Jesus Is The Real Divine and Human King
Jesus introduced a completely different kind of God to the world. He seemed to be a weak God, yet He was a God who “spoke with authority.” And He conquered sin.
He was a human God, but without human frailties. He was Himself without sin.
He was an almighty God but He exercised His power through kindness for the weak and powerless. By becoming weak and dying, he became became the King who “rules over all things in Heaven and on the Earth.” He destroyed the reign of Sin.
Jesus was not capricious and petty like Zeus. He was more powerful than Caesar, but His kingdom was not of this world. He did not fall victim to pride, or arrogance, or indifference to the fate of others. Though other religions have believed that there were God/Men, Christianity has a unique understanding of that concept. The God/Man of Christianity is a redeemer. Everything He does is good.
Catholicism brings a full understanding of the meaning of God/Man. Jesus was the fullness of the Truth and nothing before Him was completely the Truth, and nothing after Him adds to that the Truth. The Truth is God, eternal and unchanging. Only through Jesus, the God/man, can we know the Truth. It is in Jesus that we know God.
written by Laura Weston, widow of Deacon Michael
IF YOU LIKE, READ ALONG AS YOU LISTEN:
In the readings today there is a certain ambiguity that is going on that is central to our faith. The ambiguity is: who do you say I am? This ultimate question that we in our lives always come back to.
We have in the Acts of the Apostles, Paul is preaching to the Jews again. We know their negative reaction. And he is talking about who Jesus is. He goes in and at the very end of what we have here, he says, "You are my son. This day I have begotten you." In the responsoral song we have exactly the same thing.
And then we have Jesus talking about, "I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” And He is saying, again, He is the Son of God.
The question that we address as Christians, and Catholics particularly, is, what does that mean? Does the "Son of God" mean, like with Adam and Eve, God created, and that God creates very special men, that He perceives… David being one of them… He perceives as special. And there is a description of the use of the word, Son of Man, that includes that special classification of people.
Or is there something more? And obviously, as Christians, we know there is something more. That the Son of Man, the Christ, the Messiah, Our Lord Jesus Christ, is wholly human and wholly divine.
Now, even in the books of the New Testament, we see the controversies caused by that. You see in Paul where he is dealing with Gnosticism, the heresies that come up dealing with the Son of Man, the Son of God, what does that mean? Is the divinity of Christ the reality or is it the humanity, or is there some sort of, what do they call it, hypostatic union, which we don't really understand. We don't have a clue, but we invented a word for it.
And this goes on for quite a period of time and it isn't until the third century... fourth century... that we have the councils of Nicea and Calcedon and many others dealing with this problem. We see Athanasius dealing with it. The Arian heresy. There are various things of what does it mean that Jesus is the Son of God, wholly human, wholly divine. And is that a fundamental tenet of our faith. And the answer to that part is, yes, it is absolutely a fundamental tenet of our faith.
But let's put aside the humanity of Christ, because that's what He is doing in the gospel. He really is focusing on Himself and His divinity. “I am the way and the truth and the life.”
What does it mean if Jesus is wholly divine? The first one that just stops everything is it means that God died on the cross! It wasn't a game. He died. There is nothing in the gospels that indicate that He did anything but die in the totality of His death.
He died on the cross for us. Period.
But if He is also God, one of the things in that context, of that world in which they address, is there were a lot of gods. They were regional. They was grasping of trying to figure out who God was. They had the Eastern mystery religions that were coming into the Roman Empire through the soldiers, we talked about them. And first there was thought that Christianity was just one of the Eastern mysteries. Okay there were mysteries, where you go "Umm", you have special knowledge. Gnosticism.
But the reality is you also had the humans who perceived themselves or were declared gods. Now the Roman Empire we know better than others but it was happening in all the places.
Cesar Augustus was the founder of the Roman Empire. Wow, he was special! He ruled for over forty years. He solved all sorts of problems. He really did some wonderful things for the Roman Empire.
If anybody could possibly do all of those good things, he must be divine. And so we see through the first, well all the Roman Empires ultimately, until Constantine came along and put an end to all that fuss, were perceived as being divine.
Yet by their divinity, if you looked at Caesar, he did a lot of good things, but he was merely human, subject to a whole lot of foibles. And he was better than the other Roman emperors that came afterwards. I mean, can you imagine, Caligula the divine? If Caligula was going around saying, “I'm a God”, which he did, then what does it mean that this man Jesus is wholly human, wholly divine? How is it? In in our world and in the ancient world, what does it mean? What is the importance of the humanity and divinity of Christ?
In the context of the Roman Emperor, you had Caesar, you had all of these guys who were emperors, who were clearly human, clearly had foibles, were extremely powerful. They were so powerful that, from the perspective of many, they had to have been divine. With all the foibles they had they were divine because they were so powerful.
Yet Jesus comes to us and says, I am wholly human, wholly divine and I am the servant of all as you are called to be. I love you so much and call you to love each other. That your importance does not come from being like the Roman Emperor. It comes from being like Me, who is wholly human and wholly divine, who loves God and neighbor totally. And that in My divinity, in My very power of being the Son of God, I give of Myself totally.
So you have a totally different perception of the divine through Our Lord Jesus Christ. The divinity that people see now, if they are not Christians, their perception of God, and the perception of God in the ancient ages were totally different.
Because the perception of God was that he had very human characteristics, was arbitrary and capricious, and could do whatever he wanted. Think Zeus. He goes, "Hey she's a cutie, I'll go impregnate her, pretending I'm a swan or something like that.”
Yet Jesus came along and says, "I am the vine. I am the way and the truth and the life. And through Me you can come to the Father. And through Me you can have eternal life. And through Me, by you following My teachings and the way I live, you can come ever closer to God. And the way you do it is not thorough the power of God, but through the humility of God. The sacrifice of God. The love of God.” "That God so loves the world He gave His only begotten Son."
And so we have a totally different image of the divine. And that image is central to what Jesus calls us to do of loving one another and loving our neighbor. And in that we are able to partake in the divine not through lording it over everybody, "Look at me, I'm so important," but in our own humility in service of others.
And this is a central thing of the teachings of Christ, and this is a central thing that makes Christianity ultimately so appealing. Because it's easy for someone to relate to… I'm going to pick on Robert again… someone like Robert can relate to someone who is all powerful and say I'd like to be all powerful but I hate what that person is doing to me. Oh, you know, shoot them, make them poor, whatever, just arbitrary and capricious.
Yet the divine, the reality of the divine is the Lord Jesus Christ who comes to Robert, touches him, loves him and heals him through His humanity and divinity. The humanity and divinity, the totality of which Jesus brought to the cross for own salvation.
May 17, 2019 2