Featured Is It Nothing to You?

It is precisely Christ's divinity that makes Him a qualified sacrifice.

That isn't just what I am saying, that is the very gospel itself.

Luke 23:34 Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” And they divided His garments and cast lots.​

Do you suppose that they had no idea that they were physically killing Jesus?

Of course they knew that! What they did not know that they were doing was committing deicide (the killing of God).


For clarity's sake, death is a separation. Physical death happens when one's soul/spirit separates from the body. Spiritual death happens when your soul/spirit is separated from the Father. Jesus died in both ways....

Christ's physical death...

Mark 15:37And Jesus cried out with a loud voice, and breathed His last. (incidentally , "spirit" and "breath" are often paralleled throughout the scripture - see Genesis 2:7)​

...happened shortly after His spiritual death...

Mark 15:34 and at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
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You live in a weird, self-contradictory, compartmentalized world.

If your doctrine doesn't have to make sense then why bother with even reading the bible or showing up here to debate it? Just believe whatever it is you want to believe and compartmentalize it away from anything that contradicts it and whenever anyone shows up to point out the contradictions simply blurt out whatever resides inside the appropriate compartment and ignore anything and everything else as though having done so has actually proven your point!

I couldn't live like that.

 

Therefore, Jesus is not God!

That's by YOUR OWN REASONING!

 

I agree that God the Son preexisted the incarnation but it is a dangerous overstatement to hold to the idea that "Jesus gave birth to Jesus the Man, not Jesus (God)".

In fact, that doctrine has been condemned as a heresy as early as 431 B.C. It's called Nestorianism and was condemned as a heresy during the Council in Ephesus.

Jesus was not two people. Jesus was BOTH God and man and still is to this day, by the way. When He became a man, he was still God and Mary gave birth to Him as both because He was both.

And for God dying. Dying is a separation. Just as one's spirit being separated from the body is physical death so having one's spirit separated from the Father is spiritual death. Thus, you state correctly that Jesus gave up His spirit and died physically but that didn't happen until shortly after He (Jesus) was separated from the Father....

Mark 15:34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
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Thus, Christ died in the normal sense of the word and went to the place of the righteous dead ("paradise" or "Abraham's Bosom") and rose not from the partially dead or the sort of dead but He rose from THE dead.

 

No. It is your unBiblical reasoning. The Son of God has always been both the Son and God.

John 1:1-3, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made."

 

You have the problem. There is only the one LORD God. And there are three distinct Persons who are the very same God. And one Person in Trinity of Presons is also now both an immortal man and God. He was always God but not always a man.

 

Whatever. Your post is still right there for the whole world to read!

Hebrews 1:1 God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, 2 has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; 3 who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 4 having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.

5 For to which of the angels did He ever say:

“You are My Son,
Today I have begotten You”?​

 

Where did I ever say a thing that contradicted any of this?

 

No, it’s not an overstatement. It’s truth. The Son was God before He was in Mary’s womb, but He was not flesh (man) before then.

He remained God because He was already God. She did not bring forth God, as in procreating God. In fact, the Lord Jesus created everything. She brought forth the pre-existing God, in the flesh, the man. God cannot die—the Lord Jesus died. How? Because He willingly laid aside His prerogatives and became a man (Philippians 2). I did not say He “quit” being God. He is always God but God did not always have a human body (“A body Thou hast prepared Me”).

Sin came by man. Therefore, salvation also came by man, because God took on human flesh and died and resurrected as a man.

 

Acts of the Apostles 13:33, ". . . God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again; as it is also written in the second psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee. . . . "

Colossians 1:18, ". . . he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; . . ."

 

After posting, I looked up “hypostatic union”. It says what I tried to say.


QUESTION
What is the hypostatic union?

ANSWER
The hypostatic union is the term used to describe how God the Son, Jesus Christ, took on a human nature, yet remained fully God at the same time. Jesus always had been God (John 8:58, 10:30), but at the incarnation Jesus became a human being (John 1:14). The addition of the human nature to the divine nature is Jesus, the God-man. This is the hypostatic union, Jesus Christ, one Person, fully God and fully man.

Jesus’ two natures, human and divine, are inseparable. Jesus will forever be the God-man, fully God and fully human, two distinct natures in one Person. Jesus’ humanity and divinity are not mixed, but are united without loss of separate identity. Jesus sometimes operated with the limitations of humanity (John 4:6, 19:28) and other times in the power of His deity (John 11:43; Matthew 14:18-21). In both, Jesus’ actions were from His one Person. Jesus had two natures, but only one personality.

The doctrine of the hypostatic union is an attempt to explain how Jesus could be both God and man at the same time. It is ultimately, though, a doctrine we are incapable of fully understanding. It is impossible for us to fully understand how God works. We, as human beings with finite minds, should not expect to totally comprehend an infinite God. Jesus is God’s Son in that He was conceived by the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:35). But that does not mean Jesus did not exist before He was conceived. Jesus has always existed (John 8:58, 10:30). When Jesus was conceived, He became a human being in addition to being God (John 1:1, 14).

Jesus is both God and man. Jesus has always been God, but He did not become a human being until He was conceived in Mary. Jesus became a human being in order to identify with us in our struggles (Hebrews 2:17) and, more importantly, so that He could die on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins (Philippians 2:5-11). In summary, the hypostatic union teaches that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine, that there is no mixture or dilution of either nature, and that He is one united Person, forever.

gotquestions.org

 

The Greek phrase "προς τον θεον" is used in the New Testament 20 times with someone other than God with God in some way.

Here are 17 of the references:
Acts of the Apostles 4:24
Acts of the Apostles 12:5
Acts of the Apostles 24:16
Romans 4:2
Romans 5:1
Romans 10:1
Romans 15:30
2 Corinthians 3:4
2 Corinthians 13:7
Philippians 4:6
1 Thessalonians 1:8
1 Thessalonians 1:9
Hebrews 2:17
Hebrews 5:1
1 John 3:21
Revelation 12:5
Revelation 13:6

 

It’s Greek to me.

 

I looked up "προς τον θεον" in three different Greek to English translators and all three rendered it "to God".

 

As in John 13:3

I added 17 of the 20 cases
Is It Nothing to You?

 

What point are you trying make with this list?

The NKJV translates the phrase various ways
Act_12:5 to G4314 God G2316
Act_24:16 toward G4314 God G2316
Rom_4:2 before G4314 God G2316
Heb_2:17 in things pertaining to G4314 God G2316

and even
Rev_13:6 against G4314 God G2316