Mid-Lent 2
Second
Article
Jn
1:1-18
3/16/22
During the years 93-94 A.D. a Jew named
Josephus wrote a work called the Jewish Antiquities. Josephus had fought in the Jewish revolt that
began in 66 A.D. He had been captured by the Romans, but had managed to
ingratiate himself to the Roman Emperors who then served has his patrons. His work provides one of the most important
pieces of historical evidence that we have about events in Palestine during the
first century.
In the
twentieth chapter he writes: “Being therefore this kind of person, Ananus,
thinking that he had a favorable opportunity because Festus had died and
Albinus was still on his way, called a Sanhedrin of judges and brought into it
the brother of Jesus who is called Messiah, James by name, and some
others. He made the accusation that they
had transgressed the law, and he handed them over to be stoned.”
Now Josephus
is making the point that the Jewish leader did something illegal. The Jews
weren’t allowed to execute people on their own, but since the Roman governor
Festus had died and the new one Albinus had not yet arrived, he used this
opportunity to have James stoned.
But what
catches our attention is the fact that James is described as being “the brother
of Jesus who is called Messiah.” James
is identified in relation to Jesus because two chapters earlier Josephus had
spoken about a Jesus who was a wise man, a doer of startling deeds, who had gained
a following. Josephus says that because of an accusation made by leading men,
Pilate had condemned Jesus to the cross.
This
evidence from Josephus simply confirms what we find in the Second Article of
the Apostles’ Creed. It is says that
Jesus was a real man who lived in Palestine at the beginning of the first
century A.D. The Roman governor Pontius
Pilate had him executed by crucifixion, a process that involved great
suffering.
Jesus was a
real man – a real human being. The reference to Pontius Pilate in the Creed
anchors the events being described in history. This is not a myth for which the
questions when and where did it happen are nonsensical. Instead, it happened in
Palestine in the first century.
What
Josephus tells us also fits with what we find in the New Testament which
clearly tells us that Jesus was a real human being. In the Gospel lesson for the First Sunday in
Lent we learned that after fasting forty days and forty nights, Jesus was
hungry. You would be too, because that’s
what happens when a person doesn’t eat for that long. We learn that Jesus got tired. When the storm arose on the Sea of Galilee
that threatened to sink the boat, where was Jesus? He was at the stern of the boat asleep on a
cushion because he was worn out by his work of ministry. We learn that Jesus
had human emotions – he wept at tomb of his friend Lazarus who had just died.
Ultimately,
we see that Jesus was a real human being – that he was truly a man – because he
died. That’s what happens to human beings.
Josephus tells us that Pilate condemned him to the cross. The Gospels narrate
what any first century reader knew this meant. Jesus was scourged with a whip
studded with lead or bone that shredded skin and muscle. He was nailed to a
cross in manner that caused slow asphyxiation, and left there to die. A person that the Romans raised up on a cross
came down in only one way – dead.
But if that
was all there was to say about the person of Jesus, we would not be here
tonight. He would have been just one
more person who died at the hands of the Romans. However, our text tells us that while Jesus
was a man, he was also far more.
John starts
by writing: “In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made
through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” From elsewhere in the Gospel of John and the
New Testament we know that when John refers to “the Word,” he means the Son of
God, the second person of the Holy Trinity.
The Word – the Son – is God. John tells us that all things were made
through him.
And then John tells us the incredible
truth that we celebrated at Christmas: “And the
Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his
glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace
and truth.” We learn that the Word – the Son of God – became flesh and
dwelt among us. John is saying that the
Son of God became a man. He uses the
language of the tabernacle and temple to explain the fact that in the person of
Jesus Christ, God dwelt in our midst.
Paul describes this truth in Galatians when he says, “But when the
fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman,
born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that
we might receive adoption as sons.”
God sent forth his Son into this world.
He did so as he was born of a woman.
Now women give birth to sons all the
time. But God sending his Son to be born
as a man – the Word becoming flesh – was no ordinary occurrence. It was God
acting in a dramatic way to bring us salvation. The angel Gabriel announced to Mary,
“And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you
shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son
of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne
of his father David, and he will reign over the house of
Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
When Mary asked how this was going to happen since she was a
virgin, Gabriel responded, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power
of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be
born will be called holy--the Son of God.” This was the same truth that
was shared with Joseph by an angel in a dream when he said: “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for
that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a
son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people
from their sins.”
The explanation of the Second Article in the Small Catechism
begins by saying, “I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the
Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my
Lord.” Jesus is true God. He is also true man. That is the mystery of
the incarnation – of the Word become flesh.
Logically, these do not go together. It is beyond our understanding. And so,
people have always tried to deny or minimize one side or the other. The earliest was a denial that Jesus Christ
really was a man. John wrote in his
first letter, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the
spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false
prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of
God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the
flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is
not from God.”
Later, some like the heretic Arius tried to deny that the Son
who became incarnate is truly God. But because of what Scripture says the
Church rejected this and every Sunday we explicitly confess that the Son who
became incarnate it truly God when we say in the Nicene Creed that the Son is
“God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of
one substance with the Father.”
God’s word reveals that Jesus is “true God, begotten of the Father
from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary.” He is true God – God in every possible
way. He is true man, like us in all ways
except for one – he has no sin. Sin is not inherently part of human
nature. Adam and Eve were created in the
image of God, and so had no sin. It was
only the Fall – the sin of Adam and Eve – that corrupted human nature. Everyone
conceived and born in the natural way since then has been sinful – all of us.
But Jesus’ human nature is what we were originally created to be. He is the second Adam sent to restore our humanity
to what God intended us to be.
Jesus Christ is true God and true man. St. Paul says in First Timothy,
“For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the
man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which
is the testimony given at the proper time.” The person of Jesus
Christ – who he is – is directly tied to his work – what he came to do. After all, when the angel announced to Joseph
about the conception through the work of the Holy Spirit he said of Jesus, “he
will save his people from their sins.”
We will focus next week on the work that Jesus Christ has
carried out. But Paul sums it up when he
says that he gave himself “as a ransom for all.” We will see during Holy Week that Jesus died
on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins. He did this to win forgiveness
for us. But he also had come to renew our humanity – to free us from
death. And so on the third day – on
Easter - God raised Jesus from the dead with a body that can never die again.
Because we have been baptized into Jesus’ saving death, we know
that we will also share in his resurrection.
Paul told the Romans, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism
into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead
by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if
we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be
united with him in a resurrection like his.”
We will share in this resurrection when Christ returns in glory on the
Last Day, and raises and transform our bodies to be like his.
No comments:
Post a Comment