04 - The Testimony of a Quotation
The words of Php 2:10-11 are a direct quotation from Isaiah 45:1-25. I want you to repeat your comment upon this passage in Php 2:1-30 before I read the quotation from Isaiah so that we may place them together. A - I said that every tongue is not going to confess that Jesus Christ is GOD, but Lord to the glory of God, Who is not Christ, but the FATHER.
B - I will now read Isaiah 45:18-22 :
‘For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; GOD HIMSELF that formed the earth and made it ... I am the LORD; AND THERE IS NONE ELSE ... There is NO GOD ELSE BESIDE ME ... Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: FOR I AM GOD, and there is NONE ELSE’. Are you satisfied that ‘the Lord’ here is GOD HIMSELF and none else? A - Most certainly, that is the plain language of the Scripture.
B - You are sure ‘the Lord’ here does not mean a lesser Deity, ‘God in a subordinate sense’? A - No, the passage will not allow the thought. This is the Creator of heaven and earth Who is speaking.
B - I will continue the quotation from Isaiah 45:1-25 :
‘I have sworn by Myself, the word is gone out of My mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, THAT UNTO ME every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear’ (Isaiah 45:23). Will you dare repeat your comment upon Php 2:1-30 with this testimony before you? A - No, I dare not. I must come like Thomas and kneel before Him Who is both Saviour and Creator, both God and man, and say ‘My Lord and my God’.
B - Praise God for that confession. Difficulties you will still have, problems unsolved and beyond your understanding but your heart will be free, and the consciousness of loyalty to the Lord is beyond description. A - It would appear that the ‘Jesus’ of the New Testament is none other than the ‘Jehovah’ of the Old Testament. Is this borne out by any other quotations?
B - Yes. For example Isaiah 6:1-13. There we have a vision of the Lord. Before His glory the Seraphim veil their faces while they cry:
‘Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD (Jehovah) of hosts: the whole earth is full of His glory’.
There can be no doubt that this was a vision of God. Let us consider the testimony of two witnesses:
HEZEKIAH - ‘O LORD of hosts, God of Israel, that dwellest between the Cherubims, THOU ART THE GOD, even THOU ALONE’ (Isaiah 37:16).
JOHN (Quoting Isaiah 6:9-10) - ‘These things said Esaias (Isaiah), when he saw His (Christ’s) glory, and spake of Him’ (John 12:41).
Scripture declares that the Lord of Hosts is THE God, John declares that the Lord of Hosts is Christ. Your teachers, whose doctrine you have renounced, told you that John taught that Christ was A God, but not THE God! A - They did, and I believed them, denying the very Lord that bought me.
B - Not only have we definite quotation, but the fact that ‘Jehovah’ and ‘Jesus’ are one and the same is assumed on every hand. Isaiah 40:3 thew:3 thew:3 says:
‘The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God’. The Gospels declare that John the Baptist is ‘the voice’, and that he was sent to prepare the way for Christ, Who is both Lord and God.
Jehovah not limited to Israel The Lord is the God of Israel. He that dwelt between the Cherubim was no God in a subordinate sense. He is confessed as the God of Israel, the God alone of all the kingdoms of earth, the maker of heaven and earth (Isaiah 37:16). Solomon confessed that this same God was not limited to Israel or the temple, saying:
‘But will God indeed dwell on the earth? behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee’ (1 Kings 8:27).
I want you to see clearly that any reservation in the mind as to the full Deity of Christ blights the faith and is unscriptural. Take the title ‘Saviour’ in Titus:
‘According to the commandment of God our Saviour’ (Titus 1:3). ‘Adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour’ (Titus 2:10). ‘Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing (appearing of the glory) of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ’ (Titus 2:13).
‘The love of God our Saviour toward man’ (Titus 3:4).
‘Through Jesus Christ our Saviour’ (Titus 3:6). The title ‘Saviour’ is used of ‘God’ and ‘the Lord Jesus Christ’ without distinction. Further, here we have a definite statement, that Christ is ‘The Great God and our Saviour’. Not only is Christ here called ‘The Great God’, but Psalms 78:35 says:
‘God was their rock, and the HIGH GOD their redeemer’. That redeemer was Christ. In verse 56 the same title comes again:
‘They tempted and provoked the MOST HIGH GOD’.
They tempted Christ. A - How do you know that?
B - 1 Corinthians 10:9 says:
‘Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted’. In 1 Corinthians 10:4 we also find, ‘That rock was Christ’ which looks to Psalms 78:35. There can be no good done by lengthening this study. You have your Bible, and you may add to the passages already brought forward. The High God. The Most High God. THE God.
Christ - God manifest in the flesh.
Jehovah.
Creator. The Great God. Which will you believe, this glorious testimony of Scripture:
JESUS CHRIST IS THE GREAT GOD or He is A God, God in a subordinate sense?
You will remember that we opened this discussion by saying that ‘the one God’ is ‘the Father’, and that ‘the man’ is ‘the Son’, and therefore could not be God Himself. I suggested that we were dealing with the question at the wrong end. The Father must be greater than His Son. He Who sends is greater than the one sent. This is all true, but reasoning that holds good with men may not hold good with one Who is both God and man. We have seen that He is God, even the Great God, Jehovah, God Himself. Therefore we must distinguish things that differ. When He took the form of a servant it was to obey. He took flesh and blood that He might obey. In Hebrews 10:5-7 is a quotation from Psalms 40:6-8 ew:6-8 ew:6-8. Will you compare the two passages and note any important difference? The Willing Servant A - Apart from minor differences that are the result of translation, there is one that does call for explanation. In Psalms 40:6 thew:6 thew:6 the words ‘mine ears hast Thou opened’ are replaced in Hebrews 10:5 by the words, ‘A body hast Thou prepared me’.
B - In the margin of the Psalm you have a note to the effect that ‘opened’ is really the word ‘digged’. The typical principle of interpretation which we have discussed elsewhere comes to our aid here. In Exodus 21:1-6 we have the law pertaining to a Hebrew servant, which limited his servitude to six years, except under the following exceptional conditions:
‘If the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free: then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him for ever (the age)’ (Exodus 21:5-6). The ‘digged ear’ was the symbol of loving willing servitude, entered for the love of those who would otherwise have been left behind in bondage. The Lord of glory, the Creator of things seen and unseen, when He entered out of love His period of willing servitude, took the form of a servant, and entered the body ‘prepared’ for Him, which body was the symbol of lowliness, and pierced for our sakes upon the cross. Shall we abuse the very condescension of the Lord and make of it an argument against His very Deity? A - I never realised till now, what a shameful thing it is, to use the very condescension of the Saviour as an argument to rob Him of His title.
B - When people begin arguing that the ‘Son’ must necessarily be less than the ‘Father’ they are wasting time, for Scripture teaches the same thing. The Son and the Father speak of that relationship which commenced when the fulness of time came for Christ to be born of a woman. He came expressly to do the will of Him that sent Him, and took the ‘form’ of a servant and the ‘fashion’ as a man in order to accomplish that purpose. This voluntarily assumed subordination cannot be used as an argument when dealing with His essential Deity. A - Do you not believe that Christ was ‘the Son’ from eternity?
B - You are asking a question which the human mind cannot answer unaided, and upon which Scripture never speaks. As I have said, I am no philosopher, all I know is already written in the Word. What I find there is that Christ ‘Originally was in the form of God’. ‘In the beginning He was the Word’. When the fulness of time came the Word became flesh, and then, the Scripture says, ‘we beheld His glory as the only begotten of the Father’. Luke 1:31-35 makes a very complete statement. Let us read it:
‘And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call His name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest ... Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called THE SON OF GOD’ The words ‘therefore also’ put the matter beyond question. The great confession of Matthew 16:16 :
‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God’, and the words of 1 John 4:2 are complementary:
‘Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God’.
Sonship speaks not so much of His Deity, as of His office of Mediator. The way in which many who attack the doctrine of the Lord’s Deity use the title ‘Son’ is but the old abuse of the man of straw. A - What do you mean by this ‘man of straw’?
B - It means that for the purposes of argument a person first collects together a series of statements which have no real place in the argument, but which appear valid to the ordinary hearer, and then having built up this ‘man of straw’ he proceeds to display his ability in knocking it to pieces. To those who see that the Sonship of Christ is essentially a part of that great voluntary self-emptying, when the servant’s form was taken at Bethlehem, the spectacle is a pitiable exhibition of either ignorance or prejudice. A - There does not seem much more to be said. I think however that you ought to face 1 Corinthians 8:5-6 before concluding.
B - By all means. What is the context of these verses? A - Idolatry.
B - So then we have a statement concerning the Christian faith as opposed to idolatry. In contrast with the ‘gods many and the lords many’ of paganism, we have the sublime teaching of Scripture:
‘But to us (here we have the "relative" argument brought in, to which we devoted some time at the opening of our discussion) there is but one God, the Father, out of Whom the all things, and we for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through Whom the all things, and we through Him’ (1 Corinthians 8:6 literal). The ‘lords’ of paganism were mediators between men and the more remote ‘gods’, and this statement becomes exactly parallel with that of 1 Timothy 2:5 :
‘For there is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus’. The question of the Deity of Christ is not in view. It is the ‘Mediator’ and the ‘Man’ that is in question. None of these things, nor all that Scripture says concerning Christ as the Servant or the Son, the Sent One or the Sacrifice, the Shepherd or the Sufferer, can have the remotest influence upon the revealed facts of Scripture that this same Christ is also ‘The Great God’, ‘The High God’, ‘The Almighty God’, ‘The Creator’, and ‘Jehovah’. It is essential to our redemption and to the purpose of reconciliation that Christ shall be man. It is also the continual teaching of Scripture that He is God. Faith believes the complete statement. The mere multiplying of examples cannot make the doctrine more true nor more plain. I am not aware that any passage has been passed over that would cause any alteration of the doctrine I put before you. If you do find such a passage please write to me, and I will gladly consider it in The Berean Expositor.