LLI Fellowship

Was Jesus truly born naturally of a real human woman?  Did He have a natural father?  Did He really exist as a man or did He just appear as a man, in a spiritual form of a man? Did Jesus Christ have a beginning? Was He ever less than Eternal God?  How was He conceived inside of a women and at the same time not made of the stuff of sinful man?  Was Jesus mitigated or tinged in the least with anything less than His pure and holy substance of God? 

That in no way did He reduce Himself from this experience listed in Heb. 1:3, “the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His Power...”  Reduced in stature in any aspect of His incarnation and in His human development. Yet maintaining the reality that Jesus was established by the Father in Mary's womb... so deep a topic we dare to understand. 

We must emphatically state that Jesus Christ was indeed begotten and made of eternal & holy seed, that He had His beginning in the God the Father - Eloah for the specific purpose of saving sinful men!  He became a real man to save “real” men from their sins in the coat of flesh in the likeness of Adam, the man who left his place of life in the body and choose death in disobedience and in turn who brought sin on all of his progeny. 

The scriptures emphatically state. “And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” Mt.1:21

The very name of Jesus means Salvation. In Hebrew rendered 'Yĕhowshuwa` meaning Jehovah is Salvation

The very flesh He created by the word of His mouth, and in the body we inherit from Adam, Jesus came and perfectly obeyed the Father in the suit likened unto a human body, and that in perfect association with man so that He would save men and reverse the curse of our sin.  He saved them from their sins royally, He came as a descendant of King David.  He came 14 generations from David's time.  He came at the precise moment that the Father had arranged, not a moment too early, not moment too late.  

His forerunner, John the Baptist, was also trained and supernaturally birthed to go before Him and serve as a herald of all that His public ministry would accomplish to prove His Messiahship.  An exact wilderness location to preach and several locations in the Jordan river to baptize those Israelites who were being made ready to see the manifestation of the Son of God.  John came to call the Israelites back to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. John called the Israelites back to the Mosaic covenant.

John was sent to clear the land and make paths straight for the King of Kings to perform His powerful winnowing work of separating all that was false (chaff) from the unvarnished truth (wheat) of His holy presence as Son of the Living God.  Religious idolatry, hypocrisy, and all pretense would take death blows, as this 1-2 punch of John and Jesus, assiduously moved through all tribal regions of Palestine.

That in choosing His earthly father, Joseph, being an ancient descendant of King David, Jesus chose deliberately the father that would perfectly suit the prophesies uttered by holy men of God hundreds of years earlier.  He would not however, in anyway take upon Himself any of Joseph's sin.  

He perfectly maintained an undeniable and holy obedience to the entire Law of God.  All the while Jesus lived in Joseph's house.  Jesus was conceived of the Holy Spirit, and such, He was, and is God in nature and in essense.  He must be a perfect man to save sinful men.

The exclusive Lamb of God. Emmanuel God with us.  

A holy truth and understanding that opens the way for men to be heirs of an eternal salvation without end.  Its glory will deliver them from the curse of death that mortally clings to their weak flesh.

In choosing a virgin, Mary, a young devout Jewish teenager, He chose the best and most supernatural location to develop His manifest and very human self.  Being made into a perfect and yet a very real man, He left behind nothing of His Father connection.  

Even during the earliest stage of His sacred development in Mary's womb, even in that moment His body was being formed was but a microscopic zygote, He was not reduced to anything less than Almighty G-d.  Even as this small little zygote, the name of Jesus and His holy character still maintained all His kingly authority and all His creative power to hold together the universe.  He continued to do so while He grew to the size of a normal baby inside the virgin's womb.  He very short-changed any of the struggling process of our birth into this sin-cursed world.

Even while His little body added shape and form and grew inside Mary's womb, His powerful work of saving men from their sins was never placed in jeopardy or to happenstance.  This IS amazing power and LOVE at work and this is OUR Jesus!

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What have attempted to describe of our savior, Jesus Christ, and of His origin, has for thousands of years caused so much controversy in the world of education, archeology, science, and religious scholarship.  As the debate rages on, and has raged for the last 2000 years, even in our church age, we hold onto this truth as OUR salvation.  

Even though we have the clear 20-20 perspective of history and the very words of Our Messiah.  Even though we have the record of all His mighty works for our meditation and study, we still ask the same unbelieving questions, who was Jesus, and was really God?  This question must be answered in every generation born since His birth, death, resurrection and ascension into Heaven's glory.  

So to begin our presentation of the origin of Jesus, I ask a simple question.  How could Jesus lay down His life and then raise it up again if He was not ordained by God to do so?  

Any person who tries to wrap his puny mind around this immense and awe-inspiring truth, will suffer intense mental anguish as he tries to make it all work in our very time and space limited and linear mind.  To add more weight to our mental struggle to hold this very glorious truth in eternal balance, to our endless anguish, and to perform the impossible task of trying to frame words in the imperfection of human language, and still boldly, at the same time, we seek to deliberately establish this profound and foundational truth to insure our hearers truly hear the sound of His truth and SEE the LIGHT of His Way.  

Here we must honestly stumble and fall to our feeble knees in humble adoration, breathless and mentally weary, feeling very incapable of satisfying our heart's desire to make sense of the majesty of Jesus, the Christ of God, and still the very Son of God.  This struggle drives us to worship Our great King and Humble Savior!  And this is the place I sit today as I struggle with you to understand that which can only be seen in the spiritual.  Here I ask the Maker of heaven and earth to speak to me, “Let there be light!”  For only then will any of us understand so profound a truth.

Quite naturally, a human person, made of the dust, will never understand this truth without the eternal seed of God being supplied the illuminating ministry of the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit of God must come into our hearts and make our hearts that same creative place as was the chaos that marked the dawn of all creation.  Even more specifically, the creation of our father Adam.  When the Spirit of G-d breathed the life of G-d into the soul of man.  When we receive Jesus into our hearts, we literally, come back to the original intention of the Creator founded on the 6th day of Creation.  That we would live eternally with G-d in perfect harmony.  This is the same powerful G-d-breathed seed of life that animated our L-rd Jesus to perform every detail of perfecting our righteousness.    

The Word of G-d was and is Jesus.  Jesus, as the Word of G-d, who was and is still communing with Adam in the garden of Eden.  He also drafted with Noah the ark design and guided his hands and feet every step of his 120 year process of preaching to his lost work and the 5 year process of building a safe haven from the wrath of G-d.  The wrath the Word would pour out on all mankind.  

He was there to call and encouraging faithful Abraham in all faithful wanderings, especially He was near when our father Abraham lifted a sharp knife to slice open his only begotten son – Isaac.  That same knife was used to cut open a real RAM that He instructed should be killed in place of Isaac and which signify His Death 2000 years later.

He was the Word (law) of Moses on the holy mountain, and He instructed Moses on how to intercede and lead His rebellious People.   And there He was with David on the hills of Tokoa as our David tended his father, Jesse's sheep.  He was guiding the sling and the stone that hit precisely the head of Israel greatest enemy, Goliath.  There on the battlefield He instructed David on the how-to and informed he of the intricate layout of the glorious design of the temple that one day would be sacked by the Babylonians because His People fell into the sin of idolatry.  But would be miraculously rebuilt by a Roman Caesar who sought the favor of the local Hebrews in Judea.  

The Word spoke to them all in the same way as G-d intended all along to speak to our original father --- Adam.  A heavenly word that brought divine truth to us – a continually desperate and needy people. 

We affirm that the seed that heaven planted inside Mary's womb is the same holy and eternal seed that is planted inside the hearts of all those who believe on Him.  The difference between Jesus and our experience is quite clear, He never allowed the influence of the Adamic nature to overtake His Holy and God-breathed manhood.  Never did He submit or succumb to a sinful desire of the heart.   

“Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.”  Our living faith comes to us wrapped in Heaven's Glory and carries us forward to an eternity yet to be experienced. This glory animates us forward to carry out the mandate to obey God and keep His commandments in the power and grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ.  

This we will do with all of our mind, body, and soul as we yield to the Spirit's sway, through the ministry of the Word, as it freely moves into our hearts.  As we understand the nature of our Christ, and His work to save us, we will become all that His death and resurrection has secured for us to be and will be, as we submit to His divine control.
 

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Our supernatural faith is essential to defy the instinctive natural orders of our natively earthy and obstinate hearts who actively resist knowing God in the Spirit.  Rom. 8:6-7, “For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.  Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.”  

Our supernaturally derived faith will also destroy our “self” protection mechanisms that keep us from performing the entire will of God, our right and spiritual understanding of the divinity of Jesus will frame our work for Him.  We will not build His kingdom correctly if we do not hold to a right understanding of the Person, Jesus, and the work He performed here on earth.  This truth will be our touchstone at LLI Fellowship.

Why men desire to frame solidly written doctrinal statements on so vast a concept as the person and work of Jesus Christ, is beyond me, in the end, we all, without the supervision and guiding light granted by the Holy Spirit; we will most certainly fall into the darkness of sad and endless debate saturated by the folly of men and their limited reasoning.  

As we vainly, with our natural minds, seek to establish the truth that Jesus was indeed 100% G-d and real man blood and water running through his veins while He walked the dust we trod every day.  Just as Luke makes the claim so beautifully in his gospel account, Jesus was and is God in human dress.  Lk. 1:4, “that you might know the exact truth about the things we have been taught.”  Jesus was and is servant of the Most High God – and the only Savior of men.

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned. (For until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law.  Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.  But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man's offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many.  Rom. 5:12-15

The more we study the debate on the origin of Jesus, we discover that so many casualties lie by the wayside of this long stretch of road to comprehend the incomprehensible.  In the end, we can only manage to scratch our heads in wonder and awe, as we stagger to and fro under the weight of the grander of so great a truth as we seek to understand today.  

Yet in view of all that I have just honestly stated, I am going to attempt to make sense of this truth.  Why?  Because it is the very foundation and cornerstone of all that we believe, life and death hangs in the balance, as creatures formed in the corruptions of Adam seek to work through the implications of so vast and deep a topic with the hopes of gaining a sharper spiritual understanding of the incarnation of the Lamb of G-d. By laboring to do so, we pray we bring Glory to His Name —Jesus Christ; The Lamb of G-d who takes away the sins of the world.

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I have been waiting on G-d to even attempt to write on this subject for several weeks.  It truly frightens me, this due to the weight of missing a point of truth or even stating wrongly.  If any of you who read what I write and have also studied the origin of Jesus Christ, you must agree with me that many times, we do, in vain, attempt to use human words and the language of men to express things that can only be understood in the realm of the Spirit of G-d.  I hope this effort is blessed by G-d. This, my friends, is my constant prayer.

When men depart from a genuine faith in the Christ, and the Word of G-d; they leave a right rendering of the history of man; in turn they resort to prideful intellectualism, and error naturally begins to infiltrate the blood-bought church of Jesus Christ.  

Over the course of human history so much has been lost as men miss the rightful place of Jesus as the Great Teacher, the Greatest Prophet, and the only true High Priest of our Confession.  We long to see a soon-to-be exalted King coming to His blood-bought planet earth.  This time as the enthroned Christ of G-d Almighty.  Where we will see every knee bow in humble submission to His rightful place of dominion and regal authority.  

Rom. 14:11 "For it is written, [As] I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God."

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As we wrestle with this deep understanding of origin we must hang all that we say and write on a real and living faith in the Jesus of scripture represented to us as the Son of G-d.  Without faith it is impossible to please G-d. We will not make our way through this very real effort to grasp who Jesus was and always will be as a Prophet, Priest, and King.  We must gain a saving understanding of the person and work of Jesus as G-d and Jesus as Man, to bring any benefit to our study.   

Jn.16:13, “However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come.”

As we launch forward in our study we turn to the greatest theologian any of us can recite.  The apostle Paul renders the struggle and truth of the identity of Jesus as the Christ this way, I Tim.3:16, “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness:  God was manifested in the flesh, Justified in the Spirit, Seen by angels, Preached among the Gentiles, Believed on in the world, Received up into glory.”

Attempt to wrap your mind around each of these Pauline phrases mentioned in I Tim. 3:16, and you too will also begin to stagger alongside of me in an effort to gain a sight of the far reaching implications of what Jesus did for us and for all those who believe in His Name.  We turn again to Paul to take another look at the glory of Jesus in His position as Creator and Savior.  See how he set forth the eternal truth of Christ's position in heaven and over all of creation. 

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“For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on the earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers.  All things were created through Him and for Him.” 

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Later in this epistle Paul warns to the Colossians about missing the truth on the Person of Jesus Christ when he stats in Col. 2:18, “Let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshy mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom all the body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with the increase that is from God.”

Down through the ages, so much has been written about the person and work of Jesus Christ.  Much of it has been carnal speculation.  Demonic lies have come into our atmosphere from Greek mythology and stoicism.  Much of our understanding has been founded on something less than the solid foundation of Jesus Christ and Him crucified from a Hebraic monotheist understanding. Many of these slightly as cu writings and beliefs have inspired men to start new movements that bring to ruin their mortal souls and the souls of those who believe their words.  

The doctrine of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of the Living G-d, has brought to the table much discussion and volumes of thoughts and writings of men.  Men just can't resist submitting themselves to the workings of their vain imaginations.  We learn that men never seem to run out of mind twisting summarization's of the person of Jesus Christ.  In the end, humanly speaking, we will all end up drowning the ocean of the depths of God's infinite knowledge, verses the innate frailty of our flesh to worship ourselves.  

Yet the debate within the educational and religious community rages on, whether you believe in One G-d, no god, or many gods, our generation like all those that preceded us, will not resist the temptation to write and speak on the Person and Work of Jesus Christ as though they are first to discover something new about Him.  Yet there is no topic that deserves our attention more than this one. 

Jews, Muslims, and Christians will experience a worldwide revival in the days to come. This revival will be caused by a right understanding of the One True G-d - Jehovah - the G-d who saves - The G-d who has saved mankind through the work of His only begotten Son - Jesus Christ! 

Let all mouths be stopped as we gaze upon a cross that God created for His Son, destroying the sin of rebellion founded in the work of Satan which now is tragically woven deeply into the fabric of all human flesh. To create the very form of execution that would reveal the depths of our broken lives. To hang upon this piece of His creation - wood from a tree He spoke into existence, and a perfect Lamb of G-d made of a human frame.  

Yes, a human untinged by any of man's sin, in thought, word, or deed. Who being in the likeness of our flesh, was indeed 100% bona-fide G-d made material like unto the first Adam, made by the edict of the Word of His mouth.  Our Father's creative purpose was achieved when His Son faithfully came to lay His life down and then, in three days, call His sacred life back to the living again.  This is resurrection power.  This is G-d creative power.  So can this Jesus save anyone who calls upon His Name for salvation?

We assert an affirming Amen to question

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As we continue our study, we must deal honestly with two very determined statements within the Word of God, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” Jn.1:1-2  

Combined secondly with the truth revealed in Col. 1:15-17, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.  For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers.  All things were created through Him and for Him.  And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.”  Then in v19 of this same chapter the Word says, “For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness (of diety) should dwell.”

As the Jehovah witnesses unwittingly try to use this verse (V15) to prove that Jesus was created by G-d and then in turn becomes something less than the Father at the point of His creation...here I depart to my faith that only G-d the Father could create a way of Salvation that would satisfy His Righteousness and Justice.  Only G-d could make a human frame free from sin and do the mighty signs and wonders His son Jesus performed.

The very next words that flow out in the context of this Pauline expression turn their specious argument on its collective head.  The apostle Paul very adequately makes the point that has to be understood, “For by Him all things were created...”  

In order to bring forth a thorough interpretation that fits with the body of all of divine revelation, we must ask this probing question.  How could Jesus be a created being and at the same time be the author and creator of everything in heaven and in earth? How could He do this without being G-d?  Does He reduce Himself and still maintain His G-d status?  How can we as earth dwellers comprehend places in the realms of eternity; places we have never been?

To take the time to stop reading and mediate on these verses in Colossians and in the gospel of John would be a profitable exercise indeed!  I ask you to seek the Lord, and ask soberly for His Spirit to provide you with supernatural understanding, this most certainly is a holy assignment (Jn.16:13).  

Let the struggle begin...
 
To be continued