads to an obvious problem with an equally obvious solution. The obvious problem: If none of his descendants could ever take the throne of David again, how could Jesus, who took the throne of David, be descended from him, since this fellow is in the begat-list?  The obvious answer:  Jesus wasn’t descended from him because Joseph wasn’t his father!  If Joseph were his father, the “Coniah curse” would have applied to him and he would be unable to take the throne of David! That’s just an interesting little side-note. You don’t need it to prove the virgin birth, though, since there are other more direct references.

Matthew 1:18-20:
Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: After His mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit.  Then Joseph, her husband, being a just man, and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly. But while he thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.”

Matthew 1:25 states plainly that Joseph did not “know” her until she had brought forth her firstborn Son, Jesus.  This does not mean that you should marry people you don’t know from the Internet; “knowing” her here as elsewhere implies sexual “knowledge”.

Luke 1:30-35:
Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.  And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name JESUS. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David.  And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end.” Then Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I do not know a man?” And the angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you, therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God.”

Luke 3:23:
And Jesus Himself began His ministry at about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, the son of Heli…

Jesus was supposed by others to be the son of Joseph, but he wasn’t. Scripture makes it plain as day that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin and was the offspring of God and Mary.
 

Question 4-1: Matthew says Joseph’s dad was Jacob, but Luke says he was the son of Heli.  Isn’t that a contradiction, which means that we should just throw out our Bibles because we can’t trust anything in them if we can’t trust them on that?

The words “the son” do not appear in the original text in Luke.  (That’s why they’re in italics in the King James and the New King James – the translators wanted you to know that they put those words in there to try to make things clearer, but that the words had no basis in the original manuscript.) The only words are “of Heli”; there is no word indicating any “begetting”. The “begats” are explicit in Matthew.  The best explanation I have heard is that Luke’s genealogy actually goes up Jesus’ mother’s side and that Heli was Mary’s father, not Joseph’s father.  It is reasonable to show His human ancestry through Mary as well as His “assumed” ancestry through Joseph; any human inheritance rights would techncally be through Mary’s father, since he was Jesus’ only blood grandfather.  (This is the conclusion reached by Dake in Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible, Nelson in the Nelson Study Bible, and Ryrie in the Ryrie Study Bible, so this is not some “far-out” theory nobody believes.)
 

Question 4-2: Is the Immaculate Conception the same as the Virgin Birth?

No.  The Virgin Birth actually happened! The term Immaculate Conception is used in some circles to refer to Mary supposedly being born supernaturally like Jesus and living without sin like Jesus. This is a MIS-conception because the Bible nowhere teaches this. In fact, it contradicts it.  Mary refers to God as her “Savior” in Luke 1:47: “And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.” If she were sinless like Jesus, she would not need a Savior any more than Jesus needed a Savior!

So if someone asks if you believe in the Immaculate Conception, make sure you realize that it is not the same as asking if you believe in the Virgin Birth!  To a Bible student, believing Mary was conceived and born of a virgin is inconceivable and unbearable.
 

Jesus’ Sinless Life

Jesus did something no one has ever done before or since – live a life without ever sinning once!  Only His sinless life have Him the authority to grant us His perfect righteousness; one sin would have been enough to make Him unrighteous and unable to offer perfect righteousness to anyone else.  God bears testimony to the sinless life of His Son in His Word:

2 Corinthians 5:21:
For God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

1 John 3:5:
And you know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin.

1 Peter 2:22:
Who committed no sin, nor was deceit found in His mouth

Hebrews 4:15:
For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.

Man added his own testimony to the spotless life Jesus lived.  No one could find Him guilty of doing anything wrong.  Jesus got no answer when He asked, “Which of you convicts Me of sin? (John 8:46).

John 10:32-3:
Jesus answered them, “Many good works I have shown you from My Father. For which of those works do you stone Me? The Jews answered Him and said, “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy, because You, being a Man, make Yourself God.”

Since Jesus was God, it was not a sin for Him to make statements indicating that He was.  The Jews were probably thinking of His “inflammatory” assertion in John 8:58:  “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.” That reference was surely not lost on the Jews, who knew full well what Jesus was claiming – I AM was the name by which God referred to Himself when He appeared to Moses.

Here is what Pontius Pilate concluded about Jesus:

Matthew 27:24:
“I am innocent of the blood of this just Person.”

Luke 23:4:
“I find no fault in this Man”

Luke 23:14:
“I have found no fault in this Man concerning those things of which you accuse Him”

Luke 23:22:
 “I have found no reason for death in Him”

John 18:38:
“I find no fault in Him at all”

John 19:6:
“You take Him and crucify Him, for I find no fault in Him.”

One of the criminals who was crucified with Jesus had this to say:

Luke 23:41:
“And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this Man has done nothing wrong.”

Jesus’ accusers could not find a single truthful witness to any sin Jesus had committed. It was hard even to find a false witness!

Matthew 26:59-60:
Now the chief priests, the elders and all the council sought false testimony against Jesus to put Him to death, but found none.  Even though many false witnesses came forward, they found none.  But at last two false witnesses came forward…”

At various times, man made up false accusations about Jesus – that He was trying to overthrow the Roman government, denied the law of Moses, kept inappropriate company, was demon-possessed and various other things. But no one has ever come up with a valid charge against Jesus, and no one ever will.
 

Question 4-3: It seems like Jesus “lost it” in anger in the temple when he turned over the tables and drove people out with a whip. Wasn’t this a sin?

No.  God Himself has done far more drastic things than this in His anger!  If anger in and of itself is a sin, God is a big sinner because He is angry with the wicked every day (Psalm 7:11). “God is jealous, and the LORD avenges; the LORD avenges and is furious.  The LORD will take vengeance on His adversaries, and He reserves wrath for His enemies.  The LORD is slow to anger and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked.” (Nahum 1:2-3). Scripture has much to say about the wrath of God.  If you don’t believe in the wrath of God, read the book of Revelation and see the wrath that God will pour out on the unrepentant sinners who refuse to receive His Son!

Scripture does not teach that anger is a sin for the believer, either. If it were, these Scriptures would contradict themselves:

Psalm 4:4:
Be angry, and do not sin…

Ephesians 4:26:
Be angry, and do not sin, do not let the sun go down on your wrath…

God does not favor staying angry all day and all night, but there is plenty that should make you angry! It should make you angry that there are religionists out there purveying dead religion and leading blind multitudes to hell along with themselves!  It is NOT all right for this to be the case!  Since Jesus always hated false, pretentious religion with a passion, we should hate false, pretentious religion with a passion too!

Not all anger is bad.  Righteous indignation is not a sin, and that is what motivated Jesus to clear the temple out of people who wanted to turn God’s temple into a religious Super Wal-Mart.  It is possible to be angry without sinning!
 

Jesus: Godman!

People today invent all kinds of superheroes:  Batman, Superman, Spiderman, and so on, but the greatest superhero of all has to be Godman – Jesus Christ!  He was God made flesh.  He was fully God and fully Man at the same time.

We have already given several proofs that Jesus was God in Lesson 1. Now we need to discuss His humanity.  Jesus was just as human as we are and had to put up with everything we have to put up with, as Hebrews 4:15 (quoted above) tells us:  “He was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.”

It is not a sin to be tempted to sin!  Jesus was tempted, and He didn’t sin.

It is not a sin to have a body that opposes itself to what God wants.  Would your body like to have its skin ripped off and then be tortured until it’s dead, while being completely cut off from any help or fellowship with God? No, and Jesus’ body did not relish the thought either. Jesus even asked that if there was any other way to redeem mankind, that God would allow that instead of crucifixion.  “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”  (Matthew 26:41)

One of the most prevalent misunderstandings among Christians today is that Jesus “cheated” in His humanity.  They wouldn’t say it that way, but that’s how it ends up. In other words, they think that He didn’t really live as a man like us because He had His omniscience to help Him, whereas we are limited in our knowledge.

What we see in the Bible is very different.  Jesus did not walk the earth as omniscient. He emptied Himself of any advantage He had over us so that He could truly walk as a man.  Any other conclusion cheapens His humanity.

Notes in brackets below are clarifications in the margin of the New King James Reference Bible

Philippians 2:5-7:
Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery [or something to be held onto] to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation [emptied Himself of His privileges], taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men.

Jesus had to agree not to use any divine attribute that would give Him an advantage over other men.

Without “empyting Himself”, He would be just as glorious as He ever was. But Jesus talks about “The glory I had with You before the world was” in John 17:5.

An omnipotent Man would be able to do miracles all His life, as some false gospels allege. But the real Bible says that Jesus’ first miracle was in Cana of Galilee after the Holy Spirit came on Him. The plain lesson is that Jesus could do no miracles apart from the power of the Holy Spirit – the same position we are in!

While Jesus was unique in terms of being the only Godman who ever lived (don’t wait for a Godman II or Godman III movie), He never intended to be unique in ministry.  That’s right! Now that will blow some people’s religious socks right off, but it’s the plain truth and the only way that John 14:12 could be true:  “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also, and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father.” But, some argue, Jesus did all those miracles. Precisely! That’s what He’s talking about, not cooking your special baked bean recipe for a church fundraiser supper.  You can do miracles, too! Why? Because the same Holy Spirit by Whom Jesus did His miracles is available to you!  If Jesus had a monopoly on miracles, how else could He say: “It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you, but if I depart, I will send Him to you.”?  (John 16:7)  It would be no advantage at all if Jesus were the Miracle Man, but after His departure you would just have to do without miracles.

Jesus did not do His miracles because He was God – that would have been cheating and He would not have been like us in every way.  No, Jesus walked as a Man anointed by the Holy Spirit!  He credited the Holy Spirit and His Father for the miracles, not His own deity:

John 10:32:
Jesus answered them, “Many good works I have shown you from My Father…”

Luke 11:20:
But if I cast out demons by the finger of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you.

If He walked the earth as an omnipotent Man who could do whatever He wanted, He could surely not have made the following statement:

John 5:19:
Then Jesus answered and said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son does also in like manner.”

If Jesus knew everything and could already do everything, why would He have to pray?  He spent a conspicuous amount of time praying!

An omniscient, all-wise Man could not grow in wisdom because He would already have all wisdom.  Yet Luke 2:52 says that He “increased in wisdom and stature!”

An omniscient Man would not have to ask, “Who touched My clothes?” in Mark 5:30.

We see that Jesus was limited just as we are.  He knows exactly what it’s like to walk this life on the earth, because He did it. Because He walked in victory over the world, so can we because we are in Him and He is in us.

Error Alert: One error circulating in false religious circles is that Jesus was a spirit who took on a human appearance but was not really human.  In other words, this error assumes that Jesus was God in a man costume.  This is utterly false.  Jesus was a man; He just didn’t appear to be one.

Error Alert: A similar error circulating is that Jesus died as a man, but only His spirit came back to life.  Perhaps His ability to just appear somewhere gave people that impression. But this heresy is explicitly refuted in Luke’s gospel!

Luke 24:36-39:
Now as they said these things, Jesus Himself stood in the midst of them, and said to them, “Peace to you.”  But they were terrified and frightened, and supposed they had seen a spirit.  And He said to them, “Why are you troubled?  And why do doubts arise in your hearts? Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.”

He then ate broiled fish and honeycomb in their presence! You’ll eat, too, after your current body is dead – at the marriage supper of the Lamb.

Perhaps the easiest assurance of Jesus’ dual nature can be found in His virgin birth, which we have already discussed.  God was His Father, and Mary was His mother.  He thus deserves both the title Son of God and the title Son of Man.
 

Question 4-4: Is Jesus still a Man today as well as God?

Yes.

1 Timothy 2:5:
For there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus.

Acts 17:31:
because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained.  He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.

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