On December 16, 1739, George Whitefield preached a sermon based on Matthew 22. 42 at Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg, Virginia, in which he asked his audience the same question Jesus had asked his listeners 1700 years earlier: What do you think of Christ???
The language Whitefield spoke was different from that of his Lord, but the eternal consequences of the answer were the same. Some of the answers from Jesus’ time?It was John the Baptist who had risen from the dead; He was one of the prophets; Was it Elijah (see Mark 8. 27-28)?They were similar to the answers given in Whitefield’s time. Deists like Benjamin Franklin, a close friend of Whitefield’s, regarded Jesus as an incomparable teacher, but they were far from confessing his divinity Others regarded Jesus as divine, but in such a way that his divinity was inferior to that of the Father. Whitefield, faithful to the testimony of the scriptures, was not ashamed to tell people that Jesus Christ is completely God and that if Jesus Christ were not the true God of the true God, he would never preach the gospel of Christ again. For it would not be a gospel; Is it just a system of moral ethics?
- Proof of the complete divinity of the Lord Jesus can be found throughout the New Testament.
- Is Jesus explicitly called?(Titus 2.
- 13).
- The fullness of the deity dwells in him (Colossus 1:19; 2.
- 9).
- He has titles and names given to Yahweh in the Old Testament (compare.
- For example.
- Isaiah 44.
- 6 and Revelation 1.
- 17).
- It is presented as the object of worship.
- (Hebrews 1.
- 6) and is invoked in prayer (Acts 7.
- 59-60; 1 Corinthians 16.
- 22; 2 Corinthians 12.
- 8) He does things that only God can do.
- Such as creating the universe (John 1.
- 3; Colossses 1.
- 16).
- Forgive sins (Mark 2.
- 5-10; Colossians 3.
- 13) and judging us on the last day (Acts 10.
- 42; 17.
- 31; 2 Corinthians 5.
- 10) It has divine attributes.
- Such as omnipresence (Hebrews 1.
- 3; Ephesians 4.
- 10).
- Omniscience (Revelation 2.
- 23).
- Omnipotence (Matthew 28.
- 18) and immutability (Hebrews 13.
- 8).
- The complete deity of Christ is part of the gospel.
- Any other position perverts the New Testament.
The New Testament also bears witness to another truth about Christ’s identity: his complete humanity. As the Apostle Paul says, it is “Christ Jesus, man?”(1 Timothy 2. 5). He was raised in modest circumstances (Matthew 13:55) and experienced the agony of hunger (4. 2). She experienced fatigue and thirst (John 4:4-7) and wept with tears of sadness (11:35). However, while his humanity is like ours in all these respects, there is one aspect in which he is totally different from ours: he has no sin. When we look at the life of Christ, there is not a single incident we can point to. and say, “Look, a sin. ” To deny the humanity of Christ is to ruin the gospel (see 1 John 4. 1-3; 2 John 7-9).
After a lifetime of doing good, healing the sick, and preaching the gospel, Jesus was arrested by the Jewish and Roman authorities; he who is the truth and loved God perfectly was accused of blasphemous; suffered shamefully at the hands of the Jews. Roman guards and soldiers, being whipped and mocked; he was stripped of all his clothes and killed with nothing to cover his nudity (John 19:23-24; Mark 15:24). His death is the most shameful and painful known of all time. Romans: the crucifixion (Hebrews 12:2; John 19: 16-18) The Author of life, risen from the dead, was buried in a tomb; Most terrible of all, however, was the feeling of god’s abandonment that flooded Jesus’ soul when he died (Matthew 27. 46; Mark 15:34), for in his death he endured and experienced for sinners the hellish wrath they deserve (1 Corinthians 15. 3; 2 Corinthians 5. 21; Hebrews 9: 11-14, 28). His death was nothing less than a death by power and propitiator. To deny this is to deny the gospel.
But death could not imprison Jesus in the grave, for neither death nor Satan had a right over him (Psalm 16. 10; Acts 2. 24-31) . Thus, God the Father, through the Holy Spirit, resurrected Jesus from the dead on the third day. (Matthew 28. 6-7; Acts 2. 32; Romans 8. 11), and was seen several times by his selected apostles and witnesses (Acts 1. 3-8; 1 Corinthians 15:4-8). Rejecting the bodily resurrection takes away our hope of salvation. .
This is the gospel taught by the New Testament, which Whitefield preached and which we affirm again: Christ, completely God, became man for our salvation, died for our sins, and rose from the dead, believes, and you will be saved.