Sabbath School Lesson Podcast

In the centuries-old controversy over the person of Jesus, the Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451) marked a significant milepost. Essentially, it agreed and proclaimed that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man: “. . . we all with one voice teach that . . . our Lord Jesus Christ is one and the same God, the Same perfect in Godhead, the Same perfect in manhood, truly God and truly man, . . . [one] with the Father as to his Godhead, and . . . [one] with us as to his manhood; in all things like unto us, sin only excepted.”—Cited in Justo L. Gonzalez, A History of Christian Thought, vol. 1 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1970), p. 390. For an assessment of the implications of the Chalcedon statement from an Adventist perspective, see Roy Adams, The Nature of Christ (Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald® Publishing Association, 1994), pp. 57–72. “In contemplating the incarnation of Christ in humanity, we stand baffled before an unfathomable mystery. . . . The more we reflect upon it, the more amazing does it appear. How

When we imagine the huge difference between God and ourselves, it is astounding to think that God would reach out to us by condescending to take on human flesh. But after He was done, most of us would have been content for Him to abandon His affinity with us and return fully to what He was before. However—and this absolutely astounds us—we learn that Jesus will forever remain in solidarity with us by retaining our nature! Consider the implications of the following passages in regard to Jesus’ eternal solidarity with us: Luke 24:36-43 Acts 1:10, 11 Acts 17:31 1 Tim. 2:5 “By His life and His death, Christ has achieved even more than recovery from the ruin wrought through sin. It was Satan’s purpose to bring about an eternal separation between God and man; but in Christ we become more closely united to God than if we had never fallen. In taking our nature, the Saviour has bound Himself to humanity by a tie that is never to be broken. Through the eternal ages He is linked with us. ‘God so loved the world . . .

Why did God need to come into the world in human flesh? The question is important. But we should wean ourselves away from purely rational answers to it. It is not as if we need to come up with an answer that makes sense to us. There is no independent research we can do in philosophy, science, sociology, or whatever, that would lead us to an answer. Nor should we concoct our own answer. The safest way is to listen carefully to what the Bible itself reveals on this point. And in the book of Hebrews, we find some of the clearest, most intentional statements on the issue. Nor is it without significance that Hebrews also happens to be the book focusing most directly on Jesus’ present high priestly ministry in the heavenly sanctuary. Each of the following passages highlights one particular aspect of Jesus’ coming in human flesh, then proceeds to answer the implied question: Why did He do that? And in each case a reason for that particular aspect of His humiliation is given. What are those reasons? Heb. 2:9 Heb.

Many of His contemporaries considered Jesus an unusual person, yet they each knew Him to be a human being, a man. When the Samaritan woman rushed to her village to spread the word about the unusual Jew she just had met at the well, her announcement was straightforward: “ ‘Come, see a man’ ” (John 4:29, NIV). Hers was the universal testimony of Jesus’ contemporaries. Even after He had calmed the storm, the exclamation of those closest to Him was, “ ‘What kind of man is this?’ ” (Matt. 8:27, NIV). Howdo the following texts help support the fact that Jesus was a genuine human being of flesh and blood? Matt. 8:24 Matt. 21:18 John 4:5,6 John 4:7, 19:28 John 11:33-35 While on earth, Jesus voluntarily surrendered the independent exercise of the Divine attributes. He surrendered; He did not relinquish. The attributes remained in Him. He could have used them at any time for His own advantage, but He did not. The temptation to call on these attributes to extricate Himself from difficulty (in ways not open to us) was

As Christianity spread through the Greco-Roman world and moved into the second generation, people began to reflect on its basic message about Jesus’ person, and to raise questions: How could Divinity and humanity cohabit the same body? How could Deity become mortal? What is Jesus’ relationship to the Father? And so forth . . . Beginning in the first century, two conflicting emphases emerged. One would stress Christ’s humanity at the expense of His divinity; the other would do just the opposite. Among those denying Christ’s deity were the Ebionites, early Jewish Christians who taught that Jesus became the Son of God only at His baptism, at which time He became united with the eternal Christ, a nondivine being who could not save humanity but came, instead, to call humanity to obedience. The Arians later would take up the struggle against Christ’s divinity, beginning around the late third century, a position strongly condemned by the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325. The heavyweights on the other side of the spectr

Last week’s lesson spoke about the mystery of Christ’s deity. But as we contemplate His humanity, we stand also in the presence of a profound mystery. As Paul expressed it: “Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great: He [Jesus] appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, was taken up in glory” (1 Tim. 3:16, NIV). One scholar makes the point that the claim that the founder of Christianity was Divine was not a big shock in the Roman world; after all, their emperors routinely claimed divinity. But the claim that “the Christian God was concerned about humanity; concerned enough to suffer in its behalf. This was unheard of.”—Huston Smith, The Illustrated World’s Religions (New York: HarperCollins, 1986), p. 219. But however strange to the Greco-Roman world, that, precisely, was the testimony of the New Testament. What do the following passages teach about this amazing condescension? Matt. 1:18-24 Luke 1: 26-35 Joh

Memory Text: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14, NIV). In the New Testament, without any rationalistic explanations whatsoever, Jesus Christ is presented as both human and Divine. After beginning his Gospel with the Word who is God (John 1:1), John makes the extraordinary declaration that this same Word, this same God, “became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (vs. 14, NIV). And perhaps anticipating future concerns about moral contamination, the New Testament maintains the sinless life of Jesus with unequivocal consistency (Heb. 7:26, 1 Pet. 2:22). Moreover, the writers of the New Testament matter-of-factly regard Jesus as a proper object of worship and veneration (Acts 7:59, Rom. 9:5, Heb. 1:6). These earliest Christians were not detained by the philosophical problems inherent in the concept of the God-man or by the difficulties it would pose for later thinkers. “The humanity of the Son of God is everything to us. . . . When we approach this subject, we would do well to hee

Further Study: On the issue of Jesus’ identity, read Ellen G. White, “Is Not This the Carpenter’s Son?” pp. 236–243, in The Desire of Ages. “Who is this Jesus? they questioned. He who had claimed for Himself the glory of the Messiah was the son of a carpenter, and had worked at His trade with His father Joseph. They had seen Him toiling up and down the hills, they were acquainted with His brothers and sisters. . . . They had seen Him develop from childhood to youth, and from youth to manhood. Although His life had been spotless, they would not believe that He was the Promised One.”—Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 237. “They would not admit that He who had sprung from poverty and lowliness was other than a common man.”—Page 239. “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic . . . or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something

Messiah, Son of God (John 17:3) Who Jesus was is not simply a theological proposition to be proved or disproved. No, we are dealing here with the faith of untold numbers over the centuries. If Jesus is not what they have believed Him to be, then they have all been clinging to falsehood and fables and are all lost. If Jesus was simply a man who lived two thousand years ago in Palestine, then the Christian church has been involved in the most reprehensible hoax in the history of the world. How do the following texts get at the heart of the issue? _M__a_tt_._ 1__:_2_2_,_ 2__3_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ________________________ _M__a_tt_._ 1__1_:_2_–_6_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _________________________ _M__a_tt_._ 2__2_:_4_1_–_4__5_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _______________________ _M__a_r_k_1__4_:_6_1_–_6__4_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _______________________ J__o_h_n_ _2_0_:_2_6__–_

The Fascination Continues: Part 2 The so-called Historical Jesus movement was founded on the belief that we still can find in the Gospels sufficient data to reconstruct the portrait of Jesus as a historical figure, notwithstanding the theological tampering by the early church (as alleged by Enlightenment thinking). The new approach to studying Jesus was seen by its advocates as scientific, and thus in keeping with the mood of the times. The trend held sway until the twentieth century, when new studies helped undermine this whole movement, showing how this historical Jesus idea was utterly unscientific and subjective. Studies exposed the entire rationalistic enterprise as a miserable failure. The history of Jesus studies are long, winding, and complicated; and they need not detain us further, except to mention the so-called Jesus Seminar, a contemporary group of radical scholars determined to succeed where other historical quests before them failed. Their goal is to "'rescue Jesus from the spin doctors' wh

The New Testament does not speculate about Jesus. It simply presents Him as the divine Son of God. Nor does it answer the numerous concerns about Jesus' being and person that would occupy succeeding generations. Yet, in all the discussions and arguments, there was a rock-bottom acceptance of the centrality of Scripture and the basic identity of Jesus Christ. But the so-called Age of Enlightenment (of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) would change all that. No longer would Scripture constitute the foundation of discourse about Jesus. Instead, new methods and criteria being applied to the study of other ancient documents also would be applied to the Bible. With everything now subject to rational analysis and criticism, supernaturalism, a foundational presupposition of biblical faith, was rejected. The traditional biblical view of a human race steeped in sin and needing Divine rescue was replaced by humanism, an optimistic belief in human capacity and progress. The change of outlook was so radical and

Not Elijah or Jeremiah or Some Other Prophet Read again Matthew 16:14. That people should mistake Jesus for John is one thing. But for Elijah? Or Jeremiah? Or some other Old Testament prophet? Where did such ideas come from? Elijah was the fearless prophet of Mount Carmel fame, the firebrand who had the temerity to confront Israel's recalcitrant king and demonic wife. He was the one who held forth alone against the combined religious establishment in Ahab's corrupt regime (see 1 Kings 18). Jeremiah ("the weeping prophet"), coming upon the scene at a time of intense national ferment and crisis, conveyed a message to his compatriots that could not have been more unwelcome to the national mood—and he paid for it, too (Jer. 20:1, 2, 7, 8). As for the rest of God's faithful prophets in the Old Testament, Jesus in His scathing woes upon the scribes and Pharisees left Israel's treatment of these godly stalwarts for the last, as if to suggest that it was the central point He wished to make: "So you testify agains

Not the Baptist (Matt. 16:14) The question raised by Jesus' own townsfolk (Matt. 13:54, 55) came up repeatedly during His public ministry, and in a variety of ways, as people in the different areas of Palestine encountered Him. Thus, as He went through the region of Caesarea Philippi with His disciples, some six months or so before the final showdown of His life, He felt the need to draw them out on the critical question of the day: "Who do people say the Son of Man is?" (Matt. 16:13, NIV). Read the disciples' response in Matthew 16:14. What does this say about their familiarity with the theological questions of the day? Why do you think Jesus wanted to bring up this issue at this specific time? The report on what people were saying about Jesus probably provides insight into how different individuals and groups experienced His ministry in their own setting. How was it possible for some to think that Jesus could be John the Baptist when the two were contemporaries? And what aspects of Jesus' ministry may ha

SABBATH AFTERNOON Read for This Week's Study: Matt. 16:13-16, John 20:26-28, 1 Cor. 1:18-27, 15:3-7. Memory Text: "When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, 'Who do people say the Son of Man is?'" (Matthew 16:13, NIV). From the earliest days of His ministry, there was discussion and debate about Jesus. How interesting that those discussions continue, even today. They began with the people of His own times and from His own town. "'Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?' they asked. 'Isn't this the carpenter's son? Isn't his mother's name Mary. . .?'" (Matt. 13:54, 55, NIV). It is what might be called the scandal of the particular: The Messiah had to come from somewhere, all right, but not from a place so familiar to us, and certainly not from a family that is just like the rest of ours! In one form or another, the same fundamental concerns expressed by these local townspeople concerning His identity have framed the debate about Jesus across