Essential Tenet #4: Jesus Christ as the Incarnation of God is both truly God and truly human.

Culture is going through a “fruit basket turnover” with everything that we counted true. The fruit hasn’t settled yet, and it is a confusing world. The Christian Church in America is experiencing a similar disorientation. While the church in each age needs to rethink how it shares the gospel, our foundation, our essential beliefs, does not change. To ensure that we have our identity clearly rooted in the historic orthodoxy of the Reformed/Presbyterian Christian faith, the leadership of the First Presbyterian Church of Douglasville adopted 12 essential tenets.

This post is on our 4^th tenet: Jesus Christ as the Incarnation of God is both truly God and truly human. To expand on that: The divinity of the Son is in no way impaired, limited, or changed by his gracious act of assuming a human nature, and his true humanity is in no way undermined by his continued divinity.

In the first seven chapters, Hebrews explains why Jesus is superior to all other voices of authority in Israel’s tradition. Each had its time and place, and served an important role. Hebrews says that Jesus is superior to the prophets, angels, Moses, Joshua, Aaron – the founder of Israel’s priesthood. Jesus at his birth was the “rising sun that eclipsed the stars.” What made him superior?

He was fully human. This was never a surprise. His peers in the Bible never doubted in his humanity. They saw him born, reared, toil in labor, eat, drink, walk, teach, encourage, cry, bruise, bleed, and die. He really died like any human dies. He was clothed in the attributes of humanity with one exception. He did not sin. He lived a sinless life. The significance of that we will see in just a moment.

He was fully God. Jesus was not merely a human. He was both fully God and fully flesh. The Bible affirms the divinity of Jesus many times. For instance…

“He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.”(Hebrews 1:3)

“Anyone who has seen me has seen the father.” (John 14:9)

“The image of the invisible God.” (Colossians 1:15)

“Being in very nature God.” (Philippians 2:6)

I particularly appreciate the way Hebrews 1 talks about Jesus as heir. “But in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things.” (Hebrews 1:2) The “heir” is the one that receives a gift through an estate. I would normally consider us to be heirs of the work of Jesus, yet Hebrews turns it around. What does that mean for us? Calvin put it this way,

“For being made man, he put on our nature, and as such received this heirship, and that for his purpose, that he might restore to us what we had lost in Adam.” (Calvin, Commentary on Hebrews)

The thoughtful Christian might wonder why? Why would the Son need to put on human flesh and be heir to our burden?

C. S. Lewis, in the fourth chapter, “The Perfect Penitent”, of his book Mere Christianity, offers a helpful way to understand why the incarnation was necessary for what Hebrews 1:3 calls “the purification of our sin.” I encourage you read the whole book, but here are some helpful excerpts from that chapter.

Now what was the sort of "hole" man had got himself into? He had tried to set up on his own, to behave as if he belonged to himself. In other words, fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms. Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realising that you have been on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again from the ground floor-that is the only way out of a "hole." This process of surrender-this movement full speed astern-is what Christians call repentance. Now repentance is no fun at all. It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means killing part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death. In fact, it needs a good man to repent. And here comes the catch. Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person-and he would not need it.

Now if we had not fallen, that would be all plain sailing. But unfortunately we now need God's help in order to do something which God, in His own nature, never does at all-to surrender, to suffer, to submit, to die. Nothing in God's nature corresponds to this process at all. So that the one road for which we now need God's leadership most of all is a road God, in His own nature, has never walked. God can share only what He has: this thing, in His own nature, He has not.

 But supposing God became a man-suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God's nature in one person-then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God. You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us; but God can do it only if He becomes man. Our attempts at this dying will succeed only if we men share in God's dying, just as our thinking can succeed only because it is a drop out of the ocean of His intelligence: but we cannot share God's dying unless God dies; and He cannot die except by being a man. That is the sense in which He pays our debt, and suffers for us what He Himself need not suffer at all.

Through the Incarnation, God did for us what we could not do for ourselves. If Jesus were only human, his death could not have any metaphysical significance. If he was only God, then his death could not restore humanity. He was both. The costliest love is that which is embodied in flesh!

Essential Tenet #3: God the Father is the author of Creation, and by his providence continues to govern all of Creation.

The next tenet adopted by the Session of First Presbyterian Church of Douglasville is: God the Father is the author of Creation, and by his providence continues to govern all of Creation. To expand on that, we affirm that God created all things visible and invisible, and governs all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest events to the smallest, by his providence, according to his will.

This tenet first speaks to the question of the origin of life. The common explanation in the scientific community is that the first forms of life emerged through a process often called abiogenesis or biopoiesis. To put it briefly, the earth’s atmosphere was an oxygen-deficient, reducing atmosphere. The first organic molecules emerged when a primordial soup of inorganic compounds were charged by a significant energy source. The simple organic compounds began to replicate forming complex compounds. The complex compounds over an incredibly long period of time replicated into increasingly complex forms of life eventually producing human life. Of course, evolution is what we call the largest portion of that process. There is much, much more to that process, but gives you the big picture.

Is that the correct explanation for the origin of human life? If it is, then is human life an accident or the defiance of the extremely unlikely odds? Many people think so. The Christian message is different. The Christian message is that we exist because God is Creator. There are different ways that Christians understand how God created the world. Some of those views are called young-earth Creationism, old-earth Creationism, theistic evolution (a view that Francis Collins prefers to call BioLogos), or Intelligent Design. Michael Behe, author of Darwin’s Black Box, was one of the pioneers of ID. He would tell you that his ideas were not offering a substitution for evolutionary theory. Instead, he was primarily challenging what he saw as the limitations of evolutionary theory to explain all of life and its diversity. One thing all views have in common is the “who” behind Creation. The God of Abraham and Isaac, the God and Father of Jesus Christ, is the one who creates.

The significance of God as Creator is great. The Creation story in Genesis says that we are made in the image of God. Christians believe that humans are of inestimable value because we bear the mark of God’s image. We possess innate dignity. Consequently, it matters how we treat those that have been considered, at different times and places, as commodities, such as the unborn, slaves, the poor, women, anyone with special needs, and children. We can no longer see one another with any less value than how God sees us. We can no longer remain indifferent when we see human life commodified in any way. Consider for yourself the significance of this tenet. Does it change how you view yourself? Does it change how you view others, born or unborn?

This tenet secondly speaks to what God has been doing since the beginning of Creation. God has not been idle. In fact, he has been very busy preserving and governing creation, walking with us in adversity, and generally guiding all things towards his good purpose. Spurgeon talks about God’s providence this way:

Men come and go, sons follow their sires to the grave, but the undisturbed mind of God moves on in unbroken serenity, producing ordained results with unerring certainty. No man can expect his will or plan to be carried out from age to age; the wisdom of one period is the folly of another, but the Lord's wisdom is always wise, and his designs run on from century to century. His power to fulfill his purposes is by no means diminished by the lapse of years. He who was absolute over Pharaoh in Egypt is not one whit the less today the King of kings and Lord of lords; still do his chariot wheels roll onward in imperial grandeur, none being for a moment able to resist his eternal will.

There may be times we feel like people have it in for us. There may be times we feel under attack from the Evil One. There may be times we think all is lost. Providence says otherwise. God has a plan and a purpose for our lives. It doesn’t mean we will not experience adversity. It means that God defines the end of our story. As the apostle Paul wrote, “Nothing can separate us from the love of God.”

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Here is a link to a video a church member made for this tenet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6rditzXw7c.

Essential Tenet #2: The Triune God is one in essence, yet distinct in three persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

With Christians everywhere, we worship the only true God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - who is both one essence and three persons. Why is this important? The Trinity is one of the great mysteries of the Christian faith. Our limited minds can't understand how it works, but this is how God has revealed himself in Scripture. The nature of God as Trinity is hugely important for our faith practice.

What is the biblical basis for this identity? Throughout the Old Testament, the Bible is clear that God is one. Deuteronomy 6:4, says, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Many other references in Hebrew Scripture affirm God as one. In the New Testament, our understanding of God changes signficantly.

Jesus shows up and says he is God, and he is connected to God as the Son. The opening to the gospel of John is a chief example of that relationship. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1) John 1:14 affirms that Jesus is the Son as well as the “Word” referenced in John 1:1. The same relationship between Jesus and the Father is revealed in places like John 17 as well. God was one in the Old Testament, but in the gospels a second identity as the Son appears.

By the end of the gospels, however, Jesus introduced the Holy Spirit as the Comforter who would enter the world upon Jesus’ departure. Jesus describes the Holy Spirit with attributes that only God possesses. In the Book of Acts, the Holy Spirit is described again and again doing the works that only God can do. Paul often refers to the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of God.

How do we reconcile the revelation of the Old Testament that God is one, and the three-fold revelation in the New Testament that describes God as Father, as Son, and as Holy Spirit? Should we assume the difference is an error and pick one over the other? That’s unnecessary. While our minds can’t understand competing truths, it doesn’t mean that they aren't still true. Since we believe God is not a liar or deceiver and we believe the Scripture is infallible, then it is safe to believe that God is both One and Three.

The Early Church leadership through hundreds of years of discussion, debate, and fights worked out a few convictions regarding the Trinity. There are too many to list, but here are a few:

a) God is of one essence, or substance, and yet three persons. The Father is God. The Son is God. The Holy Spirit is God.

b) Each member of the Trinity, though, is fully God. In each member of the Trinity the other two members exist mutually as well. In the Father exists the Son and the Spirit. In the Son exists the Father and the Spirit, and in the Spirit exists the Father and the Son. This they called perichoresis or coinherence. It’s an important addition that ensures the unity of the Godhead.

c) There is no hierarchy within the Trinity (subordinationism), nor is the Trinity just the one God putting on three different masks (modalism).

There is much more to be said about the doctrine of the Trinity that can’t be said here, but a really good question many people ask is, “This sounds more academic than helpful. What is the significance of this doctrine for my life?” Good Calvinist know that we don’t explore the nature and character of God simply for our own practical benefits. We explore the Scriptures to seek to know God and, thereby, more effectively give him the glory he is due and to live in obedience to him. Though like must studies of Scripture, the bounty of God overflows to us in a very personal and practical way.

For instance, the nature of God as Trinity reveals the very personal God we worship. It gives God personage. We discover God is not a thing, a cosmic force, an energy, or some other inanimate, impersonal entity. God is both above Creation and transcendent, but at the same time he is willing to come near to us in a most personal way. In the marketplace of world religions, you will see notions of God as aloof, indifferent, or impersonal. The God of Christianity stands apart as a personal God.

In keeping with this personal identity, the Trinity shows how much God values relationship. The interrelatedness of the Triune God and the sending of the Son and Holy Spirit both point to a God who places great value on relationship. The God of Christianity is intensely interested in a covenant relationship with us. Consider Genesis 17:7, “And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.” The reason he makes that covenant? It is because he loves us. Look at Deuteronomy 7:7, “It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples.” He does not make a covenant because it is practical or beneficial to him. He makes covenant because he loves and desires relationship with us.

Lastly, the nature of the Trinity confirms that God is deeply personal even to the point of suffering. When do we know that a person is a deep, close friend? When he or she is with us in our suffering. When someone enters our suffering, we know they are fully committed to us. God shows in his Triune nature how deeply he loves us.

The need for the Incarnation was not a surprise to God. The Son existed from the beginning of time. There never was a time when the Son didn’t exist. In a sense, the Son was the Crucified God from the beginning. God voluntarily joins in the suffering of a people who had not yet existed. No other religion worships a god like our God. The notion of God suffering is seen as ridiculous by other religions. Either their gods are too removed from human suffering to care or they actually require human suffering in order to be satisfied.

Theologian Jürgen Moltmann helps us understand the suffering God. He writes, “All this constituted the scandal of Christianity…the scandal of the cross, the scandal that God should become man in order to suffer and die and rise again, that God should suffer and should experience what death is… It was revealed to us when God sent his Son so that he might redeem us by suffering and dying. It was the revelation of the divine nature of suffering.” (Moltmann, Trinity and the Kingdom, p. 38) There is only one Crucified God, and that is the Triune God of Christianity.

What does it mean to follow the personal, suffering God? For starters, we don’t need to ask, “Where is God when we suffer, when we hurt?” Now we know that he is already there in our suffering. His suffering preceded ours. He entered it voluntarily and has defeated it. Those who suffer have a confidant, fellow pilgrim in him. He knows what it is to suffer.

We are at our best when we model the character of God. Because God suffered for us, we should ask ourselves, “Are we willing to suffer for others?” Compassion is in one sense a voluntary entering into the suffering of others. Can we say that we have shown compassion for those who suffer as God has done for us? I applaud that compassion in the thousands of young adults who are working to end slavery as inspired by the Passion conferences. We saw it in Wiliam Wilberforce who dedicated his life to end slavery in the British Empire. We saw it in the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer who left the safety of London to return to Germany to stand with the German Christians of the Confessing Church. We saw it in Mother Theresa who denied herself many basic comforts to be with those who suffered on the streets of Calcutta.

The Trinity is key to the heart of the Christian faith. A personal God seeking relationship with us even to the point of his own suffering. How humbling is that?! Are you seeking that relationship and offering the same to the world?

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Scripture references to read and consider: Genesis 1:26; Matthew 28:19; John 1:1-18.

Book of Confession references: Apostles Creed; Nicene Creed; Westminster Confession, 6.011 – 6.013; Shorter Catechism, Q’s 4-6; Confession of 1967, Part 1.

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Here is a link to a video made by one of our church members on this topic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9NkZViC7jk.

Essential Tenets of FPC Douglasville: Tenet #1

The leadership of our congregation is discerning how to respond to the changing positions of our denomination that fall outside of the historic beliefs and commitments that have guided the Church for more than two millennia. Part of that process is to ensure that we are aligned in our beliefs and practices with the historic identity of our Presbyterian/Reformed, Christian heritage. It is no good pointing fingers if our own house isn’t right theologically.

To that end, the Session adopted a set of essential tenets. “Essential tenets” is an unusual phrase for most of us. An essential tenet means an important, foundational belief that is critical to our identity as Reformed Christians. Essential tenets are those beliefs that we cannot abandon without losing our identity. Non-essential describes those things that are not critical. Jesus as the Incarnation of God is an essential tenet; the color of carpeting in a Sanctuary is non-essential (at least to most).

The session has adopted a list of essential tenets that are intended to express our theological identity within the historic orthodoxy of our Reformed, Christian heritage.  The Session’s statement draws heavily upon the work of the Fellowship of Presbyterians document, “The Fellowship Theology Project.” Our list has some additions and changes from theirs. The full list as well as links to the Fellowship of Presbyterians document can be found on the “What We Believe” page of our website under the “About FPC” tab. For those concerned about the polity issues related to adoption of essential tenets, these tenets do no bind the conscience or practices of the congregation’s Officer Nominating Committee nor are they used as an requirement for membership in the church.

Over the next 12 weeks, this blog will reflect on each one of the essential tenets. These are my thoughts alone; they are not official statements of the Session of FPC or any other organization.

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The first tenet is “The Bible is the infallible and authoritative self-revelation of God.” To expand on that, “we glorify God by recognizing and receiving his authoritative self-revelation, both in the infallible Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments and also in the incarnation of God through the Son.” (The Fellowship Theology Project, pg. 1)

Why is this important? One of the prevailing philosophies of our culture is that there are no absolute truths, or universal standards of right and wrong. The Bible, we believe, is God’s revelation of his universal truth. It is true and reliable. Culture will always push the adoption of novel ideas, practices, and philosophies under the rubric of “progress.” In each case, we go back to Scripture to make sure we don’t stray from God’s truth, which is trustworthy in every age.

To keep Scripture authoritative, we need to consider four “musts”, even though must is an unpopular word in our age of personal liberty.

1) We must study Scripture – both the Old and New Testaments. This is the most obvious. We cannot know what it means to be Christian from any other source than the Bible. Most of us are generally convinced that we know the Bible. The greater likelihood is that we know the parts of the Bible that are helpful or agree with our opinions. We tend to ignore the parts that we think aren’t necessary or helpful. If that is the case, we don’t really know the Bible fully. 

More importantly, the Bible is too deep and too profound to read it once and think we know it. The interplay between the Holy Spirit and our reading of Scripture means that the same text can give us new insights and convictions every time we read it. We don’t need to just know the Bible’s content, we need to be lifelong students of it.

2) We must adhere to a rigorous exegetical process to extract how to apply its teachings to the most pressing issues of the day. We can’t fall into the trap on the far right, which is to only use a surface reading of the text and apply it in ways that may not speak to the true intent of the passage. This is often called “proof texting” and it’s how you get to a ban on women’s ordination. 

Nor can we fall into the trap on the far left, which is to so deconstruct the texts of the Bible that you silence it on the great moral issues plaguing our culture today. This is how some can say the message of the Bible on matters of sexuality and sexual practice is complex and polyvocal, and therefore open for the adaptation to whatever is the prevailing mood of culture. The Bible really isn’t so confused on these issues. 

Good study of Scripture takes seriously the language, the context literally and historically, and the clear intention of the greater witness of Scripture – which is to say that Scripture will never contradict itself in regards to its central truths. Through a faithful engagement of this process, and through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we will as a community find the appropriate message of the Bible for our lives today. 

3)  We must let Scripture define us. Scripture is not a club we use to beat our opinions into other people. Nor is Scripture a leaping off point for a great philosophical project that incorporates other sources as truth equal to Scripture. Instead, we humbly submit ourselves to its teachings. It defines the boundaries for faithful obedience to God. When any truth claim is asserted by any source in culture, we always go back to this rigorous study of Scripture to see if it is faithful to God’s truth or not. If it is, then we celebrate and support it. If it is not, then we stay away from it. 

4) We must live it. The greatest testimony to our belief in the authority of Scripture is that we demonstrate a life lived in conformity to it. If it doesn't change our behavior, then it simply isn't authoritative. Making Scripture authoritative means far more than simply having the right positions on the culture war issues, while living indifferently to what else the Bible reveals about the Christian life. To live under the authority of Scripture means to strive to follow Scripture in all that it says, for example, about personal behavior in all areas of our lives like pride, greed, anger, peace, or in what it says about injustice in the world, and or in what it says about caring for the widow, the orphans and the least among us.

Do you trust the Bible to reveal God’s absolute truth for the world? Do you have a regular practice for reading and studying the Bible? How well does your life reflect a commitment to the authority of Scripture.

Scripture references to read and consider: 2 Timothy 3:10-17, Matthew 5:17-20, 2 Peter 1:16-21.

Book of Confession references: Scots Confession, 3.18; 3.19; Westminster Confession, 6.002; 6.009; The Confession of 1967, 9.27, 9.49