TIME & ETERNITY  *  JESUS & LAMB  *  SON of MAN & SON of GOD

                TIME & ETERNITY  *  JESUS & LAMB  *  SON of MAN & SON of GOD

“Thus the Heavens and the Earth and all the host of them were finished. And on the seventh day, God ended His work which He had done; and He rested on the seventh day from all his work which He had done.” [The implication here in Genesis 2:1-2 is that God completed all His works from the initial Creation in Genesis 1 & 2 to the New Creation in Revelation 21 & 22. We call this “God’s Portion of Responsibility.” The rest is up to us as the Children of God, which we refer to as “Our Human Portion of Responsibility.”]

“I am God, and there is no other. I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done.” (Isaiah 46:9-10) Example #1 – “So the Lord God said to the Serpent, ‘I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her Seed. You shall bruise his heel, and he shall crush your head.” [In Genesis 3:15, God asserts His divine omniscience and predicts that Roman soldiers will drive an iron nail through the heel of Jesus during the Crucifixion and that Jesus will conquer Satan and the fear of Death in the Resurrection.]  Example #2 – “’I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,’ says the Lord, ‘who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.’” [In Revelation 1:8 (repeated in 1:10 & 22:13), God the Father and God the Son assert their divine omnipresence. The “Alpha” in our Bible is Genesis 1 & 2, the Beginning, the story of Creation, while the “Omega” is Revelation 21 & 22, the End, the story of the New Creation. * Jesus as Son of Man also reveals to his beloved disciples things that will happen in the future in John 13:19, 14:29 & 16:4.]

JHK Note: We humans live in a world, a universe, a cosmos bounded by Time, Space, and Matter but God the Father, God the Creator, is not bounded, limited, or restricted by this material world which He has created. We see our lives as proceeding from birth to death and understand that we are constantly faced with choices, but God knows everything in advance, including our choices. God gives us free will and does not determine our free choices but deals with the consequences of our choices. Thus our choices are not pre-destined in the sense that we are unable to make choices, but God has foreknowledge of what we will do. Example #1 – In the final chapters of Deuteronomy (especially 28-30), the Lord outlines in advance all the Blessings that will come to the Children of Israel if they obey His Word and all the Cursings that will befall them if they are disobedient.  Example #2 – When God appears to Solomon a second time in 2 Chronicles 7:12-22, He promises that Solomon’s descendants will be rulers of Israel forever “if you walk before Me as your father David walked,” but “if you turn away and forsake my statutes,” the people will be uprooted from the land.  Example #3 – Salvation is a free gift offered to all humans through the grace of the willing blood sacrifice of God’s Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, but we are free to choose to accept him as Savior, Teacher, Lord, Master, and King of Kings or to reject him. TBQ: Why do we have to make a conscious choice?  Because our first parents – Eve and Adam – each had a choice and made the wrong choice. Consequently, we, as their descendants, are born with “Original Sin,” yet granted the opportunity to choose Life through acceptance of Jesus as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” or choose Death by rejecting him. “Through death, he destroyed him who had the power of death, that is, the Devil, and released those who through the fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” (Hebrews 2:14-15)

“Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29 & 36) * “John bore witness, saying, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from Heaven like a dove and remaining on him .. I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God.’” (John 1:32-34) * “Andrew found his own brother, Simon Peter, and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah, which is translated, the Christ.’” (John 1:40-41) * “Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found the man of whom Moses wrote in the Law & also the Prophets – Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.’ Nathanael said to him, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said, ‘Come and see.’” (John 1:44-46) [This question of the origins of Jesus comes up repeatedly in the Gospel of John, because most people simply know him as Jesus of Nazareth, the son of a carpenter, while all the prophets say that Messiah will be born in Bethlehem, the City of David. * In fact, when Judas comes with troops, officers, torches, and weapons to identify and arrest him in John 18, Jesus steps forward boldly and asks twice, “Whom are you seeking?” When they reply, “Jesus of Nazareth,” he says clearly, “I am he.” * Pilate asks Jesus five questions: (1) “Are you the King of the Jews?” (John 18:33), (2) “What have you done?” (John 18:35). (3) “Are you a king then?” (John 18:37), (4) “What is truth?” (John 18:38), (5) “Where are you from?” (John 19:9) * But Jesus explains many times that he is from above and not of this world (John 8:23), that his kingdom is not of this world (John 19:36), that he comes from the Father and will return to the Father. (John 17:11)]

“Nathanael said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God, the King of Israel!’ Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Hereafter you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’” (John 1:49) (See also Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28:10-22) [JHK Note: I find that Jesus refers to himself as the “Son of Man” eight times in this Gospel of John – 1:51, 3:13, 3:14, 5:27, 6:27, 6:62, 8:28 & 12:23 .. and he refers to himself as the “Son of God” four times – 5:25, 9:35, 10:36 & 11:4.  See also John 19:7, where “the Jews answered Pilate, saying, ‘We have a law, and according to our law, he ought to die, because he spoke of himself as the Son of God.’”]

That Jesus is fully human is attested by Paul in Hebrews 2:17 – “In all things, he had to be made like his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in all things pertaining to God and to make propitiation for the sins of the people.”  That Jesus is fully divine is also attested by Paul in Colossians 2:9 – “For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” That this Son of God pre-existed with God the Father before the creation of this physical, material world is clear from such passages as John 1:1 – “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” * That the Crucifixion was inevitable and known to both God the Father and God the Son in advance is clear from Rev 13:8 – “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”  (See also John 13:3 & 18:4)