The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Is Jesus God or What?

Theology Christology
#129

Jason.

you said: To be fair, I think A37 thinks Christ is hung up on everyone (not only people in authority who have all the advantages and who could be expected to get things right but who are intentionally going the other way) getting a bunch of things technically right before He will save them.

Aaron37: That’s non-sense. Who are the people in authority? I have never said that anyone has to be technically right before Jesus will save them. That is absolutely ridiculous. Jesus has already been judged for the sins of the world. All anyone has to do is believe in Jesus’ finished work on the Cross and receive what God has already provided by grace. Your faith appropriates what God has already done by grace. No one has to get right first…please. Jesus will clean you up after you get born again and saved.

Btw, how many genuine born again children of God do you know that go around blaspheming Jesus and the Holy Spirit by denying the true nature of Jesus being God in the flesh? The answer is none.

#130

Dondi.

you said: What’s the difference? We’ll all see Him as He is soon enough anyway (we see in a glass darkly anyhow). Can’t you just be happy that folks have some kind of relationship with Christ without being hung up over it?

Aaron37: The difference is obvious. The Holy Spirit testifies of the true nature of Jesus. The spirit of the Antichrist denies and distorts the true nature of Jesus. How many genuine born again children of God do you know that go around blaspheming Jesus and the Holy Spirit by denying that Jesus is God in the flesh? The answer is none. That is the difference.

#131

Aaron: My only point in bringing up Arianism was that I don’t believe Christ divested himself of anything he possessed in a pre-existent state in order to “walk amongst us as a man” (which is what I understood Ran to be implying I believed).

Tom: Would you say that Arius’ Christology is then a bit “higher” than your own (given his view that Christ is created before the World and then the world created through him)?

Interesting.

T

#132

Please read my response again, Ran (as well as my post about Joseph and Pharaoh). :frowning: What you quoted above doesn’t apply to me. Paul is talking about people who worship and serve created things RATHER THAN the Creator. That is, they were disregarding the Creator and worshipping created things as if they were God! As for me, I worship and serve the Creator AS the Creator, and I worship and serve his Anointed one AS his Anointed one (not “rather than the Creator”).

#133

Aaron.

Stop blaspheming Jesus and the Holy Spirit by denying the true nature of Jesus being God in the flesh. No one else has the guts to say it…so I will say it. It’s 100% blasphemy!

#134

No, I wouldn’t. :slight_smile: It doesn’t exalt Jesus to make claims about him that simply aren’t true - just like it doesn’t make God any “greater” to say he can do illogical things (like create a square triangle). If I understood Scripture to teach that Christ pre-existed his birth, I would have no problem at all believing it. But since I don’t see that being taught in the OT (The OT and the Trinity) or in the NT, I reject it as a theological error (though not a serious one!).

#135

Aaron.

Blasphemy is serious error.

#136

Aaron, Please try and understand this. People don’t own an understanding through or because of threats - most simply acquiesce and pretend they own it - a nominal understanding because they feel they ought to believe it. There’s no love in that ‘understanding’ but primarily fear. A good teacher is patient…‘so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.’ :mrgreen: Well, there’s a verse that’s a double-whammy!

Anyway. The truth is the draw - it’s the lovely truth that’s the magnet, not fear. Bite your lip if you have to - but be patient with people. Like I am :unamused: K? No more threats - unless another nominal christian is your goal - which would indicate that you don’t give a crap about what they actually understand, only what they fear.

#137

Ha ha, RanRan! You echo my thoughts, when before, I have written of how the spirit of the carnal man and his intellect loves to kill, that it might dissect. Sit silent in prayer at the Father’s feet and you might just see the nail prints in the One you sit before.

*“Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him”
1Cor 8:6

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Deut.6:4*

Where here, is the man that prays to know God?

John

#138

Perhaps John Calvin wouldn’t have had Michael Servetus burned alive had they simply discussed their theological differences over a warm basket of nachos and cheese (and maybe a couple of cold beers):

auburn.edu/~allenkc/openhse/trinity2.html

:mrgreen:

#139

Ran.

I"m not threatening anyone. I’m stating a fact that Aaron is blaspheming Jesus and the Holy Spirit and I’m just asking him to stop. It is what it is, Ran.

#140

If you ask him to stop (or silence him in some other way) then you won’t learn - which means, you won’t sharpen your own skills and argument. He’s not the enemy, he’s just Aaron. Iron sharpens iron. A dull sword comes from not really engaging with the opposition. Witness what that dullard, Calvin, came up with to ‘convince’ people…which what Aaron-in-a-Pickle is referencing.

#141

Aaron, I looked at a bit of nacho man’s message and and might read more. I really liked this paragraph (below) from his introduction. This guy get’s it.

“The Jesus who said “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6, NIV), who is “the First and the Last” (Rev. 1:17), who sustains “all things by his powerful word” (Heb. 1:3), cannot ultimately be reduced to a formula or a creed. He is more real than a theology. Whoever wishes to know Jesus must finally meet him at the foot of the cross, where Jesus can be recognized as the righteous Son of God who gives his life for many (Mark 15:39; 10:45). This is all that God requires we understand (cf. 1 Cor. 2:2; 15:1-3).”

John

#142

Ran.

I know what Aaron believes the question is will he humble himself to the truth. Titus 3:10-11" A man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject; knowing that he is such is subverted, and sinning, being condemned of himself."

The bible says to reject a man who resists the truth after the second warning, not to continue to try to understand his error.

#143

To claim that God would demand worship of something other than Himself is NOT logical.

There’s only one God.

I’ve never really gotten into it with a Unitarian, but so far, I’m finding it as convoluted and crazy as Calvinism. Because the next thing you are going to do is re-define ‘worship’ or ‘one’ or ‘God’ in the way they re-define ‘world.’ I’m expecting Jimmy the Greek to show up soon wit da secret meanings.

Speaking of Greeks, Plato wouldn’t like where you’re going with this any more than scripture does. “I’m not the highest good - but the enabler of it.” You won’t admit to that being your argument - but ‘functionally understood’ it is your argument when one considers the express image of God - Christ, as now the ‘greater good’ to be worshiped.

#144

Ah, the ol’ hairy tick admonition. When will you ever realize we all got a bit of that hairy tick in us. Can a man reject himself and his hairy tick?

Oh my! on your next visit bring something better than the futility and folly of the hairy tick admonition! You bring that one again and i’ll lay the “woman be silent” treatment on you. :laughing:

#145

Today the best friend I have ever known in my 62 years, was given the message she has stage 3c colon cancer. She asks, "why God? and in the “why?” she is very much asking the “who?” … “who are you, God?”

I thought to share an appropriate message for the situation on our blog. Incidentally this same friend shares the blog with me. Feeling pained, I felt less than creative, so I went back through some old blogs and found one that seemed perfect for this difficult time. This borrowed and anointed message tackles the “why?” and ends up answering by giving the “Who”.

I took only a few lines(below) from this blog to share the “Who”, since this is the subject we wrestle with here in this discussion. This is for me, the “Who”

"God died on the cross for us. Christ is the image of God, the heart of God, not the victim of God.

As J.B. Philips put it, ‘the man on the cross was no demigod, no puppet-godling. no fragmented piece of Godhead, but God himself. Once people begin to realize that, there is bound to be an explosion in their thinking.’"

Please pray for my friend as she wrestles today with her “why”, that quickly she will come to the “Who”. In the realization of the “Who” she will know the healing of His love and the peace of His mind. God works that way doesn’t He. After a while the “why’'s” are no more, having been replaced by the greatness of the “Who.”

Thanks,
John

#146

Not so, Ran: May I have feedback on my CU drafts?

You’re limiting the word “worship” to that which belongs to Deity only, when Scripture puts no such limitation on it. What would be illogical is if God demanded that we worship AS GOD a being who is NOT GOD. But he doesn’t. The Father demands that we worship him alone as “the only true God,” and that we worship his Son (not as the only true God but) as the one to whom he has given all authority in heaven and on earth, and made Lord over all. Again, in 1 Chron 29:20 we are told that the people of Israel worshipped Yahweh and the king of Israel. Did God strike them down for this? Nope; later on we find them rejoicing. What they did was completely appropriate. Worship is only wrong when it’s misplaced; however, in this case it wasn’t misplaced. Now, had they worshipped the king AS Yahweh, it would have been idolatry, and God would have undoubtedly made sure that his people learned not to do that ever again. But what they were doing was not idolatry. But according to your reasoning, someone should have interrupted them and yelled out in protest, “Stop worshipping and serving the creature instead of the Creator you irreverent pagans!”

In Rev 3:9, Jesus tells the people in the church in Philadelphia, “Behold, I will make those of the synagogue of satan who say they are Jews and are not, but lie - behold, I will make them come and bow down (proskuneō) before your feet…” This is the same exact word rendered “worship” or “worshiped” in Matt 2:2, 8, 11; 14:33; 15:25; 18:26; 28:9, 17 (etc). So does this mean that Jesus is saying these believers are all part of the “Godhead?” Or is he saying he was going to make these “false Jews” mistakenly worship the Philadelphian believers as God, when they really weren’t? No; neither is the case. Jesus simply had a better handle on the word “worship” than many Christians do today.

Ran, did you know that the angels of God were not commanded to worship the “firstborn Son” until he was “brought into the world?” Did you know that Jesus BECAME “superior to the angels,” and that he “INHERITED a more excellent name than theirs?” That’s what Hebrews 1:4-6 says. But how could this be if the Son had pre-existed from all eternity? How do you account for this? But that’s not all; Christ didn’t even sit down “at the right hand of the Majesty on high” until “AFTER” he had made purification for sins. But this shouldn’t surprise us; we read of only one divine person sitting on one throne in Heaven in Isaiah 6. Where was the Son of God? According to Scripture, there was no Son of God yet (except in God’s foreknowledge and predestined plan); Jesus didn’t exist yet when Isaiah received this vision. He hadn’t been “begotten” (fathered) yet (Heb 1:5). The “today” in which this was prophesied to take place hadn’t yet arrived. But when Stephen was given a glimpse of the throne room of Heaven right before he died, did he see only one person as Isaiah did? Nope; he saw both God (i.e., the “Ancient of Days” from Daniel’s vision) and the “Son of Man standing at his right hand” (Acts 7:56).

Yeah, that’s what Paul believed, too: “There is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.”

Or would it have been more accurate for Paul to have written: “There is one God: the Father, Son and Holy Spirit”?

As much as I’d like to go on, I need to get some dinner.
:mrgreen:

#147

Great quote!

Yes it does work that way. We’re all just a heartbeat away from the Great Hope of mankind being realized.

#148

Thanks Ran, you are good brother.