Lutheran Vocational Evangelism

(Giving An Answer - About Jesus (Divine and Human))

“I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord” (Explanation of the Second Article of the Apostles’ Creed, Luther’s Small Catechism).

Jesus Christ is truly God. He was with the Father and the Spirit at the creation of the world. He was seen at times in His pre-incarnate  flesh in the Old Testament. He is the Word about which John talks in his Gospel (“1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God. 3All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:1-3)). Jesus is God, one with the Father and the Holy Spirit, inseparable and equal.

Jesus is also truly human born of the human woman, the virgin Mary. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Thus, Jesus was 100 percent God and 100 percent man.

Because humans bare the imperfect trait of sin from our human parents, Jesus had to be God in order to be born in perfection. Jesus was conceived in His human mother by the Holy Spirit making His conception a perfect conception of God in human flesh.

Jesus had to be born as a human in order to be able to trade, substitute, redeem our life for His. All the animal sacrifices of the Old Testament merely pointed to the once, for all sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. The price for sin was set in the Garden of Eden, human death, thus it was only a human death, the death of God in flesh, the death of the man Jesus that would satisfy the price for man’s sin.

Jesus was and is truly human and divine, God in flesh, perfect and holy who lived for us, took our sins, suffered and died for us. Jesus rose from the dead, defeating sin, death and the devil. And now He lives and reigns at the right hand of the Father where He is watching over us, ruling over us and interceding for us, as God in flesh.

35 of 52    © Rev. Dr. Ronald A. Bogs (2018)