Jesus, High Priest
Posted on 10/19/2015 5:52:10 PM PDT by metmom
WE ARE UNDER CONSTANT TEMPTATION these days to substitute another Christ for the Christ of the New Testament. The whole drift of modern religion is toward such a substitution.
To avoid this we must hold steadfastly to the concept of Christ as set forth so clearly and plainly in the Scriptures of truth. Though an angel from heaven should preach anything less than the Christ of the apostles let him be forthrightly and fearlessly rejected.
The mighty, revolutionary message of the Early Church was that a man named Jesus who had been crucified was now raised from the dead and exalted to the right hand of God. "Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ."
Less than three hundred years after Pentecost the hard-pressed defenders of the faith drew up a manifesto condensing those teachings of the New Testament having to do with the nature of Christ. This manifesto declares that Christ is "God of the substance of His Father, begotten before all ages: Man of the substance of His mother, born in the world: perfect God and perfect Man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting: Equal to His Father, as touching His Godhead: less than the Father, as touching His manhood. Who, although He be God and man, yet He is not two, but one Christ. One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by the taking of the manhood into God. One altogether, not by the confusion of substance, but by the unity of Person. For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ."
Even among those who acknowledge the deity of Christ there is often a failure to recognize His manhood. We are quick to assert that when He walked the earth He was God with men, but we overlook a truth equally as important, that where He sits now on His mediatorial throne He is Man with God.
The teaching of the New Testament is that now, at this very moment, there is a man in heaven appearing in the presence of God for us. He is as certainly a man as was Adam or Moses or Paul. He is a man glorified, but His glorification did not dehumanize Him. Today He is a real man, of the race of mankind, bearing our lineaments and dimensions, a visible and audible man whom any other man would recognize instantly as one of us.
But more than this, He is heir of all things, Lord of all worlds, head of the church and the first-born of the new creation. He is the way to God, the life of the believer, the hope of Israel and the high priest of every true worshiper. He holds the keys of death and hell and stands as advocate and surety for everyone who believes on Him in truth.
This is not all that can be said about Him, for were all said that might be said I suppose the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. But this in brief is the Christ we preach to sinners as their only escape from the wrath to come. With Him rest the noblest hopes and dreams of men. All the longings for immortality that rise and swell in the human breast will be fulfilled in Him or they will never know fulfillment. There is no other way (John 14:6).
Salvation comes not by "accepting the finished work" or "deciding for Christ." It comes by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ, the whole, living, victorious Lord who, as God and man, fought our fight and won it, accepted our debt as His own and paid it, took our sins and died under them and rose again to set us free. This is the true Christ, and nothing less will do.
But something less is among us, nevertheless, and we do well to identify it so that we may repudiate it. That something is a poetic fiction, a product of the romantic imagination and maudlin religious fancy. It is a Jesus, gentle, dreamy, shy, sweet, almost effeminate, and marvelously adaptable to whatever society He may find Himself in. He is cooed over by women disappointed in love, patronized by pro tem celebrities and recommended by psychiatrists as a model of a well-integrated personality. He is used as a means to almost any carnal end, but He is never acknowledged as Lord. These quasi Christians follow a quasi Christ. They want His help but not His interference. They will flatter Him but never obey Him.
The argument of the apostles is that the Man Jesus has been made higher than angels, higher than Moses and Aaron, higher than any creature in earth or heaven. And this exalted position He attained as a man. As God He already stood infinitely above all other beings. No argument was needed to prove the transcendence of the Godhead. The apostles were not declaring the preeminence of God, which would have been superfluous, but of a man, which was necessary.
Those first Christians believed that Jesus of Nazareth, a man they knew, had been raised to a position of Lordship over the universe. He was still their friend, still one of them, but had left them for a while to appear in the presence of God on their behalf. And the proof of this was the presence of the Holy Spirit among them.
One cause of our moral weakness today is an inadequate Christology. We think of Christ as God but fail to conceive of Him as a man glorified. To recapture the power of the Early Church we must believe what they believed. And they believed they had a God-approved man representing them in heaven.
Tozer ping
We lack less a Christ “ology” (the bible is plain enough) as we do a credible living Christ witness. And that blame can be laid squarely on the shoulders of modern Christendom, at least until they choose to lay it on Christ’s shoulders and beseech God to help do something about it.
Are we LIVING like an extremely sacrificially loving Lord is our Lord? Sadly so very often the answer is turning out to be no....
When Christians live up to the light revealed to them already, God will reveal more.
People these days are experience junkies and simply want to experience the latest spiritual fad high.
None of that laying one’s life down for a friend stuff, or going the extra mile. Just affirm everyone where they’re at, make them feel good about themselves, offer a risk free, soft, comfortable, health, wealth, and prosperity preaching and forget counting the cost.
People aren’t coming to Christ because we aren’t holding up a Christ worth coming to.
You’re right, we have made Him our righteous Savior, but too frequently we Christians forget about the Lord part, the obedience part.
I think you are sneaking in an “earn” part, and that is just bogus.
The actual gospel promise is to hunger and thirst for righteousness and be filled. You don’t have to be Mr. Fatso in order to validly hunger.
And there immediately is obvious a problem here. “Made Him.” Well, some Jews tried to “make Him” a king. He refused. Wrong attitude; He came to be a spiritual driver, not a medium for men to drive other men by.
“Permit Him” is the key. Yes, permit... God allows us to stop accepting His love if we heap our prides up high enough. But this is believing like a child believes, which is exactly what the Lord has commended.
Or perhaps we could say that we are hiding at least some of our hunger with pride. We feed ourselves with the hog pods of religiosity.
That won’t move us to do anything past our comfort zone.
**One cause of our moral weakness today is an inadequate Christology.**
Just as true today. Maybe more so.
An extremely good Christology followed out of pride will also result in great weakness.
There really is no substitute for growing again after being born again. That means (gasp!) taking the concept of Heavenly Father at face value. This is not someone picking up the torch of the stunted love that was present in far too many families. This is something of quite a different character, and we’re often too full of pride to appreciate it without a lot of stumbles first.
I don't get what you're getting at.
An earn what part?
**An extremely good Christology followed out of pride will also result in great weakness.**
And a poor Christology followed out of invincible ignorance leads to all manner of heresy/idolatry.
i think without a biblical Christology it is entirely impossible to have a credible living Christ witness. If you do not understand who He was/is and what His message was/is, you cannot be like him. If you miss that His miracles were for authenticating his deity, you might be tempted to think His “good words” were no more than the good works of the Pharisees. Understanding that Scripture is the foundation for all of our belief is essential. Faith requires the right object or it is a false, doomed faith.
The Lordship of Christ is a most necessary concept. Many a false believer is formed through the promise that faith in Jesus as your Savior from the consequences of your sin will give you a heavenly eternity. But it leaves out repentance, that is, faith in the Lordship of Christ. Christ as your Savior is not offered without Christ as your Lord. He rules over the hearts of those who are His. Actually He rules even over those who are not His, but they do not acknowledge it — yet. In the end every knee will bow and every tongue will confess Jesus as Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
The problem with today’s “Christians” is that they have turned back to the way of the Pharisees — they practice a form of righteousness before men, of good works and religious rituals, but their hearts are far from God. They love the world. They love sin. They are lovers of themselves and lovers of religious deception. They have no love for Truth, purity, righteousness, etc. There is no pursuit of holiness because they despise and defame holiness. They do not love what God loves but rather what He hates. Christ is not their Lord. The praise of men is their Lord, therefore they go out even to extremes (like Mother Theresa), seeking to prove themselves worthy. But they embrace the lies of the Devil and prove themselves unworthy to God, only worthy to religious frauds who value the outward and not the inward.
Spot on.
Sounds like a very charismatic and “legalistic” post.
Jesus was VERY SPECIFIC about the work that must be done to be saved. Are you suggesting we “stop sinning”?
Good luck with that! ;)
Beware of teachers that use the “pride” accusation as a weapon against biblical truth and obedience. The tender conscience can be led astray this way by being so hyper sensitive to his delight in discovered truth (which is not the sin of pride but rather a good thing) that he turns his focus on himself as “prideful” rather than keeping his focus on the truth itself, to love and understand it better.
Much deception is accomplished from these two tactics:
1. Redefine current terms
2. Redirect away from truth — a journey into error
Pray for understanding and give great consideration to what sources you trust. If even the early Christians were easily deceived by false teachers, surly we must beware of them, too.
Even more necessary than the “concept” is the attitude, and Jesus said it was not complicated. Believe as a child.
THEN, when as an “adult” you describe what has happened, you can recognize the Christology. But even then you need to realize it is love based and NOT pride based....
Anything could be carried to the point of imbalance and evil; but I am not coming within a million light years of advocating a false humility. I am saying DO make a point of glory: the glory of God however and not the glory of human teachers.
This, right here, is IMO the great "scandal" of Christianity; THIS is the foolishness to gentiles and stumbling block to Jews. Christ crucified was Man crucified and GOD crucified. Man died. God DIED! How can this even be? We accept it by faith. We can read it in the Scriptures, use words to state the facts, but truly comprehending it is beyond human understanding.
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