Jesus of Nazareth - Man?? God?? Or SON OF GOD!

At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you (John 14:20).
In John 10:30 Jesus of Nazareth made the claim, "I and My Father are one." The Jews understood Jesus to be saying that He WAS God. In fact, they were so sure of the meaning of Jesus' claim that they even tried to stone Him "for blasphemy, and because you, being a man, make yourself God." However Jesus did not say "I have BECOME God," nor did He claim that He, by any of His virtues or goodness, WAS God. He simply stated the truth, "I and My Father are ONE."
Religions outside of Christianity, if they accept the existence of Jesus at all, claim that He was only a MAN, possibly a holy and great teacher, but only a man.
It is often taught in Christianity that Jesus of Nazareth WAS GOD, and John 10:30 above is the scripture most often used to prove it. But many fail to understand that Jesus did not live such a perfect life that He qualified Himself to become God or one with God. Rather, God the Father gave birth to Jesus Christ! If Jesus had not been birthed of God, but lived the very same life, it would not have made Him one with the Father. God the Father made Jesus one with Himself at conception in the womb of Mary. This is why Jesus lived the life that He lived – because He already was one with the Father, because of the life within Him.
Did you ever realize that Jesus of Nazareth never said, "I am God!" But He often declared Himself to be the "Son of God". Am I just splitting hairs here or is this an important concept to understand? I believe that it is an all-important understanding to proceed to maturity in the Christian life!
We all know that Jesus Christ declared Himself to be the Son of God. But at what point in time did He become the Son of God? I believe the understanding of this issue is important to a person's grasp of the marvelous purpose of God in the creation of mankind.
Let's go back to the very beginning, in prehistory.
If you were asked where in the Bible to find the very earliest description of God in point of the time of His existence, you probably would say, "Why, in the very first verse in the Bible, Genesis 1:1, of course." Right? Wrong!
In time order the earliest revelation of WHO and WHAT God is is found in the New Testament: John 1:1.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made. In Him was life, and that life was the light of men" (John 1:1-4).
"The Word" in this passage is translated from the Greek logos, which means "spokesman" or "revelatory thought". It is the name there used for an individual Personage. But who or what is this Logos? Notice the explanation in verse 14:
"And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the only Son who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."
When the Word was born as Jesus Christ, He was flesh and blood, materialistic and could be seen, touched and felt. But what was He? As God – as the Logos? That is answered in John 4:24, "God is a Spirit", and spirit is invisible.
The Word, then, is a spirit Personage who was made flesh -–fathered by God, thus having another spirit Personage as His "Father". Yet at that prehistoric time of the first verse of John 1, THE WORD WAS NOT (YET) THE SON OF GOD. He divested Himself of His glory as a Spirit divinity to be fathered as a human person. He was made God's Son, through being sired by God and born of the virgin Mary.
So here we find two Personages mentioned – one is God (in verse 14 called the "Father"). And with God in that prehistoric time was another Personage who also was God – one who later was sired and born as Jesus Christ.
We later in the Gospels of the New Testament are introduced to a third Personage – the Holy Spirit. But at this point in John 1, we are only told of God and the Word. The "Word" was a separate Personage from "God", but was also a part of "God", the divine God Family. The Word, at the time of John 1:1, was not, yet, the Son of God. But He was with God, and He also was God.
They were not yet Father and Son – but they WERE members of the GOD FAMILY.
That Family – as revealed further in the New Testament – is composed, now, of God the Father, Jesus Christ His Son, and the Holy Spirit, along with many born again humans who already, NOW, are true SONS OF GOD (Romans 8:14,16; 1 John 3:2), forming the Church of God.
That FAMILY aspect – the GOD FAMILY – is vitally important in God's creative purpose for humanity.
After our understanding of the first chapter of John, THEN we go to Genesis 1 – the material creation. God (the Personage called the Father) is Creator. But He "created all things by the Word (the Personage to later become the Son of God, Jesus Christ). It is written, "He spoke, and it was done" (Psalm 33:9). God tells the Word what to do. The Word then speaks, as the workman, and the Holy Spirit is the power that responds and does what the Word commands.
But the Bible tells us that this God Personage called the Word gave up His status AS God and became a MAN – Jesus of Nazareth.
"For by Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by Him and for Him" (Colossians 1:16).
The second Person of the Trinity was the "Word". When He was doing the creating, He was NOT the "Son of God". The "Word" BECAME Jesus Christ at the human conception and birth in Bethlehem. The "Word" BECAME the Son of God in the human person of Jesus Christ. And what made Jesus Christ the "Son of God"? Jesus' human spirit part contained the divine nature of the God Family! Jesus was born to Mary that way – the only human ever, in the past, present or future, to come from his mother's womb that way.
The Word, a member of the God Family, became Jesus, a human member of the God Family, and thus BECAME A Son of God – one of many Sons of God to be formed in the human race.
Jesus was the first Son of God with many to follow upon belief and acceptance of Him as Lord and Savior. Jesus came to start a new human race – a new race of God Family members born over again with the divine nature of the God Family.
Jesus Christ came into the world containing this nature of the God Family right from conception. But He was the "firstborn of many brethren" – each of us Christians who have to be born again by faith in Christ.
Jesus drew all of His power from total dependence on His union with the Father.
We brothers and sisters of Jesus must learn to follow His example by drawing on the power of Christ and the Holy Spirit in living union with us.
So what can we truly call Jesus of Nazareth? God? Man? JESUS CHRIST WAS A NEW MAN – THE FIRST OF MANY "SONS OF GOD". Jesus was the first man to contain the nature of God. All men before Him contained the nature of Satan inherited from that evil event in the Garden. And until this new man in Christ, no man could shed this fallen nature.
It is very important the believer understand the principle of living life according to a nature. Why? It is important because, from the outset, God intended each creature live by the nature within. This is also true of each of the members of the Godhead – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – for they live life by their nature.
It is very interesting to note that the word "nature" or "natural" is used only once in the Old Testament and is found in Deuteronomy 34:7. It should be very obvious that very little or nothing was known about the nature of creatures in Old Testament times.
Except for Jesus, the apostle Paul was the first to understand that God had a nature, and that His nature, was, is and shall forever be a Father-nature. John and Peter picked up on this understanding later than Paul.
It is my understanding that prior to creation God intended to have a nature-to-nature relationship with His offspring. Hebrews 1:1-5 talks about this and verse 5 says "I will be to him a Father and he shall be to Me a Son." God is well pleased with a nature-to-nature relationship, and at this time Jesus was the only one who had a nature-to-nature relationship with God, which is also known as the Father-Son relationship. "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matt. 3:17). Jesus was the first human being that ever had God as truly a Father to Him. Pleasing God is achieved by a nature not by what can be done or performed.
Just as Jesus of Nazareth was NOT God but a man having the nature of God making Him a Son of God, so also we born-again Christians are NOT God but have the nature of God making us sons of God in God's Family. The difference between Jesus of Nazareth and us is that He was perfect as a container of the divine nature and we are imperfect containers of that nature.
Some might say, "But Jesus had to be more than just the ideal, perfect man – He was God and He knew it, otherwise He couldn't have performed all the miracles He did!" Jesus was the perfect Son of God, a perfectly mature Son of God thus giving Him all the supernatural powers available to perfect sons of God. Remember that Paul, Peter and John worked miracles too because they had a maturity beyond most men. But they were still MEN. All the true sons of God from Jesus on down to us today are given supernatural powers in relation to their maturity. As a growing Christian, little miracles occur in your life every day of which you may be unaware. And these will increase as you mature spiritually.
Others might say, "But Jesus had to be God because the Bible shows that He remembered things about Himself in past ages and even before the foundation of the world." We, as Christians, remember things from our life with the nature of Satan before conversion. Much of this is garbage which we draw on influencing us temporarily away from awareness of our living union with Christ and awareness of our present divine nature. But Jesus of Nazareth did not have any such past mental garbage. He was never confused mentally. He always knew to turn to the Father's nature within Him for His wisdom and understanding. This perfection of mind thus allowed Him to tread the corridors of time and eternity as He – as a Man/Son of God – used the wisdom of the Father. Jesus remembered who He used to be – the WORD.
What gem of truth can we draw from all that I have attempted to explain? JESUS OF NAZARETH WAS THE FIRST MAN/SON OF GOD AND THE PERFECT EXAMPLE OF WHAT THE TRINITY OF GOD HAS IN MIND FOR THOSE HUMAN CREATURES WHO CHOOSE TO FOLLOW CHRIST.
JESUS OF NAZARETH GAVE UP HIS PERSONAGE OF THE "WORD" AND BECAME A MAN/SON OF GOD, THE FIRSTBORN OF MANY SONS OF GOD.
JESUS OF NAZARETH WAS A MAN IN LIVING UNION WITH HIS HEAVENLY FATHER AND HE LIVED IN TOTAL DEPENDENCE ON THE FATHER WORKING FROM WITHIN HIM. THIS IS THE EXAMPLE OF MATURITY WHICH WE AS FOLLOWING SONS OF GOD SHOULD AIM FOR.
AS JESUS LIVED FROM HIS FATHER WITHIN, WE ARE TO LIVE FROM THE RESURRECTED JESUS CHRIST WITHIN US (see Galatians 2:20, my favorite Bible verse.)
WWJD. What would Jesus do? We can never really understand the specifics of everything that Jesus would do in the situations of life which we face. But what we CAN understand is the METHOD. "I can, of my own self, do nothing!" "The Father in Me, He does the works!" The method is dependence! When we understand our weakness and dependence on our union with Christ within us, THEN we are living out WWJD!
The bottom line is that the "Word" had to become the Son of God – in Jesus Christ. And each human being is being given the opportunity to become another Child of God by choice – by faith and trust.
This is the knowledge that "surpasses all understanding." We, as Christians, are BIRTHED of God. We are children of God. We have the nature of God.
We will never BE God, the Trinity, but we are the next best thing – children in the Family of God.
This knowledge will bring us to more rapid maturity in our day to day Christian living.

What could be better than this ??

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