So this is the study of Christ, who He is, what He's done. We're still working on who He is in these first few articles. And so page 7 has articles 4, 5, and 6 on it. I think we got mostly through article 5 last week. But the topic really begins in article 4 about the hypostatic union, the two natures of Christ, one divine and one human. And then for a few articles, kind of specifics under that topic. So Article 5 was about that, that we affirm the Incarnation, His divine and human natures retaining their own attributes. And so Jesus is truly, fully God, truly, fully human. And Article 6 really focuses on His humanity in specific. And so that's kind of where we are today. Midway through page 7, Article 6, says that we affirm that Jesus Christ is the visible image of God, that he's the standard of true humanity, and in our redemption, we will ultimately be conformed to his image. We deny that Jesus was less than truly human, that he merely appeared to be human, or that he lacked a reasonable human soul. We deny in the hypostatic union that the Son assumed a human person rather than a human nature. So, those are the statements And down at the bottom of the page, footnote 6, is where the Scriptures are. And I want to actually open the Bible up with the first one, even though they printed Colossians 1. We're going to start there and then work through these few passages in Scripture. But if you get to Colossians 1.15, says that He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for by Him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through Him and for Him. Verse 17 continues. It says, "...He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church, He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything He might be preeminent. For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell." So I wanted to add those verses. I didn't print them at the bottom of the page. But to get through verse 19 really is all that I read there. I feel like it's important for understanding the first few verses to catch the last few. So, I said it focuses on His humanity, but it begins with His divinity in the passage. Also in Article 6. What does it mean that Jesus is the visible image of God? That's the statement in Article 6. We affirm that Jesus is the visible image of God. Or Colossians 115 says he's the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. Does it mean the image of God? Yeah, this is the problem with the language right here, right? Image kind of might leave you the impression that he's similar to God. He resembles God, right? He has a resemblance to God. Kind of like how brothers are sort of sometimes the image of their father. They sort of look alike, right? Or a picture is a two-dimensional image of a three-dimensional reality, right? Is the picture the full reality? No, it's an image of the reality. It's a problem with the language. in this confession thing, statement, and all these sort of creedal statements, I want to stick close to the Bible, and then you got these guys translating into English using the word image. But I read on because verse 19 in Colossians 1.19 tells you what the image of God means. Not what image means to us, because that's the issue. What does the Bible actually mean when Paul says in v. 15 that he's the image of the invisible God? If you skip down to v. 19, you read, For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. All the fullness of God. That's different than an image the way we think about image, isn't it? You take a picture of Pike's Peak and it's just an image. Two dimensions. But it's not the fullness of Pike's Peak, right? You don't get the sense of the magnitude of it all from when you look at the picture versus when you're standing to take the picture. You don't actually see the backside. You don't know what's going on on the trail that goes up the side of the mountain that you can't even see. But it's in the picture. It's there. But it's not the fullness of what's there. You don't get the sense of what the weather's like, and how it feels, and how the pine trees smell, and listening to the little babbling brook, all that stuff, right? The fullness of Pike's Peak, you've got to go there to experience. Which one is Jesus? Is He, in our way of thinking, the image, sort of like the photocopy, the two-dimensional image of God? Or is He, in Him, the fullness of God dwells? People do pick apart our doctrine because of passages like this. No, no, no. See, it says it's the image of God. I'm like disappointed in the statement that they didn't quote the rest of the verses. That they use that terminology instead of saying, in Him all the fullness of God dwells bodily. It's true He's the image, but He's more than what we just think of as an image when we think about that. That's the confirmation of the Scripture. He is everything that God is. I've probably said it that way, I'm pretty sure, at some point many times. He's not the copy of God. He is God. If He's everything that God is, not just the image sort of similar to. Then we complicate it further. I'm just telling you this because it comes up. It's complicated further because we know that we are created in the image of God, right? Is Jesus just like us then? That's what it says. He's the image of God. And we're the image of God, so he's just a man like the rest of us. See how the language is problematic, I feel like? And I feel like even Ligonier and these guys sort of sometimes are a little bit too attached to the words and not so much about explaining the concept. I'm not sure that they grasp the concept super well about explaining. How is the image of God in me different than the image of God in Christ? Is there a difference? Is the only difference that I'm tainted by sin, is that the only difference? His man body is made. Well, in the physical sense, he is, right? But when we talk about the image of God, are we talking about our physical body resembles God's physical body? Is that even what we mean when we talk about the image of God in creation? Usually not. You end up with thoughts like, well, God's not physical. He doesn't necessarily have a body. Oh, but it says he uses his right arm to save people. Well, is that literally a right arm like my right arm, or is that imagery? Yes, I'm muddying the waters further. I'm like, I'm like confusing it. Right? But the issue with this is we know what we believe. We can say we believe that Jesus is God-man, but what are the implications for that when somebody challenges me? Right here it says that Jesus is just a man too. He's in the image of God just like us. Usually we think of the image of God in creation of me as something about I'm a conscious being, I have a moral character, I'm capable of creative thought, complex communication and relationships. Right? All of those things are similar to God. They're tainted and distorted by sin, but I have an eternal soul that's different than my dog, in case you didn't know that. Your dog doesn't have an eternal soul. Right? At least according to the Scripture. And so, your fur baby's not really like your real baby. I know nobody here has that problem, I don't think, anymore. But anyway, I'm in the image of God because I share some of these characteristics. I have an eternal soul. I will be somewhere. I'm capable of complex thought. I can keep and maintain and grow and destroy relationships, right? All of these kinds of things that are in the image of God. But do I have the characteristic and quality of being all-knowing, all-powerful? Image of God is limited, right? And so if I know that about me and creation, does that apply to Jesus? Well, in some ways He operates that way, doesn't He? He has an eternal soul. He's capable of thoughts, relationships, creativity. In that way, he's in the image of God. And while he's a man, he limits the use of his divine qualities like his all-powerfulness. He either limits it or completely doesn't use it at all. Is that what this verse means that Jesus is like that? No, it's because of v. 19. Okay? At least in the passage. There's others. There's other stuff we'll look up in the other Bible verses. But we want to make sure that we get this correct, that in His humanity there's some truth about this image of God thing, but in His being, the being of Christ, which is this union, uniting of two natures, it's not true of Him in that way. Only if you deny the divine and only accept the human, then all of that might be true. The verse complicates it further by saying that He's the firstborn of all creation. V. 16. Before I get to that, Caleb, here. I was going to say that I think maybe what is being expressed here by Paul and Colossians, Jesus also says this. You've seen Me, you've seen the Father. I think it's, verse six says, he is the image of the invisible God. And God is the invisible being in spirit. He's not on our plane of existence. And so for God to manifest himself in a visible way, that's what happens in Christ. It's God made visible, but because of our limitations of our world limitations of our sight and our mind, we can't see the true image of God, the true glory of God made visible. It's impossible for us to see it, so in that way he is sort of a picture. Even in Christ Jesus, the uniting of the two natures, we don't see all the fullness of God, but all the fullness of God is there. Right. I mean, he's definitely the revelation of all the character of God. So all the love, patience, all of the compassion, all the mercy, all of that stuff is displayed by Christ. That's brought forth in his character for the most part, I think, in Christ. The love and even some of the judgment and the wrath and the hatred of sin. That stuff is revealed more clearly in Christ than what we would have had you know in just the Old Testament text and yeah so and in that way he's the image of God perhaps a little what we see is not the fullness but the image but all of the fullness is there so this is the danger of you know sort of the language still in my opinion about it but the image we could get the wrong idea I don't have any idea I mean I like Hebrews 1 This is the last verse in the list of the Scriptures, but if you want to have your finger in two places, Hebrews 1.3 says that He's the radiance of the glory of God. The exact imprint of His nature. Upholding the universe by the word of His power. And so, I kind of like that one. That He's the radiance of the glory of God. He's the source of the light. The radiance, speaking about the glory, all of the glorious attributes of God, He reveals all of those things. And the exact imprint of His nature. Like I said, we think of imprint kind of like, you know, you take the cookie dough and you push the cookie cutter into it, and then you have an imprint of the cookie cutter. right, a Christmas tree shape that you decorate with the baubles and the garlands with the frosting and the sprinkles, right? I'm kind of hungry. What can I say? I love the sugar cookie thing. But that's like an imprint, right? Sort of like a Xerox machine copy thing. That's the imprint. But when he says he's the exact imprint of his nature, it can't be just the two-dimensional face that we see. It's all of it. It's everything. So I like that language a little bit better. And I don't know. I'm no Greek guy. I didn't try to figure it out about his image, the right word in Colossians or not. Probably. I'm not sure that Paul put this much thought into what he was trying to say. I'm not sure. But over time, these are the kinds of questions and kinds of objections that people raise. Like, oh, well, we're all in the image of God. Jesus is in the image of God. He's just a man. Right? That's how you end up with these, if he's just a man, then what do you got? Then there's all these implications about it. Why are all the councils and the Chalcedon and Nicaea and all of these things, they're all about that. Trying to correct those things, those thoughts happened early. But, sorry, in Colossians, I started, Colossians 1, 16. No, no, 15. He's the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. You get two problems in this verse that you have to explain somehow or another that contradict just the plain reading of the text, which I'm always in favor of. If all you have is that verse and nothing else to go with it, no context, no other verses about it, if all you have is that, it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that what Paul's saying is that Jesus was born, created in the image of God, just like you and I are created in the image of God. if all you had was that verse. The best heresy comes from one verse taken out of context and interpreted differently than the context and the rest of the Bible would interpret it. The context here is very immediate. Like I said, verse 19 explains the image of the invisible God, that in Him all the fullness was pleased to dwell. And verse 18 actually explains the firstborn of all creation. Paul even uses the word again that he's the firstborn. Firstborn from the dead, firstborn from all creation. What does firstborn mean? He's not talking about born, created, chronologically to be the first and not the second. He's talking about the end of verse 19, that in everything he's preeminent. Preeminence. especially when you put it in the context of Jewish culture. The firstborn was the preeminent born. He was the one who had the double portion of the inheritance. He's the one who carried on the family business, the family name, right? Dad dies, he gets everything. He splits it up with unequal parts to his younger siblings and stuff. And so the firstborn is speaking about preeminence, not about chronological creation. Paul explains it, but you've got to look for it a little bit. It doesn't change anything about what we've been saying, that Jesus is the invisible image of God. He's the exact imprint of his nature. He's the radiance of the glory of God. That phrase, I love that phrase. Do you guys remember when we talked about this in Hebrews? I love the radiance of the glory of God, which is different than you and I. You and I in the image of God are the reflection of the glory of God, not the radiance of it. The radiance is the source. Right? Jesus is the source of the revelation of the glory of God. He's the beginning of it. It's the difference between the sun and the moon. The light actually emanates from inside the sun. The sun is the radiator. It radiates the light and the radiation and everything else, right? The sun is the source. The moon, does the moon have a light source on it? How come the moon glows so brightly in the full moon in the middle of the night when there's no clouds? Reflection. It's a reflection of the radiance of the sun. The sun is the source. The moon is the reflection. At best, you and I are a pale reflection, tainted by sin in a fallen world of the glory of God. Jesus, however, is the radiance. He's the source. It means that he's not like us in that way. He is God, the exact imprint of his nature. Dina? I don't know if it makes any difference, but to me, that one little word in verse 15 says he's the firstborn over all creation. Yeah, different English translations translate it differently, but I like over too. I remember that in the NIV, right? Because it demonstrates, it emphasizes that interpretation of what does firstborn mean. Firstborn means that he's first in priority, not first in chronology, right? Firstborn of all creation. And I don't, again, I don't know the Greek or what Paul actually wrote, And he might not have been that detail, but this helps us with that understanding of the preeminence is the firstborn emphasis. Yeah, Sam. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, firstborn from the dead obviously has nothing to do with born, right? He's the first in priority of all those raised from the dead. He's also the first in chronology, right? Yeah, firstborn from the dead doesn't have anything to do with creation. So, firstborn doesn't have anything to do with birth. in that. Yeah, that helps to clarify it too. Right? Right. Now, if you take it all in each piece and it all adds up in a big way into that, right? If I want to have Jesus be like just a normal guy, I can quote the one verse, ignore all the rest of them, and then twist the interpretation, right? That's how you end up with these denial statements written about you. You do that kind of stuff, right? Andrew? I was just going to say, I love the verse in John 17 when Jesus prays. Return the glory that I had with you before the world existed. Yeah. Return to me the glory. Yeah. Yeah. Before the world existed. Before creation. That's right. Yeah, when Jesus prays in John 17, that yeah, yeah, it's great. It helps. Jesus was just praying for the return of the glory. So he kind of set it aside. He wasn't except for the transfiguration. He didn't really put it on display all the time, but he wants it back. But when did he have that? Well, from before the creation of everything, you know. If that's all we had were this creation stuff, those guys go, well, first God created him and then Jesus created everything else. It's easy. But not if Jesus is creating everything. Everything. Everything. Right? But, like I said, you can't take just one or two verses. We've got to pull this all together. And so, this image of God thing, I felt like it was a decent thing to spend a little extra time on. Is it clearer than it was when I started muddying all the waters with the questions? Or did I fail? Is it clear enough? I mean, Sam should have come up and explained it. Of course, it's clear to him. The answer is what? Read the paragraph. Yeah, there you go, read the paragraph. All right, so other verses here. I already kind of grabbed Hebrews 1, but somebody want to try to look up Romans 8, 29, Mikey, and 2 Corinthians 4, 4. Dina, thanks. And then Ephesians 4, Pauli, verses 20 to 24. So just a few to look up, but they all are not in the perfect order of the topics. But Mike, you want to read in Romans 8, 29? Those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among Okay, so the first statement in Article 6 was that we affirm Jesus as the invisible image of God, and then the second statement is He's the standard of true humanity. And that's what this verse is pointing towards. God's ultimate purpose for us when He predestined us to be what? What did He predestine us to be? Perfected. What is perfected? What does that look like in humanity? What's perfect? in the image of Christ, right? To be conformed to the image of Christ, to be conformed to become like Him. He's the standard of the perfect man. And that's what our goal is. And that's why God has predestined us, while we're born again, Right? Why we're converted, why we have a new heart, why he keeps us around so that we're being sanctified progressively by learning more things that he wants, and more of who Jesus is, and trying to become more like him. It's like the ultimate purpose. And so when he makes an ultimate purpose statement like that, that's where they're tying this in that Jesus is the standard of true humanity. He's the best of the men. and women, and mankind, humanity. Make sense? It's both. Perfect God, perfect human. Pretty good. All right. 2 Corinthians 4. Yeah, please. God of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. We do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ is Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God who said, let light shine out of darkness, may this light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face So there's that phrase again, right? The image of God. Who's the image of God? In the verse, Jesus, not us. We're not in this verse except for His beneficiaries and the guys who are impressed. Right? But Jesus is the subject. He's the image of God. And what does He mean at the end of verse 6? What does that mean, the image of God? He's the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. You want to see what God's like? Who do you look at? How would God think in a certain circumstance? How do we figure that out? Look at Jesus, right? How would Jesus react? How would Jesus think about this? How did Jesus talk about this? Even operating fully as a man, a perfect man, right? It's not that he has walked away from and doesn't include anything of the attributes of God in the way he thinks. He's conformed to God in that way. He is God. He is thinking as God would think. He's reacting in the way that God reacts. Why? Because he's God. So anything that we want to know, the best way to figure it out is not like the modern world where we look deep within ourselves to find because I'm the image of God, right? It's not looking deep within myself. It's not looking back into the Old Testament to see the types and the shadows to try to figure out how God thinks and acts. How does he think and act? Look at Jesus. Now, it's not that I can't look in the Old Testament, but I should look in the Old Testament through the lens of the new, right? I can understand certain things about how God revealed Himself in the Old Testament through the way Jesus operated in the New. So that's always this way. And so this is this, that Jesus is that image of God. Another explanation of it. So in Ephesians 4... Paul, is that you? Cool, thanks. That is not the way you are Christ. assuming that you have heard about him and were taught of him, and the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Thanks. So, there's a standard of true righteousness, true holiness, There's one in whom the truth is. Who's that? Who's the standard of righteousness? Wait, wait, I thought it was Moses. I thought it was the Ten Commandments. No, who's really the standard of righteousness? Who's the standard of holiness? It's really Jesus. Paul says it like four different ways, right? And how do we determine how we should act? We've been born again, new self, you see it's in the passage, the new life, put on the new self. What's that gonna look like? Who is that gonna look like? According to verse 24. Created after the likeness of whom? God, but specifically who? Which person of the Godhead? Specifically. Try as I might, I'm not really going to be conformed to the image of the Holy Spirit. Not nearly like I'm conformed to the image of Christ. Right? I mean, yes, I should be holy and have God's thoughts. And it's not like, it's not like there's nothing to share in the Holy Spirit. That's not my point, but like the real revelation of the, of the perfect man, the one that we should try to be like the one we should pursue, you know, copying and, and becoming like is Jesus. Got it. Get it. Makes sense. Good. Good. Yeah, yeah, even when Paul says that, hey, you want an example that's still walking and talking on the earth, follow me, but only as I follow Christ, right? He limits that even. Don't follow me in everything. He still knows enough to know that as much as you can see Christ in me, follow that. That's another way he could have said it, right? And so this is who we want to be. Yeah, and the last phrase of the affirmation statement is that in our redemption we'll be ultimately conformed to His image. That's not just a hoped-for goal of God. It will be a completed thing when we go to be with Him, to be glorified. Why that term, glorified? Because we will begin to share in His glory untainted by sin. Glorified. Not in all the fullness of the deity, but in all the fullness of humanity. We will have all of that, all the perfection of being human. Without all of the sin and all of the problems that come along with it. Which will be pretty good. Okay? So just to wrap up the article, we deny that Jesus was less than truly human. He's not merely appearing to be human. He's not a demigod. He's not half and half. He's not a god who put on a Jesus suit to walk around the earth for a while, and then he shed that, and it was just an illusion. Jesus's humanity was none of those things. And he didn't lack a reasonable human soul. That's quite a statement. We don't really understand that at all, but there's enough to understand. When Jesus says, you know, into your hands I commit my spirit on the cross, He has something of a human soul that He's commending Himself to the Lord and trusting Himself to God the Father. Yeah, yeah, there's something at the resurrection that we assume, it's not super specifically detailed to us, but his soul that was somewhere with the thief on the cross in paradise on the day that he was crucified is reunited with a physical body that is no longer in the grave, right, on the morning of the resurrection. So he actually, he's actually in that way promises that our resurrection will be like his. Yeah. The last line, I don't even, I tried to figure it out. I can't even, I don't even know why they write this, but we deny that in the hypostatic union, the son assumed a human person rather than a human nature. The best I can figure out about that is the human nature is that non-physical part, but then it's united with a physical body. But it's not like he took possession of my body, Dorian, and walked around in the Dorian body. He didn't, he didn't, steal somebody else's human person. He was his own. But he's not two people, right? He's not God and a human person separate from God like you and I are. He's united in the union. So the union requires these two things that don't belong together to be one in person. Two natures, one person. I think that's what they're trying to get at, and that's all I got for you. Okay? So, good for that? Sure. Of their statement thing? Okay. A human being is born that's a new person, a new soul, that's created. But Jesus is, in fact, the person who is born. Jesus is God. He's a person's God. He's not a new person. He's made human. So when he becomes human, he's not being created as a person. He's a human being, like a human soul, like we are. He was created before, and he adds on to the human being. Maybe. Well, I mean in his divine nature he wasn't, but there is a question that dangles out there about if the previous statement is true that he has a reasonable human soul, when was that created? If it's a human soul, it has a beginning, just like His body. And so, does He actually possess the Spirit, the spiritual nature of God, and then in the Incarnation adds all of humanity, including the human soul? Does it actually have a beginning? Because the human soul is not the same as His divine nature, or else we're confusing the two natures. That's also different, independent from His person. Maybe. Okay. Yeah, that maybe that's true. Maybe that's true. Yeah, that he's a person before even though not created, born yet. Right? In the human way. Yeah, maybe so. Maybe that's what they mean. I guess that would make sense. Because he's still only one person after the incarnation. He's one person, and he didn't not exist before, or he did exist before. Just he adds something to the person. Maybe that's what they mean. All right. Well, oh, the deny. We deny that he's less than human. That he's less than human. That he's like an illusion of humanity. We deny that. Right? He's really, truly a human. I would try to just say the simplest thing and get away from it. Exactly. Yeah, I don't know. I tried the best that I could, but it's still like, I don't know. I do think in Article 7, the next page, I mean, it's a long article, but it's fairly simple. And in it, we have some of the stuff that points to humanity. I'm kind of going a little late since we started really late. And we can kind of hit this because it's directly related if you turn the page in Article 7. It says, we affirm that as truly man, Jesus Christ possessed in his state of humiliation all the natural limitations and common infirmities of human nature. We affirm that he was made like us in all respects, yet was without sin. And so therefore we deny that Jesus Christ had sinned or that he sinned. We deny that Jesus did not truly experience suffering, temptation, or hardship. We deny that sin is inherent to true humanity or that the sinlessness of Jesus Christ is incompatible with him being truly human. So the first in the affirmations, some of the verses at the bottom, but in Hebrews 2, 17, that's fully quoted down there, it says, He had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so he might become a merciful and faithful high priest. He himself suffered when he was tempted, so he's able to help those who are being tempted. Those are a couple of things. natural limitations and common infirmities of human nature that we see in the scripture. Well, this is one of them. This is a broad statement. He became like us in every way, so that he could be a merciful, compassionate, faithful high priest, so that he would understand what it's like to be tempted by sin. That's one of the infirmities common in the fallen world, is you're going to experience temptation, right? That's common. Pretty much everybody has to deal with that. What other kinds of things do we have to deal with? There's natural limitations. What? Hunger, tiredness, sore feet when you walk too far, headaches when the sun's too bright. Okay, so yeah, there's all the physical stuff, hunger and all that. And then there's other things that are common to human beings, like being treated poorly by others, right? disease sickness Jesus seemed to have I wonder I I don't know the answer to this and in order for this to be true I don't know that it has to be that he one day some sometime experienced a cold but that's pretty common we never read that he experienced a cold and he could walk up and touch the lepers and not get the leprosy and stuff like that, but it's a question we can ask him someday, but in order for him to be a merciful, compassionate, high priest, to know what it's like to suffer some sort of illness, he may have had something like that. We just don't know. But he experiences people being mean to him. He experiences injustice in his own life. He experiences watching other people be treated with injustice, right? He experiences what it's like to have people around you who doubt you, who talk about you behind your back, who stab you in the back, right? He's got Judas, but he had that before. It got worse with Judas right when he gets arrested, but he experiences the most human of all human things and he dies, right? Yeah, he experiences the death of a loved one, Lazarus. He has to not only be comforted, but he has to comfort other people in death and dying. He faces all of that in the world. He faces political issues and sort of, although he doesn't really arguably involve himself much in the politics of it, but he's aware of some of it. speaks about certain things at times. So these are these common natural limitations. Some of the verses that we could look up tell us some of these kinds of things, I think. And even though he's made like us in all respects, in every way human, all these limitations, all of the... and he's subject to the curse, although he himself is not a sinner. Right? He's subjected to difficulty in the world that's based on the curse. He gets cold at night when the sun goes down, just like everybody else. He's got to take a nap every now and then, you know, stuff like that. Does that make it clear enough? Do you guys want to look these verses up real quick? If I got the good volunteers, somebody, Micah, Micah, you want to read Micah 5 to you? Thanks. And Matthew, would you? Oh, sorry, it's Luke. Matthew. Matthew, Luke 2, Romans 8, Ivan, Galatians 4, Andrew, Philippians 2, 5 through 8, Christopher. Oh, you were just rubbing your eye. Oh, thanks. Sorry, man. Hebrews 4.15. Back in Hebrews. Pauly, OK. You were rubbing your eye, too. Yeah, they're all like. All right, Mikey. What's Micah? Ephraim, I don't know, Bethlehem. Ephrathah. So they grab this prophecy from Micah chapter 5 about his coming has been predicted, but he's coming, right? That's kind of the language that they would use about a promised prophet or something. He's the fulfillment. He's coming. And it reads like it ties to his humanity, I think, is why they stuck that verse in there. It's not the greatest one ever, but he's born. We know where he's born, right? We know what clan he's born into. We know the name of his mom. All that kind of stuff. All just like normal human stuff. Okay? Alright. We'll take it and run from there. Matthew 2.52. I think this is similar about the birth. You got to kind of love that. That really can only mean that Jesus is increasing in wisdom and stature. He's learning things he didn't know, and he's growing in physical stature, right? As a boy, he's not born as the 30-year-old man who started immediately preaching. He doesn't appear from nowhere. He doesn't just suddenly fall out of the sky. He's born. He's a baby. He's carried around. He can't walk. He has to learn to walk, learn to talk, right? And he grows. He eats food, and theoretically, it would appear like his body's exactly like ours, subject to all of the limitations and infirmities and all the rest, and had to grow up just like all the rest of us. Theoretically, at one point, he was an awkward teenage boy with his voice cracking, you know, theoretically. But anyway, I don't think there's any sin in that. I think it's just part of the curse. Okay, great, great, good. Romans 8.3. or what the law was powerless to do that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful man in sin offering. And so He condemned sin in sinful man. So this verse is that God sent His Son, the Son of God, in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin. Did He send Him as a sinner? No, just the likeness of sinful flesh. Real flesh, true humanity, right? But nobody would have known any different just by watching him and looking at him. You couldn't see anything about him as another person walking around or sitting and listening to him. You would hear that he's different, and he had authority different than the teachers of their day, and different things about him were different. He was performing miracles and stuff, but as a man just observing his humanity, he would have appeared to be just like a man. I'll just add that this verse saying that he's in the likeness of sinful flesh doesn't mean that it's everything about the sinful flesh. This is that I'm not going to bring up the discussion about the word image and likeness and all of those things and how they're used. But here it's the likeness means not every characteristic of sinfulness, but every characteristic of the flesh. which is part of the denial statement. See it in the denial statement? We deny that sin is inherent to true humanity or that the sinlessness of Christ is incompatible with Him being truly human. What does it mean to be truly human according to the scripture? Is sin an essential part of being human? It's in our flesh, but is that how we define what a human is in the Bible, right? It's in our flesh because we're under the curse. Jesus is in the sin-cursed world, but He's not under the curse. He doesn't have sin of His own. We'll talk about that maybe next week, in the next couple of weeks. Romans 5, if we get there, about Jesus being the second Adam. But the first Adam is the one that we point to that is the evidence that true humanity doesn't require that sin is part of it. Adam is created truly as a human, all the attributes of a human being. He and his wife eventually, Eve, are both created in the garden yet without sin. They're created that way. Sin is not an essential part of humanity, of being human. So Jesus didn't have that, which is really important for our theology, right? That Jesus doesn't have any sin of his own. Yes, that's an essential part of understanding why, you know, Jesus has to be a man to be an equal sacrifice for men and women, but he has to be without any sin of his own to take my sin and pay for it. That's the doctrinal issue that starts with this. Sin's not truly in humanity. Okay? We're good? Good enough? Okay, we'll take it. Galatians 4.4. I forget. Oh, Andrew? Okay, thanks. Born of a woman, born under the law, both just normal human stuff. Right? We know who his mom is. people theoretically attended the birth and saw the baby be born, right? She certainly did. There's no denial of any of that. Jesus is a man. And even born under the law, He's subject to all of the things of the law. He's not only subject to the civil law of the day, but subject to the moral law of God in that He lives it out and fulfills all of it, but He's under all that. Philippians 2 Somewhat similar. Not referencing His birth so much. Chris, do you want to read those things? 5-8. "...have this in mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus. The early ones in the form of God did not have the quality of a God of things to be grasped, but tempting Himself by taking the form of a servant, they were born in the likeness of men. Being found in human form, they humbled themselves by becoming obedient to the point of death. So this is another place, and I don't want to go on and on about it, where the language, the words by themselves, if we don't take them and understand what's meant by them and what the scripture teaches us, Jesus being found in the form or the likeness of a man can sound like he dressed up like in a Halloween costume and put on a man suit and walked around and acted like a man for a while. Is that what he did? No, no, he's born of a woman, born under the law. He grows in wisdom and stature. And here he becomes obedient in every way. He humbles himself to be a human. And it's not that he merely put on the likeness, but became a man. How much so a man? We know this by the context that he's a man, fully a man, because he dies. Right? It's not the description of he put on the likeness of human flesh for a while and then took it off. No, no, he died and had to be raised from the dead. That's really what he is, who he is, in being a man. Okay? Hebrews 4.15. Paul, are you the last one? We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are in everything else. So in his role as high priest, Jesus represents us in this way. He's been tempted in every way, just like we are. At the very least, for 40 days in the wilderness while the devil's tempting him, right? Every way he's tempted there, in every way, just like we are. And by the way, tempted in ways that are beyond what's reasonable for us to say we were tempted with. Right? I mean, he's tempted with, go ahead and turn that rock into a loaf of bread. You know he could do that, right? He was really tempted with, bow the knee to me, and I'll give you all the powers of all the world. I'll surrender as the prince of darkness, and I'll become the king of darkness, and you can be my prince. But the temptations were real. That's part of the affirmation. You see, that's where we're wrapping up. It says that he... Is that the affirmation or the denial? Oh, that we deny that he did not experience suffering, temptation, or hardship. We affirm, therefore, that he really did experience suffering, physical suffering, emotional suffering. He experienced this suffering that I will never experience, the separation from God. That every human, just like every other human who's counted as a sinner will experience that. He experienced that, and if we are believers, we never will. Pretty amazing. So He experienced all the suffering, all the temptation, everything that we're tempted with, He's been tempted with in like manner. He knows everything that we're struggling with. That doesn't enable us to say, well, He understands me, He gets me, so I can just go do whatever I want to do. Right? He wallows around with me in my sin or something like that, like some Super Bowl ad. It's not like that in any way, shape, or form. But He knows. He's been tempted. And He knows how to get out of it. And so he can actually help us. But he's also experienced all the different kinds of hardships. And we already kind of talked about that. So to affirm that he's experienced all that is to deny that he didn't experience it, I guess. Right? We'll say it's that simple. Ivan? Well, I was just saying real quick, I've been thinking about all this stuff. We got just a little information when he was born, like what we read this morning, I think. He was tempted all that time, you know, like whatever, with girls liking him, dating him, fitting in with the kids, you know, he's your teenager, all that kind of stuff. How come you're not getting married once in a while? You know what I mean? The pressure from society, like all that stuff. Like we don't know any of that stuff, but he had to be faced with all that stuff, just like, all until he was 30 years old. I think that verse almost invites us to think like that. What are the things that I've experienced that are temptations, you know, from all that peer pressure, all the stuff of being tempted in every way to think this way, to act that way, all of it, right? He's been tempted in every way. He's not unfamiliar with any of it. Why? Because he's really a man operating and living in this world. Like you said, there's 30 years of it there where we know very little about any of it. I'm sure that he was tempted before that time in the wilderness with the devil directly, you know? It was like intensified there, but it's the whole life, just like the rest of us. Like every other kid. Right, right. Attempted to be disrespectful to his mom and not listen to her. I mean, everything, you know? I wonder if he actually had sometimes thought that his mom was like stupid or something. When's she gonna get smarter? That's probably sin, that's not temptation, that's just sin. Yeah, he never thought more highly of himself. So he was without the sin, but he was tempted to think that way. All right. Well, we got through it. A couple. So Lord, thank you for the morning today. Thank you for gathering us together and giving us your word and revealing things to us that we would have no way to know otherwise. And just thank you for making some of these things clear and giving us the opportunity to talk through some of the other ones that aren't so clear. I pray that At the very least, Lord, that the things that might be confusing or hard to understand, that you would help us to know and to understand at least that you are God. Jesus, you are a man. And that's important to us. I pray that we would know it in the way that we should worship you, in the way that we should come to you for help. You've experienced all of these things and then you apply it to us. It's not just theory, but you apply it to us. Like, come to me because I know the temptation. I know the weariness and the suffering. And so you invite us to come to you in our times of need. I pray that we would be able to have that much from these studies. To worship you more truly, more clearly, and to obey you better because we know who you are. Thank you for the time and your word together this morning and pray you'd bless the rest of the morning here Where we thank you for the revelation of the resurrection and pray that it would be to your glory this morning As we celebrate that together in Jesus name. Amen