Jesus Is Really God

One thing that I often thought about and was told throughout my Bible Institute education was how much things would change if we “really believed these things!” that we were being taught. This has had a dual effect of making me on the one hand, really inspired to believe the truth of scripture and live accordingly. But on the other hand, it has made me doubt its possibility. Seriously, sitting in Bible classes every day and reading a bunch of books about the Bible leads to me knowing a lot of Bible stuff that I am supposed to “really believe.” There can’t be any way for me to implement 100% of what I know about God in true belief every moment as I am meant to, can there?

With that in mind, I still want to bring out that classic youth group hypothetical challenge, “what if everyone in hear truly believed the truth that they are taught from scripture!” Lets just start with one truth that lays at the cornerstone of our Christian world view, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” This clause is most significant in light of John’s opening words in the book, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The word becoming flesh is referring to the man Jesus who lived and died in the near east early in the first century AD. Look at the this whole verse, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). This truth is the truth about who Jesus was (or is). Jesus was a man. He is also God.

My challenge, as a person who calls himself Christian, is to be completely convinced of and compelled by this truth. If God really did take on a human body and was with us in this way in order to “bear witness to the truth,” to live the perfect life of obedience to God that we were supposed to live, to die the death that we were supposed to die, to rise again and sit at the right hand of God until he finally comes to earth again in all His glory and power to judge the earth revealing Gods wrath against all sin and making a new heaven and a new earth… If we believe all of this, and trust in it as that which brings us hope, then because of the substance of this truth, the Gospel, it will take precedence over everything else that we live for.

This means that the way I love my friend Mark, is by doing whatever is within my capacity to help him become a man who glorifies God, because according to our worldview that is defined by the Gospel, the thing that will make Mark eternally joyful is making much of God. That is what he was created for. The problem is that often I do not love Mark as I should, really because I fail to believe the Gospel as I should.

Lord we believe, but help our unbelief. You alone can lead us to life giving, hope breathing faith. We are dangerously forgetful, would you remind us of your truth and help us to trust and believe it.