VII. INCIDENTAL PROOFS OF THE DEITY OF JESUS CHRIST
The six lines of proof of the Deity of Jesus Christ which I have given you leave no possibility of doubting that Jesus Christ is God, that Jesus of Nazareth is God manifest in a human person, that He is a being to be worshipped, even as God the Father is worshipped; but there are also incidental proofs of His absolute Deity which, if possible, are in some ways even more convincing than the direct assertions of His Deity.
1. Our Lord Jesus says in Matt. 11:28, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Now any one that makes a promise like that must either be God, or a lunatic,
or an impostor. No one can give rest to all who labour and are heavy laden who come to him unless he is God, and yet Jesus Christ offers to do it. If He offers to do it and fails to do it when men come to Him, then He is either a lunatic or an impostor. If He actually does it, then beyond a question He is God. And thousands can testify that He really does it. Thousands and tens of thousands who have laboured and were heavy laden and crushed, and for whom there was no help in man, have come to Jesus Christ and He actually has given them rest. Surely then He is not merely a great man, He is God.
2. Again in John 14:1 Jesus Christ demands that we put the same faith in Him that we put in God the Father, and promises that in such faith we will find a cure for all trouble and anxiety of heart. His words are, "Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me." It is clear that He demands that the same absolute faith be put in Himself that is to be put in God Almighty. Now in Jer. 17:5, scripture with which our Lord Jesus was perfectly familiar, we read "Thus saith Jehovah: Cursed is the man that trusteth in man," and yet with this clear curse pronounced upon all who trust in man, Jesus Christ demands that we put trust in Him just as we put trust in God. It is the strongest possible assertion of Deity on His part. No one but God has a right to make such a demand, and Jesus Christ, when He makes this demand, must either
be God or an impostor, but thousands and tens of thousands have found that when they did believe in Him just as they believe in God, their hearts were delivered from trouble no matter what their bereavement or circumstances might be.
3. Again, the Lord Jesus demanded supreme and absolute love for Himself. It is clear as day that no one but God has a right to demand such a love, but there can be no question that Jesus did demand it. In Matt. 10:37 He said to His disciples, "He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." And in Luke 14:26, 33, He says, "If any man cometh unto me, and hateth not his own father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. . . . So therefore whosoever he be of you that renounceth not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple." There can be no question that this is a demand on Jesus' part of supreme and absolute love to Himself, a love that puts even the dearest relations of life in an entirely secondary place. No one but God has a right to make any such demand, but our Lord Jesus made it, and, therefore, He must be God.
4. In John 10:30 the Lord Jesus claimed absolute equality with the Father. He said, "I and the Father are one."
5. In John 14:9 our Lord Jesus went so far as to say, "He that hath seen me, hath seen the
Father." He claims here to be so absolutely God that to see Him is to see the Father Who dwelleth in Him.
6. In John 17:3 He says, "And this is eternal life, to know thee, the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ." In other words, he claims that the knowledge of Himself is as essential a part of eternal life as knowledge of God the Father.
Conclusion: There is no room left to doubt the absolute Deity of Jesus Christ. It is a glorious truth. The Saviour in whom we believe is God, a Saviour for whom nothing is too hard, a Saviour who can save from the uttermost and save to the uttermost. Oh, how we should rejoice that we have no merely human Saviour, but a Saviour that is absolutely God. On the other hand, how black is the guilt of rejecting such a Saviour as this! Whoever refuses to accept Jesus as his Divine Saviour and Lord is guilty of the enormous sin of rejecting a Saviour Who is God. Many a man thinks he is good because he never stole, or committed murder, or cheated. "Of what great sin am I guilty?" he complacently asks. Have you ever accepted Jesus Christ? "No." Well, then you are guilty of the awful and damning sin of rejecting a Saviour Who is God. "But," you answer, "I do not believe that He is God." That does not change the fact nor lessen your guilt. Questioning a fact or denying a fact never changes it, regardless of what Mary Baker Eddy may say
to the contrary. Suppose a man had a wife who was one of the noblest, purest, truest women that ever lived, would her husband's questioning her purity and nobility change the fact? It would not. It would simply make that husband guilty of awful slander, it would simply prove that man to be an outrageous scoundrel. So denying the Deity of Jesus Christ, does not make his Deity any less a fact, but it does make the denier of His Deity guilty of awful, incredible, blasphemous slander. It does prove you who deny His Deity to be——. I leave your own conscience to finish the sentence.
V
Jesus Christ a Real Man
"And the word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth."—John 1:14.
"Who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of man; and being found in fashion as man, he emptied himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea the death of the cross."—Phil. 2:6-8.
"There is one God, one mediator also between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus."—1 Tim. 2:5.
Our subject in this chapter is "Jesus Christ a Real Man." I have three texts, and the substance of all that I shall say is these three texts. The first text is John 1:14: "And the word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth." The second text is Phil. 2:6-8: "Who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of man; and being found in fashion as a man, he emptied himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea the death of the cross." And
the third text is 1 Tim. 2:5: "There is one God, one mediator also between God and man, himself man, Christ Jesus."
We saw in the preceding chapter that Jesus Christ was God, that in Him dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, that He possessed all the distinctively divine attributes, that He exercised all the distinctively divine functions, that He occupied the position in New Testament thought that Jehovah occupied in Old Testament thought, that He was a being worthy of our absolute faith, our supreme love, our unhesitating obedience, and our whole-hearted worship, that He was God and is God. But in the passages which we have taken for our texts to-day, we are told that this Divine One, who had existed from all eternity with God, the Father, and who was God, became a man. In becoming a man, He did not cease to be God; but the Word, the Eternal Word, which was with God and was God, took human nature upon Himself. While He was very God of very God, He was real man, as truly and completely a man as any man who ever walked on this earth. The doctrine of the real humanity of Christ is as essential a part of the Christian faith as the doctrine of His real Deity. There is one very large class of people who do not see the real Deity of Jesus Christ. They are in fundamental error. There is another large class of people who see only His Deity, and who do not see the reality of His manhood. They also are in error. A doctrine of a Saviour who is
only man is false doctrine; and a doctrine of a Saviour who is only God is equally false doctrine. The doctrine of the Bible is that, One Who from all eternity was God in the person of Jesus of Nazareth became man. There are many passages in the Bible which set forth the Deity of our Lord Jesus in a way that is unmistakable and inescapable. There are many other passages in the Bible which set forth the complete humanity of our Lord Jesus in a way which is equally unmistakable and inescapable. It is with the doctrine of His real humanity, i.e., that He was a real man, that we are concerned this morning.