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God has three different ways of revealing Himself to us. Sometimes He portrays Himself as Father, sometimes as Son, and sometimes as Holy Spirit. There is only one God, a Being with three Personalities with distinct purposes which are in complete eternal harmony.
For many this may be beyond our ability to fully comprehend, but will not suffice as a reason to reject this revelation from God. We must endeavor to achieve to understand as much as we can of what God has revealed to us through His Holy Word.
The Father of Jesus is revealed as the personal God of creation. The Father is God. God is Father. What is important about the Father’s revelation of Himself, however, is that He made our relationship to Him dependent on our relationship to His only Son, Jesus.
The New Testament writers repeatedly refer to Jesus as the Son of God. The New Testament teaches that Jesus the Christ is the “only,” the unique Son of God (John 1:14, 18; 3:16, 18; 1 John 4:9). The Scriptures portray Jesus as sharing the glory of a jealous God who, through Moses, insisted that no one deserved to be worshiped but God Himself. God the Father shares His love with angels and mortals. But with Jesus the Son, He shares His glory.
Jesus’ words tell us that He definitely claimed to be God. In (John 8:58) we find Jesus’ claim that He never had a beginning. Jesus declared that His own existence transcends time. He has always existed. He has no beginning. Jesus’ claim that He is God can be found in (John 10:30).
After the fall of mankind God gave Adam and Eve a wonderful promise (Gen. 3:15). God in His wisdom provided a way to undo the terrible damage done to mankind from the fall. It was through the birth of His Son. Jesus is the Son of God born of a virgin.
Because Jesus does not have a human father, He was not shapen in iniquity conceived in sin. Jesus was conceived through the Holy Spirit. Jesus was born of a virgin who knew no man before Jesus was born. Jesus came into the world as a gateway for man to return back to the family of God. It is through the remission of sins that we can stand before God justified by our faith in the sacrificial death of Jesus, the Son of God.
There are two principles of resolution that ended the dilemma caused by our sin and helplessness and God’s holiness and love: (1) the principle of adequate sacrifice, and (2) the principle of necessary substitution.
There can be no forgiveness without a sacrificial death (Heb. 9:22). Through His death on the cross, Jesus the Christ presented to God a sacrifice sufficient to pay for the sins of all mankind. The Old Testament sacrifices had to be offered every day. Furthermore, those sacrifices were only for sins committed involuntarily, in ignorance, or through human weakness (Lev. 4:2-7). A sacrifice could not be given for a premeditated, deliberate sin in Old Testament days.
Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, by His death on the cross provided an once-for-all sacrifice for all our sins (Heb. 10:12). Jesus was the complete and perfect sacrifice. It satisfied every demand of a holy God, and it brings salvation to all who trust in Jesus.
Jesus’ sacrifice of Himself was adequate for several reasons:
1) He became a member of the human family. This was achieved through the virgin birth by His mother Mary, and by this means God became incarnate in flesh. Jesus could truly represent us (something no angel could do) because He took to Himself a human nature absent of sin.
2) He lived a sinless life. Confronted by physical, mental, and spiritual temptation, Jesus did not sin (Heb. 4:15). Therefore, when He died, He did so as a perfect human being. Because He did not sin, He could die for our sins.
3) He remained God. Even though Jesus became fully human, He also retained His full deity. Jesus was not half God and half man; He was fully God and fully man. His goodness is what gave His sacrifice infinite value, making it adequate to pay for the sins of all mankind.
Jesus’ death on the cross, provided a necessary substitute for the death we deserve to die, for our own sins. The death of Jesus could not have been possible without His birth into the human family. There can be no death of a human being without them being born. By this fact we know Jesus was born a human Being.
Jesus had substitution in mind when He told His followers that He would give His life as a “ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). When Jesus made this statement He was planning to give His life in exchange for our legal release from sin and guilt. Jesus died the death all of us should have died, taking the punishment we deserved. That’s what Jesus did for us. In love He became our substitute and died in our place. He overcame our inability to save ourselves by paying the price for our sins.
Minister George Condry
(Jeremiah 3:15)
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