¹⁵ “All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.”

Trinitarianism stretches our minds, and that makes sense. It goes against the propensity of humans to put God in a box, reduce Him to that which is fully comprehensible, to fit Him into human categories of philosophical thought. It should not surprise any thinking individual that there would be some aspects of the infinite Creator God of the universe that would be beyond human understanding. We believe a basic tenet of rational thought, namely the law of non-contradiction, which states that a thing cannot be true and not true, at the same time and in the same sense. Or to put it another way, nothing can be true and at the same time contradict something else that is true.

One of the core Christian dilemmas has to do with the deity of Christ, how can He be God and at the same time be human? To the Jews that is blasphemy, to Muslims absurdity. But Christians have accepted this from the beginning as a true, if not uncomfortable, tenant of faith, and not without some debate.

The earliest theological debates of the early church revolved around the struggle to understand this dilemma, it wasn’t a blind, unthinking, kiss-your-brain goodbye kind of ignorant faith. The NT documents clearly presented Jesus as God, for the apostles certainly believed that to be true. The question for them was not what the Bible taught on this subject, but what did it mean it mean.

Historians have identified the various attempts at “resolution.” There was modalism, which taught that God is a single person, who reveals Himself in various modes. These modes are “consecutive and never simultaneous.” Yet, Scripture speaks of the Father, Son and Spirit often in the same verse at the same time (see Matt 3:16-17, etc.). There was also Docetism, the belief that Christ only “appeared” to be human. Yet, the apostle John wrote, “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God” (1 John 4:2). He excitedly wanted his readers to know about, “What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life” (1 John 1:1). Jesus was not an apparition or ghost. Indeed, “In Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form” (Col 2:9).

While a fuller treatment of this doctrine of the Deity of Christ is beyond the scope of this writing, suffice it to say the NT clearly teaches that Jesus Christ was fully God and fully man. And that is a wonderful, deep mystery that we will probably spend eternity enjoying and un-packaging.

Lord thank You for this wonderful truth of Your Son the Lord Jesus Christ.