Jn. 1:1-14, What do ya’ know: Jesus is the God-Man (1)

Let’s begin with a chart of Scripture that depicts Jesus as God and Man.

GOD	SCRIPTURE	MAN
Son of Highest	Lk. 1:32,35; 2:7	Son of Mary
Word was God	John 1:1,14	Word became flesh
Creator of the World	John 1:10	In the world
Son of God	Rom. 1:3-4	Son of David
God blessed forever	Rom. 9:5	Jew acc. to the flesh
Lord from heaven	1 Cor. 15:47	2nd Man (2nd Adam)
Son of God	Gal. 4:4	Made of a woman, born under the Law
Equal with God	Phil. 2:6-8	Became a man
Cleanses us	Heb. 2:11	Brother of those cleansed
God	Heb. 1:8; 2:14-17	Took part of flesh, seed of Abraham
God	1 Tim. 3:16	Manifest in flesh
Jesus Christ	1 John 4:2-3; 3 Jn. 7	Come in the flesh

“We believe that Jesus Christ was begotten by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary, and is true God and true man.”

1)    What do we mean that Jesus is the “God-Man”?

a)    Negative: here is what we do not mean:

i)      He was not fully Man but partly God, the doctrine of Jehovah’s Witnesses and the early Ebionites (Christ was a representation of God).

ii)   He was not fully God but partly man, the Apollinarian doctrine (that God was the soul of Christ.  The Arians taught that God was the human intellect or spiritual principle of Christ.)

iii)            He was not half God and half man, sometimes acting like God and other times like man.

iv) He was not God for part of His earthly life, also the Witnesses and Ebionites teach this (Christ came on the man Jesus at his baptism, left him at the cross).

b)    Positive: here is what we mean, taken from an early Church writing, The Tome of Leo, written June 13, 449.

Thus the properties of each nature and substance were preserved entire, and came together to form one person.  Humility was assumed by majesty, weakness by strength, mortality by eternity; and to pay the debt that we had incurred, an inviolable (unbreakable) nature was united to a nature that can suffer … For that ‘emptying of Himself,’ whereby the invisible rendered Himself visible, and the Creator and Lord of all willed to be a mortal, was a condescension of compassion, not a failure of power.