Apologetica Christos: 3rd Disputation

Most Excellent Theophilus, “Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1:2) In examining this rock of offense, which is the foundation of our most holy faith, it is pertinent we pull together all the clues from God’s word to make clear the picture of divine struggle. Yes, the Father struggled with the decision, saith that writer:

“Think ye that the Father yielded up His dearly beloved Son without a struggle? No, no." It was even a struggle with the God of heaven, whether to let guilty man perish, or to give His darling Son to die for them” (EW pg 127)

And so, the Father and the Son went into council for “the counsel of peace shall be between them both” (Zechariah 6:13) In it, the Father gave Christ the authority as agreed in previous councils to take up humanity as His eternal form, this meaning Jesus had to give up His God-form forever. Such was the infinite cost, but it was at first a struggle. Why was it a struggle with God? Isn't God omniscient? didn't he know that His Son would emerge victor? My dear friend, here is a fact glossed over by the Churches. Too often our conceptions of God are marred by our embellished imaginations of His attributes. Because we are not omniscient, omnipresent or omnipotent, we come to imagine God to be impersonal in His operations. God is a person just as you and I are persons. Before the flood of Noah, the record states:

And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man...And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart - (Genesis 6:3,5-6)

He has emotions, He has hopes, He can be heartbroken. He truly and dearly loved His Son [for Christ is truly His Son] and "In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him." (1 John 4:9) "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son," (John 3:16). Those with sons or daughters would know what it feels. God is not this stoic statue of a being, but, His affections are holy, and yet He has them. As we were created in His image, we reflect this divine reality, God's great apotheosis to the universe. What does this knowledge do to you?

In an earlier council between God and His Son...“With clasped hands they entered into the solemn pledge that Christ would become the substitute and surety for the human race if they were overcome by Satan's sophistry.” (5BC pg 1149) Now the time had come. Man must be saved. Jesus now received His commission to come to earth, the Son of God, and become the Son of man.

The Churches teach that the Holy Spirit went out to make Mary pregnant. This is absolutely ridiculous and carnal. Nobody made anybody pregnant. Jesus overshadowed her with His spiritual presence and mysteriously joined her womb with a body formulated for Him by His Father that involved Mary's DNA. "Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me:" (Hebrews 10:5). Jesus came to her by His Spirit to become human and something happened there we may never fully understand. God became incarnate. By a process we have no mechanics of understanding, our Lord did something to Himself for “great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh” (1 Timothy 3:16) The baseline simply being, a divine being made Himself mortal. That’s the cost. Immortality. Infinite in its size, unfathomable to the mind, our Lord laid it down. What humility! The enemy of souls did not see this coming, he would rather kill for immortality. But of our Christ we read:

(Philippians 2:5) Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:

(Philippians 2:6) Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:

(Philippians 2:7) But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:

Until next time, the great love of God and the mind of His only son be with you.