Let's be seated. I am convinced that in regards to the fundamental doctrines of our faith, those things which are without which there is none, that key doctrines ought to be taught and retaught to Christians over and over again. And this is because that it's imperative that we rightly grasp and we do not forget the gospel. And the reason that we forget is because our hearts are sinful. We're prone to wander. We're prone to forget. We're prone to neglect and get distracted by earthly entertainments. And it is an act of Christian worship to grow in our understanding of God and of his works. And so reminders of fundamental doctrines not only bring our hearts closer to Christ, but in the negative it keeps us from error. It keeps us from drifting. And these errors can be overt and obvious errors, or they can be small and subtle errors. And we have to be on guard against both. Let me give an example. If we were to talk about justification, our church is very solid on the doctrine of justification. It is preached to us over and over again, because we need to hear it over and over again. If somebody were to walk through those doors and preach from this pulpit, and they were to start saying, we are justified before God on the basis of our works, I don't think that there's anybody here who would be like, you know, that's really persuasive. And the reason is, we know better. We've been taught well. And I think anybody with even just a mustard seed of faith will know that this is an anti-Christian gospel. This would be an obvious error. But there are subtle threats also to the doctrine of justification. Within Presbyterianism, the federal vision movement has done harm and caused people to wander away from the doctrine of justification. There are also those, even within the Baptist camp, even men that we might respect highly in other areas, who separate initial justification from final justification. They would say, look, when we're first justified, when we first believe in Jesus, we are justified by faith alone. But at the last day, at the great white throne of judgment, God might take somewhat of a peek just to look at your works to make sure that you were the real deal. This is a smaller error, but it's still a threat to the doctrine of justification. But today I'm not talking about justification, or at least that's not my central point. Today I just want to talk about Jesus, who he is in himself. And so the title of my talk today is True God, True Man. We must confess that Jesus is truly God, and Jesus is truly man. And I've chosen this topic because, first of all, it's absolutely fundamental to the gospel, and we cannot forget it. And Pastor Jim's been working through the epistle of the Hebrews, and it's just been a great reminder over and over again so far that Jesus is the eternal word. Another reason I've chosen this is because there are some pretty obvious errors that may not be an immediate threat to this congregation, but there's also some subtle threats that are alive and active today. And I think it would be helpful for all of us to spend just one Sunday school doing a deep dive into this, since again, we are prone to wander. So my method's gonna look like this. The first thing I wanna talk about is a positive case for this doctrine from the Bible. Second of all, necessary implications that we can draw about this doctrine. In other words, Jesus being the God-man, how does this relate to our salvation? And third, I wanna take a look at church history. I'm gonna be jumping around a little bit today, looking at various texts, but the primary text I'm gonna be in is Philippians chapter two. So if you'd like to open up your Bible and turn there with me, I'm gonna be reading Philippians two, verses five through 11. The Word of God reads, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider robbery to be equal with God, but he made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God has also highly exalted him, and given him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on the earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Amen. I'm gonna reread verse six briefly. Who, speaking of Jesus, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God. So our text says he's both in the form of God and he is equal with God. Our text says Jesus is God. And Jesus himself, he makes no apology for the fact that he makes a claim to divinity, that he is God. The testimony of the totality of scripture is clear on this point. He is not merely divine, like we might call some of our best theologians divines. nor is he divine in the sense of him just being this super holy righteous guy. He is not simply divine, but divinity itself. This is what our passage means when it says that he is equal with God. John's gospel, the gospel according to John, is the great testimony to Jesus's godhood. John opens up his gospel with straightforward language. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. And a few verses later, the text says that the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And that word is identified as Jesus, the everlasting God who took upon himself a human nature, and he lived among us. John 3.16, we're all familiar with that verse. It says that Jesus is the only begotten son. He is in several places referred to as the son of God in a unique sense. It's not merely in a covenantal relation, like we may be called sons of God by adoption, but he is called the son of God based on an eternal relation. This is why even in the Old Testament, he is called the son. In Psalm 2 verse 12, it says, kiss the son lest he be angry and you perish in the way. Other places in the Old Testament, Jesus is also referred to as being God. In Isaiah chapter nine, we have a great messianic prophecy where Jesus is called the Prince of Peace, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father. Jesus is called Mighty God. He is called Emmanuel, God with us. This was not a surprise or should not have been a surprise to the Jewish people at the time. It wasn't a surprise to Jesus' disciples who clearly wrote about him as being divine. But there is a sense in which it did surprise the Pharisees. They were very upset about Jesus' claim to divinity. You might hear people sometimes say, if Jesus is God, why did he never claim to be God? You may have heard people say that. And the best place to take them is John chapter 8. You really cannot escape the words of Jesus here. He may not say in the exact phrase, I am God, but he does say, I am. Verse 24 of John 8 says, if you do not believe that I am, you will die in your sins. And also in verse 58 of the same chapter, Before Abraham was, I am. Jesus is applying to himself the name of God. In the Old Testament, it was Yahweh, Jehovah. In the New Testament, Kurios, Lord. He is saying, I am the one, I am the same God who appeared to Moses in the wilderness. I am the same God whom Abraham believed in. And there was no doubt as to what Jesus meant. The Jews understood exactly what he meant. It wasn't Jesus is speaking in riddles. They picked up stones to stone him. Because in their eyes, he committed high blasphemy. He claimed to be God. That's not allowed. Jesus made a claim that he is divinity. And so we as Christians, we believe Jesus at his word, and we believe God when he speaks in the Bible. We confess that Jesus is truly God along with the Father and the Holy Spirit. 1 John 5, 7 says that there are three who bear witness in heaven. the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one. When we recognize that Jesus is God, we must recognize that he is truly God in every respect. For remember, our Philippians text says equal with God. Now, Pastor Charlie has been going through the attributes of God in Sunday school. He's been going through God's goodness, his omnipotence, his perfections. Well, one of the attributes of God is his simplicity. And when we say God is simple, we're saying that he cannot be divided. And therefore, we can't chop God up. We must say that Jesus, as God, possesses all of the divine attributes. We can't say that Jesus only has some of the God qualities, because not only does that undo Jesus's claim to divinity, but it also shows that we misunderstand God himself. We cannot divide God. We confess that Jesus is truly God. This is why he's called Lord in verse 11 of our text, because he is Jehovah. Now I wanna talk about how Jesus is truly man. In verse eight, our text reads in Philippians two, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Now we should notice the parallel between verse six and verse eight. Just as Jesus was in the form of God, so too was he in appearance as a man. Both are true. God and man are the twin natures of Christ. But many people want to make a false dichotomy between the two. He's either God or he's man, but he can't possibly be both. But a consistent and faithful reading of this text does not allow for this interpretation. He is man just as validly as he is God. And he evidences that he is man, according to our text, by his humiliation. God cannot be humiliated, but Jesus can. By his obedience. Who does God have to obey? He is the highest. He is the ultimate authority. And he also evidences his humanity by his death. God is the Lord and giver of life. He cannot die. He is eternal. And so, Jesus is truly man, and to be honest, it's almost not even worth discussing the various scriptural proofs for this, because not only is it obvious to us as Christians that Jesus was a human being, but it's even obvious to the most hardened atheists. Everyone believes he was a real human. If you were to say, I don't think Jesus existed, even in the secular world, you're treated as a conspiracy theorist. And rightly so, there's so much evidence to the contrary. But what's interesting is that this non-struggle for us was a very big issue for the earliest Christians. There were people who were believing that Jesus was a sort of spiritual being, but not a physical being. And I'll get into details when I get into some church history stuff, but the Bible does make it very clear in 1 John 4, verses two through three. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God. And every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist. So believing Jesus is man and believing that Jesus is God are both non-negotiables for our faith. Whatever it means to be human, Jesus was. Hebrews 2.17 says, in all things he had to be made like his brethren. So he had a true human nature. There's no caveats, there's no exceptions here, just like there wasn't in his divine nature. But the Bible does offer one word of caution, and that is he is without sin. But we have to remember how God made man. He made man upright in the garden, he made man without sin. Sin is not essential to humanity. And from the grand perspective of eternity, it's not normal. Hebrews 4.15 reminds us that although Jesus Christ may have entered into temptation just as we did in every way, yet he was faithful where we were not and he was without sin. He was impeccable, meaning he could not have sinned because he is divine and he was born of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit. So that's a brief look at a biblical defense of this doctrine. Now I want to even more briefly look at some of the necessary implications of this doctrine. How does this impact the gospel itself? Again, I've already stated that good news does not make sense unless Jesus is the God-man. If we were to look at the atonement, what Jesus accomplished on that cross, Romans 8, the first three verses read, there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, and that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh on account of sin. He condemned sin in the flesh. So Jesus died as man, for only man can die. He died as a substitute for man. which was absolutely necessary. That which was not assumed by Christ could not be redeemed by Christ. And as God, his death was of infinite value. And as God, he had the divine right of forgiveness. So if I were to, let's say, I were to slap Kevin, and Hans were to say, I forgive you, We would say, what? That doesn't make sense. Kevin has to be the one to forgive me because Kevin's the one I sinned against. It was the same thing with God. When we break his commandments, it has to be God who forgives us. It can't be some other thing. It has to be God who forgives transgressions against God, which is why Jesus can forgive. In regards to the resurrection, John says in John chapter 10, verses 17 through 18, Jesus speaking, My father loves me because I lay down my life that I may take it again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have the power to lay it down and I have the power to take it again. Jesus was man who was able to die. God cannot die for he is eternal. And yet as God, he had the power over life and death and was able to resurrect himself by his own power from the grave. In considering the mediation of Christ, 1 Timothy 2.5 says, for there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ. We are reminded that salvation is not just a past event, it's not just a one-time thing, but it's a present reality that we currently live in. Jesus mediates for Christians, currently presenting us sinlessly before God, and Jesus as the God-man breaks the infinite chasm between or breaches the infinite chasm between God and man. So that's a little bit of a look at some of the implications of this view. I'm gonna spend the rest of my time looking at church history. As stated earlier, this has been somewhat of a theological battle since the very beginning. So early that the apostles had to write about it and say, beware, this is an anti-Christ gospel. Early on, people were quick to grasp that Jesus is divine, or at least spiritual, but they were slow to confess that he had come in the flesh. Again, 1 John 4, 3, every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard was coming and is now already in the world. So within the lifetime of the apostles, something called docetism was already a living heresy. And docetism is from the Greek word doceo, which means to seem. And it's the belief that Jesus seemed and only seemed to be human, but he was really just a phantom or a ghost. So he may have really looked like he had flesh and blood, but that's really just an illusion. He's really just a spiritual being. Docetism is what happens when you take Gnosticism and you try to blend it with Christianity. Gnosticism is sort of a Greek philosophic paganism, and I don't want to get into all the specifics of it, but generally it held that God Almighty exists as the ultimate being of the universe, and all that exists emanates from Him. and the closer emanations to him are spiritual and therefore good. And the ones that are further away are material and therefore evil. So within this weird metaphysical scheme, since Jesus is good and he's a close enough emanation to God to be called the son of God, he must therefore be spiritual and immaterial. This is not only at odds with the biblical perspective that God's creation was indeed very good, according to Genesis chapter one, but it's an anti-Christian worldview that greatly threatened the church in its beginning. It may sound weird to us, and it is weird, but it was captivating back then. The church had to confess that Jesus doesn't just look like a human, he didn't just act like a human, but he was truly a human, and there was no sin in that. Some of us may know that the Council of Chalcedon defined the hypostatic union of Christ, and I do have the Creed of Chalcedon printed on the back of our bulletin. But before I get there, I want to talk about just some of the heresies that led up to this council. The two I'm going to talk about are Eutychianism and Historianism. And there are more, but I really just want to focus on these two. Because both of these heresies would actually affirm, yeah, Jesus is God and Jesus is man. But of course, I'm calling them heresies because I think they put their own spin on them. and that spin is really very much drifting in a different direction than how scripture speaks about Christ. So Eutychianism, it gets its name from its chief advocate, Eutychius, who was an elder of the church in Constantinople, and he argued that Jesus Christ was of two natures, of two natures, and those two natures would be God and man. Now, the problem with this heresy is just that preposition of. He wasn't saying that Jesus Christ was two distinct natures. He was saying he was a sort of blend between the divine and the human, which would make it so that, yeah, we could kind of say he's God, we can kind of say he's man, but we can't say that he was truly God and truly man. The biblical position is that the person of Jesus possesses two natures, not of. Two natures. Eutychius thought that Christ ultimately had one nature. And this new nature is not totally advised, not totally human. And the problem with this is this is a different Jesus. This is a Jesus that cannot represent us on the cross because his humanity was absorbed. It is a Jesus who cannot forgive us because his divinity was absorbed. And he is a Jesus that, to be honest, just defies our categories of understanding what it means to be human and what it means to be divine. The other heresy we have is Nestorianism, and Nestorius was the archbishop of Constantinople, the same city that Eutychius was from. And Nestorius, like us, would say Jesus possesses two natures. He's got the human nature and he's got the divine nature. And he would even say, Jesus was truly God and truly man, their distinct natures. He therefore concludes that because Jesus has two distinct natures, he must be two distinct persons. And his logic was, if he's human in every sense, he became like us in every way, that means he must have a human person that he assumed as well. He must be two distinct personalities. A few thoughts about this. One is, this is not the first time the church has had to have a discussion on the relationship between being and person. And the church has confessed, you know, at the latest since Nicaea, where we have distinguished between being and person in the Trinity. You know, we would say there is one being of God, but there are three persons in God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The story just doesn't seem to maintain those category distinctions between being and person, he seems to equate the two. Secondly, this eliminates any possibility of unity within Jesus. If Jesus is two natures and two persons, how then can we say that there is only one Jesus? Not only does the Bible presuppose that Jesus is one person literally everywhere, but it also explicitly states in Ephesians 4-5, there's one Lord, one faith, one baptism. And to speak of Jesus as two in every respect does great injustice to our one Savior. And it makes reading the Bible difficult if we were to accept his premises. As if to say every time it says Jesus, maybe we should think Jesuses. But in light of these two heresies, in light of Eutychianism and Historianism, and again other heresies as well, an ecumenical council was called in Chalcedon. to define the relationship between the natures and the person of Christ. And the definition produced is called the hypostatic union. And that's a fancy theological phrase. It basically just means that the unity of Jesus between his two natures is centered on his person. The two natures are united in one person. And the Creed of Chalcedon reads as such. We then, following the Holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood, truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and body, coessential with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the manhood, and all things like unto us, without sin. begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God according to the manhood, one in the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures without confusion, without change, without division, without separation, the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved and concurring in one person and one subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one in the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the prophets in the beginning have declared concerning Him, and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself has taught us, and the creed of the Holy Fathers has handed down to us." And this definition was produced in 451 AD. It's important that we affirm this. Because, you know, we can always say, you know, we always say the bad thing in heresies. And heresies are bad, they do distract us from the gospel. But one of the things that's good about heresies is it challenges the church to be more precise in our language. And that's exactly what this has helped us to do. We can say exactly, this is who Jesus is. Another thing we might notice about this creed is Mary is called the mother of God. And the word is Theotokos, and if you were to look up other translations of this creed, you might see that Mary is called the God-bearer. But what's your gut reaction when we say Mary is the mother of God? I think for a lot of us it might be disgust. You know, that sounds Catholic, that sounds like Mary worship. And certainly in the past, it has become an occasion for idolatry. But we do need to be careful here. We need to be charitable towards those who are You know, a little bit off-put by that, but we also need to seek to understand what exactly is the creed saying here? In isolation, it might look like it's talking about Mary, but that seems to be not flowing with the rest of the creed, if that's the case. The logic of the creed is this. Mary is the mother of Jesus. Jesus is God. Therefore, Mary is the mother of God. And so the question becomes this. Is this a careful and confusing use of language? Or is this biblical and helpful? If we were to look at Luke 1.35, it says, the angel answered and said to her, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the highest will overshadow you. Therefore also that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God. So the one in Mary's womb is called the Son of God. So there is a real sense in which we can say Mary is the mother of God. Another helpful text to look at would be 1 Corinthians 2.8, which says, for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. Notice what the language is doing here. It's using death and divinity and uniting them together. Or when Thomas, the disciple, sees the physical body of Jesus with his pierced hands and his side, he responds to this exposure to the humanity of Jesus with the statement, my Lord, and my God. So what I'm trying to get at with these texts is to say that this is a biblical manner of speaking. This is also not a pragmatic thing, and it's not a mere poetic device, but because the two natures are united in the person of Jesus Christ, both the human and divine attributes can be said to belong both to the person of Jesus. And it's because of this unity that whatever may be said about one of Jesus' natures may be spoken of by referencing the other nature. This is a different way of thinking, I think, for a lot of us, and it was hard for me to get used to as well, but I think it's biblically sound. This doctrine, speaking of one nature of Christ in light of the other nature, is called the communication of properties. Last time I led Sunday school, I gave a biography, a sketch of the life of Ulrich Zwingli, and he was a first-generation reformer from Switzerland. He lived at the same time as Martin Luther, that great Protestant reformer. And the one time that the two men met in person, they met to discuss doctrine. And they agreed on almost everything. They agreed on their understanding of the authority of the Bible, on the necessity of placing faith in Christ, on how grace is purely a work of God. And they agreed on almost everything except the Lord's Supper. I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit. Chalcedon was in 451, and really between that and the time of Luther, there really wasn't that much development. People kept going back to the Creed. Whenever there was any kind of error, it was back to the Creed, which pointed us back to the Bible. This is why creeds and confessions are really important. They help us to keep from error. They show us this is what the church has historically understood. And if we're going to deviate from this, we better have a really good reason. Anyway, a thousand years later, going to Luther. Zwingli and Luther agreed on pretty much everything except the Lord's Supper. Zwingli believed that when we have the bread and the wine, that Jesus is not present in the elements at all. but that these are simply bread and wine. Jesus is symbolized by these things. Luther rather strongly disagreed. He disagreed to the point where he would no longer extend the right hand of fellowship to Zwingli. He believed that when Jesus said, this is my body, that he was making a pretty literal, physical statement. And Luther was saying, yes, this is bread and wine, and it doesn't cease to be bread and wine when it's consecrated. But in addition to being bread and wine, we must equally and truly confess that this is the body and blood of Jesus. And this view has sometimes been called sacramental union. We Reformed are very good about exposing ourselves to different arguments from different sides. You know, we're always comparing the Bible and our beliefs to what do Armenians believe, what do liberals believe, what do Catholics believe. But something that we've seemed to neglected in the past several decades is comparing ourselves to Lutherans. If you were to read, you know, Reformed theology from a couple hundred years ago to even a hundred years ago, they always went out of their way to discuss the differences that we have with Lutherans. It doesn't seem like we do that a whole lot anymore. And I think when it comes to the doctrine of Christ, it's important. Modern Lutherans, as well as At the time of Luther, they do follow Luther's view of the sacraments. They do believe wholeheartedly that Jesus is physically present at the Lord's Supper. We Reformed do not. But when Lutheran theologians begin to discuss, well, how is this possible? How can it be bread and wine, but also be the body and blood of Jesus? They run into some problems. How can we place this into are classical, theological, and metaphysical categories. How is this possible? And the way that they believe that they have solved it is through a doctrine called the ubiquity of Christ. And the ubiquity of Christ is to say that when the incarnation happened, some of the divine attributes, not all, but some, were formally communicated to the human nature of Jesus. Now Lutherans would be in agreement with us regarding what I said earlier about the communication of properties. We can say things like God suffered on the cross because the two natures are united in the person of Christ. But Lutherans do go further to say that these properties are communicated, not simply to the person of Christ, but some divine properties are communicated to the humanity of Jesus. And really the primary attribute I'm talking about here is omnipresence. We believe that God is omnipresent. He's everywhere. And since Jesus is God, does that not then follow that Jesus is present everywhere? Well, yes, since he is God. But what about regards to his humanity? Is he everywhere? We should say no, because scripture tells us that he is only at the right hand of the Father in heaven. And this is our point of disagreement with Lutherans. When the Son of God assumed a human nature, according to Lutheranism, his humanity became omnipresent And therefore the human nature of Jesus is not only in heaven, but it is truly omnipresent just as the divine nature is. A few critiques here. This does violate the creed of Chalcedon. They would insist that it doesn't, but I do not see how this does not confuse the natures. Another critique is this doctrine was formulated in order to explain their interpretation of the Lord's Supper. It wasn't first that they derived their Christology and then from that their understanding of the sacrament, but they did it in the reverse order. Jesus must be in the bread and wine. How can we understand this? Well, let's tweak our Christology a little bit. Let's tweak our understanding of who Jesus is. That's a really weird order to do theology. And this also creates a metaphysical problem. You know, how can we understand this? We don't have the categories to understand this. How does the physical matter of Christ's human nature become infinitely present in a finite universe, and yet we can't see it? Even when, as Lutherans say, he is present at the Lord's Supper, in, with, and under the elements, even at the Lord's Supper, we still can't see it. But that is what they confess. And they would say it's a mystery. Well, is it a mystery or a contradiction? One last word here. Catholics and the Reformed have always been quick to critique this. And it is debatable, supposedly, whether or not Luther held this view himself. I'm inclined to believe, based on my studies, that he did not believe this, but it was Lutheran theologians who believed this. But Luther also was aware that this was a view, and he didn't condemn it. Remember that his view of the Lord's Supper was at stake. And for him, this meant the very gospel itself. He disagreed with Zwingli, and was willing to say, because of our disagreement, you're not a Christian. Well, if the only way he can keep his view of the Lord's Supper is by tweaking Christology, he's open to that, because he believes the gospel itself is at stake. And I didn't mean all that to bash Lutheranism, but it is to say, there are some subtle threats to this doctrine, and we don't expose ourselves to that argument very often, and we do need to hear it that we might be prepared for an answer. There is also, I guess, a more modern and popular theory called kenosis, which, again, tries to modify the truly God aspect. Going back to Philippians 2.7, our text says, at least in part, he made himself of no reputation. That's the New King James, and King James says the same thing, but almost all modern versions will say he emptied himself, which is perhaps a more literal translation. What does it mean when Jesus emptied himself? And the word for empty is kenosis, and this is the theory that Jesus willingly laid aside, by a self-limitation, some of his divine attributes during his earthly ministry. Like he may have laid aside his glory, or he may have laid aside his omniscience. This is a popular view today. I've run into it myself. But this really only became a thing in the late 19th century. But it's really just an old air phrase in a new way. The biblical view is that Jesus is truly God without exception or qualification. But if we look closely at our text, this does not seem to mean that Jesus emptied himself of divine attributes. Actually, I think that's reading an awful lot into the text. But his emptying seems to be about his humiliation. And the text tells us exactly how this emptying, or becoming of no reputation, happened. And this wasn't by subtraction. This wasn't by getting rid of some of his godness. But by addition, by assuming the nature of lowly man, which is nothing compared to the glory of God, and by dying on the cross, which is not a treatment fit for the king of kings. Regarding kenosis, it's also, I don't know, fun fact that one of our hymns in our hymnal has changed because of this doctrine. Charles Wesley's favorite famous hymn, and can it be, has a line that read, he humbled himself of all but love, And our Trinity Hymnal changed it to, he humbled himself because of love. Historically, Wesley did not teach this doctrine, or at least he didn't teach it in any way except maybe this one hymn. And so it's unlikely that he met Kenosis here for that reason, and it also really wasn't a controversy until about 100 years after his death. But it is hard for modern ears to hear that line and not think, okay, he got rid of some of his divinity. And so I think it's probably a wise change, but the New Living Translation makes Philippians 2.7 say, he gave up his divine privileges, which is affirming the canonic theory, again, reading too much into the text, which is why I think it's important for us to have a more formal translation than a more thought-for-thought translation. In conclusion, Having gone through all these things, my point wasn't to bombard us or overwhelm us or anything like that, but hopefully give us a lot of examples of how this doctrine has subtle threats to us. I wanted this to help us sort out working through who Christ is. And so my parting advice is this, listen carefully to everyone. when they talk about Christ. Even our trusted teachers. We need to be faithful Bereans. Test everything according to the scriptures. And it would be helpful if we had this creed somewhat in our heart. Not the same level as scripture, but understanding that Christians have labored over this. And this is the conclusion that we've come to. And it seems to be confirmed not only by the church 1,600 years ago, but faithful Christians today. confess this to be true. In conclusion, I'd like to end with a quote by one of my favorite theologians, Anselm of Canterbury. In his work, Why the God-Man, which in general is a great defense of substitutionary atonement, he writes the following concerning Jesus. For we affirm that the divine nature is beyond doubt impassable, and that God cannot at all be brought down from his exaltation nor toil in anything which he wishes to effect. But we say that the Lord Jesus Christ is very God and very man, one person in two natures, and two natures in one person. When, therefore, we speak of God as enduring any humiliation or infirmity, we do not refer to the majesty of that nature, which cannot suffer, but to the feebleness of the human constitution which he assumed. And so there remains no ground of objection against our faith. And this is our faith. Our faith is God the Son took on flesh, He lived, He was crucified, He died, and He was resurrected. And there is no ground of objection here. We have a firm foundation, Jesus Christ our Lord. And according to our text, verses 9 through 11 reads, Therefore, because He is the God-man, therefore God has also highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that the name of Jesus every knee should bow of those in heaven and of those on earth and of those under the earth and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Amen. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, Lord, you are crowned with glory and honor and riches unimaginable and we thank you that you have left your heavenly throne, that you took on flesh and that you dwelt among us. We thank you that as the God-man you lived for our righteousness and you died for our justification. Lord, we thank you that as the God-man you resurrected from the grave and that you defeated death and that you are seated at the Father's right hand making intercession for us. God, we thank you for all that you've done. We thank you for the gift of faith. We thank you for your glorious gospel. We thank you for your son. God, we ask that you would help us to grow in our wisdom and our knowledge and our love for Jesus Christ. Lord, may he be magnified today that we may see him for how he truly is, the God-man. We pray all of this in his impeccable name. Amen. Amen.