Jesus Is God And Man
With Easter fast approaching I wanted to take time to talk about just how great this person Jesus was and is. Yes He was there before the beginning of creation and all things were made by Him and for Him (Colossians 1:16, 17) but He is also the One who took the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of man (Philippians 2:7). Unlike what many popular media may show for entertainment purposes, you can not kill God, nothing can. God is life whereas we were given it. Since life was given to us it can be taken away but with God, who is life, life can not be separated from Him. It would be like removing Righteousness or Justice from Him. They are part of who He is, they are simply words that describe Him.
So if Jesus was only God walking the earth, He could have never died. But Jesus gave up who He was as God to become man. Don’t think that Jesus was simply and only fully God walking on the earth. He had to have been fully man as well. All our struggles, He shared. All our frustrations, He felt. All our pain, He knows. And I would venture to say, moreso. I have never been without food for 40 days; I have never, to my knowledge, been tempted by Lucifer himself; I have never had mobs of people coming after me to bring me harm; I have never had mobs of people coming after me to listen to every word I said; I have never had mobs of people coming after me to be healed by me; I have never been falsely accused of something that would eventually lead to my death (and I knew it would); I have never had a Roman scourging; I have never been hung on a cross; and more than all of that, I have never had the bear the weight of even my own sins, let alone the sins of all mankind.
Jesus had to deal with all the natural and normal emotional ups and downs that come with being human, all the natural and normal sinful tendencies that come with being human. He had to continually fight against and deny His flesh the temptation of giving into and being proud, of lusting after women, of hatred, of covetousness and of so many other sins while He was in His pre-resurrection human form. Hebrews 4:15 says that, “we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” And that is the thing, He was tempted just as we are, His flesh craved iniquity and yet He did not sin; not once did He “give in” or “slip up”. He had to have been on guard against those temptations, all the time, even while He was without food for 40 days, while He was being beaten and while He was hanging on a cross receiving a physical and spiritual punishment He did not deserve. During all of that He still had to fight His fleshly tendencies towards sin and His emotional ups and downs that are part of being human.
Death
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). To me, this verse is so powerful because of the implications. Jesus took the full weight and punishment for all sin, for sin itself (sometimes I think that I gloss over this when I think about accepting that He died for my sins, the sins I committed and continue to commit against God). What is the full punishment for my sins? Separation from God, both physical and spiritual separation from God. Though Jesus was God and though He was there before Creation and created all things, He was separated from God; the Son ripped from the Father. It is this cost that I will never fully know as the price of my sins. I am sheltered in that sense. I know in my mind, in my emotions, in my spirit that I deserve this death and that Jesus died these deaths for me but I do not know it from experience. I have never fully experienced these deaths that Jesus died, to be separated from God and to enter Hell itself, being physically and spiritually separated from God, dwelling in a place in which is void of anything that is God or reflective of Him.
Jesus died on the cross and His soul, His spirit went to Hell. That’s what I deserve but Jesus stepped in before I received my just punishment and went there with the expressed purpose so that I did not have to. He took that punishment so that I could never know it. I will never know through experience the full weight and cost of my sinfulness…but Jesus, a man who did not deserve that same punishment because He lived a perfect life, He did, through experience, know the full weight and cost of sinfulness, my sinfulness. Though He knew not sin He knew the cost and punishment and consequence and weight of it.
Hell
Anyway, that wasn’t the point I wanted to drive home. Jesus was in Hell and as such, was separated from God. He did not have His “connection” with God anymore. This man, this Jesus was in His enemy’s domain and under His enemy’s control. It’s like a dream come true for Lucifer, who was created by this enemy that he now has dominion over because Jesus is now residing in Lucifer’s domain. Lucifer knew that he couldn’t kill God or really oppose Him. Then one day (because Lucifer sees time the same as we do, as a linear entity), this God whom he wanted to subvert and usurp, this God that created him and kicked him out of heaven, this God that he could do nothing against, this God that he could not kill nor could be killed, leaves His throne and power as God to take the form of a man and not just look like a man but suffer the same weaknesses as a man. It’s a dream! Now Lucifer can do something, now he can hurt and possibly even kill this God he so hated. So all these things happen and then, as if suddenly, Lucifer is able to get what he had been thinking was not possible though he desperately wanted, he was able to kill this God, and not only that, but this God is now dead and under his control and in his domain, without the power and authority of God. Lucifer now has the “upper hand”. What can God the Father do? He can’t go into Lucifer’s domain to get Jesus and this Jesus is in chains (figuratively speaking) and seemingly, to Lucifer, unable to escape. Lucifer has won; he now has the advantage; let’s see what God can do now!
It is one thing to resurrect someone else, as Jesus did to Lazarus not so long before He was crucified. That is simply having power over the person you are resurrecting. It is a momentary thing because that person you resurrected is going to die again. So it isn’t having full authority and power over death, just delaying the inevitability of it. It’s having the authority over the person to tell them that they are not done yet but that they will be done later. It is to have authority over the spirit of someone, to have them enter again into their body. It is not to have authority over death because death still has its power and will exact it at a later time.
To resurrect yourself though would be to fight an unwinnable battle against death. Nobody has ever done this before nor should it even be possible. And remember, when Jesus resurrected Lazarus, Jesus was still connected with God; He had the Holy Spirit with Him and was connected to Him through prayer and fasting. But in a death that results in the individual residing in Hell, that connection is severed. No more “God power” or “God connection”; no more Holy Spirit on the inside. All your power is gone. You have nothing left except to accept your demise and fate and pain. That is why Lucifer allowed and planned and desired for all this to happen. Lucifer didn’t really believe that Jesus could do anything about it once he got the “Christ” down in his domain. If he did, why would he ever allow it to happen? Lucifer would have never allowed Jesus to die and to be brought into Hell if he knew what was going to happen afterwards, if he knew Jesus could be resurrected (1 Corinthians 2:8). This means that Lucifer never thought it possible for Jesus to leave Hell, where Lucifer has all the power and where the power of God is absent.
Resurrection
John 2:19 – Jesus answered and said unto them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”
John 10:18 – No man takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.
John 11:25 – Jesus said unto her, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live”
There are many Scriptures that say that God raised Jesus from the dead and though that is possible, for all things are possible with God, why does Jesus say that He has the power to take it again? Why does Jesus say that if the temple (Himself) is destroyed, that He will raise it up in three days? This is another one of those moments that I don’t know the direct answer to these questions. I don’t know if there is a direct answer. Some Scriptures say that God the Father raised Jesus from the dead, like Colossians 2:12 but then Jesus, when speaking about it, says that He will raise Himself, though that being a command He received from His Father. So maybe it’s one of those where both are true, that Jesus did raise Himself but it was through the command and power that His Father gave Him before He died on the cross.
One of the verses that really makes be believe it is a combination, that, yes, God raised Jesus up but that Jesus raised Himself is Acts 2:24, which says, “Whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it.” This gives a picture that death is not able to hold Jesus because of the power and the authority given to Him by God and, put simply, who Jesus was. The thing to note here is very difficult to understand because Jesus was in a very different place than God the Father, One in Heaven and the other in Hell, and yet they are still both equally God. So to say that God raised Jesus would be the same as to say that Jesus raised Jesus. To say that God gave the power to Jesus so that He could raise Himself is to say that both God and Jesus raised Jesus from the dead.
Another interesting Scripture is Romans 6:4, which says, “Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” This Scripture makes it interesting because it states that Jesus was resurrected by, not an act of God but simply by the glory of the Father. Not “for” the glory but “by” the glory of the Father. In other words, to me, Jesus was raised from the dead because, though He was in Hell and separated from the Father, He was still God and though He gave up His physical life, was still Life itself, as He said, referring to Himself as the life and the resurrection, and therefore, though He was dead, death could not keep Him. That is interesting to me, that Jesus is life, is the author and giver and Prince of life (Acts 3:15) and yet He died. But when He died He couldn’t be separated from “life” because it isn’t that “life” is a created entity that originated with God and that God gives out, but that “life” is an aspect of Jesus, it is part of who He is and He can therefore not be separated from it. It is because of this that even though Jesus died there was no possible way that He could stay dead.
Yet another Scripture is 2 Timothy 1:10, which says, “But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who has abolished death, and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.” It is very clear that it was Jesus who abolished death. Now, to me, it doesn’t make sense to say that Jesus abolished death if it was solely God the Father who raised Him, for then it would be more accurately said that God, through Jesus, abolished death. But that can’t really happen because to abolish death there is the requirement that you defeat it. God couldn’t just “undo” sin and its consequences, His righteousness and justice would not allow that. God couldn’t just make death of no consequence. He had to have suffered those consequences and rise victoriously from them in order to defeat it. In other words, death had to be experienced, battled face to face, and defeated in order for there to be true victory over it. To me, this means that God had to have maintained the life that makes up part of who He is, suffer the consequences of the judgment of sin, be under the rule and reign of death and then, of His own power and volition, overcome all that death had power to do. And this, I believe, Jesus did.
The point here is that for God to have abolished death, He had to die and to be resurrected. Both were accomplished by Christ. So Jesus, not simply being resurrected by someone else, but resurrecting Himself, abolished death. Remember that this resurrection is different from the resurrection of others, say, Lazarus, because the end of the resurrected life of Lazarus was still death (he still died a physical death) but the end of the resurrected life of Christ is death no more. Jesus was not resurrected in a way that He was still subject to death but conquered and defeated death in such a way that it did not have authority over Him any longer. Death is now fully and completely defeated. To me, this can only be accomplished if Jesus raises Himself (again, not saying that God did not raise Him). To me, when I think about it, if God raises Jesus as One who is outside of the situation that Jesus was in (very similar to how Jesus raised Lazarus), then Jesus did not defeat death and is therefore still subject to it and His humanity would require that He die again. But if Jesus resurrects Himself, as He said He would, then He truly has defeated death and death would no longer have any power or authority over Him and He would be the firstborn of the resurrection, of those who have died but been raised.
Likewise in 1 Corinthians 15:54 and 57 it says, “Death is swallowed up in victory…But thanks be to God, which gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The victory we have over death is through and provided to us by Jesus and His victory over death. We share in Christ’s victory over death. Now think back to Lazarus, did Lazarus have victory over death? No, for Lazarus was resurrected by the One who had authority over his life. Likewise, in my opinion, Jesus is the life, the very life that death can not keep down, so for Scripture to award Jesus the victory over death, to me, means that Jesus is the One who raised Himself from the dead. To me, this is why Romans 6:9 says, “Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dies no more; death has no more dominion over Him.” Because Jesus defeated death it no longer can force itself upon Him like it did to Lazarus. If God alone resurrected Jesus then the victory is God’s and not Christ’s and it would be God who would have to defend Christ from death. But that is not the case. Jesus is the victor over death. Again, this isn’t to say that God the Father was not involved in any way, but that Jesus was not resurrected but instead resurrected Himself.
Power
The picture I have in my mind is of Jesus in Hell, in Lucifer’s domain, and walking out when the time had been fulfilled. God didn’t call Jesus out as Jesus did to Lazarus, God didn’t go into Hell to walk Jesus out, God didn’t send angels to go and get Him. Jesus, of His own will and power (power that undoubtedly was given to Him as being God) left Hell when Lucifer and all his demons and all the power of death was trying to keep Him there. They could do nothing. The whole of Hell and all the power of death itself could do nothing against this man Jesus. They could not stop life, for Jesus is life. The man who was dead and in Hell without doing a single thing to deserve either walked out of death and Hell to enter again into this world and entered into Heaven itself as a man, not as a spirit. This man, Jesus, is still alive and seated at the right hand of God the Father. He is alive, over 2,000 year old man, living in Heaven because death can do nothing to Him. Jesus is human, just like you and I. He didn’t stop being human when He resurrected Himself; He isn’t simply a spirit now, as we think of ourselves after we die. His spirit entered back into His body, the same body that was crucified, and it is that body that is seated at the right hand of God in Heaven! Holy is the Lamb of God, slain for the sins of the world!
The point in which we need to understand is not who exactly resurrected Jesus, whether it was God or Jesus or both, but that Jesus IS resurrected and that is the point that matters. However it happened, we know it happened. That on the third day of Jesus being in Hell (maybe Hell has the same linear time movement that is upon this earth?) something happened that Lucifer did not expect or want.
But this brings me to my point about this man Jesus. It is my opinion that, however it happened, and with whatever power it happened with, Jesus, unable to remain dead by the power and glory of God, power and glory that wasn’t given to Him but was Him, resurrected Himself, defeating death and therefore lives forever. What kind of man, for He was fully man, was He to have had the power to be dead in Hell and to walk out on His own initiative and volition? The power of Jesus is beyond understanding! We don’t have power or authority enough to not die, let alone to be dead and then overcome death to be alive again. Think about that, humanity can do nothing to stop death from coming for each and every one of us and yet there was a man who was defeated by death but then overcame it. How is that even possible? How much power does that person possess to be able to be under the power of death and then to overcome that power and enter into the same, lifeless body, bringing life back into it? Jesus has that power, but not like a possession that He obtained but more like it is part of Him, all power and all glory, it is who He is! To be able to be dead and to bring yourself back to life is the most powerful act in the history of man. You don’t have power to do it. I don’t have power to do it. And yet, for the sake of our eternity, it had to be done.
It isn’t like Jesus was in Heaven and simply resurrected Himself from there, no, this man Jesus was in Hell, in the enemy’s domain and walked out! He, apart from His body and separated from God, was in Hell and of His own volition went back to His body. In doing so He made a spectacle, a showing of dominance, over Lucifer and all his demons and powers (Colossians 2:15) and defeated death so that death no longer had a grip on any whom He resurrected with Himself, those who are within His authority to protect. Jesus was dead and then, by His own will and power and authority and life, He wasn’t. His body was empty of Himself and then He chose to and had the power to leave Hell and go back into His body and in doing so, forever made death subject to Himself. The life that is Jesus, for He is the life, could not be conquered by death, a fact that Lucifer had not known but wishes he had.
Enemy Defeated
1 Corinthians 2:8 – Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
Hebrews 2:14 – Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same; that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.
It turns out that a resurrected God is more powerful than a God who has not been resurrected, at least if you are God’s enemy. A resurrected God can do more for those in need of resurrection. If Lucifer would have known what would happen after the death of Christ, Lucifer himself would have never allowed Jesus to die. Lucifer thought he had Him, thought he had defeated God. That’s what pride will do to you, make you believe you won when the truth is that you lost way more than you realized. Because when Jesus defeated death, He destroyed Lucifer himself. It’s interesting to me that Lucifer hadn’t been destroyed until death had been defeated. Sure Lucifer was cast out of heaven but had yet to be defeated. Death seemed to be Lucifer’s trophy. Lucifer would continue to rule as long as death ruled over man. Death is Lucifer’s victory just as life is Christ’s victory. As long as Lucifer had death alive (interesting phrase) and had death as the “final authority” then he was winning. Death was Lucifer’s victory. He had beaten God. But when Jesus rose Himself from the dead and defeated death in One on one combat, He destroyed them both together, death AND Lucifer. Lucifer lost everything in that resurrection. He no longer has his trophy. He is no longer beating God but has been destroyed.
How did Jesus do this? The life that is a characteristic of who He is, though was able to die through the body He emptied Himself into, was not able to say dead. The power of death was no match for the power of life. Lucifer is death just as Jesus is life. Lucifer must have rejoiced with great pride when death had a victory over Jesus, believing that death was stronger than life. But then the third day came! Lucifer knew then what we all know now, and that Jesus Himself said in Matthew 28:18, that “All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth”, that there is none more powerful, none stronger, none more mighty than Jesus, not even death!
Power Is Alive
And it is because of this that the Name of Jesus has power, because it isn’t a reference to someone who is dead and gone but a calling to the One who is alive and who possesses all power and authority in this creation and in the next, in heaven and in earth. When we pray in Jesus Name, we aren’t saying, “We remember the wonderful works of Christ and we ask that You treat us and hear us as You treated and heard Jesus.” No, we are saying, “We ask this with the authority and power of the Man who is alive, seated at the right hand of God, who we call upon and know as Jesus.” We are saying, “I say this on behalf of Jesus, who is alive and who has all power and all authority in heaven and in this creation.” That is why there is so much power in the Name of Jesus, because He is alive. There would be no power – those who hear it would not have to act upon it – if He were dead. There would be no weight behind the Name if the Name referred to someone who was dead and unable to act for those who call upon it. But since He is alive then He is able to. Since He is alive those who hear it must act upon it because we are saying it as if He said it (meaning that we agree with Him). That is why Scripture says so many times that we receive whatever we ask for in Jesus Name, because there is power in His Name, because asking in His Name is us asking for Him, saying that, “Jesus has sent me with a message and a request and that message and request is this.” All we must do is ensure we ask for those things that are in alignment with Him and His will (that we represent His Name rightly) and believe that His Name has the power to impact the heavens and the earth and to bring into fruition whatever it is we ask. Demons, Lucifer and even death itself can do nothing against the Name of Jesus for the man the Name calls upon is the same that was in their domain and under their power but was rose victorious. And that is the point, that not only was He victorious but He remains victorious. Jesus is still alive, the same Jesus with the same body as when He walked the earth over 2,000 years ago. He wasn’t simply risen from the dead, He IS risen from the dead. He is alive and victorious over all of His enemies, with no exception and with no question. His Name is great because He is great. His Name is powerful because He possesses (not as a possession but as the essence of who He is) all power, all dominion, all authority and all honor and all glory. Praise to the Christ, Jesus, the Lamb of God slain for the sins of the world!
All Honor, All Glory, All Power, All Dominion, All Authority to Jesus (Revelation 5:13)! To Him whose Name is above every Name and to whom every knee will bow and every tongue confess that He and He alone is Lord (Romans 14:11 & Philippians 2:9).
Andy Monec – MCD