Unitarians and other self-identified non-Trinitarians who consider Jesus as merely an exalted man, but who also claim to revere / worship / perform obeisance to Him, are guilty of idolatry (the worship of any reality that is not God in Trinity)--not only because they worship the wrong Jesus (cf. 2 Cor. 11:4; Gal. 1:8) but also because they worship a mere man and not God the Son. God Himself confesses that only God is worthy of worship (Ex. 20:4, 5) and, to this confession, even Jesus Himself agrees (Luke 4:8), as does an angel in the Revelation (Rev. 19:10; 22:8, 9). If we are to worship only Deity, only God--the one, the only living and true, triune God (1 Thess. 1:9; cf. Jer. 10:10; John 17:3; 1 Tim. 1:17)--then attributing any semblance of worship to a mere man is overt idolatry--idol worship--something God utterly detests and condemns.
Either Jesus exists from all eternity past as God the Son (John 1:1 NLT), the Second Member of the eternal Trinity (with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit) and is innately worthy of divine worship as God incarnate, or He is the biggest fraud who ever existed (God forbid). But Unitarians even deconstruct the act of worship itself to merely "showing respect" to Jesus as they would show respect to any mere mortal. That, they say, is how one can worship Jesus while denying He is God. While bowing down before a man, in order to show him respect and honor, is a custom of the ancient world, and is practiced in many cultures today, Unitarians fail to distinguish between showing respect and honor to a human being and a proper worship of God, who is to be set apart as holy in a far different manner than merely revering a mortal. We worship God the Son as we worship God the Father and God the Holy Spirit because Jesus is God--He is, eternally, God the Son (Micah 5:2). Jesus Himself said people will die in their sins for not recognizing Him as the Great I Am of Exodus 3:14, 15 (John 8:24, 28, 58).
While Lot reveres angels who visit him (Gen. 19:1), he does not worship them as God; while Moses reveres his father-in-law (Ex. 18:7), he does not worship him as God; while Abigail reveres King David (1 Sam. 25:23), she does not worship him as God. Unitarians are obliged theoretically to deconstruct worship in order to avoid the truth that Jesus is God incarnate, the eternal, uncreated Son of God who is worthy of worship as is God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. We also worship the Holy Spirit, the third member of the Trinity, because the Holy Spirit is God--He is, eternally, God (Acts 5:4, 9). The same is true of Jesus Christ--He is God, God the Son, Son of God.
UNCREATED
Non-Trinitarians hold that Jesus is the first creature / person God the Father ever creates,1 abusing and misinterpreting the passage, "He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation" (Col. 1:15 NRSV). The Greek word for "firstborn," prōtotokos, is a compound word referring to the first-born child in a family--prótos, first, and tokos, child, or offspring. In ancient Hebrew culture this typically refers to the first-born son. What this text does not teach is that God creates Jesus, properly, or that Jesus is the first object (or being, entity, person) God the Father creates. Jesus always existed with the Father and with the Holy Spirit in past-eternity (John 1:1 NLT). Moreover, all things were created through (or by) Jesus and for Jesus (John 1:3; Col. 1:16), and Jesus could not have created Himself. He is eternal. Furthermore, revealed as Creator, a created being cannot create a universe, star systems, planets, animals, and humans. Jesus is eternal God.
Incidentally, some non-Trinitarians (who reject the truth that Jesus is eternal) refer to Proverbs 8:22, alleging that God the Father creates Jesus, who is perceived as the Wisdom of God, "The LORD created me at the beginning of His work, the first of His acts of long ago." But this interpretation is proved faulty at best given that the passage explicitly refers to Wisdom as being female (Prov. 8:1, 2, 3, 11). Unless Jesus is transgender, ontologically female inhabiting a biologically male body, then the interpretation that Jesus is referred to at Proverbs 8:22 (more so than inferentially--a rhetorical means of principle--that Christ is for us the Wisdom of God, 1 Cor. 1:30) and is thus actually created by God in time poses insurmountable gender and ontological problems that are irreconcilable theologically and philosophically.
FIRSTBORN
Jesus is considered the firstborn in God's family not because He is the first to be created but because He is the Preeminent Redeemer of all those who will by grace through faith in Him become children of God. "For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He [Jesus] might be the firstborn within a large family" (Rom. 8:29 NRSV). Jesus is the Head of the Body of Christ of which all believers are members. Jesus is "the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He might come to have first place in everything" (Col. 1:18). Jesus represents us before the Father, as the perfect son (or child) of God in our stead (and so God the Father sees us in and through Jesus), and Jesus is also the exact representation of the Father (Heb. 1:3). Jesus also fully represents God the Father (John 14:9).
Notice that Jesus is called the firstborn from the dead. He is not, however, the first to be raised from the dead. Lazarus is raised from the dead by Jesus Himself (John 11:43)--demonstrating that He has power over death. So we can no more suggest that Jesus is the first one to be created by God than we can admit that Jesus is the first person ever to be raised from the dead. Even in the Old Testament we find that the prophet Elijah prays and God raises a young boy from death (1 Kings 17:17-24), and Elisha raises the son of the woman of Shunem (2 Kings 4:32-37), whose birth he previously foretold (2 Kings 4:8-16). To what, then, does "firstborn" refer? The position of Jesus as the firstborn is, as the New Revised Standard Version accurately states, the Head or Firstborn within a large family (Rom. 8:29 NRSV)--the redeemed family of God. This title "firstborn" recognizes that Jesus the Christ is Supreme and King and Creator over all God's creation, the Preeminent One who maintains special rights and privileges as of the firstborn son in Jewish culture, above those of any mortal--a confession we can properly grant reference solely to Deity, to the Divine, to God as inherently and innately worthy of any and all worship by us (Col. 1:18; cf. Ex. 20:1, 2, 3; 34:14; Ps. 89:27; Isa. 42:8; Matt. 4:10; John 4:23, 24; Rev. 22:8, 9).
ETERNAL
Jesus always existed as God the Son: "Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped [harpazó, to seize, take by force]" (Phil. 2:5-6 NASB)--better, "something to be exploited" (Phil. 2:6 NRSV 1989: the NRSVue greivously reverted back to "something to be grasped"), or "used to His own advantage" (Phil. 2:6 NIV). Here Paul admits that Jesus always existed: (1) pre-existence is noted in the Greek uparchōn, a present active participle better translated "existing and continuing to exist"; in the form of God He exists in past-eternity and is existing now and will be continuing to exist into future-eternity; (2) Jesus always existed in the form of God (Phil. 2:6) and this pre-existence as God is not an eternal reality that He had to seize upon by force, nor to exploit (NRSV 1989), nor even use to His own advantage (NIV); instead (3) Jesus "emptied Himself [His divine form], taking the form of a slave, being born in human form" (Phil. 2:7). This form of God, in which Jesus pre-existed, is not merely an image of God, in which we humans are created (Gen. 1:26, 27)--Jesus is the form of God. We are created in God's image (Gen. 1:26); Jesus is God's very image (Heb. 1:3). Jesus is what God looks like walking in human flesh (John 1:14, 18).
Robert Bowman and J. Ed Komoszewski, in Putting Jesus in His Place, rightly contextualize this issue: It would be better to draw a contrast between Adam, who existed in God's image, and Christ, who existed in God's form. The contrast should be understood in the light of Paul's contrast between Christ's existence "in the form of God" and his subsequent act of becoming a human when He took "the form of a slave" (v. 7). The "image of God" in human beings refers to their role as earthly, physical representatives of God's rule (Gen. 1:26-30). However, the "form of God" in which Jesus existed refers to His being the heavenly reflection of God's nature and glory [cf. Heb. 1:3],2 since we hold that Jesus has always existed in the form of God--as Paul insists at Philippians 2:6. Therefore, as Deity, eternal by definition, Jesus is worthy of worship as is God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. Otherwise, the disciple Thomas idolatrously worshiped Jesus (John 20:28), and Jesus blasphemously allowed the worship and received the worship of Himself as God. Jesus would have known better.
WORTHY OF WORSHIP AS GOD
Christians do not merely honor or bow in respect to Jesus Christ as one man worthy of accolades or for mere human accomplishments: we view Jesus as worthy of worship as God incarnate--God in the flesh. While Jehovah's Witnesses and other non-Trinitarians are forced to reinterpret and to deconstruct Thomas' worship, by suggesting that he calls Jesus Lord but then points toward Heaven, referencing God as God the Father, is specious at best. (How is that supported in the Text?) To which view Jamieson-Fausset-Brown note is as an "invasion of the supreme divinity of Christ here manifestly taught--as if it were a mere call upon God in a fit of astonishment--[it] is beneath notice, [except] for the profanity it charges upon this disciple [Thomas, and also John], and the straits to which it shows themselves reduced" (emphasis added). In other words, this notion is an unwarranted presupposition in search of biblical warrant, and only displays the desperate attempt at undermining the intent of the disciples Thomas and John. There is no inferential hint in the text that Thomas motioned toward Jesus, referring to Him as "lord," or as "sir" (as to any common man), and then motioned toward Heaven in reference to God--meaning God the Father in Heaven. He really did, as the Text reads, worship Christ Jesus, rightly, as God.
Moreover, such a view completely ignores--indeed, it must ignore--that Jesus is revealed as LORD (YHWH), meaning God, and that to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:9, 10, 11). Furthermore, such a view must also ignore the divine claims made by Jesus Himself (Matt. 10:37, 38; 12:58; Mark 3:33, 34; 12:6; Luke 2:41-52; 14:26; John 5:23, 25; 8:28, 38, 58; 10:30, 38; 11:4; 14:10; 18:1-5 with Exodus 3:14-15), as well as His divine relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit (cf. Ps. 2:7; 45:6, 7; 110:1, 2, 3, 4; Isaiah 53:10, 11; Matt. 11:27; 28:18, 19, 20; Luke 22:29; John 5:17, 18; 14:1, 6; 10:28, 30; 14:9; 17:21; Acts 2:34, 35, 36; 1 Cor. 8:6; 12:4, 5, 6; 2 Cor. 13:14; Eph. 4:8, 9, 10; Col. 1:15, 19; 2:9; 1 Thess. 3:11; 1 Tim. 1:15, 16; 1 John 2:23), which further demonstrates that Jesus Christ, the uncreated and divine and eternally pre-existent (Mic. 5:2) Son of God (Ps. 2:1-12; Prov. 30:4), is worthy to be worshiped as Preeminent LORD, as Creator and rightful King over all, Sovereign God, God the Son, the Word of God incarnate (John 1:1, 14), Jesus the Son of God, second member in the Godhead Trinity.
__________
1 This ancient pagan Greek heresy originates with Arius, with whom Unitarians and other non-Trinitarians agree that, "God resolved to create the world, and so He created first a superior being, which we call the Son or Word, destined to be the instrument of creation. The Son occupies a place intermediate between God and the world, for he is neither God nor part of the world-system. He is before all creatures and the instrument of their creation." This quote by Edmund J. Fortman is found in Robert Morey, The Trinity: Evidence and Issues (Iowa Falls: World Bible Publishers, Inc., 1996), 473.
2 Robert M. Bowman and J. Ed Komoszewski, Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 2007), 83.
Either Jesus exists from all eternity past as God the Son (John 1:1 NLT), the Second Member of the eternal Trinity (with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit) and is innately worthy of divine worship as God incarnate, or He is the biggest fraud who ever existed (God forbid). But Unitarians even deconstruct the act of worship itself to merely "showing respect" to Jesus as they would show respect to any mere mortal. That, they say, is how one can worship Jesus while denying He is God. While bowing down before a man, in order to show him respect and honor, is a custom of the ancient world, and is practiced in many cultures today, Unitarians fail to distinguish between showing respect and honor to a human being and a proper worship of God, who is to be set apart as holy in a far different manner than merely revering a mortal. We worship God the Son as we worship God the Father and God the Holy Spirit because Jesus is God--He is, eternally, God the Son (Micah 5:2). Jesus Himself said people will die in their sins for not recognizing Him as the Great I Am of Exodus 3:14, 15 (John 8:24, 28, 58).
While Lot reveres angels who visit him (Gen. 19:1), he does not worship them as God; while Moses reveres his father-in-law (Ex. 18:7), he does not worship him as God; while Abigail reveres King David (1 Sam. 25:23), she does not worship him as God. Unitarians are obliged theoretically to deconstruct worship in order to avoid the truth that Jesus is God incarnate, the eternal, uncreated Son of God who is worthy of worship as is God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. We also worship the Holy Spirit, the third member of the Trinity, because the Holy Spirit is God--He is, eternally, God (Acts 5:4, 9). The same is true of Jesus Christ--He is God, God the Son, Son of God.
UNCREATED
Non-Trinitarians hold that Jesus is the first creature / person God the Father ever creates,1 abusing and misinterpreting the passage, "He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation" (Col. 1:15 NRSV). The Greek word for "firstborn," prōtotokos, is a compound word referring to the first-born child in a family--prótos, first, and tokos, child, or offspring. In ancient Hebrew culture this typically refers to the first-born son. What this text does not teach is that God creates Jesus, properly, or that Jesus is the first object (or being, entity, person) God the Father creates. Jesus always existed with the Father and with the Holy Spirit in past-eternity (John 1:1 NLT). Moreover, all things were created through (or by) Jesus and for Jesus (John 1:3; Col. 1:16), and Jesus could not have created Himself. He is eternal. Furthermore, revealed as Creator, a created being cannot create a universe, star systems, planets, animals, and humans. Jesus is eternal God.
Incidentally, some non-Trinitarians (who reject the truth that Jesus is eternal) refer to Proverbs 8:22, alleging that God the Father creates Jesus, who is perceived as the Wisdom of God, "The LORD created me at the beginning of His work, the first of His acts of long ago." But this interpretation is proved faulty at best given that the passage explicitly refers to Wisdom as being female (Prov. 8:1, 2, 3, 11). Unless Jesus is transgender, ontologically female inhabiting a biologically male body, then the interpretation that Jesus is referred to at Proverbs 8:22 (more so than inferentially--a rhetorical means of principle--that Christ is for us the Wisdom of God, 1 Cor. 1:30) and is thus actually created by God in time poses insurmountable gender and ontological problems that are irreconcilable theologically and philosophically.
FIRSTBORN
Jesus is considered the firstborn in God's family not because He is the first to be created but because He is the Preeminent Redeemer of all those who will by grace through faith in Him become children of God. "For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He [Jesus] might be the firstborn within a large family" (Rom. 8:29 NRSV). Jesus is the Head of the Body of Christ of which all believers are members. Jesus is "the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He might come to have first place in everything" (Col. 1:18). Jesus represents us before the Father, as the perfect son (or child) of God in our stead (and so God the Father sees us in and through Jesus), and Jesus is also the exact representation of the Father (Heb. 1:3). Jesus also fully represents God the Father (John 14:9).
Notice that Jesus is called the firstborn from the dead. He is not, however, the first to be raised from the dead. Lazarus is raised from the dead by Jesus Himself (John 11:43)--demonstrating that He has power over death. So we can no more suggest that Jesus is the first one to be created by God than we can admit that Jesus is the first person ever to be raised from the dead. Even in the Old Testament we find that the prophet Elijah prays and God raises a young boy from death (1 Kings 17:17-24), and Elisha raises the son of the woman of Shunem (2 Kings 4:32-37), whose birth he previously foretold (2 Kings 4:8-16). To what, then, does "firstborn" refer? The position of Jesus as the firstborn is, as the New Revised Standard Version accurately states, the Head or Firstborn within a large family (Rom. 8:29 NRSV)--the redeemed family of God. This title "firstborn" recognizes that Jesus the Christ is Supreme and King and Creator over all God's creation, the Preeminent One who maintains special rights and privileges as of the firstborn son in Jewish culture, above those of any mortal--a confession we can properly grant reference solely to Deity, to the Divine, to God as inherently and innately worthy of any and all worship by us (Col. 1:18; cf. Ex. 20:1, 2, 3; 34:14; Ps. 89:27; Isa. 42:8; Matt. 4:10; John 4:23, 24; Rev. 22:8, 9).
ETERNAL
Jesus always existed as God the Son: "Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped [harpazó, to seize, take by force]" (Phil. 2:5-6 NASB)--better, "something to be exploited" (Phil. 2:6 NRSV 1989: the NRSVue greivously reverted back to "something to be grasped"), or "used to His own advantage" (Phil. 2:6 NIV). Here Paul admits that Jesus always existed: (1) pre-existence is noted in the Greek uparchōn, a present active participle better translated "existing and continuing to exist"; in the form of God He exists in past-eternity and is existing now and will be continuing to exist into future-eternity; (2) Jesus always existed in the form of God (Phil. 2:6) and this pre-existence as God is not an eternal reality that He had to seize upon by force, nor to exploit (NRSV 1989), nor even use to His own advantage (NIV); instead (3) Jesus "emptied Himself [His divine form], taking the form of a slave, being born in human form" (Phil. 2:7). This form of God, in which Jesus pre-existed, is not merely an image of God, in which we humans are created (Gen. 1:26, 27)--Jesus is the form of God. We are created in God's image (Gen. 1:26); Jesus is God's very image (Heb. 1:3). Jesus is what God looks like walking in human flesh (John 1:14, 18).
Robert Bowman and J. Ed Komoszewski, in Putting Jesus in His Place, rightly contextualize this issue: It would be better to draw a contrast between Adam, who existed in God's image, and Christ, who existed in God's form. The contrast should be understood in the light of Paul's contrast between Christ's existence "in the form of God" and his subsequent act of becoming a human when He took "the form of a slave" (v. 7). The "image of God" in human beings refers to their role as earthly, physical representatives of God's rule (Gen. 1:26-30). However, the "form of God" in which Jesus existed refers to His being the heavenly reflection of God's nature and glory [cf. Heb. 1:3],2 since we hold that Jesus has always existed in the form of God--as Paul insists at Philippians 2:6. Therefore, as Deity, eternal by definition, Jesus is worthy of worship as is God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. Otherwise, the disciple Thomas idolatrously worshiped Jesus (John 20:28), and Jesus blasphemously allowed the worship and received the worship of Himself as God. Jesus would have known better.
WORTHY OF WORSHIP AS GOD
Christians do not merely honor or bow in respect to Jesus Christ as one man worthy of accolades or for mere human accomplishments: we view Jesus as worthy of worship as God incarnate--God in the flesh. While Jehovah's Witnesses and other non-Trinitarians are forced to reinterpret and to deconstruct Thomas' worship, by suggesting that he calls Jesus Lord but then points toward Heaven, referencing God as God the Father, is specious at best. (How is that supported in the Text?) To which view Jamieson-Fausset-Brown note is as an "invasion of the supreme divinity of Christ here manifestly taught--as if it were a mere call upon God in a fit of astonishment--[it] is beneath notice, [except] for the profanity it charges upon this disciple [Thomas, and also John], and the straits to which it shows themselves reduced" (emphasis added). In other words, this notion is an unwarranted presupposition in search of biblical warrant, and only displays the desperate attempt at undermining the intent of the disciples Thomas and John. There is no inferential hint in the text that Thomas motioned toward Jesus, referring to Him as "lord," or as "sir" (as to any common man), and then motioned toward Heaven in reference to God--meaning God the Father in Heaven. He really did, as the Text reads, worship Christ Jesus, rightly, as God.
Moreover, such a view completely ignores--indeed, it must ignore--that Jesus is revealed as LORD (YHWH), meaning God, and that to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:9, 10, 11). Furthermore, such a view must also ignore the divine claims made by Jesus Himself (Matt. 10:37, 38; 12:58; Mark 3:33, 34; 12:6; Luke 2:41-52; 14:26; John 5:23, 25; 8:28, 38, 58; 10:30, 38; 11:4; 14:10; 18:1-5 with Exodus 3:14-15), as well as His divine relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit (cf. Ps. 2:7; 45:6, 7; 110:1, 2, 3, 4; Isaiah 53:10, 11; Matt. 11:27; 28:18, 19, 20; Luke 22:29; John 5:17, 18; 14:1, 6; 10:28, 30; 14:9; 17:21; Acts 2:34, 35, 36; 1 Cor. 8:6; 12:4, 5, 6; 2 Cor. 13:14; Eph. 4:8, 9, 10; Col. 1:15, 19; 2:9; 1 Thess. 3:11; 1 Tim. 1:15, 16; 1 John 2:23), which further demonstrates that Jesus Christ, the uncreated and divine and eternally pre-existent (Mic. 5:2) Son of God (Ps. 2:1-12; Prov. 30:4), is worthy to be worshiped as Preeminent LORD, as Creator and rightful King over all, Sovereign God, God the Son, the Word of God incarnate (John 1:1, 14), Jesus the Son of God, second member in the Godhead Trinity.
__________
1 This ancient pagan Greek heresy originates with Arius, with whom Unitarians and other non-Trinitarians agree that, "God resolved to create the world, and so He created first a superior being, which we call the Son or Word, destined to be the instrument of creation. The Son occupies a place intermediate between God and the world, for he is neither God nor part of the world-system. He is before all creatures and the instrument of their creation." This quote by Edmund J. Fortman is found in Robert Morey, The Trinity: Evidence and Issues (Iowa Falls: World Bible Publishers, Inc., 1996), 473.
2 Robert M. Bowman and J. Ed Komoszewski, Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 2007), 83.
0 Comments
Please be respectful to everyone.