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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Understanding who God the Son is
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GeorgeNZ
Apprentice
# 18672
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Posted
I have been wondering of late when I read the Gospels, what does Jesus reveal to me more. Am I learning about what God is like or am I learning what a man is like who lives a life in explicably close relationship with God the Father. Or is this really just a spurious question.
One thing I am conscious of is that if I think I have a handle on what God is like from just observing Jesus then I am in trouble before I even start.
Posts: 40 | From: A land so far away | Registered: Sep 2016
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by GeorgeNZ:
I have been wondering of late when I read the Gospels, what does Jesus reveal to me more. Am I learning about what God is like or am I learning what a man is like who lives a life in explicably close relationship with God the Father.
Both.
quote:
Or is this really just a spurious question.
If so, then all are.
quote:
One thing I am conscious of is that if I think I have a handle on what God is like from just observing Jesus then I am in trouble before I even start.
Without Jesus what would you have? No trouble?
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Raptor Eye
Shipmate
# 16649
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Posted
I take the view that as I will only ever see God in part, I will never have a handle on what God is like. I know that God is love: I see that through the scriptures which tell me that everything God gives us is for our good, I see that from closeness in relationship as revealed through the Holy Spirit, and I see that through Jesus, the Son, the ultimate gift from God. Jesus who didn't tell us in writing, with an instruction manual we couldn't get our heads around, but who gave us a demonstration of how to live in complete harmony with God, and who spoke to us in ways we could understand, words which were recorded and which will last forever.
Jesus did die, in that his human form expired, but Jesus is still alive and still shows us the way to God. And so yes, you will see God through Jesus: not only by reading about his life and ministry 2000 years ago, but by conversing with him in prayer today.
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Be still, and know that I am God! Psalm 46.10
Posts: 4359 | From: The United Kingdom | Registered: Sep 2011
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by GeorgeNZ:
I have been wondering of late when I read the Gospels, what does Jesus reveal to me more. ...
One thing I am conscious of is that if I think I have a handle on what God is like from just observing Jesus then I am in trouble before I even start.
I'm confused by the last sentence--what do you mean? And how do you understand that bit in John where Jesus says "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" ? (John 14:7-11)
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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churchgeek
Have candles, will pray
# 5557
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
Jesus did die, in that his human form expired, but Jesus is still alive and still shows us the way to God.
I know there is great mystery surrounding the Resurrection, but at least in orthodox Christian understanding, Jesus is still human. I might be reading you wrong, though, when you say his "human form expired" - maybe you just mean to expound on the word "die." So you might not be suggesting he's no longer human. But it's an important point: If Jesus isn't still human, than what he's become in his resurrection tells us nothing about our future hope.
It gets mixed up in one's view of atonement, of course. I personally believe that Incarnation was the point of creation, and that the point of the Incarnation was to join the divine and created natures. We're saved, I think, because in Christ we're joined to the divine nature and so have received immortality. What we're saved from is alienation from God (inherent in the fact of not being God, of being creation) and passing out of existence (also inherent in not being God but being created).
However, the question that prompted the Church Fathers to articulate the "hypostatic union" (the union of Christ's divine and human natures) was whether someone who wasn't God could save us, and whether someone who wasn't human could save us. Those questions apply to most models of atonement.
To address this to the OP, asking whether Jesus teaches us about God or about a man living in close relationship to God is, in my opinion (and I believe in the opinion of church tradition), a false dichotomy. As the ancient Christian hymn quoted in the New Testament says, Christ "is the image of the invisible God." We learn about him in the Gospels, and by learning about him we learn about God, because he is God, made visible for us.
Not that we can ever fully understand God, but we get the most important bits (important for us, that is) by looking at Jesus. Primarily, anyway. We learn about God through our own experience, through the world around us, through the testimony of Scripture which records others' experience of God...but Jesus is the lens we read all those other sources through.
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I reserve the right to change my mind.
My article on the Virgin of Vladimir
Posts: 7773 | From: Detroit | Registered: Feb 2004
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by GeorgeNZ:
One thing I am conscious of is that if I think I have a handle on what God is like from just observing Jesus then I am in trouble before I even start.
Why do you think this?
Michael Ramsey used apparently to say that God is Christlike and in him is no unChristlikeness at all.
That is to say that while we cannot know what God is in Godself except through images and analogy, Jesus is the best image we have.
What make you think otherwise?
In Western Trinitarian theology, we can see God as being analogous to the self, knowledge and love - the three being distinct yet the same, with God the Son being analogous to knowledge. An Orthodox theologian suggests we can see the Hindu triad of Being, Consciousness, and Bliss as being a similar analogy.
[ 28. October 2016, 15:07: Message edited by: Dafyd ]
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Is that Hart? Oh, ****!
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Anglican_Brat
Shipmate
# 12349
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by GeorgeNZ:
I have been wondering of late when I read the Gospels, what does Jesus reveal to me more. Am I learning about what God is like or am I learning what a man is like who lives a life in explicably close relationship with God the Father. Or is this really just a spurious question.
One thing I am conscious of is that if I think I have a handle on what God is like from just observing Jesus then I am in trouble before I even start.
I just read Rowan Williams' book on Augustine so I can't claim credit for this but, if I understand his theology of Augustine is that Christ is both perfect God and perfect man. The true vocation of humanity is to be a sign pointing towards God. So Christ thus, is both God incarnate and also as perfect human, simultaneously points to God and points away from him.
So Jesus points to God, and in doing so, reveals our human vocation and calling in pointing away from us to God.
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It's Reformation Day! Do your part to promote Christian unity and brotherly love and hug a schismatic.
Posts: 4332 | From: Vancouver | Registered: Feb 2007
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GeorgeNZ
Apprentice
# 18672
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
quote:
Originally posted by GeorgeNZ:
I have been wondering of late when I read the Gospels, what does Jesus reveal to me more. ...
One thing I am conscious of is that if I think I have a handle on what God is like from just observing Jesus then I am in trouble before I even start.
I'm confused by the last sentence--what do you mean? And how do you understand that bit in John where Jesus says "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" ? (John 14:7-11)
LC yes it does read confusingly. I guess I am trying to say that if I limit my understanding of God by thinking God is just like Jesus then I maybe think he is just like me. A human. With all the limitations that involves. Jesus is God the Son, but God is God the Father, Son, and Spirit. I know that doesn't make a lot of sense it's a struggle to express these thoughts. Jesus I can relate to up to a point but the Triune God is beyond my understanding.
Is it fair to say that while Jesus is God, we are only in Him seeing one aspect of God. . . sorry the words are poor and limiting and turning into a ramble.
Posts: 40 | From: A land so far away | Registered: Sep 2016
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BereaN
Apprentice
# 18281
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Posted
Jesus certainly (while on earth) was often limited by his humanity, however this was a voluntary situation for the benefit of all who would respond to his message and of course His crucial death and resurrection.
He confirmed that he is the:-
Creator (john 1:3)
Judge (john 5:22)
Almighty (Revelation 1:8)
God and was worshipped as such (John 20:28)
The Jews knew that claim clearly in John 8:58 with
"Before Abraham was I AM!"
Only an extremely limited scholar would fail to understand the significance of such words, or indeed the reaction in v59.
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John 3:18
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
How did He know?
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by GeorgeNZ:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
quote:
Originally posted by GeorgeNZ:
I have been wondering of late when I read the Gospels, what does Jesus reveal to me more. ...
One thing I am conscious of is that if I think I have a handle on what God is like from just observing Jesus then I am in trouble before I even start.
I'm confused by the last sentence--what do you mean? And how do you understand that bit in John where Jesus says "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" ? (John 14:7-11)
LC yes it does read confusingly. I guess I am trying to say that if I limit my understanding of God by thinking God is just like Jesus then I maybe think he is just like me. A human. With all the limitations that involves. Jesus is God the Son, but God is God the Father, Son, and Spirit. I know that doesn't make a lot of sense it's a struggle to express these thoughts. Jesus I can relate to up to a point but the Triune God is beyond my understanding.
Is it fair to say that while Jesus is God, we are only in Him seeing one aspect of God. . . sorry the words are poor and limiting and turning into a ramble.
George, maybe the best way of getting a handle on it to start is to look at God's character as reflected in Jesus--what Jesus says and does is an exact reflection of what God says and does. As God-come-in-the-flesh, you can see what was formerly invisible--namely, God's attitude toward ordinary broken people of all sorts. For me it's a lot easier to believe in an invisible Father who cares about me when I can actually see and hear Jesus in the Gospels treating people like me as if they mattered--as if he cared about them--as if they were not bothers but beloved. Seeing that, I can start to dare to imagine that the invisible God might feel that way about me too.
As for Jesus' limitations as a human being, it might help to look at the traditional understanding of kenosis--that is, that although he is and was and always will be God, he voluntarily laid aside his privileges and power as God to live the life of a man. Not that he never made any use of his divine powers on earth--we know from the miracles that he did--but he never used those powers for himself, never for any selfish reason. It was always to help somebody else. The miracles that would have benefited him directly (changing stone into bread, calling rescue angels, coming down off the cross) are the ones he refused to perform. Not "could not" perform, but refused to perform. He had made a commitment to accepting human helplessness, and he kept it.
As for the Triune God--there's nobody but God himself who understands God himself. So that's all right, he doesn't expect that of us.
But he does give us a window into himself in Jesus Christ our Lord. He takes what is invisible and makes it known to us.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Is that Hart? Oh, ****!
Yes, it is. What's wrong with that?
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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GeorgeNZ
Apprentice
# 18672
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
....
As for the Triune God--there's nobody but God himself who understands God himself. So that's all right, he doesn't expect that of us.
......
LC I think that is why I find it easier to relate to God rather than God the Son. God is so far beyond my comprehension, beyond my understanding, therefore beyond myself and who I am, that if I am honest God provides no challenge to 'Self'. We are not the same!
Now Jesus, God the Son, here is a problem. Here is a God who weeps, who sleeps, who eats and drinks, who hugs, who gets frustrated, who cries and gets angry and despairs, here is a God who if I looked into His eyes I would see my own reflected back. Jesus is way to personal. I look at the map in the front of my Bible and the places where Jesus and his disciples are in this chapter then where they are in the next . . . they walk huge distances and it is hot, it is cold, it is dusty it is wet, it is rough sleeping, it is a long time between home cooking. It is something I can imagine. God is Spirit, God is everywhere, knows all things, is outside time and space, God is nothing and everything . . . God the One easy.
Jesus, God the Son, God incarnate so that I can relate to Him in my humanity and weakness and need . . . . Jesus is hard.
Posts: 40 | From: A land so far away | Registered: Sep 2016
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by GeorgeNZ:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
....
As for the Triune God--there's nobody but God himself who understands God himself. So that's all right, he doesn't expect that of us.
......
LC I think that is why I find it easier to relate to God rather than God the Son. God is so far beyond my comprehension, beyond my understanding, therefore beyond myself and who I am, that if I am honest God provides no challenge to 'Self'. We are not the same!
Now Jesus, God the Son, here is a problem. Here is a God who weeps, who sleeps, who eats and drinks, who hugs, who gets frustrated, who cries and gets angry and despairs, here is a God who if I looked into His eyes I would see my own reflected back. Jesus is way to personal. I look at the map in the front of my Bible and the places where Jesus and his disciples are in this chapter then where they are in the next . . . they walk huge distances and it is hot, it is cold, it is dusty it is wet, it is rough sleeping, it is a long time between home cooking. It is something I can imagine. God is Spirit, God is everywhere, knows all things, is outside time and space, God is nothing and everything . . . God the One easy.
Jesus, God the Son, God incarnate so that I can relate to Him in my humanity and weakness and need . . . . Jesus is hard.
Brilliant.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Kwesi
Shipmate
# 10274
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Posted
I sometimes think it is helpful to ask the question what our understanding of God would be if we did not admit Jesus as part of the trinity. (The history of Unitarianism might be instructive in this regard).
To my mind a Christian view of God means that whatever we say about God has to be compatible with what we know about Christ. That gives us a great deal of latitude and recognises that there are many things about the totality of God that are not known through the incarnation. As the apostle insists "We know in part and prophecy in part." That's good enough for me. At least it will have to do for now.
Posts: 1641 | From: South Ofankor | Registered: Sep 2005
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Anglican_Brat
Shipmate
# 12349
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by GeorgeNZ:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
....
As for the Triune God--there's nobody but God himself who understands God himself. So that's all right, he doesn't expect that of us.
......
LC I think that is why I find it easier to relate to God rather than God the Son. God is so far beyond my comprehension, beyond my understanding, therefore beyond myself and who I am, that if I am honest God provides no challenge to 'Self'. We are not the same!
Now Jesus, God the Son, here is a problem. Here is a God who weeps, who sleeps, who eats and drinks, who hugs, who gets frustrated, who cries and gets angry and despairs, here is a God who if I looked into His eyes I would see my own reflected back. Jesus is way to personal. I look at the map in the front of my Bible and the places where Jesus and his disciples are in this chapter then where they are in the next . . . they walk huge distances and it is hot, it is cold, it is dusty it is wet, it is rough sleeping, it is a long time between home cooking. It is something I can imagine. God is Spirit, God is everywhere, knows all things, is outside time and space, God is nothing and everything . . . God the One easy.
Jesus, God the Son, God incarnate so that I can relate to Him in my humanity and weakness and need . . . . Jesus is hard.
And that's the challenge of the incarnation, the incarnation teaches that God, through the person of Jesus Christ, raised humanity (all that messy stuff, that deep complicated stuff that makes all us all too human), into eternal glory. God became human, so that the human could become divine, to paraphrase a common Orthodox saying.
It is through our messed up, our complicated and all too often humanity, that we find God. You may indeed think God as the Great Other, the abstract Ground of All Being, but are you prepared to encounter God as He washes your feet?
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It's Reformation Day! Do your part to promote Christian unity and brotherly love and hug a schismatic.
Posts: 4332 | From: Vancouver | Registered: Feb 2007
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
And I like these.
[ 30. October 2016, 23:23: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Raptor Eye
Shipmate
# 16649
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by churchgeek:
quote:
Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
Jesus did die, in that his human form expired, but Jesus is still alive and still shows us the way to God.
I know there is great mystery surrounding the Resurrection, but at least in orthodox Christian understanding, Jesus is still human. I might be reading you wrong, though, when you say his "human form expired" - maybe you just mean to expound on the word "die." So you might not be suggesting he's no longer human. But it's an important point: If Jesus isn't still human, than what he's become in his resurrection tells us nothing about our future hope.
It gets mixed up in one's view of atonement, of course. I personally believe that Incarnation was the point of creation, and that the point of the Incarnation was to join the divine and created natures. We're saved, I think, because in Christ we're joined to the divine nature and so have received immortality. What we're saved from is alienation from God (inherent in the fact of not being God, of being creation) and passing out of existence (also inherent in not being God but being created).
However, the question that prompted the Church Fathers to articulate the "hypostatic union" (the union of Christ's divine and human natures) was whether someone who wasn't God could save us, and whether someone who wasn't human could save us. Those questions apply to most models of atonement.
To address this to the OP, asking whether Jesus teaches us about God or about a man living in close relationship to God is, in my opinion (and I believe in the opinion of church tradition), a false dichotomy. As the ancient Christian hymn quoted in the New Testament says, Christ "is the image of the invisible God." We learn about him in the Gospels, and by learning about him we learn about God, because he is God, made visible for us.
Not that we can ever fully understand God, but we get the most important bits (important for us, that is) by looking at Jesus. Primarily, anyway. We learn about God through our own experience, through the world around us, through the testimony of Scripture which records others' experience of God...but Jesus is the lens we read all those other sources through.
I thank you for this, Churchgeek. It leaves me, as ever, scratching my head. Is Jesus still human? Was the resurrected body seen by everyone a human body which could appear in a locked room and disappear? Has he a new body, and if so is it human? Does it consist of the members of the Church? Was the work he did before the crucifixion completed, finished, so that we from that moment are saved? So many questions that must be left hanging there, as we won't know until we see him face to face. So much to look forward to. Thanks again.
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Be still, and know that I am God! Psalm 46.10
Posts: 4359 | From: The United Kingdom | Registered: Sep 2011
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
The Athanasian Creed says that the incarnation happened, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the Manhood into God.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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BereaN
Apprentice
# 18281
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Posted
Always wise to remember that Creeds are not inspired text but purely human interpretation of inspired texts.
[ 03. November 2016, 18:56: Message edited by: BereaN ]
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John 3:18
Posts: 4 | From: UK | Registered: Nov 2014
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Of humanly interpreted inspiration.
[ 03. November 2016, 20:37: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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GeorgeNZ
Apprentice
# 18672
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by BereaN:
Always wise to remember that Creeds are not inspired text but purely human interpretation of inspired texts.
So are not the people who wrote the creeds the same ones that chose the Canon?
Posts: 40 | From: A land so far away | Registered: Sep 2016
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
What you call "choosing the canon" was actually a long and mostly unintentional process that got officialized in the end. Various local churches used various books and had a remarkable tendency to focus on the same basic group, with a handful of iffy ones. This went on for a while (with various writers mentioning the set of books they were personally familiar with). Finally the church reached a consensus and made it official in a council, I believe, but it's not like a bunch of guys ever sat down to pick and choose among a lot of candidates. Somebody my scattered brain cannot recall compared it to people looking at one another's bookshelves and saying, "Hey, you've got pretty much the same authors I have! Great minds think alike, eh?"
Given this kind of a process, there really are no guys to credit with choosing the canon--and therefore we can't say they wrote the creeds either. And those had their own development, which I'll let someone more knowledgeable describe. ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
Is Jesus still human? Was the resurrected body seen by everyone a human body which could appear in a locked room and disappear? Has he a new body, and if so is it human? Does it consist of the members of the Church? Was the work he did before the crucifixion completed, finished, so that we from that moment are saved?
You might have meant these questions only rhetorically, in which case ![[Hot and Hormonal]](icon_redface.gif) . But if not, this is my understanding of the mainstream traditional orthodox Christian view.
Yes, Jesus is still human. His death and resurrection did not undo the incarnation. He will always be human, and that includes having a body. And yes, it is the same human body he died with (nobody's ever going to find his bones, as he's still wearing them), but it is now glorified, which means a lot of stuff we don't yet understand, but certainly includes the ability to do some very strange things. So various weirdnesses like appearing in locked rooms etc. are normal to him after his resurrection, and may be normal to us as well after ours (though we don't want to lean on this too heavily, as there is still one major difference between us and him, which is his deity). One thing we know that our resurrected bodies will have in common with his own is that they will never die again.
As for Christ's body the church--this would be a use of the term "body" in a different sense than the physical bone, flesh and blood body we usually think of first. One does not replace the other. We are Christ's body in a very real but somewhat mystical manner (not merely symbolic) and this fact imposes certain restraints on us (for example, how we treat one another, and the manner in which we use our individual human bodies). We are part of a larger "organism" whose head is Christ, and we are under his rule and care.
Does it consist of members of the church? That depends on exactly what you mean by "church" (the body of all real Christian believers, which is known only to God? in that case, yes). If we're referring to the visible church, we all know that there are hypocrites and unbelievers in it, and believing Christians who are currently outside it, for whatever reason.
Is the work of Christ finished from the moment of his death? Well, first define "work of Christ." If you mean our salvation, that was finished at his death-and-resurrection, which is basically a single undividable event in its effects. If you are considering the matter from God's point of view, it was "finished" from before the foundation of the world. If you are thinking not of objective salvation (justification) but rather of something else--God's remaking of us as a new creation; the birth and growth of the Christian church worldwide; our personal growth in sanctification; etc. etc. etc.--then you will probably see those things as being complete at the final day of judgement, and not at the cross.
Sorry if your questions were all rhetorical and I should have shut up.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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GeorgeNZ
Apprentice
# 18672
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Posted
Thanks LC that's what I thought. I just look at things askew when people start saying "this is of God and this is not". So much we don't know and can't know, which is not really the problem I have tho I do like answers, my problem is when people fill in the blanks with such 'authority'.
Posts: 40 | From: A land so far away | Registered: Sep 2016
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
That's why it's so important to get to know the Scriptures, so people can't pull a fast one on you (knowingly or unknowingly).
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Raptor Eye
Shipmate
# 16649
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
You might have meant these questions only rhetorically, in which case . But if not, this is my understanding of the mainstream traditional orthodox Christian view.
Yes, Jesus is still human. His death and resurrection did not undo the incarnation. He will always be human, and that includes having a body. And yes, it is the same human body he died with (nobody's ever going to find his bones, as he's still wearing them), but it is now glorified, which means a lot of stuff we don't yet understand, but certainly includes the ability to do some very strange things. So various weirdnesses like appearing in locked rooms etc. are normal to him after his resurrection, and may be normal to us as well after ours (though we don't want to lean on this too heavily, as there is still one major difference between us and him, which is his deity). One thing we know that our resurrected bodies will have in common with his own is that they will never die again.
As for Christ's body the church--this would be a use of the term "body" in a different sense than the physical bone, flesh and blood body we usually think of first. One does not replace the other. We are Christ's body in a very real but somewhat mystical manner (not merely symbolic) and this fact imposes certain restraints on us (for example, how we treat one another, and the manner in which we use our individual human bodies). We are part of a larger "organism" whose head is Christ, and we are under his rule and care.
Does it consist of members of the church? That depends on exactly what you mean by "church" (the body of all real Christian believers, which is known only to God? in that case, yes). If we're referring to the visible church, we all know that there are hypocrites and unbelievers in it, and believing Christians who are currently outside it, for whatever reason.
Is the work of Christ finished from the moment of his death? Well, first define "work of Christ." If you mean our salvation, that was finished at his death-and-resurrection, which is basically a single undividable event in its effects. If you are considering the matter from God's point of view, it was "finished" from before the foundation of the world. If you are thinking not of objective salvation (justification) but rather of something else--God's remaking of us as a new creation; the birth and growth of the Christian church worldwide; our personal growth in sanctification; etc. etc. etc.--then you will probably see those things as being complete at the final day of judgement, and not at the cross.
Sorry if your questions were all rhetorical and I should have shut up.
Thank you LC, I appreciate this.
Although I am aware of these and other thoughts, I haven't settled on any conclusions for myself. The questions remain - which is the usual position for me as no answer satisfies me for long. New questions arise. I doubt if any of us will know until that day when we are face to face with our Lord.
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Be still, and know that I am God! Psalm 46.10
Posts: 4359 | From: The United Kingdom | Registered: Sep 2011
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
... Is Jesus still human?
Yes.
quote:
Was the resurrected body seen by everyone a human body which could appear in a locked room and disappear?
Yes.
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Has he a new body,
Yes in the sense that its the old one glorified.
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and if so is it human?
Yes. Glorified.
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Does it consist of the members of the Church?
No.
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Was the work he did before the crucifixion completed, finished, so that we from that moment are saved?
What work, what moment? From when He said 'It is finished'. Yes.
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So many questions that must be left hanging there, as we won't know until we see him face to face. So much to look forward to. Thanks again.
But our Jesus isn't the same as the growing infinity of others.
Unless of course there has only ever been one sapient species since eternity began.
[ 04. November 2016, 22:45: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
OK shoot me in the face: it[']s.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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