Amen. And that is maybe the exact right prayer to start this discussion again as we get into this area of what's called Christology. We started talking about it in chapter eight, section two last week, and that's where we are. it's an important area to consider, but it's one of those areas where we can say true things from Scripture, we can make logical connections, but we can't fully comprehend this stuff, and so there's always The concern, one, to be unapologetic about the Bible, to push all the way to say true and orthodox things, and yet also to have the humility to say we don't fully understand this, but we have to say this is true in light of scripture. And so these are both important aims. And we'll get into that a bit further again later here. So let's read chapter 8, section 2, and then we'll pick up where we left off last week. The Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, is truly and eternally God. He is the brightness of the Father's glory, the same in substance and equal with Him. He made the world and sustains and governs everything He has made. When the fullness of time came, he took upon himself human nature with all the essential properties and common weaknesses of it, but without sin. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary. The Holy Spirit came down upon her, and the power of the Most High overshadowed her. Thus, he was born of a woman from the tribe of Judah, a descendant of Abram and David, in fulfillment of the scriptures. Two whole, perfect, and distinct natures were inseparably joined together in one person without converting one into the other or mixing them together to produce a different or blended nature. This person is truly God and truly man, yet one Christ, the only mediator between God and humanity. And we left off at the end of footnote 10 last time. And so that's where we'll pick up this time. But before we get started, I should ask if there's any kind of leftover discussion or any leftover questions or comments from last week, or are we ready to move on? Then if it's quiet, then we will move on. So picking up after footnote 10. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary. The Holy Spirit came down upon her and the power of the Most High overshadowed her. Thus he was born of a woman from the tribe of Judah, a descendant of Abram and David in fulfillment with the scriptures. And we've got two genealogy texts there. Who wants to take Matthew one? Howard, and who wants to take Luke one? Keith, do 27 through 35. Howard, go ahead. Matthew 1, 22 and 23. Okay, very good. And the actual physical genealogy is given earlier, and Jesus does come from the tribe of Judah, but we also saw a couple weeks ago, he's also from the tribe of Melchizedek, which means he can be prophet, pardon me, priest and king, but physically he descends from Judah, which would allow him, by Israel's standards, to be a king, but not a prophet. Pardon me, a king, but not a priest. And so that's the connection with Melchizedek. But ethnically, Jesus descends from the tribe of Judah. And then Keith, Luke. And Mary said to the angel, How will this be, since I have heard you? And the angel answered her, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow your shadow. Okay Good so and again some of this goes back to the the section on the Trinity that we did and there's quite a bit of overlap when we look at the Trinity and the person of Christ because Christ is one of the persons of the Trinity so there is a fair degree of overlap and yet it's not a exactly the same. And so one thing that we want to affirm is that Jesus is truly God and truly man, and in that vein, what is the significance of the virgin birth? I'll throw that out as a question. What is the significance of the virgin birth? He's not of the seed of man, and what does that get him? What benefits come with not being a man's seed? No original sin, right? No original sin from not being a man's seed. Because sin is transmitted covenantally through heads of homes, i.e., men. Fathers transmit sin to their children because we're sons of Adam. Okay? Keith, you also were saying something there? Okay, okay, so see how this is important, and I've stressed this lots, but it's really important because I think sometimes it's easy to not see the theological meaning of the virgin birth. We just see it as a party trick. It's just a miracle to show God's power. See, God can make a baby without a man, and that's true. He can, he did, but we shouldn't be content to leave it there. There's theological meaning there. What the theological meaning is that God is directly the covenant head of Jesus and not an earthly father who would transmit sin to his children like I did. And like Howard and Ron and Don and Pete Ginter did. We transmit sin to our children because we are sinful sons of Adam and sin is transmitted covenantally from father to children. Jesus bypasses that. So the virgin birth proves his deity, his sinless perfection, and what else is accomplished? Was Mary real? Yes, she was. And I think this happened very ordinarily. We talked about this when we did the Trinity discussion. Mary ovulated just like she did every single month for who knows how long. And an ovum comes down the fallopian tube, waiting to be fertilized, and implant itself in the wall of the uterus, and that's exactly what happened. She ovulated an egg that was just as normal as every other egg she had ever ovulated, and it came down, was supernaturally fertilized, attached itself to the wall of her uterus, and it grew there, just like every other baby in the history of humanity. Nothing different. If they had ultrasound equipment back then, nothing would have looked different about this whatsoever. Now why is that important? Because he's fully man. Yep. When we look at the humanity of Jesus, there's nothing special about his humanity. He's a man. We could say what's special about his humanity is that it was sinless, and that's true, but that doesn't exactly make him special because Adam was also sinless at one point in time. Right? Before the fall. So there's absolutely nothing special or different about Jesus' humanity than our humanity. Other than, of course, in a post-fall world, we're used to having a sin nature, which his humanity did not have. But this is so important. Jesus was a man. And Jesus was God. Well, he is, not just was, he is both of those things right now. Okay? And how many natures does Jesus have? How many wills or how many natures does Jesus have? If he's fully God, fully man, how many wills, how many natures? Oh, I saw a hand gesture. Or did I not? Oh, maybe Keith was just throwing gang signs. Okay. Okay. But this is important. How many natures in Christ? Two, that's right, two natures in Christ. Okay, a human nature and a divine nature. Christ has two natures. And this is where it gets hard for us to understand, because everyone in this room is one person with how many natures? One. Christ is one person with two natures. Again, how does that work? We don't fully know, but we're gonna expound upon this a little further in the confession here. that we have to say true things about it. Keith, you had a question. That's highly speculative. I don't know if we heard Keith's question, but he's asking because, if I'm understanding it correctly, because Jesus was supernaturally conceived, Adam genetically had all of our genetic material in him, so was Jesus' genetic expression limited by Mary? Is that what you're asking? Okay. Right. That would be possible that would be possible Yeah, it in genetics. We call that phenotype the way you express your genetic potential, but I I Don't know what I would take from that passage is that Jesus wasn't a handsome man and He didn't draw a crowd because of his rockstar good looks. And this is one of the challenges, and we brought this up before too, throughout history in Reformational and Protestant Christianity, it has been generally, not universally, but generally accepted that the second commandment prohibits depictions of Jesus. And that's a weird concept to a lot of people because all of us saw lots of pictures of Jesus when we were kids. And I wouldn't be dogmatic on this, but I am convinced enough of that position that I would never use artwork that depicts Jesus as a man. For several reasons. One, I'm convinced by scripture we should not draw pictures of Jesus. We shouldn't. I think that is... a legitimate application of the second commandment, is to leave Jesus out of our artwork, and rather represent him in other ways that don't depict his humanity, that we can't see. So to represent him as a lamb or a sheep, I think is fine, and I wouldn't fight with someone who doesn't have problems with depictions of the human Jesus. I just am convicted enough that I wouldn't do it myself personally. But even if you're not convinced of that at all, and you say, I disagree with you, Matt, there's nothing wrong with artwork depicting Jesus, here is one problem. Jesus always looks the same in artwork. And how does he look? Soft, effeminate, long hair, right? Blue eyes, yeah, light skin, probably about six feet tall. Okay? So, in other words, almost certainly not at all like he looked. Okay? And there's always like this aura or this glow off his face and a halo. Not at all. He was probably about a 5'7 unattractive carpenter with calluses on his hand, dark skin, not a well waxed and trimmed beard. Okay? He didn't look, we know this for sure, he looks nothing like what you picture in your mind when you think of Jesus. We know for sure he didn't look like that. And that's actually another reason, not a scriptural reason, that would be a practical reason why I'm leery about artwork of Jesus is because that artwork does something. What do we all know when we see artwork with Jesus? He's soft and effeminate. Okay? That does something in your head. Jesus was not soft or effeminate. Jesus was the true man Okay, so if you're convinced. We should depict Jesus in artwork then at least depict him at about this tall and unattractive and very blue-collar looking do that and That won't sell why well for the same reason his looks didn't sell in real life Okay Because he didn't have Rockstar good looks Yeah Yes, did you ever hear Inge? Artwork of angels is the same way, right? They're always fat, chubby six-year-olds, right? Wearing a cute little diaper. And if it's on a Van Halen album cover, the angel is smoking. But that's maybe an exception. But is that at all how the Bible depicts angels? If a seraphim comes to you, do you say, oh, that's cute? Or do you run for cover? You run for cover. You do not want a seraphim to come visit you. It's not a chubby baby with a little bow and arrow with a heart at the end of it. Okay? And I'll grant, the language is symbolic. But you read Ezekiel's prophecy and there's wheels and wheels and eyes. And in Isaiah's prophecy, God is so holy that the angels have three sets of wings. With two, they cover their eyes because they're not allowed to look at the glory of God. With two, they cover their feet. Because they can't touch the sinful creation, and with two they're flying, saying, holy, holy, holy. That's not what Hallmark captures. Okay? Be careful about your artistic choices. Marina, you had your hand up. The angels. Okay, yeah, so Marina's saying that the depictions are always female angels, which probably is mostly true, now that I think of it. Yep. Male, yep. No, that's a fair point. Yep, that's a fair point. Okay. So that would be how I would understand that he had no form or appearance that we should behold him. He wasn't attractive physically. Okay. Anything else on this before we keep moving on? Without pressing anyone's conscience, are we at least going to think seriously about Christian artwork? Have we at least been challenged that far? Think about using artwork with Jesus or angels in it, especially in light of don't make any likeness of things in heaven? when you're working in your brain, right? Because if you're immediately playing an image in your mind, right, that is, like, for example, I've enjoyed the shows, but I'm not sure if they would get to the point where a lot of people would place a picture of that actor in their mind on their brain to talk, right? And that would be, obviously, not good. And then also, the other thing is the little details that I think it can be. I think between the way that we talk about Jesus and the way we depict him artistically, I think it's had profound influence. I think it shapes our thinking at least as much as scripture does. Yeah, yeah. about that, too. I'm curious never to have an experience. But then the show that shows up, you start watching it, and automatically now as soon as you see Jesus, you picture that after your head, which is not right, because that's not who he is. And that's why I've decided it's going to be my story. I would be cautious about the Chosen for many reasons, and the physical depiction of Jesus is only one of them. The fact that it's produced by Mormons, and the Mormon theology has definitely worked its way in there is, I'd say it's just, be very careful. And there's lots of words of Jesus in the Chosen that you look at your Bible and, okay, somebody made this up, because that's not in the Bible. Yeah, so I wouldn't, again, I'm not sure it's worth trying to bind someone's conscience over. If you can watch it with a mature outlook, fine. I can only share where I've come to on this. Classically, Protestant Christianity rejects artistic depictions of Jesus for those reasons, because it very quickly turns to idolatry. But someone no less than R.C. Sproul would disagree. He'd say, we cannot depict God, we cannot depict the Father in any way, but because Jesus was physically human, artistic depictions of a man are not necessarily sinful, because he really was a man. And if you saw him in real life, you would have seen what his face looked like, and you would have seen his body. Therefore, artistic depictions are not automatically sinful. That's a respected, conservative, reformed theologian, and I'm not gonna fight him over it. Yeah. Counter-argument, I've heard to that and I've used that argument. Counter-argument is maybe that's one of the reasons providentially that Christ came when he did, so we can't idolize pictures of him. That's speculative. Yeah. Quite possibly. To me it's both. The effeminate depictions are for sure wrong. And I think we just need to reject them. So that means even if we grant there can be lawful artistic expressions of Jesus, at least we know 98% of them are just plain wrong. So that leaves us with potentially some. And again, I'm not quite sure where I land on this. Other than my conscience is pricked enough, I chose several years ago, I will not again use artistic depictions of Jesus because I'm just not sure. And me personally, when I'm not sure, my default setting is to be cautious rather than to push the line. I'll leave it there for myself. Mr. Wiebe. Are they all liars no The okay, so Yeah, I believe they all had a dream. I don't think they're lying so mr. Weave is asking about these dreams and depictions of people who have seen heaven and To be as charitable as I can, I would say I'm extremely skeptical of those things. There's a whole... Well, and that's just it. So there was... About five to ten years ago, there was like a whole Christian book genre almost dedicated to heavenly tourism. Right? And they actually called it like heaven tourism books and lots of people and it was more and more and of course as these books sold very well I'm sure it's coincidental but as these books sold very well more and more people were having dreams of heaven and writing books to tell us about it. I would be extremely skeptical of those books I would never recommend one to anyone Because very often the depictions of heaven are in direct violation of how scripture depicts it. And I'll grant a lot of our depictions are symbolic. But you can't outright, the fact that something's symbolic just means it points to something bigger. It doesn't mean you can directly contradict it. And there was one written by a little boy, that must be 10 years ago, and I'm trying to forget, or I'm trying to remember, Was it heaven is for real? The little, like the eight year old boy or whatever? Okay, he later came back and said this didn't happen. Okay. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But we treat these things very authoritatively. Yeah. Yep. I think another part of this is the whole when someone is going dead has been flavored by modern science. We deem someone dead and therefore their experience is real because their heart stopped beating for a period of time. Whereas you're not dead until you're dead. You've got quote unquote resuscitated. You are very much alive still. You still have brain signals. You still have parts of your body still going. Yeah. No, I would tend to agree. And again, I won't say what God can or can't do. He's God, he can do whatever he wants. I would always say, is there scriptural precedent for this? Is the depiction of heaven, does it match scripture, which is the ultimate test? And I'd say the fact that enough people have come out afterward, like this one boy, and said, my parents basically put me up to this. And how many evangelicals ran to the bookstore and bought that book? Right? And probably because it's new and exciting, put as much weight practically on that book as they do on scripture, because it's a bestseller. Right? And then this boy becomes a teenager and says, yeah, don't read that book. I'd be cautious about that stuff. And we do live in a mystical age, which I think has been imported from non-Christianity, from Eastern stuff, and that Eastern mysticism has deeply penetrated Christianity, right? We have it with, I think, these kinds of things, people writing heavenly tourism books. We have it with stuff like people seeking mystical guidance for decision-making, rather than honoring the sufficiency of Scripture. Love God and do what you want. Take which job you want. You don't need a vision or a dream or a picture. You've got Christian liberty. Pray for wisdom, but then use wisdom, not a picture or a dream or a vision. And yet, I'd push back on the other side and say, just because someone has a hunch or an instinct, I wouldn't automatically rule it out. I trust my wife's judgment quite a bit. And if Tanya has a hunch, it's just a hunch, but I'll listen to it. It's not authoritative. I won't necessarily go that way, but I wouldn't say it's nothing. But when it comes to dreams, listening prayer, heavenly tourism, whatever is happening in people's minds or imaginations, one thing we can say with certainty, it has zero authority. It may be real in one sense, but even if it is, it carries zero authority. We get our theology of heaven from this, right? And everything must be measured according to this. So even if what they're describing is real, or it actually happened, that doesn't make it authoritative. So, and again, you're sensing my skepticism, but with that I'm not saying that there's no sense at all in which God can do strange things. He does it often. Does that, maybe you don't agree with me, but I don't know if that answers your question or not. Okay. Let's keep going. Because this is what we really want to discuss here. After footnote 11, two whole, perfect, and distinct natures were inseparably joined together in one person without converting one into the other or mixing them together to produce a different or blended nature. This person is truly God and truly man, yet one Christ, the only mediator between God and humanity. If you have ever heard of or familiarized yourself with what's called the Chalcedonian definition, that's a creed from the year 451 which hammers out the natures of Christ, and this is borrowing from that language. And there were a few heretical viewpoints going around at that time that that council sought to clarify. One is a view called Eutychianism or Monophysitism, which just means one will. So this view of Jesus' two natures is you've got a cup of coffee, you pour some sugar in it, you stir it, and now you have a new substance. It's coffee and sugar mixed together. But the properties of each are now indistinguishable from one another, because you have a new chemical compound. So in this view, Jesus's natures are, you start with two separate ingredients, and then when you mix them together, you now have one new thing. So Jesus has one will. When you talk about monophysitism, the mono there just means one. Jesus has one will, so God starts with this recipe card, and you flour, and then you put the egg in, and now you have something that's a new substance. That view is not Christian. Okay? And they are seeking to rule that out here when it talks about without converting one into the other or mixing them together to produce a different or blended nature. And so this view was rejected by the church and some went too far the other way and so now the conception of Jesus' two natures are like oil and water. They hardly touch each other. Right? So they're so separate that it's almost like you're dealing with two separate people. They hardly make contact with each other. And that view is ruled out where it says that they are inseparably joined together in one person. So we can't separate them and we can't mix them. So what option is left? Nobody knows. Somehow they are united together in a way that each nature remains distinct, but they're not so separated that you can divorce them from each other. So maybe... No, I won't come up with an analogy, because I'm going to end up in heresy. So, I won't come up with an analogy, because it won't work. This is hard to understand how the two natures can be united in one person, without going through a blender and coming out as one different product, that's different from the two starting products, and also to rule out a view that they're so separated that you can talk almost as though there's two different people in Jesus, but there's only one Christ. So how does this work? Again, this is well outside of our experience. So it's hard for us to say, but if we want to keep the teaching of scripture intact, we have to affirm both of these things. And this is why often these creeds that deal with very difficult things speak in negative terms. Because no one can explain exactly how this works. We can say, if you go too far over here, you're going to run into this problem. where Jesus' divinity and his humanity are indistinguishable from one another. And if you go too far this way, it's like they're not even united in the same person. So it's like a guardrail to keep you from going too far to the left or too far to the right, to keep you safely in the bounds of biblical orthodoxy. Does that seem very confusing? Does that... Even if it's confusing, can we see that there's guardrails here for a reason? Notice how heresy is always easier than orthodoxy? It's always simpler, and that's the appeal of heresy. It is very simple. But orthodoxy is much more romantic than that. It's much more interesting than that. It leaves us with questions. Let's look at these texts. Who wants to take Romans 9? Ron. And who wants to take 1 Timothy 2? I'm gonna call, oh, there we go, Steve. Romans nine, whenever we're ready. Okay, so Christ is God over all. Okay, so he's truly God. Can we all affirm that? Jesus is truly God? Very God? Okay, and we saw in Hebrews last time, he's also very man, he's tempted in every way as we are. 1 Timothy 2.5. Okay, is Jesus a man? Yes, he is. So if we blended these natures, like the Etikians do, and so it turns out when you mix the blue paint and the red paint, now you end up with purple paint. You end up with something that's dissimilar from both starting compounds. If that's how divinity and humanity worked, red plus blue equals purple, is purple red? Is purple blue? No, it's not. So if that's how the two natures of Jesus are joined, That you mix divinity and you mix humanity, now you end up with a kind of a new compound. Could you say Jesus is God? You could not. Could you say Jesus is a man? You could not. So they cannot mix. You cannot mix them. Okay? It doesn't create a new compound. It's not red plus blue equals purple. Lisa? That's right. So somehow his manhood has to be distinct from his divinity. Right? Somehow. That's right. That's right. Because purple can't redeem us. Blue can, right? To push the analogy further. Yeah, very good. Did everyone hear what Lisa said? So if blue plus red equals purple, then Jesus is purple, but it's blue that needs to be redeemed. Purple can't redeem blue. Because purple is different than blue, okay? So a mixed god-man can't redeem humanity because his manhood got lost in his divinity. It got dissolved into it and created something new. Dave. There's two causes there, right? There's two purposes for that rather than And that is good, and that's maybe an important point to end it for now because Exactly on that point these heresies are very easy to understand but what's the practical outworking of the theology and the practical outworking of eutychianism of blending these two natures is works based salvation and because you can also be infused with the Holy Spirit. You can also be adopted at your baptism, like Jesus was. And you too have marks of divinity in you. Just listen to Joel Osteen, listen to Joyce Meyer, listen to Kenneth Copeland. One of the reasons they're heretics is because they get their Christology completely wrong. So Jesus is basically an example for you, and you can do it. with this super added Holy Spirit stuff in you, you can do it. And they run deep into heresy for that reason. You lose the gospel when you lose the two distinct natures of Jesus. And if Jesus is so separated, if the two natures are so separated that they can't get to each other, one, Jesus would become a schizophrenic, and two, redemption is also impossible, because how can that divine healing touch man? Right? So now you have a gospel that's so removed that it doesn't make personal application. It's just this cosmic kind of fact. And you run into theological problems that way. So when we're dealing with stuff like the Trinity or with Christology, it seems abstract, it seems impractical, it seems like we're, you know, arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. I would say it's very important for exactly what Dave just pointed out. Because the gospel rests on these things. A saving gospel must be Trinitarian. A saving gospel must have Orthodox Christology. If you lose either of these things, you end up in man-made religion. Okay? Somehow or another. Moralism, or a God that's so out there that he can't make contact with the sinful creation. I'm happy to leave it there. Any other discussion, any questions, comments, something I've misspoken? Okay, then let's wrap it up in time now, because Frank and Rita very generously brought cake.