L4: The Deity of Christ
What We Affirm: Fully God
Jesus is God the Son Incarnate. He is fully God and fully man. In our last step, we clarified what we do not mean when we say, with the Bible, that Jesus is fully God. In this step, we will expand on what we do mean.
When we affirm that Jesus is fully God, we are affirming two realities: (1) that Jesus is equally and eternally the full divine essence and (2) that Jesus is and has always been God the Son, a distinct person of the Trinity. The rest of this lesson will seek to dive into these two realities.
But first, let us take a moment to consider the significance of affirming these two realities:
...to honor Jesus is to honor the triune God. For if we are to speak of Jesus, we must speak of him as the Son of God, as the Word who makes his Father known; we must speak of him as the Christ (“the anointed one”), the one anointed with the Holy Spirit. In other words, in speaking of Jesus, we cannot but speak of the Trinity. For he is the one who makes known the triune God. The Trinity, then, is not some complex add-on to Jesus, a higher-level matter for those ready to go beyond simple trust in him: in thinking about the Trinity we are pressing in to know Jesus better. And on the other hand, if we are to speak of the Trinity, we must speak of the Father who is made known by his Son Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit. Any “trinity” that can shuffle off, untethered to Jesus, is nothing but a philosophical party game. You can find such trinities bobbing around out there, filled with excited talk of love, relationship and the great conga that is Father, Son and Spirit. But detached from Jesus, they become only heavenly boogies shaped by each person’s own dance preference (something that puts the fear of God into those who prefer a quiet sit down). No, Jesus is the one who makes known the triune God, who shows us the love of God and the life of God. To be truly trinitarian we must be constantly Christ-centered. (Michael Reeves, Rejoicing in Christ, 23)
Jesus is fully God
Jesus is equally and eternally the full divine essence.
Okay. But what does that mean?
To get us started, let's clarify what "divine essence" means. Matthew Barrett defines "essence" in his book None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God:
essence — Refers to the being of God; his whatness. God's essence (substance; being) is not one thing and his existence another thing, but they are one and the same. God's essence is his attributes and his attributes are his essence. In reference to the Trinity, God is one essence, three persons.
By affirming that Jesus is equally and eternally the full divine essence, we mean that Jesus is truly and fully God. He is not a demigod like Hercules or Maui. He is not a godlike spirit or archangel as Jehovah's Witnesses teach. He is not a mere prophet like Muslims believe. He is truly and fully God. He is equally and eternally with the Father and the Holy Spirit the very being of God.
For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority.
Colossians 1:9-10
In the next steps, let's consider three ways that Jesus is equally and eternally the full divine essence.