ABOUT THIS EPISODE
8.2 Differences between God and Jesus
There is a fine balance to be drawn between those passages which emphasise the degree to which “God was in Christ”, and those which highlight his humanity. The latter group of passages make it impossible to justify Biblically the idea that Jesus is God Himself, “very God of very God”, as the doctrine of the Trinity wrongly states. (This phrase “very God of very God” was used at the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D., where the idea of God being a ‘trinity’ was first promulgated; it was unknown to the early Christians.) The word ‘trinity’ never occurs in the Bible. Study 9 will delve further into Christ’s total victory over sin, and God’s part in it. As we commence these studies, let us remember that salvation depends upon an acceptance of the real Jesus Christ (Jn. 3:36; 6:53;17:3). Once we have come to this true understanding of his conquest of sin and death, we can be baptised into him in order to share in this salvation.
One of the clearest summaries of the relationship between God and Jesus is found in 1 Tim. 2:5: “There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus”. Reflection upon the highlighted words leads to the following conclusions.
§ As there is only one God, it is impossible that Jesus could be God; if the Father is God and Jesus is also God, then there are two Gods. “But to us there is but one God, the Father” (1 Cor. 8:6). ‘God the Father’ is therefore the only God. It is therefore impossible that there can be a separate being called ‘God the Son’, as the false doctrine of the trinity states. The Old Testament likewise portrays Yahweh, the one God, as the Father (e.g. Is. 63:16; 64:8).
§ In addition to this one God, there is the mediator, the man Christ Jesus - “...and one mediator...”. That word “and” indicates a difference between Christ and God.
§ As Christ is the “mediator” it means that he is a go-between. A mediator between sinful man and sinless God cannot be sinless God Himself; it had to be a sinless man, of sinful human nature. “The man Christ Jesus” leaves us in no doubt as to the correctness of this explanation. Even though he was writing after the ascension of Jesus, Paul does not speak of “the God Christ Jesus”.
Several times we are reminded that “God is not a man” (Num. 23:19; Hos. 11:9); yet Christ was clearly “the Son of man” or, as he is often called in the New Testament, “the man Christ Jesus”. The Greek text calls him “son of anthropos”, i.e. of mankind, rather than “son of aner” [husband, man]. In Hebrew thought, “the Son of man” meant an ordinary, mortal man (Is. 51:12). “For since by man [Adam] came death, by man [Jesus] came also the resurrectio
