JESUS CHRIST: GOD-MAN - Vital Christianity

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This is the mathematical chance of any one man fulfilling 48 prophecies. In light of such
compelling evidence how can anyone doubt the messianic emphasis of the Hebrew Scriptures
and that Jesus of Nazareth was that Messiah!
If Christ is the substance of the Old Testament Scriptures how much more is He the
substance of the New Testament. The only real Christ, then, is the Christ presented to us in the
Sacred Scriptures. Just as Christ came to that one generation two thousand years ago as a human
being so He comes to every other generation in the garments of the Bible, God's Word, as
witnessed by the prophets and apostles who were inspired to write as God Himself supernaturally
guided them (2 Pe 1:20-21).
While Jesus Christ is the Truth, we know Him only through the instrumentality of
truths. Jesus as the Living Word is revealed to us in the written Word--the Holy Scriptures.
Apart from the written documents of the New Testament we would know virtually nothing of
this Nazarene Carpenter. It is only through special revelation (Jesus as revealed through the
Scriptures) that we gain knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth. The only Jesus Christ we can grasp,
experience, know, and love is the Christ that is shown in the New Testament. We can only
apprehend Christ, therefore, in terms used by His apostles. Theologian B. B. Warfield explained:
"Christ is the very substance of special revelation documented in Scripture, and the
laying hold of Christ by faith presupposes therefore confidence in the revelation
the substance of which He is."11
Conceptual Framework: Doctrine
Those who say (some liberals) that we are to look only to Jesus and not to any doctrinal
considerations are being naive for such a position presumes that we can know Christ without any
conceptual framework. The Christ of faith is not a religious figure conjured up by well-meaning
religious folk: He is a Person rooted in history. Therefore the Christian Church has always been
unalterably pledged to the written witness of the Person and Work of Christ as given by His
apostles. And what is given by the apostles is Holy Scripture.
This is why the apostles (primarily John and Paul) framed the Christian faith in doctrinal
terms and showed great concern for its preservation and protection. To speak of Christian faith
without the bedrock of "the apostles' teaching" (Ac 2:42), "sound doctrine" (1 Ti 1:10; Titus 1:9),
"sound instruction" (1 Ti 6:3), or the "pattern of sound teaching" (2 Ti 1:13-14) is to deviate
from the bedrock of orthodox teaching. It is the truth contained in such doctrine that was taught
by the apostles and passed on to the Church. This is the message that is presented to us in
Scripture as our only ground for hope (Titus 1:9) and salvation (1 Co 15:2; 1 Pe 1:23-25). John,
the apostle, put it:
"Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does
not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and
the Son" (2 Jn. 9).