"Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked
them a question, saying, What think ye of the Christ? whose son
is He?"—Matt. 22:41, 42.
The question that our Lord Jesus here puts to the Pharisees is the
most fundamental question concerning Christian thought and faith that
can be put to anybody in any age. Jesus Christ Himself is the centre
of Christianity, so the most fundamental questions of faith are those
that concern the person of Christ. If a man really holds right views
concerning the person of Jesus Christ he will sooner or later get right
views on every other question. If he holds a wrong view concerning
the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, he is pretty sure to go wrong on
everything else sooner or later. +What think ye of Christ?+ That
is the great central question, that is the vital question.
And the most fundamental question concerning the person of Christ
is, is Jesus Christ really God? Not merely is He Divine, but is He
actually God? When I was a boy, to say you believed in the Divinity
of Christ, meant that you believed in the real Deity of Christ, that
you believed that Jesus was actually a Divine person, that He was God.
It no longer means that. The Devil is wise, shrewd, subtle, and he
knows that the most effectual way to instil error into the minds of
the inexpert and unwary is to use old and precious words and put a new
meaning into them. So when his messengers masquerading as "ministers of
righteousness" seek to lead, if possible, the elect astray, they use
the old precious words but with an entirely new and entirely different
and entirely false meaning. They talk about "the Divinity of Christ,"
but they do not mean at all by it what intelligent Christians in
former days meant by it. Just so they talk of "_the atonement_," but
they do not mean at all by the atonement the substitutionary death of
Jesus Christ in our place, by which eternal life is secured for us.
And oftentimes when they talk about Christ they do not mean at all
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the actual historic Jesus of the
four gospels, they mean an ideal Christ, or a Christ principle. So our
subject this morning is not the Divinity of Christ, but the Deity of
Christ, and our question is not is Jesus Christ Divine, but is Jesus
Christ God? Was that person who was born at Bethlehem nineteen hundred
and twenty-one years ago, and who lived thirty-three or thirty-four
years here upon earth as recorded in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John, who was crucified on Calvary's cross, who rose from
the dead the third day, and was exalted from earth to heaven, to the
right hand of the Father, was He God manifested in the flesh, was He
God embodied in a human being? Was He and is He a being worthy of our
absolute faith, and supreme love, and our unhesitating obedience, and
our whole-hearted worship, just as God the Father is worthy of our
absolute faith and supreme love and unhesitating obedience and our
whole-hearted worship? Should all men honour Jesus Christ even as they
honour God the Father (John 5:23)? Not merely is He an example that we
can wisely follow, or a Master whom we can wisely serve, but is He a
God Whom we can rightly worship?
I presume that most of us do believe that He was God manifested in
the flesh, and that He is God to-day at the right hand of the Father,
but why do you believe so? Are you so intelligent in your faith,
and therefore so well grounded in your faith, that no glib talker
or reasoner, no Unitarian or Russellite or Christian Scientist or
Theosophist, or other errorist can confuse you and upset you and lead
you astray? It is important that we be thoroughly sound in our faith
at this point, and thoroughly well-informed, wherever else we may be
in ignorance or error, for we are distinctly told in John 20:31 that
+"These are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ,
the Son of God; and that believing, ye may have life in His name."+
It is evident from these words of the inspired Apostle John that this
question is not merely a matter of theoretical opinion, that it is a
matter that concerns our salvation. It is to confirm and instruct you
in your blessed faith, your saving faith in Jesus Christ as a Divine
person, that I speak this morning. When I studied the subject of the
Divinity of Christ in the theological seminary I got the impression
that there were a few proof-texts in the Bible that conclusively proved
that He was Divine. Years later I found that there were not merely a
few proof-texts that proved this, but that the Bible in many ways and
in countless passages clearly taught that Jesus Christ was God manifest
in the flesh. Indeed I found that the Doctrine of the Deity of Jesus
Christ formed the very warp and woof of the Bible.