Day 2: Jesus is Perfectly Divine

The Jews surrounded him and asked, “How long are you going to keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” “I did tell you and you don’t believe,” Jesus answered them. “The works that I do in my Father’s name testify about me. But you don’t believe because you are not of my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all. No one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” JOHN 10:24–30, EMPHASIS MINE

WAY BACK IN 2004, long before grown people began pulling hamstrings trying to keep up on the latest social media app or overgrown people began making themselves miserable on Keto (mostly teasing but true from my own half-starved vantage point!), an epic Hollywood blockbuster called The Passion of the Christ came to theaters and captured the imaginations of millions of moviegoers. It ultimately grossed more than 600 million dollars with its dramatic portrayal of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It also catapulted the handsome young actor who played the Messiah, Jim Caviezel, to seemingly overnight stardom. A few months after the movie hit theaters, several of my girlfriends attended a large conference where Christian publishers, record labels, and the then-budding faith-based film industry met with ministry, retail, radio, and television representatives to promote their upcoming projects. And much to their delight, Mr. Caviezel was there in person.

I had dinner with a few of them soon after they got home from the conference, and when I asked what upcoming books, Bible studies, or worship recordings they were really excited about, they drew a blank. Neither remembered much at all about the hundreds of faith-based projects they’d been pitched. But honey, they’d become experts on Jim Caviezel because they’d spent the bulk of the two-day conference trying to figure out where he was at any given moment and then, when they located their poor prey, they followed him around the convention floor like starstruck paparazzi! While describing their mission/mild stalking in detail to me, one sighed dreamily and said, “Oh Lisa, if you’d been there, you would’ve traipsed after him too because that Jesus was absolutely gorgeous!” I couldn’t help laughing—and they good-naturedly poked fun at themselves—that they were swooning over a man named Jim who’d simply pretended to be Jesus.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with their momentary crush, although I do think it underscores humanity’s tendency to dumb down our Messiah’s divinity. To rub the shine off His proverbial crown a bit so we won’t be as intimidated by that whole “divine nature” thing He has going on. Associating Him with an attractive actor isn’t much different than referring to Him by anthropomorphic (which is a fancy word that, in the context of theology, means using human attributes to describe God) terms like copilot or homeboy; it’s simply a way to lower our perceived drawbridge around the King of all kings so that we, as commoners, can access Him. Which, again, in and of itself isn’t necessarily a bad or heretical habit. Heck, the accessibility of Jesus is a recurring theme throughout the New Testament!

We just need to be careful not to throw the proverbial supernatural baby out with the relevant bathwater because the undiluted deity of Jesus Christ is a big deal. After all, when historic Christianity was being built at the very start of the church era, the undiluted deity of Jesus Christ was (and still is) one of the foundational walls. From the very beginning of the formation of the Christian belief system, the fact that Jesus has a divine nature—that He’s really, truly God in the flesh—is and always has been a nonnegotiable. In fact, the divinity of Jesus was so imperative to our faith that it was the main focus of the first two Christian councils when the need for orthodox boundaries became apparent. Why? Because in the late (AD) 200s and early 300s, church leaders became aware of Gnostic mystery cults and errant teachings that were being circulated about Jesus; namely, that He was of a lesser nature than God the Father. In other words, some heretical yahoos had infiltrated first-century Christian circles and were talking smack about Jesus, which was causing confusion among believers.

In response, Emperor Constantine called church leaders together for the first formal Christian council in Nicaea in AD 325 to prayerfully consider two main questions: How does this teaching stack up against the whole of what Scripture teaches? and What are the implications of this teaching regarding our salvation through Jesus? Ultimately, the Council of Nicaea concluded that Jesus’s divine nature was the very nature of God, and that He was, in fact, Immanuel, God with us.

One of my all-time favorite Christian scholars, authors, professors, and pretend theological boyfriends, Dr. J. I. Packer, eloquently elaborated on this magnificent mystery with this observation:

The really staggering Christian claim is that Jesus of Nazareth was God made man—that the second person of the Godhead became the “second man” (1 Cor. 15:47), determining human destiny, the second representative head of the race, and that he took humanity without the loss of deity, so that Jesus of Nazareth was as truly divine as he was human.1

He took humanity without the loss of deity . . . that’ll make you think twice before putting one of those “Jesus is my homeboy” bumper stickers on your car, won’t it?

• THINK ABOUT OUR modern habit of using anthropomorphic/casual terms for Jesus like copilot and homeboy. In what ways has this dulled our awe about the fact that Jesus is divine?
• IN WHAT SPECIFIC ways do you sometimes treat Jesus like He’s just a man, and not God? What are some practical ways to restore appropriate reverence and awe (not formality or rigidity, mind you!) into your real, intimate relationship with Jesus?