WEBVTT
00:00:10.320 --> 00:00:14.320
Hi everyone, happy Tuesday, and welcome back to Worldview Academy's QuickCast.
00:00:14.400 --> 00:00:16.079
I'm your host, Del Cook.
00:00:16.239 --> 00:00:24.239
Thanks once again for allowing us into your week with thoughtful worldview content, encouraging biblical teachings, and timely contemporary commentary.
00:00:24.559 --> 00:00:37.520
This week, The God Man, Christianity's other astoundingly audacious and mind-blowing claim that in one man, Jesus of Nazareth, the complete fullness of deity dwells.
00:00:37.840 --> 00:00:39.200
How does that work?
00:01:27.359 --> 00:01:44.959
Now it's also in my humble opinion that the most important words ever spoken by human lips, not under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, were from the North Carolinian songwriter James Taylor when he sang in that classic Carolina in my mind, there ain't no doubt in no one's mind that love is the finest thing around.
00:01:45.200 --> 00:01:50.000
Now, in these two statements, I believe we have the summation of all the world's wisdom.
00:01:50.239 --> 00:02:01.040
The infinite, transcendent creator of the world manifests himself within the finite material world, and that's accomplished in the basic essential reality of the world.
00:02:01.280 --> 00:02:04.319
Now that's no small claim, and it's no small mystery.
00:02:04.560 --> 00:02:07.439
How can the infinite and the finite be united?
00:02:07.599 --> 00:02:11.599
How can divinity and humanity exist together in one person?
00:02:12.159 --> 00:02:15.599
Well, let's start by considering what the incarnation is not.
00:02:16.080 --> 00:02:19.599
First, the incarnation is not merely an appearance of God.
00:02:19.840 --> 00:02:24.159
Many religions and mythologies contain stories of gods appearing in human form.
00:02:24.400 --> 00:02:28.960
We see versions of this in Hinduism, in Greek, Norse, and Egyptian mythology.
00:02:29.199 --> 00:02:34.719
A god puts on the likeness of humanity for a time, almost like putting on a mask.
00:02:35.039 --> 00:02:37.759
Christianity claims something fundamentally different, though.
00:02:38.000 --> 00:02:41.919
God does not merely appear to be human, he becomes human.
00:02:42.479 --> 00:02:46.080
Second, we should not understand the incarnation as God's plan be.
00:02:46.319 --> 00:02:53.280
It's not simply God's reaction to the fall, as though humanity sinned and God suddenly needed to devise a rescue mission.
00:02:53.520 --> 00:02:57.039
From the beginning, God's purpose for creation has been communion.
00:02:57.199 --> 00:03:00.800
God creates a world in which humanity can live in communion with Him.
00:03:01.039 --> 00:03:04.159
That is why Genesis repeatedly calls creation good.
00:03:04.639 --> 00:03:08.400
Now, interestingly, it does not call creation perfect.
00:03:08.719 --> 00:03:19.280
Humanity is commanded to be fruitful, multiply, tend the garden, and act in such a way as to bring that world toward its intended perfect fulfillment.
00:03:19.680 --> 00:03:22.560
And where does the biblical story ultimately end?
00:03:22.800 --> 00:03:25.120
With God and humanity dwelling together.
00:03:25.280 --> 00:03:30.080
Revelation presents heaven and earth united and God dwelling with man.
00:03:30.319 --> 00:03:41.439
In that sense, the incarnation is not simply a response to the fall, it reveals where the entire story has always been headed toward communion between God and his creation.
00:03:41.680 --> 00:03:44.159
Well, so what then is the creation?
00:03:44.479 --> 00:03:49.039
Well, John's extraordinary words tell us the word became flesh.
00:03:49.280 --> 00:03:57.840
The beginning of John's Gospel echoes the beginning words of Genesis in the beginning God created, and it says in the beginning was the Lagos.
00:03:58.479 --> 00:04:04.240
Lagos is normally translated word, but the Greek carries a much richer range of meaning.
00:04:04.479 --> 00:04:10.080
It can communicate reason, wisdom, principle, order, the fundamental way things are.
00:04:10.479 --> 00:04:21.439
John is telling us that the ultimate reality underlying everything, the way, the truth, and the life, became flesh, not appeared as flesh, became flesh.
00:04:21.680 --> 00:04:25.040
Think about God's revelation to Moses in Exodus.
00:04:25.279 --> 00:04:32.079
Moses asks God whom he should say has sent him, and God answers, Yahweh, I am.
00:04:32.720 --> 00:04:36.399
God does not merely possess existence in the way that we do.
00:04:36.720 --> 00:04:40.319
We participate in being, but God is being.
00:04:40.560 --> 00:04:47.120
Or as Scripture says through the Apostle Paul, in him we live and move and have our being.
00:04:47.360 --> 00:04:51.360
And then something astonishing happens in the incarnation.
00:04:51.680 --> 00:04:58.319
Being becomes the great I am becomes here I am.
00:04:59.040 --> 00:05:02.480
The eternal inhabits a particular time and place.
00:05:02.959 --> 00:05:04.560
Jesus is born to Mary.
00:05:04.639 --> 00:05:13.199
He lives in Nazareth, he walks particular roads, speaks to particular people, and suffers under their a particular Roman governor, Pontius Pilate.
00:05:13.439 --> 00:05:32.240
The gospel writers deliberately ground the story in history because the Christian claim is not that God symbolically appeared, the life was manifest, the transcendent became imminent, the invisible visible, the one who is became present among us so that he could be seen, heard, and touched.
00:05:32.560 --> 00:05:34.639
But that creates another question.
00:05:34.959 --> 00:05:35.519
How?
00:05:36.240 --> 00:05:39.279
Once again, let's consider how it doesn't work.
00:05:39.759 --> 00:05:46.240
Since the time of the incarnation, any number of attempts have been proffered to rationally explain John's claim.
00:05:46.480 --> 00:05:52.560
Those explanations ultimately diminish either Christ's humanity or his divinity, though.
00:05:52.800 --> 00:06:12.240
Some said that Jesus only appeared human, others said he was a created divine being, and some suggested he was a human being upon whom God placed divinity, and still others attempted to make Jesus a sort of pastiche, simply attaching divinity and humanity together like some sort of Frankenstein.
00:06:12.480 --> 00:06:18.800
The problem with these explanations is that they turn the incarnation into something almost mechanical.
00:06:19.120 --> 00:06:23.759
God puts on humanity like clothing, or humanity puts on divinity.
00:06:24.000 --> 00:06:33.040
But these descriptions fail to express or account for what John describes in Jesus manifests, the word became flesh.
00:06:33.360 --> 00:06:37.680
So how can we begin to understand the union of divinity and humanity?
00:06:38.000 --> 00:06:44.319
The great moment requires greatness to explain it, what Scripture calls the greatest of these.
00:06:44.560 --> 00:06:49.120
Jesus tells us that the commandments are summed up in loving God and loving our neighbor.
00:06:49.360 --> 00:06:53.759
Paul says that faith, hope, and love remain, and the greatest of these is love.
00:06:54.000 --> 00:07:01.360
And then in John 17, Jesus says something remarkable to the Father, you loved me before the foundation of the world.
00:07:01.600 --> 00:07:04.079
Before creation there was love.
00:07:04.480 --> 00:07:06.319
Love is not something God created.
00:07:06.560 --> 00:07:08.639
Love is not merely something God does.
00:07:08.800 --> 00:07:11.120
Love is the eternal life of God.
00:07:11.360 --> 00:07:16.639
Before there were worlds, there was Father, Son, and Spirit, giving, receiving, knowing, and loving.
00:07:16.879 --> 00:07:22.319
And because creation comes from this God, creation bears the marks of relationship.
00:07:22.480 --> 00:07:25.600
Nothing exists entirely unto itself.
00:07:25.839 --> 00:07:32.800
Everything receives its existence and is sustained through relationships with things outside of itself.
00:07:33.040 --> 00:07:38.240
At the foundation of reality there is gift and receipt, communion and love.
00:07:38.879 --> 00:07:42.240
It gives us a way of approaching the mystery of the incarnation.
00:07:42.959 --> 00:07:52.240
Divinity gives himself fully to humanity without ceasing to be divine, and humanity fully inhabits divinity without ceasing to be human.
00:07:52.480 --> 00:07:56.639
The Father is in the Son, the Son is in the Father.
00:07:56.879 --> 00:08:02.240
And in Jesus Christ we encounter divinity in humanity, in humanity in divinity.
00:08:03.040 --> 00:08:08.480
The incarnation is not a mechanical attachment of two incompatible substances.
00:08:08.720 --> 00:08:16.240
It is the supreme manifestation within creation of what has always been true in God, giving of self.
00:08:16.480 --> 00:08:19.759
And that has profound implications for how we live.
00:08:20.000 --> 00:08:23.839
Scripture tells us that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit.
00:08:24.000 --> 00:08:25.600
And there is an important point here.
00:08:25.839 --> 00:08:31.519
When Paul calls us God's temple, he's not speaking merely about isolated Christian individuals.
00:08:31.759 --> 00:08:35.120
Collectively, the church is the temple of God.
00:08:35.360 --> 00:08:39.360
We are God's people united to one another by the Holy Spirit.
00:08:39.519 --> 00:08:49.200
Our different gifts, lives, personalities, and callings are joined together so that together we become the dwelling place of God in the world.
00:08:49.440 --> 00:08:57.519
We do not become God, we do not become incarnations of the Word, but we are called to become dwelling places of the Most High.
00:08:57.759 --> 00:09:08.480
And this is exactly what Christ prays for in John 17, that we would be one as the Father and the Son are one, that we would abide in Christ, in Christ in us.
00:09:08.879 --> 00:09:15.840
And as that happens, the life and love of God begins to become visible through or incarnate in us.
00:09:16.159 --> 00:09:26.080
We give ourselves to one another, we receive one another as gifts, we live not for ourselves, but for another, because this is the way.
00:09:26.320 --> 00:09:28.960
Before all things, this was the way.
00:09:29.120 --> 00:09:36.159
And therefore, the good life, the truly human life, is a life patterned after that reality.
00:09:37.279 --> 00:09:40.639
Next week we'll look at the flip side of the coin of the incarnation.
00:09:40.879 --> 00:09:43.279
Man is the image bearer of God.
00:09:43.440 --> 00:09:45.840
So until then, a word of wisdom for your day.
00:09:46.159 --> 00:09:50.879
For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program.
00:09:51.519 --> 00:09:53.039
Grace and peace.
00:00:10.320 --> 00:00:14.320
Hi everyone, happy Tuesday, and welcome back to Worldview Academy's QuickCast.
00:00:14.400 --> 00:00:16.079
I'm your host, Del Cook.
00:00:16.239 --> 00:00:24.239
Thanks once again for allowing us into your week with thoughtful worldview content, encouraging biblical teachings, and timely contemporary commentary.
00:00:24.559 --> 00:00:37.520
This week, The God Man, Christianity's other astoundingly audacious and mind-blowing claim that in one man, Jesus of Nazareth, the complete fullness of deity dwells.
00:00:37.840 --> 00:00:39.200
How does that work?
00:01:27.359 --> 00:01:44.959
Now it's also in my humble opinion that the most important words ever spoken by human lips, not under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, were from the North Carolinian songwriter James Taylor when he sang in that classic Carolina in my mind, there ain't no doubt in no one's mind that love is the finest thing around.
00:01:45.200 --> 00:01:50.000
Now, in these two statements, I believe we have the summation of all the world's wisdom.
00:01:50.239 --> 00:02:01.040
The infinite, transcendent creator of the world manifests himself within the finite material world, and that's accomplished in the basic essential reality of the world.
00:02:01.280 --> 00:02:04.319
Now that's no small claim, and it's no small mystery.
00:02:04.560 --> 00:02:07.439
How can the infinite and the finite be united?
00:02:07.599 --> 00:02:11.599
How can divinity and humanity exist together in one person?
00:02:12.159 --> 00:02:15.599
Well, let's start by considering what the incarnation is not.
00:02:16.080 --> 00:02:19.599
First, the incarnation is not merely an appearance of God.
00:02:19.840 --> 00:02:24.159
Many religions and mythologies contain stories of gods appearing in human form.
00:02:24.400 --> 00:02:28.960
We see versions of this in Hinduism, in Greek, Norse, and Egyptian mythology.
00:02:29.199 --> 00:02:34.719
A god puts on the likeness of humanity for a time, almost like putting on a mask.
00:02:35.039 --> 00:02:37.759
Christianity claims something fundamentally different, though.
00:02:38.000 --> 00:02:41.919
God does not merely appear to be human, he becomes human.
00:02:42.479 --> 00:02:46.080
Second, we should not understand the incarnation as God's plan be.
00:02:46.319 --> 00:02:53.280
It's not simply God's reaction to the fall, as though humanity sinned and God suddenly needed to devise a rescue mission.
00:02:53.520 --> 00:02:57.039
From the beginning, God's purpose for creation has been communion.
00:02:57.199 --> 00:03:00.800
God creates a world in which humanity can live in communion with Him.
00:03:01.039 --> 00:03:04.159
That is why Genesis repeatedly calls creation good.
00:03:04.639 --> 00:03:08.400
Now, interestingly, it does not call creation perfect.
00:03:08.719 --> 00:03:19.280
Humanity is commanded to be fruitful, multiply, tend the garden, and act in such a way as to bring that world toward its intended perfect fulfillment.
00:03:19.680 --> 00:03:22.560
And where does the biblical story ultimately end?
00:03:22.800 --> 00:03:25.120
With God and humanity dwelling together.
00:03:25.280 --> 00:03:30.080
Revelation presents heaven and earth united and God dwelling with man.
00:03:30.319 --> 00:03:41.439
In that sense, the incarnation is not simply a response to the fall, it reveals where the entire story has always been headed toward communion between God and his creation.
00:03:41.680 --> 00:03:44.159
Well, so what then is the creation?
00:03:44.479 --> 00:03:49.039
Well, John's extraordinary words tell us the word became flesh.
00:03:49.280 --> 00:03:57.840
The beginning of John's Gospel echoes the beginning words of Genesis in the beginning God created, and it says in the beginning was the Lagos.
00:03:58.479 --> 00:04:04.240
Lagos is normally translated word, but the Greek carries a much richer range of meaning.
00:04:04.479 --> 00:04:10.080
It can communicate reason, wisdom, principle, order, the fundamental way things are.
00:04:10.479 --> 00:04:21.439
John is telling us that the ultimate reality underlying everything, the way, the truth, and the life, became flesh, not appeared as flesh, became flesh.
00:04:21.680 --> 00:04:25.040
Think about God's revelation to Moses in Exodus.
00:04:25.279 --> 00:04:32.079
Moses asks God whom he should say has sent him, and God answers, Yahweh, I am.
00:04:32.720 --> 00:04:36.399
God does not merely possess existence in the way that we do.
00:04:36.720 --> 00:04:40.319
We participate in being, but God is being.
00:04:40.560 --> 00:04:47.120
Or as Scripture says through the Apostle Paul, in him we live and move and have our being.
00:04:47.360 --> 00:04:51.360
And then something astonishing happens in the incarnation.
00:04:51.680 --> 00:04:58.319
Being becomes the great I am becomes here I am.
00:04:59.040 --> 00:05:02.480
The eternal inhabits a particular time and place.
00:05:02.959 --> 00:05:04.560
Jesus is born to Mary.
00:05:04.639 --> 00:05:13.199
He lives in Nazareth, he walks particular roads, speaks to particular people, and suffers under their a particular Roman governor, Pontius Pilate.
00:05:13.439 --> 00:05:32.240
The gospel writers deliberately ground the story in history because the Christian claim is not that God symbolically appeared, the life was manifest, the transcendent became imminent, the invisible visible, the one who is became present among us so that he could be seen, heard, and touched.
00:05:32.560 --> 00:05:34.639
But that creates another question.
00:05:34.959 --> 00:05:35.519
How?
00:05:36.240 --> 00:05:39.279
Once again, let's consider how it doesn't work.
00:05:39.759 --> 00:05:46.240
Since the time of the incarnation, any number of attempts have been proffered to rationally explain John's claim.
00:05:46.480 --> 00:05:52.560
Those explanations ultimately diminish either Christ's humanity or his divinity, though.
00:05:52.800 --> 00:06:12.240
Some said that Jesus only appeared human, others said he was a created divine being, and some suggested he was a human being upon whom God placed divinity, and still others attempted to make Jesus a sort of pastiche, simply attaching divinity and humanity together like some sort of Frankenstein.
00:06:12.480 --> 00:06:18.800
The problem with these explanations is that they turn the incarnation into something almost mechanical.
00:06:19.120 --> 00:06:23.759
God puts on humanity like clothing, or humanity puts on divinity.
00:06:24.000 --> 00:06:33.040
But these descriptions fail to express or account for what John describes in Jesus manifests, the word became flesh.
00:06:33.360 --> 00:06:37.680
So how can we begin to understand the union of divinity and humanity?
00:06:38.000 --> 00:06:44.319
The great moment requires greatness to explain it, what Scripture calls the greatest of these.
00:06:44.560 --> 00:06:49.120
Jesus tells us that the commandments are summed up in loving God and loving our neighbor.
00:06:49.360 --> 00:06:53.759
Paul says that faith, hope, and love remain, and the greatest of these is love.
00:06:54.000 --> 00:07:01.360
And then in John 17, Jesus says something remarkable to the Father, you loved me before the foundation of the world.
00:07:01.600 --> 00:07:04.079
Before creation there was love.
00:07:04.480 --> 00:07:06.319
Love is not something God created.
00:07:06.560 --> 00:07:08.639
Love is not merely something God does.
00:07:08.800 --> 00:07:11.120
Love is the eternal life of God.
00:07:11.360 --> 00:07:16.639
Before there were worlds, there was Father, Son, and Spirit, giving, receiving, knowing, and loving.
00:07:16.879 --> 00:07:22.319
And because creation comes from this God, creation bears the marks of relationship.
00:07:22.480 --> 00:07:25.600
Nothing exists entirely unto itself.
00:07:25.839 --> 00:07:32.800
Everything receives its existence and is sustained through relationships with things outside of itself.
00:07:33.040 --> 00:07:38.240
At the foundation of reality there is gift and receipt, communion and love.
00:07:38.879 --> 00:07:42.240
It gives us a way of approaching the mystery of the incarnation.
00:07:42.959 --> 00:07:52.240
Divinity gives himself fully to humanity without ceasing to be divine, and humanity fully inhabits divinity without ceasing to be human.
00:07:52.480 --> 00:07:56.639
The Father is in the Son, the Son is in the Father.
00:07:56.879 --> 00:08:02.240
And in Jesus Christ we encounter divinity in humanity, in humanity in divinity.
00:08:03.040 --> 00:08:08.480
The incarnation is not a mechanical attachment of two incompatible substances.
00:08:08.720 --> 00:08:16.240
It is the supreme manifestation within creation of what has always been true in God, giving of self.
00:08:16.480 --> 00:08:19.759
And that has profound implications for how we live.
00:08:20.000 --> 00:08:23.839
Scripture tells us that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit.
00:08:24.000 --> 00:08:25.600
And there is an important point here.
00:08:25.839 --> 00:08:31.519
When Paul calls us God's temple, he's not speaking merely about isolated Christian individuals.
00:08:31.759 --> 00:08:35.120
Collectively, the church is the temple of God.
00:08:35.360 --> 00:08:39.360
We are God's people united to one another by the Holy Spirit.
00:08:39.519 --> 00:08:49.200
Our different gifts, lives, personalities, and callings are joined together so that together we become the dwelling place of God in the world.
00:08:49.440 --> 00:08:57.519
We do not become God, we do not become incarnations of the Word, but we are called to become dwelling places of the Most High.
00:08:57.759 --> 00:09:08.480
And this is exactly what Christ prays for in John 17, that we would be one as the Father and the Son are one, that we would abide in Christ, in Christ in us.
00:09:08.879 --> 00:09:15.840
And as that happens, the life and love of God begins to become visible through or incarnate in us.
00:09:16.159 --> 00:09:26.080
We give ourselves to one another, we receive one another as gifts, we live not for ourselves, but for another, because this is the way.
00:09:26.320 --> 00:09:28.960
Before all things, this was the way.
00:09:29.120 --> 00:09:36.159
And therefore, the good life, the truly human life, is a life patterned after that reality.
00:09:37.279 --> 00:09:40.639
Next week we'll look at the flip side of the coin of the incarnation.
00:09:40.879 --> 00:09:43.279
Man is the image bearer of God.
00:09:43.440 --> 00:09:45.840
So until then, a word of wisdom for your day.
00:09:46.159 --> 00:09:50.879
For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program.
00:09:51.519 --> 00:09:53.039
Grace and peace.
