JESUS CHRIST: GOD-MAN - Vital Christianity

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We Westerners are extremely impatient with mystery. We are always trying to formulate
systems, categories, formulas. God cannot be fully comprehended by our categories. He cannot
be boxed in! At all costs we feverishly try to disarm tension. In our efforts to attain clarity and
logical precision, we risk eliminating important aspects of the mystery we are trying to
comprehend. Namely, that Jesus the Christ is the God-Man.
At the shrine of the intellect we sacrifice truth in shrouded mystery. As sophomoric,
beginning philosophers we're like a puppy dog tearing things to pieces that we do not
understand. We try and force pieces to fit together so that our beliefs, our doctrines, easily fit into
our neat formulas. But God cannot be torn apart to be disproved nor can He be forced into our
neat, packaged way of thinking. God is mysterious. He is unfathomable. His ways are higher
than our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts (Isa 55:8-9).
GOD LIMITED TO A HUMAN BODY
The English deist, Anthony Collins of the 17th century, met a common countryman one
day while out for a walk. He asked him where he was going, "To church, sir." Then he followed
up the question, "What are you going to do there?" The countryman replied, "Worship God." At
that point the educated Englishman asked him, "Is your God a great God or a little God?" The
quick response was, "He is both, sir." This puzzled the deist who asked, "How can He be both?"
The simple answer he received was:
"He is so great, sir, that the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him; and so little
that He can dwell in my heart."
Infidel Collins later admitted that this simple answer from the countryman had more
effect upon his mind than all the volumes which sophisticated theologians had written against
him.
The God of the Bible as a spirit is the Creator of all things and yet as a Redeemer
indwells the heart of His believing creatures in the person of Jesus Christ.
ORTHODOXY
While we conservatives, whether evangelicals or fundamentalists, have been busy
repudiating the liberals for their deemphasis on the deity of Jesus Christ, we likewise, have in the
process deemphasized the humanity of our Lord. Both are equally heretical (1 Jn 4:1-3; 5:1).
John, because he was writing to defend Christianity against Docetism, started out with a
strong testimony of the reality of Jesus' humanness. John refers to three of the five physical
senses: