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JESUS CHRIST: GOD-MAN - Vital Christianity

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"This is My Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased" (Mt 3:17; 17:12; Mk 9:2).<br />

Is it any wonder that Jesus challenged His enemies with the statement:<br />

"Can any of you prove Me guilty of sin?" (Jn 8:46)<br />

● He claimed He and the Father were "one" (10:30).<br />

When Jesus claimed, "I and My Father are one" (v. 30) the Jews immediately wanted to<br />

stone Him. He asked them for which good work they wanted to kill Him. They replied,<br />

"We are not stoning You for any of these but for blasphemy because You, a mere<br />

man, claim to be God" (vv. 30-33).<br />

The Jews understood clearly what Jesus was affirming when He claimed that He and God<br />

the Father were "one." Nothing less than that He was and is "God."<br />

The Jehovah's Witnesses explain this away by pointing to John 17:11 where Jesus also<br />

talks about being "one":<br />

". . . Holy Father, protect them [the disciples] by the power of Your name—the<br />

name You gave Me—so that they may be one as we are one."<br />

The point the Jehovah's Witnesses make is that Jesus' "oneness" with the Father is no<br />

more significant than our (as human beings) oneness with each other. There is a sense in which<br />

this is true. Rather than disproving Jesus' deity, it affirms it. If this "oneness" of us human beings<br />

is the paradigm for God's oneness, then God's oneness means that Jesus is divine just as God the<br />

Father is divine. After all, as human beings our "oneness" means that we are of the same stuff,<br />

the same substance or essence—humanity. It is our shared humanity that makes oneness<br />

possible.<br />

● He and God the Father are Builders of God's House:<br />

"Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a<br />

house has greater honor than the house itself. For every house is built by someone,<br />

but God is the builder of everything. Moses was faithful as a servant in all God's<br />

house, testifying to what would be said in the future. Christ is faithful as a son<br />

over God's house" (Heb 3:3-6).<br />

Great as Moses was, his status was inferior to Christ's. The old economy, inaugurated by<br />

Moses, is inferior to the new order introduced by Christ. Moses was a household servant exalted<br />

by virtue of His outstanding faithfulness to the post of chief administrator of God's household;<br />

but Christ, the Son of God, through whom the universe was made and to whom it has been given<br />

by His Father as His heritage, is founder and inheritor of the household.

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