in on page 6 with these articles of affirmation and denial. This is sort of the body of our study. And so we got through Article 1 last week and sort of started into Article 2 and 3, but these early articles are about the person of Christ, starting essentially with Him as part of the Trinity. And so this works pretty nicely, I feel like, as a transition from that Bible-class study we did on the Trinity into specifically focusing on Christ. And so, that's basically the first article, is we affirm that Jesus is the incarnation in history of the eternal Son of God. The second person in the Holy Trinity, He's Christ, God's promised Messiah. And we deny this, that Jesus Christ is a mere man or was a fictional creation of the early Christian church. And so the incarnation brings this, what's that word? Incarnation? Bring to the forefront for us? What's that word mean? What's that? Yeah, God becomes a man, right? That's right, God made into man. It's Immanuel, God with us. But Jesus, the Son... becomes a man. He's born as Jesus, who's the Christ, right? He is, in history, born. He has a beginning of his human nature at birth, just like all the rest of us actually at conception, just like all the rest of us. But He is the eternal Son of God. This sort of comes into Article 2, which we started reading last week. We didn't get, I don't think, to any of the Bible verses because of a very astute question from one of our students. about what is this eternally begotten stuff. But if you look at that Article 2 affirmation, it's that we affirm the unity of the Godhead. In the unity of the Godhead, the eternally begotten Son is consubstantial, co-equal, and co-eternal with the Father and the Holy Spirit. This is the positive statement that there's a unity in the Godhead. The Trinity is this unity of the three persons, right? The term, eternally begotten, that I didn't really prepare for last week very well, it seems. is something, a phrase that comes out of the Nicene Creed, that is generally something that's explained that in eternity past, the relationship of the persons of the Trinity, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, exist in eternity past in that relationship, Father, Son. They're eternally that way. The term begotten is sort of a translation of a word that means something about having a beginning, a genesis type of a word. But when it's applied to the son, modifying begotten with eternally means that he's not been created, but he, sometimes the phraseology is he's eternally generated of the father. He doesn't have a beginning, but He is somehow in relation to God the Father as Father and Son. Do we fully understand that? How Father and Son, Jesus, well, the Son who later is incarnate and named Jesus, how in eternity past He and the Father exist in that relationship, yet the affirmation statement is that they're consubstantial, they're of the same substance. They are co-equal, equal with one another in every aspect of their being, and co-eternal. Jesus, well, the Son, keep using His name, but when we're trying to be real precise, Jesus is the human name that His father, stepfather Joseph gave to Him by the command of the angel speaking to Him, telling Him what His name should be. Before that, He's not actually known as Jesus. We would have to identify Him as the Son. So they try to be careful in these kind of statements that the Son is eternally begotten. He's always been in the relationship to the Father as Father and Son. And the relationship with the Holy Spirit is that they are co-equal, co-eternal, consubstantial, the same as one another in essence. Does that help to clarify a little bit? At least explain the same thing that got explained last week? in a way that maybe answers the question. I would have preferred if they would just say that instead of using the terms. But anyway, Sam? If generated means available. Right. How do you guys get around the idea that there's multi-tiered They attempt to get around the idea that generated or begotten has a beginning by modifying it with the word eternally. Right. Not only was he, I think they usually use the present tense too. He is eternally generated. He's constantly from when there wasn't any time without any beginning and without any end. coming from the Father? We definitely see that in the Incarnation, right? Jesus confirms this. I was sent by the Father. He's directed by the Father. He's under the supervision, so to speak, of the Father, right? He's not doing anything of His own will, but only as the Father desires. All that sort of stuff. We see that clearly in the Incarnation. But they would assert that that doesn't begin at the Incarnation. That's always been that way. I don't know. I don't know. Because you could see it in John 3.16 where that begotten word shows up. I feel like there you can see that for God so loved the world that He sent His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him. Sent who? His one and only Son. His only begotten Son. Translated in the King James, it's that word. This generated thing. He's the one that's generated, but it's kind of tied to him coming into the world, right? And so you could, that part's easy to get, but this eternal thing. And I mean, there's verses here that we'll try to look at that, you know, where these things are stated, but not necessarily fully explained in a way that I feel like I can fully comprehend them. So. I don't know if they purposefully... I believe that the Ligonier guys are using that language because it comes out of the Nicene Creed. And so they're trying to tie historically to the creeds. But why the Nicene guys ran it that way, I guess this is an Athanasius argument, you know, in Nicaea, that he argued this way, I guess. But why he chose to run it that way, I couldn't really say. And I think that we might have multiple translations of language issues, where Jesus is talking mostly to the crowds in Aramaic that's mostly written down in Koine Greek, and then I think in Athanasius, I think at that time they're communicating in the combination of Greek and Latin, and then somebody's trying to translate it into English and make it all understandable to us, this truth that's not fully comprehensible. Yeah, right. Who knows? Like, I'm sure there's no typewriter guy there, the court recorder, like, recording exactly what he said. You know what I mean? They end up writing these statements, and where's it coming from? I think Nicene Creed is originally written in Greek, if I remember right, but in this time period, they're communicating, you know, more commonly in spoken Latin. in that time. So, anyway. I tried. Since I failed last week. Yes. Any other deep probing questions that I can say I don't know to? Yeah. The verses that go along with this, well before we catch the verses of the affirmation, let's just, the denial statements in this thing really kind of help to eliminate wrong ideas? Because it's one thing to try to state it positively. When you can't fully comprehend what's being said, the denial statements can help to narrow it down. When we say it doesn't mean this, right? Eternally begotten doesn't mean that the Son is merely like God. It doesn't mean that He was simply adopted by the Father as His Son. He's not like us in the New Covenant, where it's said that we've been predestined for adoption as sons, right? He's the Son, but not only the Son begotten in the womb of Mary, in His human nature, in His divine nature, He has always been God the Son. And so, this denial is, when we say eternally begotten, we don't mean born. or created, or adopted. We don't mean that. We deny the eternal subordination of the Son to the Father in the ontological Trinity. Now, if you remember our Trinity study, we talked about the subordination, that Father and Son implies a subordination. And Jesus operates this way when He's operating as a man, right? I'm only doing what the Father tells me. There's a subordination in that. But in the co-eternal, co-consubstantial same essence, that the unity of the Trinity, when you go into eternity, the deity of Jesus is not a lesser deity than God the Father. The deity of the Son. It's not Zeus and a lesser God. It's not that. The Trinity affirms that. And so, at least we get that much out of these statements. Does that make sense? We good? Okay, what's the Bible say? What saith the Scripture? Down at the bottom of the page, footnote number two, like I think I said this last week, every one of these affirmation statements has proof texts with it, and they take one of the proof texts and print the whole verse. So Matthew 28, 19 is the Great Commission, they printed it, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. It's just a Trinitarian verse, identifying the three persons of God, the Godhead. Right? Father, Son, Holy Spirit. We don't baptize them in the name of the Father, and the mention of the Son, and the hopefulness of the Spirit. Whatever it is, they're presented there as three persons in unity in the Trinity. So, I think that turns out to be the point of most of these verses. The next set of verses are in John. If you can turn there in your Bible, Somebody want to read all of these John verses, one after another, just turning pages? Or I can do that. Ivan, you want to catch that? So John 3.15 and 16 is the first ones in John. "...that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life, for God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life." So again, this is John 3.16, I quoted earlier, this is about the only begotten thing, his only son. There is no other person, entity, identified as equal to the Father in this kind of way. Right? And how do we get saved? How do we get eternal life? Verse 15. I think they included this for this. Eternal life can only be bestowed by God, right? And it's by believing in the name of the Son of Man, the Son of God. Same thing, different titles, but it's believing in Jesus who's the Christ that we're saved. And so that confirms it at the end of John 16 also. 15 and 16 both say that. In Jesus, we have God in a human form with nature. We'll get to the hypostatic union today in other articles, but that's what we see here, Jesus, the emphasis on Him being God. John 4.14, "...but whoever creates the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become an endless stream of water flowing up." You see the emphasis of Jesus, His divine nature in His statement? It becomes clear when you think about this. If I told you, whoever comes to me, Dorian, and drinks the water I give him, that will spring up to you into eternal life. You come to me for eternal life. Yeah, there'd be an issue with me saying that, right? And pointing to myself. There's no issue with Jesus saying that because He really is the source of life, eternal life. He really is God. Alright? Next, John 6.54. Thanks, Ivan. John 6.54, same kind of verse again, right? Whoever eats my flesh, drinks my blood, will have eternal life. And I hope that God the Father, whom I'm not equal with, will raise them up in the last days. He's the life. He is the resurrection. He Himself. This can only be true if He's actually God. So either Jesus is lying, He's making stuff up, He's crazy, or maybe He's what we believe that He really is, God. That's the point. Alright, John 10, 28. Okay. So who's giving eternal life? I'm giving them eternal life, Jesus says. It's all the same sort of emphasis. Jesus is really clear about this. We said it before when we were studying the Trinity, right? All these different things that John presents in his Gospel that demonstrate Jesus as being God, the Son. These are just a small sampling of that. This is somewhat repetitive from our study in the Trinity, but I'm not sure that we can say it often enough. Too often? Alright. Moving on then in the verses of the same set of affirmations and denials in Romans 5.21. Somebody ahead of me want to read that? Mikey, thanks. So that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ, Again, same thought, right? Where does eternal life come from? Jesus Christ our Lord. Lord is one of the words indicating that not Lord like Lord of the manor, but like Lord God Almighty. He's the eternal God who can bestow eternal life. And Romans 6.23. Anybody ever learn that one without having to look it up and read it? Romans 6.23. No? You want to read it, Mikey? Again, it affirms. John 6, 23 affirms that Jesus Christ is our Lord, He's our God, and eternal life comes from Him as a gift. Right? It comes from God in the person of Jesus Christ, who is our God. That's where eternal life comes from. Catching it? Good. 2 Corinthians. Josh, thanks. Cool, thanks. This is the last verse of 2 Corinthians. 2 Corinthians 13, 14 is this. benediction kind of statement, right? A statement of blessing that the grace comes from the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Are those three different separate gods? One who gives grace and the other who gives love, and the third who's about fellowship? No, they're overlapping such with one another that all of those things are present in and flowing out of the Godhead. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Grace, love, fellowship. That all comes from God. We could use that generically or we could identify them individually as Paul did at the end of the letter. But, of course, the Son is included in there. Good? Thanks, Josh. Ephesians 2.18. Anybody? Polly? Thanks. So we have access to the Father. The Father is clearly God. How do we have access to God? Through Jesus, right? Is that because He's a really good man? Is that because He's a perfectly sinless man that we have access to God? Kind of. But it requires something more than just a mere man to bridge the gap of eternity. Right? It requires that that man also be the eternal Son of God. God the Son. It's all there. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Access to the Father by the Spirit. Yeah, the ESV just flips it, right? That in one Spirit we have access to the Father. But it's through whom? Through Jesus, right? And so, again, Trinitarian verse, all three are there. It's not like you can fully separate Jesus and the Spirit, but they're identified in conjunction with one another there. Good. Yes? Good, good. Verses? 2 Timothy. We've only got a few more. 2 Timothy 1.19. Somebody want to read 2 Timothy 1, v. 19? Ivan, thanks. 1.9, sorry. Thanks. No 19? Okay. Yeah, thanks. Who has saved us and called us to a holy life? Not because of anything we have done, but because of His own purpose and grace. His grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time. You could debate just a little bit about who saved us and called us to a holy calling. not because of our works, but his own purpose and grace, that easily could be the Father who's calling us, who gives us a purpose and grace, but then how does he accomplish it, right? He gives us eternal life in Christ Jesus before the ages began. And so Christ is God the Son in eternity past, the one through whom salvation is given by the Spirit according to the plan and calling of God the Father. Have you seen these things? Okay. Like I said, these first few articles are about the Trinity primarily. 1 Peter 5.10. Mikey, thanks. Technically, who is it that is restoring, confirming, strengthening, and establishing us after we suffered for a little while? The God of all grace, right? How's he doing it? Through whom? Well, through the Son. This is just different roles identified for the persons in the Godhead, but they're all there. They're all involved and they're all doing it. Jude, Chapter 1 verse 21 says, Keep yourself in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. Specifically, if you want to be very technical, in that verse, the mercy that leads to eternal life is in Christ. But it's according to the love of God. They're all attached and related. That's how we read through all these verses. They're all this. Eternal life comes through believing in Christ Jesus as the Son of God. And it's all coordinated by the Trinity, by God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. All right then. So that's Article 2 in this thing. Article 3 brings up a couple of other things, okay? I didn't print and don't plan to go read and look up the Nicene Creed or the Chalcedonian definition, Here we have in Article 3, a different set of affirmations, there's more. When we talk about Christ, we affirm, they say with the Nicene and Chalcedonian creeds, that Jesus Christ is both truly God and truly man, two natures united in one person forever. And yet, we deny that the Son was created. We deny that there was ever a time when the Son was not divine. We deny that the human body and soul of Jesus Christ existed prior to the incarnation of the Son in history. There are, in most of the denial statements, some reference to some heresy or another. This is one of them. That somehow Jesus bodily exists before He is conceived in the womb of Mary by the Holy Spirit. And that's not taught in the Scripture. And so, that's something that we deny. So when we talk about the Son, the Son, the eternal nature of Christ, has not been created. He's always been. There's never been a time when He wasn't God. Fully God, truly God in every way. That's the affirmation statement. And so, See at the bottom of the page, the footnotes in reference to the Scripture references? The first one there is from Colossians 2.9. It says, for in Him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily. In whom is the fullness of the deity dwelling bodily? Jesus, right? In the man Jesus, the body, the physical man, the human being, who is truly human, human in every way, just like you and me. dwells the fullness of God in His deity. I think I've said this before, but just logically speaking, if everything, every aspect of God is dwelling bodily in the man Jesus Christ, is He less than God? Not if all the fullness of the deity dwells in Him, right? And so in our English translations, it says it doubles down. The whole fullness of the deity dwells in him bodily. The whole fullness. Not just the wholeness of it or the fullness of it, but let's just make sure we understand we're talking about the whole fullness of every aspect, right? Paul. Paul's question was in the denial statement. It says that we deny that the human body and soul of Jesus existed prior to the incarnation. Why does it say soul? not just body. Body's easy enough, but why soul? Well, because soul is an essential part of the human nature. We exist in at least two parts, if not three, depending on how you subscribe to, you know, the anthropology of humanness. But we have a physical body and we have a spiritual reality of who we are. There's an inner man and an outer man. The outer man is is the body. The inner man is either the soul or the soul and the spirit, depending on how you put it together or whether somebody's saved or not. But there's a non-physical part of being human that we all possess. It's an eternal soul. Well, none of our souls existed before we were born. Jesus is essentially a man just like I am in every way. And so his human soul is created at his conception, just like his physical body is. We don't have anything in Scripture to indicate anything different than that. To call his eternal nature as God the Son, his soul, would be to bring God down to something that we possess, which you can't do. And so it very carefully separates those things, that the human nature is both physical and spiritual, but in a created way, different than God in the person of the Son, who has existed forever, and not merely a soul, but deity who creates souls, if that makes a little bit of sense. I think it's specifically this, to identify, what do we mean when we say he's human? Well, it's this. Sam? He has two natures, right. Yeah. Yeah, they're joined, right? Article 4 talks about how they're joined. The hypostatic union, right? These two natures that are united uniquely in Christ. He's the one and only God-man. truly, fully, holy God and truly, fully, holy human. But we only have one nature, right? We sometimes talk about how we have two natures, right? The sinful nature and the redeemed nature or something. Talk about that some ways, but it's not the same thing as what we're talking about with Jesus in any way. We only have the human thing. We don't have the deity. Yeah. Does that make some sense? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, this is it's not in that particular. statement is it? Yeah, no. When he becomes God, when he's Emmanuel, right, he's incarnate. He is given, he's created, he's born into a human body with physical and non-physical realities of humanness. Body, soul, spirit, all of it's there. And it will always be there. It's never not there. Yeah, He always has the perfected nature of humanity. Right, correct, yeah. Jesus never goes back to... It's not when the physical dies that He then separates from the human nature. That's not... He dies the way that we will die. body and soul separate for a time evidently but then there's a resurrection and they're rejoined at the resurrection and so he exists exactly that way. He's already been resurrected and already gone back to heaven and been glorified and when he comes back he'll do the same with us. Yeah. Indeed. Raise your hand if you're fully comprehending all of it, and it just makes perfect sense, like elementary school math. Right? One plus one equals two. It's just super easy. But all we're trying to do is sort of... This helps to try to systematize some of the things that are told us in the Scripture. That's why I think some of this stuff is worth churning and working through and doing over and over again. That's why we're doing it. I already read from Colossians 2.9 that in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily. And that emphasis is really the one that more of the heresies get wrong. is that Jesus is somehow less than fully God. And so even the scripture affirms that over and over again, because that one's harder for us to get a hold of. God becoming a man, walking around in human form, you know, that's been something that even the false religions sort of make up. So this one's maybe the more urgent need. Luke 1, verse 35. Here's the next verse. Ivan, thanks. Answer, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, so the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God. Yeah, the Holy One to be born. Born is the word that, you know, is this born. I mean, it's a start, right? There wasn't anything before the conception and at the birth that's realized. The child in the world where we can all see Him and stuff. This is Jesus. How did it happen? Oh, this is unique, isn't it? The child to be born by Mary is called the Son of God. Is He really the Son of God? Conceived by the Holy Spirit. Who is Jesus' true, authentic Father? In the creative sense, it's really God, right? He's born in that way. And so that one verse wraps all of this up, that He's the Son of God. He's born into the world as a man in the normal way that all of us were born. The birth is normal. The conception is miraculous, right? The birth is normal. Okay, John 10, verse 30. All right, Sasha, go for it. Use your dad's voice, though. 1030. Thanks. Wow. That's a big verse, huh? Jesus said, I and the Father are one. Does that mean that they just, like, hang out together a lot? They got the same ideas about politics? I mean, sometimes we say that, right? Ivan and I are like, we think alike, and we're kind of like the same guy sometimes, it seems like. Right? Maybe. Not really, no. Not completely, though. But that's not Jesus. Jesus isn't talking like I'm similar to the Father. He's talking about, in essence, I am one with Him. Right? Yet, there he is, a man, standing in front of everybody in John's Gospel, and he appears as a man, he's walking and talking like a man, right? He eats and sleeps and gets tired, and all the things that men and women do. That he just simply says, I am the Father, I won. He's talking about God the Father. Okay. United in the two natures here. Romans 9, 5. Mikey things. What a ridiculous verse. No, seriously, right? Paul is explaining that Jesus, according to the flesh, He's in the line of the patriarchs. Who are the patriarchs? The three who are usually mentioned. What? Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, right? He's the great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandson of Abraham, according to the flesh. But yet, He's God over all. Like I said, ridiculous verse. You can't have that. Nobody else can say that. That's not the way it works. But this is who Jesus is. He's both man and God fully, truly, in every way. 1 Timothy 3.16. So this is the mystery of godliness that Paul is claiming The mystery of Jesus who is God. He's manifested in the flesh. Does that mean that He just appeared like flesh for a short time? Some try to make it that. He's temporarily sort of putting on a man suit as God and walking around in disguise like one of the Greek gods. Weren't there a couple of Greek gods who did that? Dressed up in a man suit and walked around? Almost all of them did that, right? Yeah. That's not what that means. How do we know that's not what it means? Well, because Paul explains it very thoroughly elsewhere, but he explains this, that he's proclaimed among the nation, believed on the world, taken up into glory. He's taken up into heaven in the flesh, right? He's vindicated. The Holy Spirit has vindicated him. How's he vindicated? How do we know that he's a man? Well, the big way is the crucifixion, right? He died. and then he's raised from the dead to ascend up into heaven. How is he raised from the dead? Still in the flesh. It's altered, it's changed a little bit. The fact that he can do stuff like walk through walls and appears in rooms without opening the doors makes me think that maybe one day we'll be able to do that, but I couldn't guarantee that. There's something, but Jesus is revealed this way to us in the Scripture over and over again throughout the whole of the Bible. In 1 Peter 3.18, the last verse for this little section, 3.18. Oh, yeah, question first. How is it different than a theophany? Yeah, so the whole of what we're kind of looking at in these verses would indicate that the Theophanies, so the appearances of Jesus, assumed Jesus, the Son of God in the Old Testament, the appearance of God in the Old Testament where He appears in a physical form. We'll often read it as, the angel of the Lord appeared. Who wrestled with the patriarch, Jacob, right? Who wrestled with Jacob? Who appears in the flames of the fire of the burning bush? There's others, but some of them have this like, there's some sort of physical manifestation that occurs with whoever comes and wrestles with Jacob. And for a time, it would seem like there's enough physical manifestation that he and Jacob can physically grapple with each other. But it's not ever said that at that time that Jesus is permanently affixed to his physical form. He hasn't yet been God born and flesh. Assuming that's Jesus, it's more like an angel. Angelic beings who are not the Lord evidently have the ability to appear at times in a physical form as well. When given proper permission by God, the devil, who's an angel, is evidently able to do stuff to Job, like make tornadoes and cause his physical flesh to start rotting with some leprosy or something, right? Those things are possible, but it's not the permanent placement of God in a truly human form. Those forms aren't born. They don't grow. They don't gain in stature and wisdom. We're not really sure that they ever much eat, sleep, get tired. They're not subject to all the weaknesses of humanity. And so they can't really be said to be truly human in their nature in that way. Can God take a physical form? Sure. Can you make angels have, you know, bodies that you can see and touch and can interact with you physically? Evidently. Yeah, grab swords and kill a hundred and some thousand people in a night? One angel all by himself? Yeah, right? I mean, can they physically make the earth open up and people fall into it? Yeah, all kinds of stuff go on. And so there's a substantive difference between God appearing in a form or sending an angel as a messenger compared with Him becoming one of us. He never did that in those Old Testament theophanies. It's not always, but it's here and there predicted that he would one day, like in Isaiah, that he's going to be born of a virgin and these sort of things. But that is, I think, substantively different than a theophany, if that makes sense. It's the best I got. Good question, though. All right. Last verse, we're going to catch 1 Peter 3.18. Caleb, you want to read that? Thanks. In this way, Jesus is exactly like you and I. When He died on the cross, it wasn't just an illusion. It's not just the appearance of dying. He didn't just go to sleep for a little while and later get revived in the grave. I mean, there's all kinds of theories about what happened, but this is really the thing. He suffered for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, And he was put to death in the flesh and then he's made alive again. His physical human being is made alive again at the resurrection, reunited with his human soul, yet still joined in nature with the nature of his deity. Even if I tried to draw this stuff on a whiteboard or something, right? You stop and you think, I guess I understand the words that you're saying, but how does that really happen? Well, great we confess is the mystery. That's Paul's point when he wrote that to Timothy. Don't think that you can fully comprehend this, but there's plenty of information given to us, right? To affirm and deny certain aspects. Sam looks like he's got the next stumping question. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. He actually has to experience the real separation from God. When he says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It's got to be both of those things. That's the realization of Isaiah 53, right? He's suffering in his soul. He's separated. Right. Right. Yeah. This is why he has to be made human in every way, just as we are. every aspect of our nature, so he's a proper substitute. Bulls and goats could never do that, Hebrews tells us, right? And he had to have a body, because we have a body. He has to have a soul, because we have to have a soul. He's not sinful, because honestly, sin is not essential to humanity. It is how we're born, because in the line of Adam, it's how it worked for us. But Adam wasn't like that. Adam's truly human. He didn't have sin until he sinned. That's not essential to our human nature. But in order to take sin as a man, from men and women, he has to be a man. That's exactly the way this is, right? And so, sometimes, you know, have you ever heard, like, especially a little kid when they're trying to understand all of this, right, they start talking about how God died on the cross? Because they've learned Jesus is God, Jesus died on the cross, therefore God died on the cross. Is that true? No way. No, not even close, right? Jesus is God. Jesus died on the cross, but Jesus is also a man. The man Jesus Christ died on the cross. God never died. The Son never died. This comes later in the affirmations. They do painstakingly, slowly take one little piece at a time until you end up with 26 of these articles, and we got through three. today, but next week we'll see it in Article 4 as we start talking about the hypostatic union, these two natures of Christ that they're united, but they're not mixed. They maintain a separation, although they're united in one person. It's very much like the Trinity. Two natures, one person, not two persons. So we'll start studying that a little bit more next week about the union that's in Christ as it's revealed in the Scripture. Good for today? Other thoughts and questions? I mean, we've got a minute, but... No? Okay. Well, then we'll pray. Lord, thank you for the morning here. I thank you for gathering us here. I thank you for who you are and what you've revealed to us about your nature. Lord, I thank you for sending Jesus Christ, sending the Son to be made a man for our sakes. not only to reveal Yourself to us more clearly and more fully, but to become the sacrifice for our sins, that You might actually take our sins and die in our place on the cross and be resurrected as our hope that we too one day will be resurrected in the same way. Lord, I thank You for revealing these truths to us. I pray, Lord, that as we think about them, learn them, remember them, churn through them in the study, Lord, that we would see You more clearly and that we would worship You more devotedly. Lord, give us more love for You as we know You better. Thank You for allowing Yourself to be known to us by revealing these things. Lord, help us in our weakness. our slowness to think and our sort of our weakness in understanding. Lord, I just pray for your help in that. Ask you for your presence with us this morning as we gather and stay together here to worship you. Thank you again for the time and the place to meet in Jesus name. Amen.