Re: [TruthTalk] Jesus had the same sinful flesh that we have

[Wm. Taylor]

Hi Terry, thanks for the comments.   Well, I don't know where to begin. I knew when I posted this that their would be no taking it back, not at least in a way that could satisfy my responders :>) If it is okay with you, I would like to address the middle portions of your message first and leave the history stuff til last. And so I will quote you and then post my response:   "The Holy Spirit tells me (backed up by scripture) that Jesus was and is God." The Holy Spirit tells me the same thing, through the Scriptures.   "Always has been, always will be." I agree with you that the Eternal Son has always been and will always be God.   "Two things everyone should know about God. One, He does not change, and two, He cannot sin." If you are speaking of his character when you say he does not change, then I agree with you. If when you say God cannot sin, you are speaking of Jesus before his death, then I will have to insist that we say he was able not to sin; and this is not to say he was not God -- he was (and is) -- but when referring to the Incarnation, we must also uphold the equally true statement that Jesus was human as well. Being human, sin was a possibility; being God, he was able not to. This does not take away from the statement "God cannot sin"; what it does do is it lets Jesus be truly human.   "That He took my sins on Himself and paid for them with His blood is scriptural.  He did that during His last moments on the cross.  At that moment you may classify Him as sinful if you wish, but I see Him as sacrifice, not sinner." I do not classify Jesus as sinful, nor would I see him as a sinner, for both would imply that he sinned; I would not want to do that -- Jesus did not sin. What I am stating explicitly now is that when the Word became flesh, the flesh he assumed was human flesh from the sin gnarled stock of Adam. The Atonement in part is Christ's victory over the limitations and propensities of that flesh. It was in the flesh that he condemned sin. It was in the flesh that Christ reconciled humanity to God. It was in the flesh that he defeated the tyrants: sin, death, and the devil. All of these things he accomplished in the flesh, the flesh of Adam, so that when he died, his death could truly be our death, and likewise when he rose victorious, his victory could truly be our victory over these same tyrants, defeated now in Christ.   Did he do this "during the last moments on the cross"? Yes, and at every other moment throughout his earthly life. And, yes, I too see him as a sacrifice; not just on the cross, though, but from womb to tomb he sacrificed himself on our behalf, in our place, and as our representative; hence, death being the last enemy to be destroyed.   "Had he ever sinned prior to the cross, He would not have been an acceptable sacrifice." That's right, and neither would he have defeated sin, death, and the devil. In short, we would still be in bondage to those things.   If you would like further clarification on any of these comments please feel free to ask.   Now, about your comments concerning Jesus and history and referents and truth and the Holy Spirit, let me begin by asking you if the only truth is Scripture truth. Is Jesus not the Truth? Is he not Lord over everything? Cannot the Spirit lead us as decisively into historic truth as he does to truth via other mediums? When Jesus spoke to the Jews about Moses or Jonah or Sodom and Gomorrah, was he not speaking of historic events? And were the Jews not his people? Were these events already in Scripture before they happened? Were they not historical before they were inscripturated? Does the fact that they are included in Scripture negate their historicity? Is the Church not Christ's Church? Are we not his people? Is Church history not our history; is it not Christ's history? Is Christ not Lord over all history?   You say that Jesus did not advise us to look at history. Do you believe that Jesus does not care about history, about what his Church believes in any age, in all ages? Are the beliefs of the Church not historical beliefs, whether true or false? Should it matter to us what the Church teaches? Does it matter what the Church believes, whether we are talking about today or in days past? What if false beliefs from earlier times are not caught and corrected today, shouldn't that matter to us? I think Jesus would say it should.   Thank you, Terry. I will be waiting for your reply.   Bill Taylor        ----- Original Message ----- From: Terry Clifton To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2004 5:31 PM Subject: Re: [TruthTalk] Jesus had the same sinful flesh that we have Hello Bill Taylor.  Welcome to the melee.  Sorry to say that I do not quite understand what you are trying to convey.  Jesus did not advise us to look at history.  He did not tell us about going to resources.  He told us the Holy Spirit would lead us into all truth. The Holy Spirit tells me (backed up by scripture) that Jesus was and is God.  Always has been, always will be.  Two things everyone should know about God. One, He does not change, and two, He cannot sin.  That He took my sins on Himself and paid for them with His blood is scriptural.  He did that during His last moments on the cross.  At that moment you may classify Him as sinful if you wish, but I see Him as sacrifice, not sinner.  Had he ever sinned prior to the cross,  He would not have been an acceptable sacrifice. If I have misunderstood you, feel free to clarify. Respectfully, Terry A great resource for this discussion is T. F. Torrance.  In his great little book The Mediation of Christ, he introduces his handling of the Incarnation with these words: "Perhaps the most fundamental truth we need to learn in the Christian Church, or rather relearn since we have suppressed it, is that the Incarnation was the coming of God to save us in the heart of our fallen and depraved humanity, where humanity is at its wickedest in its enmity and violence against the reconciling love of God. That is to say, the Incarnation is to be understood as the coming of God to take upon himself our fallen human nature, After establishing the historicity of these beliefs and attaching their origin to the writings of the Apostles, he then goes on to state, "before long in the fourth century there began a revolt against the idea that Christ took our fallen humanity including our depraved mind upon himself in order to redeem it from within. Thus there developed especially in Latin theology from the fifth century a steadily growing rejection of the fact that it was our alienated, fallen, and sinful humanity that the Holy Son of God assumed, and there was taught instead the idea that it was humanity in its perfect original state that Jesus took over from the Virgin Mary, which of course forced Roman Catholic theology into the strange notion of immaculate conception, . . . It seems to me that Christians should be able and willing to ask the question, What has happened to influence my thinking in this area? Why did early Christians accept this teaching, when I am unable even to consider it? What stands in the gap between the beliefs of these early Christians and those that I hold? If nothing else, David, if Christians will take seriously the early history of the Church, when they say No to you, they will know that you have been relegated to some pretty good company.    .