Athanasius stood alone in Christendom to defend the essential doctrine of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, against the widespread heresy of Arianism.
These are only preliminary, unedited outlines and may differ from Andy’s final message.
And in a word, the achievements of the Savior, resulting from His becoming man, are of such a kind and number that if one should wish to enumerate them, he may be compared to men who gaze at the expanse of the sea and wish to count its waves.
For as one cannot take in the whole of the waves with his eyes, for those which are coming on baffle the sense of him that attempts it, so for him that would take in all the achievements of Christ in the body, it is impossible to take in the whole, even by reckoning them up, as those which go beyond his thought are more than those he thinks he has taken in.
Better is it, then, not to aim at speaking of the whole, where one cannot do justice even to a part, but, after mentioning one more, to leave the whole for you to marvel at. For all are alike marvelous, and wherever a man turns his glance, he may behold on that side the divinity of the Word, and be struck with exceeding great awe.
[Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word]
[What follows relies on John Piper, 27 Servants of Sovereign Joy, “Contending for Christ Contra Mundum: Exile and Incarnation in the Life of Athanasius”]
I. Understanding Arianism and the Battle Over the Incarnation
A. Arianism Defined
Jesus Christ was not truly divine (God) but was God’s first and greatest creation, made out of nothing by God, but of essentially the same substance as the created order. These slogans define it:
‘There was a time when he was not’; and, ‘He was not before he was made’; and ‘He was made out of nothing, or out of another substance of thing’; or ‘The Son of God is created, or changeable, or alterable’
B. Context: How Arianism arose
1. The concept of Christ’s deity led to the infinitely mysterious doctrine of the Trinity
2. Many educated people in the Greco-Roman world could not accept it and sought to explain it by philosophy
3. Earlier heresy: modalism… that God appears at different times in the three different roles, sometimes as Father, sometimes as Son, sometimes as Spirit… but always the one God
4. BUT this flies directly in the face of how the gospels are written; the Father speaking about the Son at his baptism, Jesus calling out in prayer to the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane
5. After modalism was rejected, some theologians worked on language that sought to separate the persons of the Trinity as far as possible from each other: the Father was NOT the Son, the Son NOT the Father, etc.
6. Arius was an extreme anti-Modalist; he argued that the Father alone was truly God, and that the Son was the first and greatest creature of the Father. A father gives life through birth to his son and no one considers them the same being. Arius made it clear that there was a time Jesus did not exist. The Father made him to give us salvation. The Son is more like us than he was like God.
7. Athanasius saw that, if this was true, Jesus could not really be our Lord and Savior
C. Modern-day Version: Jehovah’s Witnesses
D. Battle for Orthodoxy… for the Proper Understanding of Christ
John 1:1-5 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
John 1:14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Other than the writers of Scripture, Athanasius was the man most personally responsible for the orthodox understanding of the Incarnation and the Trinity.
II. Overview of Athanasius’s Life
A. A Bishop Beloved by His People
1. Born AD 298 in Egypt
2. Became bishop of Alexandria, Egypt, on June 8, 328 (30 years old)
3. People of Egypt “viewed him as” their bishop until he died on May 2, 373 (75 years old)
4. “Viewed as” because the Imperial Church forced him into exile five times; 17 of 45 years as bishop spent in exile; BUT the people were fiercely loyal to him and considered the others as false bishops
5. Gregory of Nazianzus, giving a memorial message seven years after Athanasius’s death, said when Athanasius returned from his third exile (364) after being gone for six years, people flocked from the distant countryside filled with joy just to hear his voice again or see him back in his position
6. Words of highest praise:
Gregory: “Let one praise him in his fastings and prayers… another in his unweariedness and zeal for vigils and psalmody, another his patronage of the needy, another his dauntlessness towards the powerful, or his condescension to the lowly…. He was to the unfortunate their consolation, the hoary-headed their staff, youths their instructor, the poor their resource, the wealthy their steward. Even the widows will praise their protector, even the orphans their father, even the poor their benefactor, strangers their entertainer, brethren the man of brotherly love, the sick their physician.”
Archibald Robertson (biographer): “In the whole of our [limited] knowledge of his life there is a total lack of self-interest. The glory of God and the welfare of the Church absorbed him fully at all times… The Emperors recognized him as a political force of the first order… but on no occasion does he yield to the temptation of using the arm of flesh. Almost unconscious of his own power, his humility is more real for never being conspicuously paraded. Courage, self-sacrifice, steadiness of purpose, versatility, and resourcefulness, width of ready sympathy, were all harmonized by deep reverence and the discipline of a single-minded lover of Christ.”
B. Father of Orthodoxy Contra Mundum
1. Athanasius was known for his battle for the orthodox view of the incarnation of Christ
2. A lifelong battle to explain and defend Christ’s deity and to worship Christ as Lord and God
3. For a significant stretch of time, he basically stood alone in this fight against all the combined powers of the Imperial Church—the bishops who were in place under the authority of the Roman Emperor
4. Hence the famous expression, Athanasius contra mundum… “Athanasius against the world”
5. BUT “fighting for orthodoxy” is a strange phrase… since the orthodox view of Christ was not yet articulated and agreed-upon
6. It was this very battle that established what all succeeding generations of Christians would believe about the incarnation of the Son of God
7. The mysterious doctrine of the Trinity and the exact relationships between the Father, Son, and Spirit had not yet received any formal treatment
8. The Council of Nicaea was supposed to settle it, but if it had, there would not have been a conflict over the next sixty years with Athanasius at the center of it for forty-five years
C. Arius: Leader of a Heresy that Swept the Roman World
1. The war began in the year AD 319, led by a deacon in Alexandria named Arius, born in 256 in Libya
2. He argued in a letter he wrote to Bishop Alexander that if the Son of God were truly a Son, he must have had a beginning
3. We have very little primary source stuff from Arius, who died in 336. He actually ended up being a very small character in this drama… but his ideas came to be known as “Arianism”
4. It is the false teaching at the core of the Jehovah’s Witness cult today… that Jesus is God’s greatest created being, but not God himself
5. Athanasius was just over twenty years of age when it all started… forty years younger than Arius!
6. Central to this controversy was the role human philosophy played in Arianism vs. biblical orthodoxy
7. Athanasius was steeped in biblical truth from meditating carefully on every book in the Old and New Testaments
8. He used his biblical knowledge to chop down the philosophical speculations of the Arians
9. In 321, a synod was convened in Alexandria and Arius was deposed from his office, and his views declared heretical
10. Athanasius, at age 23, wrote the deposition for Bishop Alexander, starting the role he would play for the next fifty-two years, writing to declare the glories of the incarnate Son of God
11. This deposition of Arius would unleash sixty years of ecclesiastical and empire-wide political conflict
12. Eusebius of Nicomedia (Izmet, Turkey) took up Arius’s theology and became its champion; the “Eusebians” were Arians… the eastern part of the Roman Empire was predominantly Arian
13. This is despite the fact that the Council of Nicaea supposedly settled the whole issue; hundreds of bishops signed it, but willfully twisted the language to match it with Arianism
D. The Council of Nicaea (AD 325)
1. In 312, Emperor Constantine had seen the sign of the cross before his climactic battle of the Milvian Bridge by which he won the Roman Empire and was converted to Christianity
2. He used the power of the Roman Empire to shape church life; that intermingling of church and state was a big part of the persecution that Athanasius had to endure
3. Constantine wanted a unified empire and was deeply concerned about the political effect this theological debate would have… bishops wielded tremendous influence over the people and whenever they were at odds, the empire was rendered unstable
4. His Christian advisor Hosius, tried to mediate the Arian controversy at Constantinople but had failed
5. So in 325, Constantine summoned 318 bishops (plus other attenders, like Athanasius and Arius, who were not bishops). Constantine fixed the order of the Council and enforced its decisions with civil penalties
6. The Council of Nicaea lasted from May through August and ended with a statement of orthodoxy on the incarnation that has lasted till this present day
7. What we presently call the Nicene Creed is the statement that was written in 325 but slightly altered at the Council of Constantinople in 381
8. The anathema at the end of the statement clearly shows what the issues were
9. The Creed was written in Greek; here it is in English:
“We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, the only begotten, that is, of the essence of the Father [Greek: ek tes ousias tou patros], God of God, and Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father [Greek: homo-ousian tou patri], by whom all things were made in heaven and on earth; who for us men and for our salvation, came down and was incarnate and was made man; he suffered, and the third day he rose again, ascended into heaven; from thence he comes to judge the living and the dead.
And in the Holy Ghost.
And those who say: ‘There was a time when he was not’; and, ‘He was not before he was made’; and ‘He was made out of nothing, or out of another substance of thing’; or ‘The Son of God is created, or changeable, or alterable’, they are condemned by the holy catholic and apostolic Church.”
10. The key statement was “being of one substance with the Father” [Greek: homo-ousian tou patri] made everything crystal clear. The Son of God could not have been created because he did not have merely a similar being with the Father [Greek: homoiousian tou patri]
11. Christ was not brought into existence with a similar being to the Father but was eternally one with the divine being
12. These two words homoousian and homoiousian differ only by one single letter in the Greek… the letter “i” (iota), leading some skeptical historians to mock so much ado over an iota. But the difference is infinitely vast!!
13. AMAZINGLY… all but two bishops at the Council of Nicaea signed the creed, some doing so with absolute duplicity—not believing it at all
14. Several key leaders of Arianism (including Arius himself) were sent into immediate exile
15. Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia managed to squeak by with significant mental reservations, but four years later persuaded Constantine that Arius actually held substantially to the Nicene Creed!!
16. Athanasius’s mentor, Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria died on April 17, 328, and Athanasius took over in his place… the mantle of leadership in this orthodox cause fell to him for the rest of his life
17. The bishopric of Alexandria was the second most influential in the Christian world behind only Rome; under Athanasius’s leadership, Arianism almost entirely died out in his region—all of Egypt and Libya
E. The Desert Monk and Antony
1. Several years before all this, Athanasius had made a visit with Alexander to the Thebaid, a desert region in southern Egypt, where they met with the early desert monks… strict ascetics who lived lives of solitude, celibacy, discipline, prayer, simplicity, and service to the poor
2. Athanasius was deeply affected by this visit and felt his soul set on fire by their piety and example
3. They also held him in awe… resulting in a powerful bond between the city-dwelling bishop and these desert-dwelling monks
4. He frequently asked their input and their critiques of his writings and his lifestyle
5. This relationship became a matter of literally life and death for Athanasius when he was driven into exile by forces of the empire
6. These monks would shelter him and keep him from falling into the hands of the authorities, who desperately wanted to find him and execute him
7. One monk in particular captured Athanasius’s mind: Antony, sometimes called the father of monasticism
8. Antony was born in 251; at 20, he sold all his possessions and moved into the desert, but continued to serve the poor near him; at 35, he withdrew into entire solitude for twenty years, during which time no one knew if he was alive or dead; at age 55 he returned and began a ministry to other monks and to many people who sought him out for counsel and prayer; he died at age 105 in the year 356
9. Athanasius wrote the biography of Antony… he was his ideal Christian man; a combination of solitude and compassion for the poor based on unshakeable doctrinal purity
F. Athanasius: At the Center of Controversy
1. Within two years of becoming Bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius was at the center of controversy
2. Most of the bishops who signed the Nicene Creed did not want to call anyone a “heretic”, even if they agreed with the statement; they looked on a zealot like Athanasius as a disturber of the peace of the empire and wanted him gone
3. So they began trumping up charges against him, including that Athanasius was charging illegal taxes; they also claimed he was too young to be a bishop, that he used magic, and that he was paying for treasonous people to trouble the empire
4. Constantine didn’t like his stridency for doctrine either… he wanted peace, order, and unity
5. SO in 331, the emperor called Athanasius to Rome to face the charges the bishops were alleging. He was acquitted, but his zeal for orthodoxy was clearly increasingly in the minority
G. Exile after Exile
1. The First Exile (336-337): His enemies resorted now to intrigue. They bribed Arsenius, a bishop in southern Egypt, to disappear, so that they could claim that Athanasius had arranged for his murder and had had one of his hands cut off to use for magic. Constantine was told, and arranged for another trial… this one held in Tyre. But one of Athanasius’s trusted deacons managed to find Arsenius hiding in a monastery and had taken him captive and transported him secretly to Tyre for the trial. At the trial, the accusers actually produced a gruesome human hand as proof of Athanasius’s guilt. Athanasius asked his accusers, “Did you know Arsenius personally?” They answered that they did. Then Arsenius was ushered in, wrapped in a cloak. When his identity was revealed, they were shocked, but demanded to know how he’d lost his hand. Part of the cloak was pulled back, revealing that he still had one hand. Then dramatically, the second hand was also revealed. Whereupon Athanasius asked his accusers how his third hand had been cut off!! YET despite all this, Athanasius was still condemned by this council and had to flee in a boat. His accusers gave up the Arsenius angle (obviously), but came up with other charges using false witnesses. They claimed that Athanasius had tried to starve Constantinople by refusing shipments of wheat from Alexandria. Constantine, with no evidence at all for this charge, banished Athanasius to Treveri (modern-day Luxembourg) on February 8, 336. Constantine died the next year, and the empire was divided among his three sons: Constantius (taking the East), Constans (Italy and Illyricum), and Constantine II (Gaul, Africa). Constantine II immediately restored Athanasius to his office in Alexandria (November 23, 337)
2. The Second Exile (339-346): Two years later, Eusebius, the leader of the Arian cause, persuaded Constantius to get rid of Athanasius. He took ecclesiastical power into his hands and declared Gregory the bishop of Alexandria, put an imperial governor in charge of the city, and Athanasius was forced to flee to avoid bloodshed. This was the second exile, the longest of them… seven years and six months. Constantine’s two other sons (Constantine II and Constans) supported Athanasius and got him officially reinstated in 343, but other political issues prevented his return for three more years. He came back in October of 346 to the great rejoicing of his people.
3. The Third Exile (356-362): On January 18, 350, Constans was murdered, freeing Constantius to attack Athanasius and the Nicene theology unopposed. The people of Alexandria held off an imperial attack on their city in 355, but on February 8, 356, Constantius’s commander pressed an attack successfully while Athanasius was presiding at a large communion service. Constantius’s soldiers surrounded the church, then broke in the doors. Athanasius did not give way to fear, but calmly took his seat on the bishop’s throne, and conducted the prayer service. Despite his people begging him to escape, Athanasius would not leave until all the people were safe. Then a band of loyal and courageous monks grabbed Athanasius in the confusion and managed to smuggle him out of the building. For the next six years and fourteen days, Athanasius completely disappeared from view. He was protected out in the desert by the loyal holy hermits, none of whom betrayed him either from fear of death or promised reward. Constantius’s henchmen searched everywhere for him, but the people’s loyalty to him was unswerving, despite the fact that the soldiers committed some of the most horrible atrocities in the name of the Arian Emperor. During those six years, Athanasius wrote some of his most influential writings on the deity of Christ: The Arian History; Tracts Against Arians; Letters to Serapion; and On the Councils of Ariminium and Seleucia. The last of these was his response to two councils meant to settle the controversy once and for all and promote the unity of the empire. The councils were a lukewarm compromise saying the Son is “like the Father” but failed to specify how. Athanasius saw more clearly than any person alive at that time (or perhaps since) this truth: nothing less than belief in the full deity of Christ was essential to the salvation of human souls.
This third exile marked the summit of Athanasius’s achievement. This is when he was said to be “against the world”, a fugitive living constantly within inches of his death. Athanasius was showing by steady argumentation the inherent flaws in the Arian system. It began to fall apart through its own inconsistencies. The combination of his clarity, writing skill, and courage as well as the amazing loyalty of his followers to never give him up marked the high point of his life. Athanasius returned to his bishop’s seat in February of 362 when another emperor, Julian the Apostate, took power and reversed all the banishments of Constantius. During Athanasius’s brief time of favor with the pagan emperor, Athanasius called a synod in Alexandria and solidified the theological gains he had won with his writing while in exile. Basically this synod snatched the Christian world from the jaws of Satan and united the orthodox for years to come. They would need it, because the next emperor, Valens, who ruled from 364-378, would be aggressively Arian.
4. The Fourth Exile (363-364): Julian the Apostate became incredibly angry at Athanasius when he realized that he took Christianity seriously enough to reject the classical pagan gods of Rome that Julian sought to reinstate. So Athanasius fled and spent fifteen months with the desert monks. There is a story that Athanasius returned to his position by a prophecy that the emperor had fallen that very day in battle. He acted on it, and it turned out to be true! Athanasius was restored on February 14, 364.
5. The Fifth Exile (365-366): A year and a half later, Emperor Valens ordered that all bishops expelled by Julian should again be removed by civil authorities. On October 5, 365, the Roman authorities broke into the church in Alexandria, but Athanasius had been warned and fled in time… his fifth and final exile. It lasted only four months because the emperor was in a precarious position politically and Athanasius’s popularity was a threat to him. Athanasius spent the remainder of his life pastoring the people he loved so well. He died May 2, 373.
III. Timeless Lessons from John Piper
A. Defending and explaining doctrine is for the sake of the gospel and our everlasting joy
1. Athanasius said, “This struggle is for our all… let us also make it our earnest care and aim to guard what we have received.”
2. The deity of the incarnate Son of God is essential to our salvation… and therefore to our present and eternal joy
3. There is NO SALVATION if Christ is not God
B. Joyful courage is the calling of a faithful shepherd of souls
1. Athanasius courageously faced head-on murderous intruders to his church building; this was a clear symbol of his larger fight for doctrinal purity against false teachers
2. Pastors need to be willing to take courageous stands for the souls of their flock
3. Courage needs to be clearly mingled with joy, to confound and convert rage-filled adversaries
Athanasius: “Let us be courageous and rejoice always… Let us consider and lay to heart that while the Lord is with us, our foes can do us no hurt…. But if they see us rejoicing in the Lord, contemplating the bliss of the future, mindful of the Lord, deeming all things in his hand—they are discomfited and turned backwards.”
C. Loving Christ includes loving propositions about Christ
1. Propositions represent truths mined from scripture, and getting those propositions right is the difference between eternity in heaven or hell
2. Things like “There was a time when the Son of God was not” can damn a soul
3. In our modern scene, some people minimize doctrinal precision as DIVISIVE (just like in Athanasius’s day… the reason so many hated him was he was causing relational trouble over doctrine, calling people “heretics”)
4. Modern sentences like “Christ unites us, doctrine divides us” Athanasius would have hated
5. Knowledge ABOUT Christ is not the same as LOVING Christ; but true knowledge about a loved one is essential to that love relationship
D. Biblical truth/language must be defended with non-biblical language
1. Biblical language can be used to assert falsehoods
2. The Arian bishops constantly were slippery on their views and cited many passages to support their doctrines
3. Look at this description of the events at the Council of Nicaea:
The Alexandrians . . . confronted the Arians with the traditional Scriptural phrases which appeared to leave no doubt as to the eternal Godhead of the Son. But to their surprise they were met with perfect acquiescence. Only as each test was propounded, it was observed that the suspected party whispered and gesticulated to one another, evidently hinting that each could be safely accepted, since it admitted of evasion. If their assent was asked to the formula “like to the Father in all things,” it was given with the reservation that man as such is “the image and glory of God.” The “power of God” elicited the whispered explanation that the host of Israel was spoken of as dunamis kuriou, and that even the locust and caterpillar are called the “power of God.” The “eternity” of the Son was countered by the text, “We that live are always (2 Corinthians 4:11)!” The fathers were baffled, and the test of homoosion, with which the minority had been ready from the first, was being forced (p. 172) upon the majority by the evasions of the Arians.”
4. The problem was that the whole debate was over the meaning of the biblical language itself!
5. The essence of good theology is recasting theological truths in non-biblical language that accurately reflects those truths. The crafting of that non-biblical language is what good teaching/preaching is all about in Christian churches, seminaries, publishing houses, etc.
E. Widespread/long-held dispute does not mean its insignificant, not worth fighting for
1. Someone could argue with Athanasius, “People have disagreed over the deity of Christ for three hundred years! Who do you think you are, dividing the church now over something no one has been able to resolve over that time?”
2. Athanasius did not think that way… error is error
3. Luther didn’t think like that either! The medieval Roman Catholic church had some bad doctrines and practices for centuries. He was willing to evaluate them all in light of the scriptures and fight for truth
F. Pastors should aim to preach not only in categories of thought that can be readily understood by its generation, but also aim at creating biblical categories of thought that are not present
1. Piper points out two important themes in the bible that we need to harmonize:
The Indigenous Principle:
1 Corinthians 9:22 I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.
The Pilgrim Principle:
Romans 12:2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
2. Some of the most critical truths in Christian theology do not fit easily into the fallen human mind
3. The orthodox understanding of the Incarnation and the Trinity are undoubtedly among them
4. We have to challenge our generation of hearers to learn whole new categories of thought that accurately capture what the Bible truly teaches
G. The danger of adapting to the “seekers”
1. The conversion of Constantine and the Edict of Milan in the year 313 opened the floodgates to many heathen people unconverted into the church
2. For many of those people, Arianism was much more understandable than the Nicene Creed
3. It is tempting to grow a church by pandering to the thought patterns that sit well with our generation
4. As we do try to employ “The Indigenous Principle” making the gospel comprehensible to our culture and time, we also need to transform them by radical new thoughts that blow their minds:
Piper’s list:
· God rules the world of bliss and suffering and sin, right down to the roll of the dice and the fall of a bird and the driving of the nail into the hand of his Son, yet, though he will that such sin and suffering be, he does not sin, but is perfectly holy.
· God governs all the steps of all people, both good and bad, at all times and in all places, yet such that all are accountable before him and will bear the just consequences of his wrath if they do not believe in Christ.
· All are dead in their trespasses and sin and are not morally able to come to Christ because of their rebellion, yet, they are responsible to come and will be justly punished if they don’t.
· Jesus Christ is one person with two natures, divine and human, such that he upheld the world by the word of his power while living in his mother’s womb.
· Sin, though committed by a finite person and in the confines of finite time is nevertheless deserving of an infinitely long punishment because it is a sin against an infinitely worthy God.
· The death of the one God-Man, Jesus Christ, so displayed and glorified the righteousness of God that God is not unrighteous to declare righteous ungodly people who simply believe in Christ.
H. Old books can teach us startling new things we really need to learn
IV. Quotations from Athanasius’s Writing
On the Incarnation of the Word
“At one and the same time — this is the wonder — as Man He was living a human life, and as Word He was sustaining the life of the universe, and as Son He was in constant union with the Father. Not even His birth from a virgin, therefore, changed Him in any way, nor was He defiled by being in the body. Rather, He sanctified the body by being in it. For His being in everything does not mean that He shares the nature of everything, only that He gives all things their being and sustains them in it. Just as the sun is not defiled by the contact of its rays with earthly objects, but rather enlightens and purifies them, so He Who made the sun is not defiled by being made known in a body, but rather the body is cleansed and quickened by His indwelling, ‘Who did no sin, nor was guile found in His mouth.’”
“…who that saw His authority over evil spirits and their response to it could doubt that He was, indeed, the Son, the Wisdom and the Power of God? Even the very creation broke silence at His behest and, marvelous to relate, confessed with one voice before the cross, that monument of victory, that He Who suffered thereon in the body was not man only, but Son of God and Savior of all. The sun veiled his face, the earth quaked, the mountains were rent asunder, all men were stricken with awe. These things showed that Christ on the cross was God, and that all creation was His slave and was bearing witness by its fear to the presence of its Master. Thus, then, God the Word revealed Himself to men through His works. We must next consider the end of His earthly life and the nature of His bodily death. This is, indeed, the very center of our faith, and everywhere you hear men speak of it; by it, too, no less than by His other acts, Christ is revealed as God and Son of God.
We have dealt as far as circumstances and our own understanding permit with the reason for His bodily manifestation. We have seen that to change the corruptible to incorruption was proper to none other than the Savior Himself, Who in the beginning made all things out of nothing; that only the Image of the Father could re-create the likeness of the Image in men, that none save our Lord Jesus Christ could give to mortals immortality, and that only the Word Who orders all things and is alone the Father’s true and sole-begotten Son could teach men about Him and abolish the worship of idols But beyond all this, there was a debt owing which must needs be paid; for, as I said before, all men were due to die. Here, then, is the second reason why the Word dwelt among us, namely that having proved His Godhead by His works, He might offer the sacrifice on behalf of all, surrendering His own temple to death in place of all, to settle man’s account with death and free him from the primal transgression. In the same act also He showed Himself mightier than death, displaying His own body incorruptible as the first-fruits of the resurrection.”
V. Why the Orthodox Doctrine of the Incarnation Matters
A. If Christ is a Creature, He Cannot Be Worshiped as God
1. Look at the fierce monotheism of Isaiah
Isaiah 42:8 I am the LORD; that is my name! I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols.
Isaiah 44:6-7 This is what the LORD says– Israel’s King and Redeemer, the LORD Almighty: I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God. 7 Who then is like me? Let him proclaim it.
Isaiah 46:5 “To whom will you compare me or count me equal? To whom will you liken me that we may be compared?
2. Look at this prayer by Christ
John 17:5 And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.
3. Look at the issue of worship
Exodus 34:14 Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.
Matthew 4:8-10 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. 9 And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” 10 Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, “‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.'”
Revelation 22:8-9 I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. And when I heard and saw them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed them to me, 9 but he said to me, “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers the prophets, and with those who keep the words of this book. Worship God.”
BUT God commanded that his Son be worshiped:
Hebrews 1:6 And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, “Let all God’s angels worship him.”
Daniel 7:13-14 “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.
Christ accepted worship as God:
John 20:28-29 Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
Matthew 28:16-17 Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.
Luke 24:51-53 While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. 52 Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. 53 And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God.
B. If Christ is God, Our Estimation of Christ Must Always Be Greater and Greater… there is no limit
NIV Philippians 2:9-11 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name
Jesus is offered the HIGHEST PLACE in our estimation and in the universe… which is, the throne of Almighty God!
Revelation 5:6 Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne
If Christ is God, no thoughts we think of him can be TOO HIGH. But if he is a creature, worshiping him would be IDOLATRY!
Like what Pharaoh said to Joseph concerning his authority in Egypt:
Genesis 41:40 You shall be in charge of my palace, and all my people are to submit to your orders. Only with respect to the throne will I be greater than you.
So the Father could say a similar thing to Jesus!!
C. Jesus Is Mediator as BOTH God AND Man
1 Timothy 2:5 For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus
Job 9:33-34 If only there were someone to arbitrate between us, to lay his hand upon us both, 34 someone to remove God’s rod from me, so that his terror would frighten me no more.
Who could do this but GOD??
If Jesus is not God but just a creation of God, in what sense did God pay the penalty himself for our sins. It’s more like, “Here is a friend of mine, one of my top creations… he’ll pay the price for your sins.” How is God himself invested??
