Faith | Books | Culture
According to the Bible, Jesus is divine. More accurately, divinity and humanity unite in the person of Jesus. Jesus grew, lived, and still now lives as a true human. Yet he also has always been divine.
But don’t take my word for it. Take the Bible’s.
Sometimes Christians argue that Jesus has to be divine in order to atone for our sins. I noticed someone recently citing this argument and asking, “Really? Got a Scripture for that?” Well, that’s the real question for many of these theological questions.
What does the Scripture say? And what does Scripture mean by what it says? Put another way, what pattern of teaching does the Bible provide that can answer the question?
God created everything. Nothing came into being except what he made. Does that mean that God created evil? Isaiah 45:7 seems to suggest so: “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things” (KJV).
But if God created evil, then he seems implicated in evil. How can evil come from a simple, good being like God? In him is no darkness. So why does God himself claim, “I make peace, and create evil”?
Exegesis, reason, and theology all point to one answer: evil has no being, and so God could not have created it. Isaiah 45:7 also teaches this same reality. Here is how.
Probably no area of Christian thinking has produced as much controversy as thinking on the doctrine of God. And this only makes sense. God is not like us. So we find it incredibly hard to speak about God.
But avoiding the discussion leads to more problems not less. In the first place, the doctrine of God is the primary foundation of Christianity. So not knowing how to talk about God places us in an awkward position. On top of that, most heresies start by talking about God in ways that conflict with the Bible’s meaning and right reflection on the Bible.
So we should know God and how to talk about God. For Christians, this means learning how to talk about the triune God. For the sake of knowing God, our faith, and avoiding error, consider then the following short dictionary of Trinity words.
The Bible tells a story about God and his creation. Throughout its pages, Scripture reveals God through story, poetry, and prophecy. And although Scripture reveals God, we sometimes misunderstand and misreflect on what the Bible says about God (whether intentional or not).
To correct these twin errors, we need to define what we can know about God by crisp definitions. For example, the Apostle John pithily spoke of God in 1 John by saying “God is love” and “God is light.” And while we can never know God fully, we can say true things about him.
We can follow John’s example by using concise definitions to clarify who God is, to avoid error, and ultimately to grow in our knowledge of God. For those reasons, consider this short dictionary of God words.
The Bible contains salutary themes like atonement, temple, and promise. But throughout history, unsavoury or mistaken people have misread the Bible. For example, Paul had to correct the Galatians who began to follow false teaching when it came to the relationship between the Torah and the Gospel.
During the course of his argument, Paul had to specify the identity of the seed in Genesis 22 as well as the fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham. According to the apostle, the seed is Christ and the Spirit fulfills the promise.
Like Paul, we sometimes too have to specify the Bible’s meaning with crisp definitions. For centuries, the church has done just that. Christians have developed a number of words to specify the Bible’s teaching about Jesus.
And I think it is good and wholesome to know these words so that we can have a better understanding of who Jesus is. For that reason, consider this short dictionary of Jesus words to help you avoid error and to know Jesus better.
