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By
Robert A. Sabin
Christology, simply put, is the study of Jesus Christ. Who is Jesus Christ? We do not
hesitate to reply "He is God," and he certainly is. Some however, emphasize his
deity almost to the exclusion of his humanity. We believe Jesus is God in flesh, and we
must emphasize his divinity, but not to the exclusion of his humanity. Should we do so,
his humanity becomes just an impersonal robe. Jesus becomes a mere body, a carcass that
God has put on and wears into the world.
Christology, the study of Who Jesus Really Is, reveals him to be a man who actually
lived on this earth. Jesus was the "historical figure," a man with a definite
place in human history. He has reached and occupies the highest place any creature has
ever reached, the right hand place. That man will ultimately be exalted to the highest
place in all the universe. Now he is just below the majesty in the heavens, or as he put
it, "at the right hand of power." When Jesus is exalted to his ultimate place,
the very throne itself, he has promised to take us with him and to share all his
achievements with us (Psalm 110:1, Isaiah 53:12, Revelation 3:21). The glory he has, he
will share with us. The honor he has, he will share with us. The position he has, he will
share with us. The spoils he earned by his suffering, he will divide with the strong.
Jesus is God in flesh. That is a glorious message. He is also a man, and that full message
surpasses everything. It deals with creation, why and how God created us. It deals with
the whole plan of redemption— how we are redeemed. It deals with all that God foresaw
and all that he predestinated. It deals with our eternal reward. It deals with the
ultimate place of the child of God in heaven. The message of who Jesus is, and all that he
is, is absolutely central to everything Christians believe. For there is one God and one
mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5). It is a man who
is our mediator, the man Christ Jesus. He is the mediator of the better covenant
found in the New Testament. The Bible says the mediator is not the mediator of one but God
is one.
Christ Jesus the man was born at Bethlehem. He did not pre-exist as the eternal son of
God. The single greatest difference between what we believe and what Trinitarians believe
relates to the pre-existence or non-pre-existence of the Son of God. The Trinitarian
doctrine holds that Jesus pre-existed, that is, lived before Bethlehem, as the eternal Son
of God, the second person in the Godhead. But we find no eternally existent Son of God in
scripture. Certainly not in what God teaches us in the Old Testament. An Eternal Son
and the corresponding eternal generation of the son are phrases coined by Origen.
Walter Martin, former head and founder of the Christian Research Institute, stated on the
nationally televised John Ankerberg Show that Origen's statements were heretical, even
though they are believed by most Trinitarians. Jesus was not in Old Testament times, nor
is he now the second person in the Godhead. He is simply God, the God of the Bible, who
manifest himself to creation as a man. The word Godhead, "theotokos" in
Greek, actually means "the deity." No one can be in the Godhead. There is
nothing in scripture to support this. There is everything in scripture to support the
truth that God is one, alone in his category. In Trinitarian thinking, and even in Oneness
thinking carried over from Trinitarianism, the word godhead is made to seem
as a corporate term. The Godhead is thought of as being some sort of a panel, board, or
composite of persons. We determine to put God and man in the godhead in a
certain way. Only God is the Godhead. Nothing can be in the Godhead and only
God is Divine. To say that someone or something is in the Godhead is inappropriate
and unscriptural terminology. What scripture does express is the the fullness of the
Godhead is in Christ. "All the fullness of the Godhead dwelleth in him bodily"
(Colossians 2:9). Jesus was never and is not now the second person in the Godhead. Hebrews
1:3 tells us Jesus Christ is the express image [NIV states "exact representation] of
his [God's] person. God is a person, an individual, an identity, a unique being. Scripture
does not support the statement that within God's being are three persons. God is one
individual, one person who was imaged forth on earth as Jesus Christ. Hebrews 1:3 speaks
of God and man, a visible image of an invisible God. It does not put forth the idea of a
plurality of persons in the Godhead, nor does any other scripture.
When Jesus was born, God became a father and Jesus Christ was the Son (Hebrews 1:5).
God was never a Father in a procreative sense before Jesus was born. Malachi 2:10 asks,
"have we not one Father?" Yes, we have one Father, God who created us. But God
was not a Father in a procreative sense until Jesus Christ was born. Hebrews 1:5 clearly
indicates this, "I will be to him a Father, he shall be to me a Son." There was
no father-son relationship prior to the Lord's conception and birth. There was not, back
in pre-Marian times a relationship between a father and a son, certainly not a divine
father and a divine son as eternal persons. The Bible emphatically declares I will be
to him a father, he shall be to me a son, a future prediction of a reciprocally
exclusive relationship.
Christ possessed two identities, two capacities. Jesus was both God and man. He could
act in his capacity as God. He could act in the capacity of man. He could speak as God and
he could speak as man. As a man he said, "I thirst." As God he could say to the
blind man or to the leper, "I will, be thou clean, " without any reverence to
being deity. In him were two genders, divine and human. Gender, as used here, does not
refer to sexual differences but to differences of class or category of being. He occupied
two classes, the only one who ever did. He was God and man, God manifest in flesh (1
Timothy 3:16).
Jesus was simultaneously both father and son, God and man. Thomas said "My Lord
and my God" (John 20:28). My Lord, the exalted man, Lord and master of
the church. My God, the creator of the universe. Jesus said, "I and my Father
are one" (John 10:30). Jesus was the man in whom God was embodied with a will, a
personality, a mind, a heart with which to love. The disciples knew him as a man, they did
not know him as God. They knew the way he looked at them, the way he smiled, the way he
talked, the aspects of his personality.
And yet the disciples knew much of what God was like from Jesus because he was the
visible image of the invisible God as he subjected himself in all things to the Spirit of
God. He behaved as God would behave. He said, "Lo I come in the volume of the book it
is written of me to do thy will O God" (Psalm 40:7, Hebrews 10:7). The man Christ
behaved as God because Jesus the man yielded his will, the will of the flesh, to the
scripturally expressed will of the Spirit of God, saying, "Not my will, but thine be
done" (Luke 22:42). Jesus personified the Spirit of God here on this earth in all
things. Jesus was not simply a carcass or a robe. He was a man, willfully yielding to the
Spirit of God.
The man was like other men in all ways except sinfulness. He prayed; he obeyed; he was
subject in all things to God. He could not, and did not, use his divinity for his own
benefit. When Satan said, "Command these stones that they be made bread," Jesus
refused. He accepted human suffering, suffering even the death of the cross (Philippians
2:6-11).
The Father to Son, God to man, manner of speaking and relationship, is a temporary
relationship for the purpose of redeeming mankind without human encroachment on divine
prerogatives. The relationship began when the Lord was conceived, begotten. "I will
be to him a Father, he shall be to me a Son." It will end when the mediatorial role
of Sonship is completed. When every soul has had every opportunity to receive every
benefit God made available to mankind as Jesus. Jesus will "Show us plainly of the
Father" (John 16:25, 26). He will reveal himself as "God, all and in all"
(1 Corinthians 15:28). We will learn that our brother (Hebrews 2:10, 17) is actually also
our Father (Revelation 21:1-7 cf Revelation 22:13-16). He will always retain the identity
of Jesus Christ, our Creator who became one of us in order to redeem us.
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