Why Study Christology?

Sermon Transcript

Let’s try just to give you a little lay of the land. And this is review for most of you. And I don’t know if we went to this depth last time, but I want to think through tonight.

 

## Divisions of Theology

 

The first thing are divisions of theology. And I’m just smiling when you see it pop up over my shoulders. Is this my fault that the thing’s not happening? Is it over my shoulder now? There it is.

 

Divisions of theology. And I know if you’re sitting in the back, these letters are small, but they’re the smallest of the night. Okay?

 

So, let’s just… I want to talk about divisions of theology because we’re trying to systematically, in 10 years, to go through all of these things. And so, we want to be able to think carefully through what we’re doing and find kind of our little patch here of challenge and study amidst the breadth of all that we need as Christians to conquer in our thinking.

 

And the first one is that, just logically, in any study of theology, it comes down to the beginning steps, the rudimentary steps of understanding God’s truth, is to understand the nature and the origins of the Bible. And we did that last semester, as a matter of fact, and we call that what? Bibliology. Bibliology.

 

Did I mention this in a service somewhere? I was talking about the name, yeah—it was a couple weeks ago. *Biblios* is the Greek word for book. That’s all it means. We call this the Bible, and all that means is book. It’s God’s book. We need to know about how it came to be, the nature of it. You need to know something about inspiration, revelation, canonicity, transmission—all of that—which many of you are experts at now.

 

Then we wanted to spend a little time in any study of theology dealing with God Himself, the triune God, and in particular the works of God the Father. We call that theology proper because theology, of course, means the study of God, and all of that is under the umbrella of theology—all the divisions of theology—but theology proper is that one section of theology where we deal with the person, nature, attributes of God, the triune God.

 

Then, of course, we’re going to deal with this semester, with the person and work of Christ, and hopefully you can see the logical sequential order of this.

 

We call it Christology, but before we ever look at the information about God, we’ve got to know our source of information. We start with the Bible, we move to a systematic study of God, we then go on to a systematic study of Christ—and though it’s a logical order, that’s not the order we’ve taken here at Compass, but there are reasons for that.

 

Number four—and this would make sense as we think through the triune God—we’ve got to know something about and be able to have a handle on the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Of course, that’s going to include his nature and his acts and his current ministry and past ministry within the nation of Israel, within the church.

 

We call that pneumatology. Like when you get pneumonia—that is the word for breath. Breath is the same word for spirit. *Pneuma*. And we call that pneumatology, the study of the Spirit, the study of the Holy Spirit.

 

Fifthly—and these go together quite often, and they will in our study, if Christ tarries—the creation and fall of mankind. We need to deal with human beings, and since we’re so laden and characterized by sin, we need to study how we came to be, who we are, how we’re constituted, and then the problem we have with sin.

 

Those are two areas usually put together in most theological studies: anthropology and hamartiology. Hamartiology is the word for sin. *Hamartia* is the Greek word for…

 

All of these are based on Greek roots, obviously. Anthropology—obviously people study that in secular universities from a different perspective—but *anthropos* is the Greek word for people, mankind.

 

Creation, fall: anthropology and hamartiology.

 

God’s redemption—His plan of redemption and His work of salvation, how He saves fallen mankind—is the logical and the next sequential topic. We call that soteriology. Soteriology. Soter is the Savior. *Soteria*, salvation.

 

Number seven: the nature and function of the church. The nature and function of the church. What is the church all about? Is it distinct from Israel? How does it fit into God’s plan? Did we replace Israel? How is it supposed to function? The pastoral epistles become a real focus of our study as we systematically try to understand as best we can the nature and function of the church.

 

We call that ecclesiology, *ekklesia*. *Ekklesia* is a Greek word for church—*ek*, out of *kaleō*, to call together. The called together ones, the called out ones—they’re called out from the rest. *Ekklesia*: the study of the church.

 

Eight: the study of angels and demons. Usually those go together—angels and demons—because of course they are ontologically tied together, angels and demons. Demons, of course, are fallen angels. That one’s easy because angel is a transliterated word, so that just slides right across. Angelology, we usually call that. And though some of us—I took an entire semester course on demonology—usually that is together under the banner of angelology. But some schools and some courses of study, you’ll have angelology and demonology. But usually they’re under that heading. That’s how we’ll cover it. We almost did that this fall, but maybe next year.

 

Study the end times, which we did not too long ago, is the systematic study from the beginning of the Bible to the end of the Bible—how we gather information about the prophetic sequence of events that have yet to happen, the end times. *Eschaton* is the Greek word for the end, the consummation, the summation—how it all finishes out—eschatology.

 

Bibliology, theology proper, Christology, pneumatology, anthropology, hamartiology, soteriology, ecclesiology, angelology, eschatology—all based on Greek words and the word ology.

 

Now, if you’ve been with us for a while, we started with this in 2007. We covered eschatology. Then in 2008, we did theology proper. And I guess you get a brownie point or a star if you’re here for all of them. Then we did bibliology last year. And then this year we’re doing Christology.

 

These aren’t in order, obviously, but we hope to, Lord willing, cover all of these. And then every 10th year, we start over. Or we die, or whatever. We go get raptured. I don’t think Christ is going to wait for our study. But the point is we want to go through this. And it wouldn’t be a bad thing to do every decade, right, to go through these things.

 

So that’s what we’re doing. And that’s our goal.

 

What’s the order next? I don’t know. We pray about it. We talk about it. We discuss it here on our team and make some decisions.

 

So that gives you the lay of the land, right? How many of you were here for bibliology? For most of it, at least. You came to some of it. How many of you were here for theology proper? Oh. How many of you were here for eschatology? See? Wow. You’re here for all three. And you’re here again. Very good.

 

See, if you’re new, that’s an endorsement right there. Either they’re crazy or this has been good. So hopefully you’ll come back. We’ll just need bigger buildings in the years to come.

 

All right, tonight: Christology. Let’s just get some introductory issues out of the way.

 

## What Is Christology?

 

What is Christology? We want to deal with that. And the first thing we want to deal with is the word Christology. We want to understand that, and if this is, again, review for some of you, I apologize. We’ll have plenty that I trust will stretch our understanding, but let’s deal with this—and a chart is always helpful.

 

So let’s start with this little chart here as we think through Christology. Obviously, there’s two components: Christo, or Christ, right? And ology—or *logy*—or we’ll see here. It comes from the word *logos*, or *logion*, okay? *Logion* or *logos*.

 

That occurs some 339 times in the New Testament. Very common. *Logion* and *logos*. *Logos*. *Logos* is obviously more frequent. But Romans chapter 3, 2 and 4—you can see both of these words side by side, and it is helpful to see how it’s translated. The ESV is consistently translating *logion* in one particular way.

 

And if you’re quick with your Bible, you might want to catch up and take a look at this. When we get all of these divisions of theology, we use the word *logion* or *logos* to describe what we’re trying to capture with our systematic study.

 

Romans chapter 3 verse 2, at least the end of verse 2, says the Jews were entrusted with the *logion*—the oracles, the divine messages of God.

 

God is entrusting in words truth. God is that way. He takes information in words—propositional statements—and delivers them to people. That is His avenue of bringing truth to people. We’ve looked at that in our bibliology study. God puts the idea in the mind of the prophet. The prophet then speaks or writes in words the truth that God is getting from the mind of the infinite, transcendent God to the mind of the person sitting there pondering and wondering what God is like. Here comes the message from God.

 

And those are described as—here’s the containers, the suitcases of God’s knowledge, His information.

 

And again, I would hate to think this isn’t needed. It seems to be more and more needed, and we need to recognize why that’s so profoundly different than most of what’s happening in the church today. Most people want to experience God, to feel God. The reason our theology has really taken a backseat to the sentimental and sentimentalized Christianity is because we don’t recognize this as God’s method. God’s method is to bring propositional containers of truth in words, right?

 

Do those bring experiences to our life? Yes, often they do. Sometimes they don’t. But that’s our focus and is always our concern—to tie together everything in a container, in these things, these propositional structures of words.

 

And the ESV is consistent in calling them oracles. They come from God. They’re messages from God.

 

Look at verse 4 now. It says, by no means—you know, I’m just a rough shot over verse 3 there—but let God be true and everyone, let God be true though everyone were a liar, as it is written, that you may be justified in your—there’s the word *logos*—in your words and prevail when you are judged.

 

So when you speak, those are the words of God—the oracles of God—perhaps a broader idea of God’s revelatory packages of information that come in God’s words.

 

Christos—the word *Christos*. That’s quite frequent in the New Testament, just to stick with that, because the word Christology is a Greek compound. That’s 529 times in the New Testament we find this. I mean, the examples are replete. You don’t even need to turn there, but Matthew 1:1—right out of the gate it starts: “This is the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham,” and on it goes.

 

Let’s untangle that word if we can, because that’ll be somewhat helpful, and then we’ll dig in a little bit deeper when we look at the offices of Christ.

 

We’re going to use the word Christ throughout, which is distinct from Jesus. It is not Jesus’ name, okay? And that’s helpful for us to work through here.

 

*Christos*. Let’s just look down this column. *Christos* in Greek is transliterated, not translated into English, in our Bibles: Christ. Okay? *Christos*—Christ.

 

Which, by the way, you often see things like this strewn throughout church history books and even on the screen in our title slide. Can you see where we get that? This is the—this was popularized by Constantine when he converted to Christianity and put it all over the place on coins, on shields, on banners. But this is—they often abbreviated names by the first two letters of the name. And so Chi-Rho is just the two letters starting Christ’s title stacked on top of each other. And because this was such an important appellation or title for Christ, it became really the moniker of Christianity for years and years and years.

 

So you can see there—*Christos*. I just spelled it in Greek there to show you the connection to that.

 

Which, by the way, is when you see an X for Christ, don’t think it’s done by atheists, right? You understand that. And even on the outline tonight, I couldn’t avoid—sometimes when I need to scrunch down the word Christ or Christian, I’ll put an X there.

 

I know we want to take, you know, the X-mas away and put in Christmas because they’re trying to take Christ out of Christmas—they put an X there. If it’s an X in a context for Christ, it’s wholly appropriate because it is the Greek letter that begins his name and has been throughout church history an abbreviated way to put the *nomen sacrum*—the sacred name of God.

 

All right. The Hebrew word here—Mashiach—is translated Messiah. I’m sorry, not translated—it is transliterated Messiah. This is a problem with a lot of biblical vocabulary. We often talk about this: that the Greek words are simply spelled in English, but they’re not translated—they’re transliterated, and letter for letter comes over into our language.

 

Same thing has happened with this word, to where we have in our Bibles the word Messiah, and it’s left that way.

 

As a matter of fact, if you’re still open in the Gospels there, look over to John 1—John 1:40. John 1:40 and 41. Andrew and Peter.

 

One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew. One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew—and Simon, he was Simon Peter’s brother.

 

Verse 41: He first found his own brother Simon and he said to him, “We have found the—” now here’s a real interesting thing—they took a Hebrew word, transliterated into Greek, and then that Greek word was transliterated into English. We don’t find this very often in the Bible.

 

“We found the Messiah,” which then John, who’s writing to a primarily non-Jewish audience, says, “that’s Christ.” That means Christ. Which is kind of funny because it really doesn’t mean Christ. It just is our Greek transliteration of that Hebrew transliterated word. We still don’t even have a definition here, and that’s really not what it means. It’s just what the equivalent would be in our language—the language that John was writing in.

 

“We found the Messiah, which means Christ.” Well, then let’s translate it. That’d be helpful. If you take Christ or Messiah and you translate them, you’re going to translate them into this word—which doesn’t help us much because it’s shrouded in English mystery. It translates the word anointed—anointed.

 

Which the Pentecostals have hijacked, it seems, and occasionally it creeps into, you know, conservative evangelical churches, and they talk about, “That singer had an anointing from God.” We’re not sure what it means, but it sounds really spiritual—but it really isn’t very spiritual in its most fundamental meaning.

 

To anoint—or someone who is anointed—Christ and Messiah is one who is anointed. But the word anoint, right, in a verbal form—synonyms would be words like pour, smear, sprinkle, and rub.

 

In the Bible, for instance, when it talks about painting a house, it uses the word Messiah in a verbal form. When they would rub oil on their shields before they went out into battle, they would use the word Messiah. It was the word to anoint. And they don’t even translate it that way, but that is the word. They’ll translate it: “He rubbed oil on the shield,” or “painted the house.”

 

But of course it picked up a religious and very special meaning because of the religious context in which the word anoint was used.

 

Let’s turn to one—a very familiar historic passage—in 1 Samuel 16.

 

## 1 Samuel 16

 

1 Samuel 16. 1 Samuel chapter 16 is the context of Samuel going out to find the next king of Israel because Saul—the people’s choice—who God, humanly speaking, conceded to allow them to have—head and shoulders above the rest of his brother and his kinsmen—he was one who really embodied a lot of what the Israelites in that day wanted to be, and that is like all the other nations.

 

“Give us a king like everybody else.”

 

So God gave them the guy they wanted. He didn’t work out so well. His name was Saul, of course.

 

So God says, “You pick the first one. I’m going to pick the second one.” And he sends Samuel out to find the next king. And of course, he comes to the household of Jesse.

 

Verse 10 of 1 Samuel 16 says:

 

And Jesse made his seven sons pass before Samuel. And Samuel said to Jesse, “The Lord has not chosen these.”

 

Doesn’t tell us quite how he knows, but apparently he knows.

 

And then Samuel said to Jesse, “Are all your sons here?” I mean, are you missing any? Because I’m not getting the green light on any of these guys.

 

And he said, “There remains yet the youngest, but behold, he is keeping the sheep.”

 

And Samuel said to Jesse, “We’ll send out and get him, for we will not sit down until he comes.” We’re not going to eat. We’re not going to fellowship. We need to see him.

 

And he sent and brought him in.

 

By the way, I’m thinking, I’m feeling really bad. I wasn’t even invited to the recruiting party, right? Here comes the religious recruiter of the nation, and I didn’t even get invited to come. That would create a bit of a problem with dad, I would think.

 

But he sends for him, he brings him in, and now he was ruddy, he had beautiful eyes, and he was handsome—but he was a runt, and he was just the youngest and the smallest and the shortest.

 

And the Lord said, “Arise”—and here’s our word—“anoint him, for this is he.”

 

And Samuel took the horn of oil, and he—here’s our word again—anointed him in the midst of his brothers.

 

And here’s where it picks up a spiritual context: The Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward, and Samuel rose up and went to Ramah.

 

He was chosen to do a task. God was going to empower him to do that task. The symbolic external symbol was taking the special oil and pouring it, sprinkling it on his head.

 

Then God says, “That’s the guy. I’m going to empower him to be the king of Israel,” and it would be a man after my own heart and all that, and off he goes to do his job.

 

The pouring of oil was an ancient symbolic rite or act to show that this is the guy who is set apart. They would anoint the prophets, they would anoint the priests, and they would anoint the kings.

 

You can start to see right there that, as you know, as we look through and think through New Testament Scriptures, Christ is presented to us as the ultimate prophet, as the ultimate priest—prophet, he brings. He is the word of God. He speaks for God. He represents God. He’s the exact representation of God’s nature. He is the ultimate priest—he represents us to God—and he will come and reign. He’s the ultimate king.

 

God used the anointing process to designate prophets, priests, and kings. Christ comes on the scene, and God says, “Here’s the guy that all of those symbolically represented,” and I’m going to call him the anointed one—the Messiah—or in Greek, the Christ—the one who’s been set apart, picked out to be the representative of God to the people, the representative of the people to God, and the leader of all mankind, the king.

 

So, when we use the word Christ, it’s not Jesus’s name, right? It wasn’t his last name, Mr. Christ—Jesus, nice to meet you. No, it was his role.

 

He usually had three designations. He was Jesus, which is the word Joshua, right? That’s the Greek Hellenized version of the word Joshua. Joshua means Savior.

 

He is Christ—the anointed one—and he is the Lord: the Lord Jesus Christ, or Jesus Christ the Lord. He is the king, the ruling one. He’s associated with God. Lord was the most common word used for God, in Greek, from the word Yahweh.

 

He is the anointed one—prophet, priest, and king—and he is the one who’s going to save the people—Joshua, Jesus, Yeshua in Hebrew. Christ—anointed one.

 

Don’t forget that. That is the foundation of what this study is all about, and that is that Christ is the one set apart to do all these things.

 

1 Samuel 16—we just looked at it.

 

This person and work—charts take up too much space here, so we’re moving along quickly. This one’s a fancy chart. I like this one. His person and work—letter C.

 

That’s really what we’re going to be spending the rest of our 2010 here doing. Until Christmas, we’re going to be studying the person and work of Christ.

 

But I’ve got to tell you that we’re not going to really cover all of his work. We’ll try to deal with all of his person, but not all of his work, and I’ll show you why.

 

There are seven subjects that we’re going to cover, represented by these blocks here. And we’re going to cover them in different degrees and spend a lot more time on some than others. We’re working in these blocks here, these subjects, these buckets from left to right—one to seven—and we’re covering them chronologically.

 

Not that that may be the best way to cover them, but it’s the way we like to think about Christ. If we’re going to say, “Tell me everything the Bible says about Christ,” we want to start chronologically—even though he exists outside of time and has existed outside of time—we want to start at the beginning of all that we know about him and move all the way to the future in terms of the eschatological future of what Christ is and what he’ll do.

 

So you’ve got this chart that looks like this. Let’s fill these in.

 

If you can read these here, we need to start logically with his pre-existence. Now, pre-existence is a bit of an oxymoron. He has always existed, but he didn’t always exist in a human form. So, when we say pre-existence, we’re talking about his reality, his life, his ministry, his doings, his comings and goings before he ever took on a body and was conceived in Nazareth by God and given birth in Bethlehem down in Judea.

 

So we need to deal with his pre-existence. It’s trippy, it’s weird, it sometimes leaves us with some questions, but it’s a great place for us to start. And we’ll try to deal with issues like the angel of the Lord and these identifications in the Old Testament. We’ll think through his pre-existence. So we’ll spend a good time on that. We’ll cover that next week.

 

We’re also then going to spend more time on pre-existence. We’re going to spend more time on incarnation—the incarnation of Christ. That has caused a lot of problems and debates throughout history. What was that all about? The incarnation of Christ.

 

*Carne*, as I often say, from chili con carne or carne asada—because my mind goes there easily—is meat, right? Carne is meat. The incarnation is when God took on meat—flesh. He existed in human form. A lot of questions about that: the issue of the virgin birth—why was that? Why did that have to be? And was it really that? And maybe it was just, you know—all of those issues need to be dealt with when we talk about the incarnation.

 

Now, we’re going to spend most of our time, admittedly, on His nature. We’re going to try to define that as best we can and spend important time dealing with our best definitions and summaries of what is Jesus’ nature—what kind of person is this person.

 

He’s different. I mean, even if we just start talking about pre-existence and incarnation—that’s unlike any other person we know. Because name another person that pre-existed their birth and, you know, had to be incarnate to come into a different form. We don’t have that reality. We don’t know that experience. That’s a different person altogether. So we’ve got to deal with that.

 

And the debates, of course—we’re going to have to deal with some church history and start with the debates early on about who Christ was and how the church often responded to the heresies of the day in making very clear statements about who Christ was.

 

People think that the theology of Christ evolved. We’ll try to show you it didn’t evolve at all. It’s just that the biblical content, when it was taken into the transgressed areas—the out-of-bounds of orthodoxy—it went into heresy. The church had to say, “No, this is heresy, and I’ll tell you why. Let’s look at the biblical data again and clarify the person and nature of Christ.” And so we came out with more statements. And so we’ll deal with that.

 

You’ll become acquainted, I hope, with some of the basic church statements and councils. We just have to cover some of those. So we’ll do that in this section, which will be a good bulk of what we have to deal with to conquer this topic.

 

We’ll then deal with His earthly ministry. What did He do now that He was this person—whatever He was, however we define Him—post-incarnation? He was here on earth for some 33 years or so. And what was that all about? What did he do? What was the point of that? And what do we learn about him from his earthly ministry? Which, of course, is debated amongst a lot of people in world religions today.

 

Then there is something we need to spend a little bit of time on, and that is his resurrection and ascension. That has a lot to do, I would think, with our interest in how we will be resurrected—though we’ll save some of that for the tapes that you’ll listen to of past lectures.

 

But we’re going to deal with that. What was that all about? Why did he leave? We’re going to deal with the bodily resurrection of Christ.

 

Then I call this—if you can read these tiny letters—his current ministry. What’s he doing right now? And if he really is incarnate and then he was really bodily resurrected, then you’re telling me that Christ is existing in a body right now somewhere in a non-bodily, physical, non-corporal space with a bunch of angels who don’t have bodies and dead spirits that don’t have bodies. This must be a weird reality. What is that all about? And then what’s he doing today in this body when everything else around him doesn’t seem to match his nature—his current physical nature at least? So there’s some great questions there that we’ll try to tackle.

 

Then, of course, we’ll deal with his future role for all eternity. And there are periods of time where his roles obviously will change—Marriage Supper of the Lamb, Millennial Kingdom, Eternal State—we’ll deal with those.

 

But the reason those get small is because of these call-outs here. And let’s start with the first one—number four. We’ve got this little call-out here. The reason we’re not going to have a lot of weeks or hours or time on earthly ministry is because much of his earthly ministry was to save us. He lived to save us. He died to save us. He rose to save us.

 

And the aspects of him saving us—those will be deferred to our study of soteriology. So, soteriology will, you know, come across this subject, and we’ll feel like in some cases we don’t really fully explore the ministry of Christ, but that’s all right. When we get to soteriology, we’ll have to pick those up.

 

What exactly happened on the cross? How did a death on a cross outside the city walls of Jerusalem actually do anything for my sinful behavior? How does that work? Well, we have to deal with the mechanism of the atonement as we deal with the subject of soteriology—our study of salvation. So, that’s why that’s smaller, because we’re going to deal with everything but that in this study.

 

Ecclesiology: a lot of His current ministry—Christ’s current ministry—is dealt with in our study of the church. I say some—it’s not much, but it is some. And so, we could say more about His current ministry that we’ll leave for our study of the church. What is the relationship of Christ to His church? Those questions we’ll leave for our study of ecclesiology.

 

And then, of course, future role—you’d think there’d be a lot to say about that. Well, most of that is covered in eschatology. And if we want to understand why is there a millennium and why is he physically reigning there, and why is Israel still called out from the rest, and how does that work when we transition from the millennial kingdom to the eternal state—those kinds of questions we’ve already dealt with, at least to the extent that we have time to on Thursday nights in eschatology.

 

So, when we talk about the person and work of Christ, we’re not talking about his work in salvation, we’re not talking about his present ministry in the church, and we’re not talking about his future roles specifically that are covered in eschatology—though some of it may overlap.

 

Those things we try to extract, and that’s why we’re left primarily with a discussion—a critical discussion—about his nature.

 

And some would say, “Well, eschatology is fun to study. Ecclesiology has bearing on my everyday function in the church. Soteriology is something we worship God for and think about a lot. Why would I study Christology?” Great question. And I have anticipated that.

 

Let’s spend some time—eight things here tonight—to get us prepped, excited, and ready to come back next week.

 

Why should we study Christology?

 

### 1) Christ Expects Clarity Regarding Christology

 

Number one, turn to Matthew 16, verses 13 through 18. Matthew chapter 16, verses 13 through 18.

 

I want to talk about why it is so important for us to talk about a pre-existent, incarnate God-man, and something about his earthly ministry, his resurrection and ascension, current ministry, and future role. Why would we want to do that—especially spend so much time talking about who he is? Why is that all critically important?

 

Matthew 16:13–18.

 

Now, when Jesus came to the district of Caesarea Philippi—do you know where that is? Just because this is Compass Night, we should take these little excursions. Caesarea, right? They call it Caesarea Maritime—it is on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. In the back of your Bible, you got those maps. That’s not Caesarea Philippi. Caesarea Philippi was north of the Galilean area, of the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus now meets these folks. It’s really out of the way from a lot of the ministry that we see elsewhere in his ministry.

 

So this isn’t on the beautiful coast of the Mediterranean. This is way up north. He comes and asks his disciples this question:

 

“Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”

 

Of course, that was his favorite title for himself throughout the Gospels. That’s what he called himself. So he says, “Who do people say that I am?” As a matter of fact, that’s how the rest of the Gospels who record this—that’s usually how they summarize this discussion: “Who do people say that I am?” Here, Matthew makes it clear that he said “the Son of Man.”

 

“Who do you say?”

 

And they said, “Well, some say you’re John the Baptist. Others say you’re Elijah.” Okay—John the Baptist was just, you know, executed. You have the spirit of John the Baptist. You’re this great prophet. Elijah—that’s the greatest prophet of the Old Testament, taken up in this chariot. “And others say, Jeremiah, you’re one of the prophets.”

 

And he said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”

 

And Simon Peter replied, “You are the”—here it is—the anointed one. And when we talk about the Son of God, I mean the Son of the living God—that Daniel 9 kind of person—this one that has special regent and regal status with God—you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.

 

And Jesus said, “Now that’s the right answer. Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah.” Bar is the Hebrew word for son. Simon, son of Jonah. “For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.”

 

There is something revelatory, there is something divine about this answer and this understanding—which is what we’re trying to unpack.

 

“For I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock”—little play on words, because that’s what Peter means: stone, rock—“I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

 

Now, he says, “I need to build my church, and I’m going to build my church on you,” which by the way, according to Ephesians 2:20, it’s also—he’s building it on all the rest of the apostles—which is one of the reasons they get their 12 names on the 12 foundation stones of the new Jerusalem. Their names are going to be on the wall, on the foundation stones, because those guys played a very critical role in founding the church.

 

What was their message? The message of the first century church was, “Let me tell you who Christ is.” He’s not this, he’s not that—he was this. He was the Christ, the Son of the living God.

 

And that would raise a lot of questions for the Sabbath school graduate going, “What does that possibly mean?”

 

Much of the early church was spent on trying to clarify the nature, the person—definitions and debates regarding the person of Christ.

 

To put it this way: number one reason we’re going to study this, and you should study this, and we should spend time studying this, is because Jesus expects clarity regarding Christology, right?

 

He wouldn’t be going through this whole discussion with his disciples unless he expected his followers—who, by the way, would be the foundation for the growth of the church, the church would be built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets—he wants us to be clear about who he is. It is the most important thing that we could possibly understand according to 1 John. John is big on this. You must know who he is. That’s critical.

 

Is that all you ought to know? No, it’s not, but it is foundational.

 

And if Christ—now let’s just think this through—if he is anything what we find him to be in the scriptures, and the Christ who will rule and reign in the world says, “I’m leaving you my oracles in print,” and systematically throughout this book of oracles—messages from God—you need to systematically understand who I am, and I expect clarity on that. And I should be able to come to you and say, “Who do you say that I am?”

 

And I’m not just talking about a trite recitation of some words of Peter, but do you really have that revelatory understanding where God has clearly made clear in your own heart who this person is—the nature of Christ, the person of Christ, the role of Christ.

 

Jesus Christ expects you to be clear about that.

 

And so I’m thinking, “Wow, I should do that.” I shouldn’t rely on just little sidebar references and definitions to Christ in sermons on Sundays. I had to roll up my sleeves and look at everything the Bible has to say about who Christ is, because Christ goes around to His disciples and says, “Who do you say that I am?” Christ expects clarity regarding Christology. He expects that we know who He is.

 

Let’s turn to 2 Peter 3, and I’ll give you another reason when you study Christology.

 

Did that one make sense to you? “Who do you say that I am?” Well, they say this, you say that—wow. No, that’s the right answer. God has revealed that to you. That’s it. And on that I’m going to build a church—which, by the way, the gates of hell will not prevail against.

 

And the great news is you can have a lot of weird things going on in churches today, and they can attract a crowd, but it will not be the building of the church of Jesus Christ that will really tear down the boundaries and perimeters of Satan’s work—hell—unless it is founded on a clear understanding of the person of Christ, unless the people in the church understand Christology.

 

So, we got to study that.

 

### 2) Studying Christ Is Commanded

 

2 Peter 3:18. Look at this. It says, “But grow”—that’s an imperative verb. You know what an imperative is, right? It’s a command. “But grow in the grace”—underline this—“and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

 

Now, he adds as many words to his title as you can get, right? He’s the Lord, he’s the Savior—his name is Joshua, his proper name—Savior, the saving one—and he’s the Christ.

 

“To him be glory,” by the way, “both now and to the day of eternity.”

 

The church should be focused on this person, and the church should be growing in the knowledge of this person.

 

Which means this: even if, like Peter, you can say, “I understand who he is and who he’s not,” the Bible seems to say that for Christians, they should continue to grow in their knowledge of who Christ is. That’s what it says.

 

So, number two, I’m going to tell you: studying Christ is commanded. It’s a non-optional thing. You’ve got to do it. I mean, you cannot get to heaven and say, “I never really took time to study systematically and thoughtfully what Christ was, who He was, what He said He was, what He said He came to do, His nature, the nature of His incarnation, His pre-existence, His post-incarnation ministry.”

 

So, it’s commanded.

 

I don’t know if that’s going to keep the retention rate here up high, you know, but I hope that it would because Satan is going to try to keep you from doing what Christ has told you to do. God has told you to study Christ—to grow in your knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

 

So when you’re tempted and you’re tired and “I don’t want to come, we’ve been coming all fall”—I mean, it happens every year. And by that I mean we have more people, and then it starts to tail off. And maybe because, you know, it’s no good. But I’m thinking, no—we’ve got people coming back four years in a row. What we’re teaching here is important. Okay—there.

 

So, you need to fight the temptation to stop studying with us who Christ is.

 

Christ expects you to have clarity about Christology. Studying Christ is a commandment. It’s commanded. It’s non-optional.

 

Can you look up one verse in verse 17? 2 Peter 3:17. I’ll give you a third reason we’ve got to study Christology.

 

### 3) Christology Is Always Under Attack

 

Look at verse 17, just to work backwards here.

 

“You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless men and lose your own stability, but grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

 

Now, if the solution is the growing knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, then we know that whatever’s happening here, in terms of what I got to guard myself against—what he calls the error of lawless people—it must have something to do with Christ.

 

And all I got to do is open my eyes and recognize the reason I need to master Christology is that Christology is always under attack—always. It is always the focus of the attack of Satan in the world from the beginning right up to the present time.

 

Let me prove it to you.

 

Islam. Billion people in the world, right? Who confess to be Muslims, okay? Ask them who Christ is. Oh, Christ—he was a prophet, just like Abraham, just like Moses. Oh, he’s not as great as the last and final prophet, Mohammed, but he’s one of the prophets. He could never be the Son of God, though. Don’t tell me that. You don’t even want to use those words, because really when it comes to God, God would never have a son.

 

I mean, that’s the line, that’s the logic. So you got a billion people on the planet—if they claim to be Muslims—they look at Christology, the study of Christ, and they say, yeah, yeah, we recognize that he was some kind of holy guy, but he’s just a spokesman to bring people back in line with Allah. He’s not who you say he is.

 

And if Christ is concerned with clarity regarding Christology, and this gigantic, you know, religious system—I mean, you’ve got a billion people on the planet who are going to say this about your Christ—I know Christology is under attack, and the error of lawless men are trying to redefine what God—the oracles of God, the words of God—have given us regarding the person of Christ.

 

How about Judaism? How about Israel today?

 

I’ve sat there in downtown Jerusalem with the Turkish old city walls over my shoulder, sharing the gospel with Jewish people. And I always ask them, “Who is Jesus Christ?” Right? Which to them is even a combination of words they bristle at.

 

But the point is, they’ll say—well, some will say, and I’ve gotten different answers—he’s a false Messiah. He claimed to be the Messiah. And the Orthodox will say, we’ve still got Messiah to come, but he wasn’t it. Whatever he was, he wasn’t all that the Old Testament looked forward to. And that’ll open up debate.

 

Other people say, well, he was some kind of godly person, but he died as a martyr. Because whatever he was, he was perhaps overzealous, and whatever he did, he got on the wrong side of the authorities and the powers that would be. So, you know, he’s just a martyr.

 

But don’t be talking to me about any kind of substitutionary atonement. He wasn’t any of that. Certainly wasn’t God in human form. Stop with that. Whatever he was, even in the most orthodox settings, if they want to attribute something divine to a messianic figure, they’re going to say, “This guy wasn’t it.”

 

And there’s quite a few Jews in the world. Have you noticed that? I mean, they’re on the headlines every day. We’re trying to get, you know, the Middle East peace talks going right now again. It seems—you read the update every night in the news—but the point is the folks that are trying to debate all this, if it’s Muslims and Jews, both of them are looking at our definitions that we find in the Bible of Christ and saying he’s not any of that. Christology is under attack.

 

How about Hinduism? A lot of Hindus in the world—Hindus all over the place. I know I didn’t leave you enough room for all of this, but I did leave you more room between C and D than I did between B and C, right? But most of you know this.

 

Hindus say, well, he was a good teacher. And they take this approach: he was one of many sons of God. There’s lots of sons of God. God has many sons, and Jesus—the good moral teacher—was one of the many sons of God.

 

Of course, that is not what we have as we open up our Bibles. And this entire monolithic picture of Hinduism and Hindu theology takes a look at your Christ and says, “Good teacher,” just like a lot of other good teachers.

 

I was going to leave these guys off, but I’ve been seeing more and more of these guys around—their funny outfits, bald heads, tambourines—the Hare Krishnas, right? You see these guys?

 

My kids encountered the first one last year on vacation, and we had a great theological discussion—who are those guys and what are they saying?

 

And the most important thing to tell my kids is, here’s what they’re saying about Jesus: he was an enlightened, vegetarian—not mediator, meditator—which did show up in my exhaustive dictionary, so I used the word. He is the one who helped people meditate, get in touch, and you know, Hare Krishna is all over the map, with at least the enlightened state and the elevated place of my spirit—but that’s who he was. A bit of a religious dietician who spends a lot of time alone. Hare Krishna.

 

Certainly not the teachings of Christ.

 

The Baha’i faith is often overlooked, but it has got a resurgence going in the United States of America these days. If you ask the Baha’is, which is a bit of an offshoot of Islam, they’ll say, well, he’s one of many God manifestations. I know he’s important—you date your checks by his life—but he was nothing more than one of several opportunities that God had to minister to planet earth, and he did it through Jesus, as he has through many others.

 

Closer to home and down the street and knocking on your door: how about the JWs—the Jehovah Witnesses? Ask the Jehovah Witnesses, and I know there’s a lot of fancy footwork going on in the discussions we have at the door, but get right to it. Jesus was Michael the archangel, and He certainly wasn’t God incarnate. Don’t give me that. He’s nothing more than the pre-existing Michael the archangel.

 

That’s not biblical Christology. Certainly, that is a distortion of Christology, and another reminder that huge organizations have attacked the doctrine of Christology.

 

How about the good Mormons that seem to be all in the newspaper every day? Well, the Mormons will say, yeah, he was God—just like you can be, right? One of many gods. I mean, not in any way connected with the Father the way you think he was. He was the offspring of Elohim and Mary having sex together and, you know, running his own thing now—kind of—but you can do the same. Jesus—one of many gods.

 

I know we can say we’re singing, you know, cheering for Jesus. We follow the same God, and you can say all that. But when Christology is attacked, as we’ll see, you’ve just undermined the entirety of biblical Christianity.

 

Christian Science—anybody grow up Christian Science? Here’s my Chi, by the way, right? Representing Christ. Christian Science. Christian Science. Any old Christian Scientists here? Aren’t you glad to be out of that? That was weird, wasn’t it? What was that all about? Christian Science.

 

Well, I know this: Jesus was not Christ. And I love the Christian Science—we talk to Christians—but he carried the Christ idea. There is a Christ principle, and Christ had the Christ principle, but don’t call him really the Christ because he wasn’t the Christ. Christ is something that transcends who that guy was. Jesus was someone who had this transcendent principle of Christ in him. Yeah—Christian Science. That’s a carnival of ideas there.

 

And since it seems that a lot of Hollywood types love this, I thought I’d throw in Scientology. Which, if you read Scientologists or L. Ron Hubbard, it depends on what lecture you’re reading. It’s just all over the map. I think the guy was just making this up as he went along. I mean, as he went along is the key. Clearly he made this up, but it seems like he was doing it as he went along. He didn’t sit—I should have planned this out ahead of time.

 

If you’re familiar with anything in Scientology, there’s this concept of the Thetans—the Theta beings, they call them. And they’ll say, well, he was one of those. And the reason I say not the creator is because if you read L. Ron Hubbard talk about the Theta in terms of the Greek letters—Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, the letter Theta—the Thetans, they were creative forces of types. And Christ was a creative force.

 

But if you press someone in Scientology—which is hard to do—but they’ll say he was certainly not the creator. His spirit was something of a creative force.

 

Clearly, we’re miles away from anything contained in the words delivered to us by God in the pages of Scripture.

 

Now, we could go on, but whether you’re talking—I mean, and look at these blocks: Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, the Hare Krishnas, the Baha’i faith, Jehovah Witnesses, Mormons, Christian Science, Scientology. How many—I mean, billions of people are represented here by this? I mean, tons.

 

And if you sit down and talk to them about God—yeah, a lot of agreement there. You talk to them about, you know, I don’t know, morals—or what should we be fighting for in society, and should we be against abortion or pornography—they might stand shoulder to shoulder with you.

 

But if you’re going to get down to the question, “Who do you say Christ is?” right? They’re going to have an entirely different answer.

 

And see, Satan is really good at parading around as an angel of light, and he’ll do that so that he can get to the heart of the matter. And as long as you can be convinced he’s a good moral guy that wants to fight for the same things you want to fight for, that’s all fine and dandy. But don’t go around saying, “Hey, they’re brothers in Christ,” unless they’re going to have the same answer about who Christ is.

 

This is critical.

 

Matter of fact, I’ll prove it to you.

 

You’re still there in 2 Peter 3. You’ve got that laying open there on the table. Look at verse now—16—and I’ll give you a fourth reason.

 

### 4) Wrong Christology Is Damning

 

Verse 16—work our way backwards. Just to pick up the whole sentence, I guess we could start in verse 15:

 

“And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand.”

 

Maybe even he’s thinking of Philippians chapter 2: “Though he existed in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself”—kenosis—“and he’s found in the appearance of man, he made himself like a bondservant.”

 

Even that—how does God exist in form? How does that all work? That may be hard to understand.

 

But, he says—look at this—he says, “the ignorant and unstable, they twist those things.” They don’t embrace them because they don’t fit tightly into their mind easily and simply. “They do it”—these are three important words to underline—“to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures.”

 

So Paul’s statements about Christ—which he’s going to go on to say you need to grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ—is an issue that will either lead to salvation or damnation.

 

And I’ll put it this way: wrong Christology is damning.

 

Why should you study Christology? Because eternity—really, humanly speaking—it hangs on this.

 

Now, I know it’ll be God who makes that revelation to you, right? It’s not flesh and blood that has revealed this to you, Simon Bar-Jonah, but it is God, and God will make this clear. But as it’s made clear, you need to understand that’s the difference between something that leads to salvation versus something that leads to damnation or destruction.

 

And I don’t think that’s enough to convince you—I mean, some, at least some of you may be. But can you turn to 1 John 2 just as a kind of a cross-reference to this idea? Is it really that important? Yeah, it’s really important.

 

I’m still on the third reason for us studying Christology.

 

1 John 2, verses 23 through 25. 1 John 2, verses 23 through 25.

 

Now, tell me if not here, in Scripture, we don’t have a statement about the damning nature of wrong Christology. It’s right here. It is right here.

 

Verse 23: “No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.”

 

“Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you’ve heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son”—right? That information that you’ve had—it’s been revealed—and in the Father.

 

“And this is the promise He made to us”—I’m going to show you that in a second in the next point—eternal life.

 

The promise He made to us, and that is embracing the Son, abiding in the Son, continuing and abiding in that knowledge that has been given to you about the Son. That’s the difference between heaven and hell.

 

As a matter of fact, I didn’t go here, but we should have.

 

You’re in 1 John. Look across the page. This one I didn’t write down here.

 

1 John chapter 2—let me catch up with you real quick—look at verse 18.

 

1 John 2:18—are you with me?

 

“Children, it is the last hour,” right? Which is the way that John likes to talk about this last season. There’s nothing keeping back the return of Christ but Christ’s decision to come back, right? This is the final phase—the church age.

 

“And as you’ve heard that the Antichrist”—that Antichrist, rather—“is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore, we know it is the last hour,” because God promised, Christ promised, that we’d be filled with people that are attacking the person of Christ.

 

“They went out from us, but they were not of us, for if they’d been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that not all are of us.” They may talk the same language, but they redefine all this—it’s a problem.

 

“But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. You got it. You understand it. I write to you not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, because no lie is of the truth.”

 

“Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus”—here’s a good line—“is the Christ,” which is a loaded phrase, which is why the whole banner of this study is Christology.

 

Christ—if we can understand what that’s all about—that’s a big deal. And anyone who wants to come and deny that—right? That is, he says, bottom of verse 22—the Antichrist. “He who denies the Father and the Son.”

 

“No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also,” and on to the passage that we read.

 

Should have wrote those verses down—18 through 21, 22. We read 23 through 25. I don’t know. I know there’ll still be some, but is that not clear enough?

 

Your Christology is messed up, and you don’t have the knowledge of what it is that Jesus is the Christ? I don’t care what religious system you have or how devout you may be. It is the thing that is the difference between salvation and damnation. That’s a big deal.

 

That’s why I think this one makes sense.

 

2 Corinthians chapter 4 verse 6—it builds on the fourth reason. Let’s talk about a fifth reason we ought to study Christology. I’ll turn it positive here because those were kind of heavy.

 

### 5) Knowing Christ Is the Crux of Salvation

 

Letter E: 2 Corinthians 4:6. 2 Corinthians 4, verse 6.

 

“For God, who said”—this is a loaded phrase, it’s great—“Let light shine out of darkness.”

 

Now think back: that ex nihilo, you know, creation out of nothing—he speaks, “Let there be,” and it happens—has shown in our hearts to give us the light. This is the metaphor now. He speaks and things happen. Like he said, “Let there be light,” and it happened.

 

He has shown in our hearts—that’s the center of our thinking and the middle of our person, right? That’s who we are. It’s how we think. It’s where we think—to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God.

 

Pause, okay?

 

Want to know God? Want to understand God? He spoke and light existed in eternity past, and the universe and photons came out of nowhere. Now he has spoken the word and he’s shown in our hearts—the center of our thinking—the light of the knowledge of the glory of God.

 

Now, I have it. Look at it though. It says, “Where do we get that?”

 

“In the face of Jesus Christ.”

 

That’s big. That means that my salvation and my understanding of the glory of God and who God is comes as I’m able to perceive who God is in the face of Jesus Christ.

 

Obviously not physically because none of you have seen his face.

 

What is his face? The thing he’s presented to us about who he is. And that’s only revealed here.

 

So who Christ is, is the thing that lets me understand who God is—that is the difference between spiritual death or being made spiritually alive by the word of God—shining the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

 

Huge.

 

Put it this way: knowing Christ—right?—having good Christology is the crux of salvation. It is what salvation is really. I mean, that’s the core of it all. If you’re saved, it’s because you have understood the glory of God in the face of Christ, because no one comes to the Father except through Him.

 

So, you’ve got to have Christology in line to be able to even know God.

 

Or to put it this way—how about this? The great high priestly prayer of Christ in John 17, verse 3—and this is eternal life. Do you remember this old memory verse? “That they may know you”—he’s praying to God the Father, right?—he may know you, they may know you, “the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

 

This is eternal life that you may know God.

 

How do you know God? By knowing Jesus Christ. It is the crux of salvation.

 

Should we study Christology? Wow. I would think that’s what the whole thing’s about.

 

Sixth reason: Ephesians 5, 1 and 2. Let’s get more practical here.

 

### 6) Christ’s Attributes Are Our Template for Life

 

Ephesians 5, verses 1 and 2.

 

“Therefore”—Ephesians 5:1–2—“be imitators”—*mimētai*, the word to mimic—“be imitators of God as beloved children.”

 

Now, here’s the really hard thing about that. According to 1 Timothy 6, he dwells in unapproachable light, right? That no man has seen or can see.

 

Wow—be like him. How’s that going to work?

 

Here’s how you do it—verse 2. Let’s get down to the specifics.

 

“Walk in love as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

 

Here’s the thing: to be godly is to be Christ-like, right? To be godly is to be Christ-like. If you’re going to imitate God, the only way you can really do that is to be able to see representation of God—and that’s what Jesus did.

 

Put it this way: Christ’s attributes are our template for life. That’s the whole point of your sanctification. As Romans 8 puts it: to be conformed to the image of his Son.

 

You’re as godly as you are Christ-like. Put it that way.

 

You’re as godly at work as you are in functioning in your job as Christ would function. Did he have your job? It is the measure of godliness.

 

Now, I put an asterisk by the word attributes because you studied theology proper with us. Theology proper—we took the attributes of God and threw them into two buckets, right? Communicable and non-communicable. Shared and non-shared. I can do it from time to time, and it’s impossible for me to do it, right?

 

Now, there are some attributes Christ has I can’t have. “And lo, I’m with you always, even to the end of the age.” That’s something about him being timeless and something about him being always present, right? Omnipresent.

 

And I can’t really be that for my family or my church or anything. I can’t be changeless—the same yesterday, today, and forever. I’m not immutable.

 

But what Christ did that reflected the communicable attributes of God—those are the things I need to look at, like his love.

 

How did he love? He didn’t love because he had a green fuzzy in his belly for someone. He loved in a sacrificial way—to give up His life for the lives of others, to lay down His comfort and convenience for the advancement and promotion of others.

 

That’s the kind of love I need to have.

 

So, I study Christ because I need to know how to live, and to study Christ is to learn how to live. The epistles are nothing more than consolidating those in didactic packages, but my point is I want to be Christ-like, and that’s our goal as Christians.

 

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

 

Number 7: Hebrews chapter 12, verses 1 through 3.

 

### 7) A Focus on Christ Strengthens Us

 

Why do we want to spend an entire semester at the end of this year studying Christology? Here’s one reason. A really good reason.

 

Therefore, verse 1 says, “since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses”—that’s coming off of chapter 11. We had all these wonderful examples of people having ambitious faith, plowing ahead, hanging in there. Those are great examples.

 

“Let us lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely and let us run with endurance”—there’s that great word we study a lot around here, *hupomonē*—“the race that is set before us.”

 

Keep going. Don’t give up. Don’t get discouraged. Don’t get depressed. Don’t throw up your hands and quit.

 

“Looking to Jesus.”

 

Now he’s gone past the good examples of godly people in the Bible, and he says, now look right to it. “He is the founder and the perfecter of our faith.”

 

Now look at that first word there—verse 2. I got to look to him. Now, I can’t see his face. There are no pictures. I don’t know what to look at except his life, right? I have to take up the Christological information in the Bible, and as the founder and perfecter of our faith—for the joy set before him—I can watch how he endures his pain like the cross, despising its shame. And now he’s seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

 

Now consider him—an even stronger word. Think about him. Ponder him who endured from sinners such hostility against him so that you may not grow weary or faint-hearted.

 

You want some practicalities? Here’s the seventh one: a focus on Christ strengthens us.

 

You look at godly people—and I hope you see this in godly people because they’re really not godly people unless they’ve got tenacity, unless they’re forthright, unless they’re go-getters and they’re willing to get out there and do it and not throw up their hands and say, “I’m tired of doing the right thing.”

 

Godly people go after it and they go after it hard. And the way the Bible says that happens is by people who—two words, verse 2—they look to Jesus. Verse 3—they consider Him.

 

You spend time studying Christ—the person of Christ, the ministry of Christ, the work of Christ—it’s going to do something to your character. It builds your character.

 

You want to sit around on the couch and, you know, hear the same old simple sermons about simple themes and all of that—great. You’ll get fat and lazy as Christians. But you want to be strengthened? Focus on Christology. There’s something about that that is held there in that promise of Hebrews 12 that we shouldn’t miss.

 

Last one: Ephesians 3:8 through 12.

 

### 8) Studying Christ Has Unsearchable Benefits

 

Ephesians chapter 3, verses 8 through 12.

 

I say last one—the great thing about my last one is it opens up the door for thousands of others. Because I couldn’t pull together an exhaustive list, nor would we have time for it.

 

But look at verse 8.

 

“To me,” Paul says, “though I’m the very least of all the saints”—why does he keep saying that? Because he persecuted the church—“this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles.”

 

Great phrase here. Underline these five words: “the unsearchable riches of Christ.”

 

And speaking of the old metaphor we saw over there in 2 Corinthians 4, look what he says: “And to bring to light for everyone.” I want them to understand it.

 

“What is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in heavenly places.” Preach it, man. Preach it to heaven.

 

“This is according to the eternal purpose that he’s realized”—here comes—“in one person: Christ, the Messiah, the anointed one, Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.”

 

That is a promise that there are unsearchable riches in the study and understanding and the light, if you will, the recognition of who Christ is.

 

So, I just put it this way: studying Christ has immeasurable benefits that I don’t even fully understand, and I wouldn’t even be able to list them all.

 

But the Bible says that Christianity is really all about Christ. And if you focus on Christ—if the light of Christ is shown in your heart—if you grasp the mystery of God that is in the person of Christ—there are, good words, immeasurable or unsearchable riches. So it is a good use of our time.

 

It’s my goal this semester to give you one book per night. And I’m, you know, I’m—I give you way too many books. I’m—I give you too many books in the back of the worksheet. Here—here’s one book, but I’ll give you one per week.

 

And I thought this would be an appropriate book to give you here up on the screen. I’m not going to give it to you. I don’t have enough copies. But I want to give you the title.

 

We carry it in our bookstore. You can get it online. But everything that I’m going to say in the weeks to come, and everything even that I’ve said tonight, is built upon my understanding of Christ from this book.

 

Now again, all that we talk about should come with an understanding of bibliology, which we’ve already studied. If you didn’t buy that, then you’re not going to buy anything in Christology. But if you understand something of that, then maybe you need to see where bibliology and Christology crisscross in the battles that are fought there.

 

In other words, we need to be confident that what we read in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in particular are really a true assessment, right, of the historical truth and facts and history of what Christ said and what Christ did. If that’s not reliable—if the Gospels aren’t reliable—then what are we talking about? I should stop quoting all these verses.

 

So, if you want to build a library in your Christology library here—book number one, week number one—you can get into this. You can—it is a bit of a challenge in some places, only because the topic is so ambitious.

 

But I want to recommend this book to you right here: *The Jesus Crisis*. *The Jesus Crisis*.

 

I give this one out for people’s birthdays. I try to get this out there because it’s important that we, as the subtitle says, we fight the inroads of historical criticism in the evangelical scholarship. I want to make sure that the Christ that I’m reading about here is the Christ that is.

 

And the high view of Scripture that the church once had is now being attacked on every front. And some people in seminaries that have the title evangelical or conservative no longer really believe that the Gospels are an accurate representation of what actually happened.

 

And I’m not talking about—if you know the debates—the Robert Funk crowd or the Jesus Seminar. I’m not talking about those guys. I’m talking about the people that are at the traditional seminaries of our day that no longer look at what’s said in these passages and say, “Yeah, that’s what Jesus actually said.”

 

And so, Dr. Thomas and Dr. Farnell tackle this topic in a Kregel book—came out in 1998—but a great book for you to start your Christological library.

 

You want to do that? Some of you have that book because I give it out a lot—*The Jesus Crisis*.

 

All right—Christology. Let me pray for you. I’ll let you go.

 

God, thanks for this inaugural study in our—what promises to be from your word at least—a tremendously encouraging, enriching, and assuring study when we can understand who Christ is with more clarity, what the incarnation was about, what happened in the pre-existence of Christ before he came to the planet, the nature, the debates, the attacks, and why it’s so important to clarify all of this.

 

God, give us, please, a good study of your word that we can systematically draw these things together to strengthen our walk with you, our knowledge of you, so that we’re not driven and tossed by every wind of doctrine.

 

Thanks for this crowd. I pray you’d keep them coming back, please. Get them here. Get them here every week. Allow them to be committed to this. Maybe even right now in this time of prayer, allow them to commit themselves to this so that they might be able to get the full-orbed picture of where we’re trying to go here in the next whatever number of weeks it is—13 weeks.

 

So, get us grounded, God, and get this group back, and just may we roll up our sleeves and really have a greater and deepening appreciation for the person and work of Jesus Christ, your Son, in whose name we pray as our mediator and intercessor.

 

Amen.