Biblestudy: Christ Coming in the Flesh

#BS-111123
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 11-Nov-23; 61 minutes 2023-11-11

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If you would all turn to II John 7—we do not often go to II John, but I would like to use this as the jumping off point for this Bible study because it is something in the Bible that John said we need to be aware of. And that is what I will be speaking about for the rest of the time.

II John 7 For many deceivers [notice that, many deceivers] have gone out into the world who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.

This problem, this false teaching that Christ did not come in the flesh, is not a great controversy right now. It has been in the recent past. As I said, we had to deal with it a little bit back in 2009 when somebody was speaking these things, teaching these things to our brethren and we had to combat it then and every once in a while it flares up. It is like Satan has a list, that he has got of all the false teachings and he kind of goes around and he says, OK, we are now going to talk about the calendar and once that settles down then we are going to talk about, I do not know, born again, and then we will talk about this, that, and the other thing. And finally he gets down to, well, Jesus Christ did not come in the flesh. And so it comes around and goes around and comes around and goes around, as these things do.

But this false teaching is still around in the periphery of the church and I think it is a good idea for you to know about it and to have a few ways through the Scriptures to understand that it is wrong and you can combat it that way. But before we get into the Scriptures, I want to just go through a mental exercise, a mental outline of why we should think theologically that the Messiah had to come as a human being in the flesh, as John puts it here. So we are going to consider the theological reasoning of this doctrine.

Now, we have to begin with the fact that we live in a fleshly, physical, carnal, material world. And we are part of that. We ourselves are fleshly, physical, carnal, material people. And because of that, we are full of sin. There is no way we seem to be able to avoid it. Only One has. And so that is where we begin. We start with the fact that this world is material and fleshly and we ourselves are material and carnal. And we know that sin can only be paid for through death.

We know that from Romans 6:23 that the wages of sin is death. And so that is the only way that we ourselves, as physical human beings, can pay for our sin. So if a sinful person dies, he then pays for his transgressions, he pays for them with his own life. But that is kind of a futile thing because there can be, then, no afterlife. If you pay for your own sin with your life, then there is no hope that you can live again because there is no promise or power or means of a renewed life.

Remember, we are keeping God out of this at this point. So I do not want you to think that all those people who have died and paid for their own sins have no hope of an afterlife. But this is just in the sense of this is the state of mankind. The same verse, Romans 6:23, says that eternal life (now we are bringing God in here), is the gift of God. So it is something that only He can give. He makes that possible by grace. But without God there is no eternal life. If we were humans alone, without God (perish the thought), we would still sin—we would sin terribly—but we would pay for our sins with our own life and that would be it. There would be nothing more.

So in order for there to be life after death, another greater death than our own must pay for the sin that we have committed. And this holds true for every individual among humanity. Or we could say it holds true for all humanity as a whole, that there must be a greater death than a human death to pay for human sin.

Now, Jesus said in Matthew 7 that humanity is evil. He was speaking to His disciples at the time and He said, "If you, being evil, can give good gifts to your children, how much could the Father give?" How much more will the Father give you? Well, Jesus Himself says we are evil, and humanity is so black with sin that it would take a terribly costly death to cover all of those sins. I mean, we look at ourselves and say, "Aahh, look at all the sin that I've done!" And then you start multiplying that by all the billions of humans who have sinned, many who have sinned far worse than we have, and we think, "Wow, we stink. We're horrible." There is so much sin. How can it ever be paid for? Who could ever redeem all of this sin? All these people, all these terribly sinful people.

Well, of course, we understand that the only payment sufficient for this task is the death of the very Creator Himself because only He is precious enough, only He is valuable enough, to pay for all of that sin that humans have committed—all sin for every person for all time. Only the Creator God has worth that was able to pay for that all that sin.

Fine and good. We understand that, I think. It is not too difficult. But even coming to that conclusion creates a problem. The problem is the Creator is not human, or not one He was creating. The Creator is a spirit. We are material. He is also eternal whereas we are very finite, we die, we are mortal. We only last, as Moses says in Psalm 90, maybe 80 years if we happen to be strong. But most of us throughout history have not made it even that far.

Another problem, beyond the fact that He is spirit and eternal, is that in Him is self-sustaining life! He is life! He is the life and of that life, He gave life to all living things. How do you kill the Lifegiver, the Eternal One composed of spirit, the great immortal being who is God? That is a problem because if you are going to have a sacrifice for sin, if you are going to pay for all those iniquities of humankind, the payment must be in kind—human for human. But that human that dies has to be so precious and valuable so that He is able to pay for all of those sins. So the question has to be, how can that eternal life die? Sounds paradoxical.

There is only one solution and that is the Creator, this Eternal One, the One who is spirit, must voluntarily give up His glory and many of His prerogatives as the Eternal God, and allow Himself to be fashioned as a human, a fleshly material man. Yet, if He becomes a man without certain qualities, He will fail. And God does not do things to fail. And so the answer has to be that this Great God—eternal, immortal—must become a man, must become a human being and have all of these qualities that would allow Him to overcome all the temptations of living as a human being.

So what He has to do is become a man yet still maintain His personality, His character, and His wisdom as God. He divests Himself of great power and glory, and like I said, many of His prerogatives as the Eternal God, yet be still a man. Then, despite His holiness, despite His Godhood, being a man He could die and His shed blood then could pay for the sins of the whole world. There is no other way that this could work. There is no other way that could satisfy God's justice so that the sins would be paid for and then He could give grace.

I have a note here to go to Hebrews 2. I usually obey my notes.

Hebrews 2:9 But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of God might taste death for everyone.

And therefore pay for their sins.

Hebrews 2:14 Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same [flesh and blood], that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil.

Hebrews 2:17 Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

He had to go through all of these things to accomplish the work that His Father sent Him to do. He had to redeem the sins of all mankind upon belief in God and for the propitiation, the sacrifice for all those sins. Let us move forward to chapter 5, verses 5 through 9.

Hebrews 5:5-9 So also Christ did not glorify Himself to become High Priest, but it was He who said to Him, "You are My Son, today I have begotten You." As He also says in another place, "You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek"; who in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear, though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him.

Hebrews 10:5-7 Therefore, when He came into the world, He said: "Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You have prepared for Me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure. Then I said, 'Behold, I have come—in the volume of the book it is written of Me—to do your will, O God.'"

Hebrews 10:10 By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Hebrews 10:19-20 Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh.

There is a lot of theology in all of that. We could probably write tomes of the theology that is in those verses and poems have definitely been written about all of that. But this is basically the author of Hebrews explanation for what I just said in my trying to reason through this idea of why Christ had to come in the flesh. Because that was the only way that human sin could be paid for. There had to be an offering so great to be able to pay for all that sin, but it had to be done by a human being. But a human being so wonderful and so free of sin, so great of character, so valuable, that it would cover all sin for all men for all time.

So, this teaching that Christ has come in the flesh is astoundingly important. It has everything to do with not only our forgiveness but our ability to one day be in God's Kingdom. Because if Christ did not pay for our sins in the flesh, there is no propitiation for our sins. We still are in sins and if we die, that is it. But Christ has come in a body, in a human body, in the flesh; it is said enough ways to cover all the bases that false teachers try use to get you all confused. But He came as a man in the flesh and paid for those sins. And we can claim that redemption through belief and acceptance of the blood of Christ.

Hebrews may have been Paul's explanation. We do not know who the true author of Hebrews was, but just in case it was not Paul, let us go to Philippians 2 and get his take on this.

Philippians 2:5-8 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God [it is not something that He felt that He needed to hold on to with everything that He had], but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.

So in four quick verses here, Paul puts this theology in a nice little package for us to understand. The one we call Yahweh, the One who is the God of the Old Testament, did not cling to His equality with the Father, but sacrificed all of that to become a lowly servant in the likeness, that is, in the form and the composition of a human being. And He became the One that we know as Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, the Son of Man.

He was so committed to His task that He had been given, that of redeeming mankind, that He further humbled Himself. He not only became a man which was humbling enough with all of our, I do not know, ickiness. I will just leave it at that. But He humbled Himself in obedience. He obeyed as a man and He allowed Himself to be crucified and take all that beating and abuse that He did there in Jerusalem—all this to pay for our sins. He was willing to go to the nth degree, given this opportunity to make sure that His work was finished. And you know what He said at the end, "It is finished." He had done His job and He gave up His spirit. It was done. He had come to do that very thing and His blood was shed and His task was over.

So throughout His entire life, as a fleshly human being, a material man, Jesus retained His essential personality and character as God. And that is why He was able to do what He did. And of course, He had the Holy Spirit all the time. He never lost the Holy Spirit at any point and He had it fully. My dad, I think, put this in a way that we can understand it. He was a man, but He was a man who had as much God crammed into Him as a man could hold and still be called a man. So He was of two natures, as it were. He was a fleshly man. He had the nature of man, but He had as much of the nature of God that any person with a brain, a physical brain, could hold.

I do not know if that is theologically totally correct but it probably would not pass muster with the great scholars and theologians, who have their own ideas. But it is a nice way to think about it—that He was full of God as much as He could be while still being a man.

Let us go to John 1 and see John's take on it. Not fully, but we will see one of the ways he put it here. Very simple. John, he usually uses very simple words, but the concepts that he talks about are very deep.

John 1:14 And the Word [the Logos] became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

This goes along with what my dad said about having as much God crammed into a human brain as possible. Because He became flesh, this God being who has all power under the Father, and He becomes a sperm impregnated into Mary, and He develops into what we know as Jesus Christ.

But do you notice what he said? He came and He lived among us, He tabernacle among us, which is the actual word he uses here. But it says other people, we, His disciples, beheld His glory. Not all the glory of God had to be given up, but enough had to be given up so that He was not glorious as God, shining like the sun. All of that was muted to what a man could hold. The glory as of the only begotten of the Father. So it was recognizable once you had the Spirit, that this was God. He was God's Son on the earth.

But what was His glory composed of? The next words, "full of grace and truth." He embodied these two ideas: the grace of God and the truth of God. And in those two great things, the glory of God shone through Him. So we might, instead of saying the grace of God here, use the word "goodness." Christ went about doing good. He did good in everything and He followed the truth and spoke the truth all the time, and it was this, His example and His speech, that showed the glory of God. And just as an aside here, you guys are full of grace and truth as much as you allow it. And by your actions and your words you can show the glory of God too, because you are children of God as well. You are taking the same path that Jesus Christ took. A little different. You have not come to redeem mankind, but you have come to be an example of the Father and a witness.

Let us move on here. Notice John the Baptist's testimony just down the page here.

John 1:29-30 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is He of whom I said, 'After me comes a Man who is preferred before me, for He was before me.'

John 1:34 "And as I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God."

John recognized this very plainly, that Jesus was the Lamb of God whose job was to remove sin from the world as a man, the very Son of God the Father. A Son by literal impregnation of a human woman.

There is more to be seen here. Let us go back to Matthew 1.

Matthew 1:18-21 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: After His mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit [or by means of the Holy Spirit]. Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly. But while he thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins."

So right here the angel tells Joseph what this human being that Mary will bear is all about. That He was conceived through the Holy Spirit from God and that His name would be Jesus. Jesus means Savior. And that His job was to come to redeem His people.

Let us go on to Luke. If you wonder why Matthew and Luke put the birth accounts in, it was certainly not to make the world celebrate Christmas. It was to verify some of these things about His humanity. That He was born of a human woman, even though His Father is God, a spiritual entity, Jesus Himself was human. As I said, with as much God crammed in Him as possible.

Luke 1:26-31 Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. [notice that calling her virgin gets you to understand that there is something interesting here that links with prophecy] And having come in, the angel said to her, "Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!" But when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and considered what manner of greeting this was. [Nobody has called me that before. What's going on?] Then the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name Jesus."

Notice here: You shall conceive in your womb. She did not find Jesus under a cabbage leaf somewhere. This was a being, a human being that came from her body. These words are very important because people would make arguments to say He was not really human, but Luke and Matthew are leading us down this road to understand that He came into the world just like you and me.

Luke 1:32-35 "He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give 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." Then Mary said to the angel, "How can this be, since I do not know a man?" And the angel answered and said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; and therefore, also, the Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God."

All the pieces are being put in place in this dialogue between Mary and the angel. So we understand, yes, Jesus was born as the Son of God, He was placed in Mary's womb through the Holy Spirit, and He was to be born just like any other human. But because His Father was God the Father, then He would be called the Son of God. But we also know from many other places He was also called the Son of Man because He was the son of Mary and she was human. He was both Son of God and Son of Man. That was His unique nature, which made Him the perfect One to redeem us from our sins.

Let us go to Galatians 4.

Galatians 4:4-5 But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.

I do not want to get into all the adoption stuff. That would take this another hour or so.

But notice that Paul here makes sure we understand that He was born of a woman and He makes it very clear that He was human and that He was subject to the law like any other human. And these things always seem to mention the same things. He was born to redeem those who were under the law, who had sinned. They were under the law because they had sinned. The law only comes into motion, into effect when we sin. Otherwise, it is just a list of things that we should do or not do. But the law comes alive when we sin and we must then be redeemed and forgiven.

Let us go back to one more place to Genesis the third chapter, verses 14 and 15. This was after Adam and Eve's sin.

Genesis 3:14-15 So the Lord God said to the serpent: "Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; on your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel."

So right here at the beginning, at the foundation of the world, we have a prophecy that foresees that a Savior would come and He would win the battle over sin, over Satan. But notice that He is described as her Seed, the woman's Seed. So even in this very early chapter of the Bible, we understand that the Savior of the human race would be a man, someone born of a woman, but someone powerful enough and righteous enough to overcome Satan and be the Redeemer.

Let us go back to Matthew 1, where we were just a few minutes ago. Matthew the first chapter and we will read verse 23. Now, under the inspiration of God Matthew takes the prophecy of Emanuel from Isaiah 7:14 and applies it to Jesus.

Matthew 1:23 "Behold [he is quoting Isaiah 7:14], a virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel," which is translated, "God with us."

It is clear here, from even this prophecy, shows us these things that we need to understand. That He is born of a woman, a virgin here. He was a real baby, a real child, but He was the Son of God, her Son, the woman's Son, the woman's Seed, as well as God's Son. And He Himself was Immanuel—God with us—showing here in this prophecy, again, His human nature, His divine nature. That His origin is human and divine. And in that way, He can save us from our sins. He can be the Redeemer. He could be the propitiation, the perfect sacrifice for sin.

One commentator, James Burton Kaufman, writes, "The fact that the rabbis and the Pharisees had overlooked it is only an indication of spiritual blindness on their part. [He is talking about the connection between Isaiah 7:14 and Jesus.] This beautiful prophecy not only reveals the virgin birth, but also sets forth the nature of Christ."

So in just a few words in Isaiah 7:14, you have the prophecy and now the fulfillment here in Matthew of these very important points. Son of a woman, Son of God, save us from our sins. He is God.

I just wanted to show you by going through all those scriptures that these details are repeated over and over and over again so that we can understand that we have a Savior who qualified in all points to be our Redeemer to pay for our sins.

Let us go to the apostle Paul again in I Timothy 3.

I Timothy 3:16 And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness [and notice what he says the mystery of godliness is here]: God was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up in glory.

So Paul gives Timothy this bit of a creed here, this mystery of godliness revealed to the church. And the first thing on it was that God was manifested in the flesh. He was revealed in the flesh. He was shown to be in the flesh. We need to understand that we do not need to doubt because we have many, many witnesses to tell us that He was human, that He came in the flesh as God. It says here the witnesses were: the angels, the Gentiles, the whole world. And the kicker is that after He was resurrected, He was received up into glory. So this shows us again all those details in one way or another to show that there can be no mistake. Christ came in the flesh.

Now, this is a great mystery to many people in the world, that is, not all human beings understand this. But we with God's Spirit can understand it, especially theologically we can understand it because it is explained so often in the Book and we have so many witnesses to it. Other people may just not grasp it but we can because we have His Spirit.

Let us move forward and get some testimony from Peter. We have seen a lot from Paul and John, even some from Isaiah and Matthew and Luke. Now, let us see what Peter has to say.

I Peter 1:17-21 For if you call on the Father, who without partiality judges according to each one's work, conduct yourselves throughout the time in your sojourning here in fear [that is, godly fear], knowing that you were not redeemed [this is the subject here] with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers [that which you did before you were called and baptized], but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest [there is that word again, manifest or revealed] in these last times for you [specifically it was revealed for you, for your good, for your benefit] who through Him believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.

We do not need to have faith or hope in any other person or means. This is how the process works, he is saying here.

Now, this passage tells us several things that are self-evident for a fleshly being. If a fleshly being, a human being died for us, he would have to have these things, these qualities or these substances. One is mentioned starting in verse 19.

The first self-evident thing of humanity, proof if you will, that He was human is that He had blood. Spirit beings do not have blood. They are composed of spirit. But human beings—what about the blood? The life is in the blood. So Jesus Christ here, verse 19, "with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot." So He had blood that He could shed for our redemption, for our forgiveness.

Verse 20, "He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you [or revealed]." What is the difference between a spirit being and a human being in terms of your eyes? You can see a human being, you cannot see a spirit being, not unless that spirit being allows you to see Him. So Jesus was a human and one of the proofs is that He was visible, He could be seen. And as we will see, He could be felt, He could be heard. He had all of these attributes that we think of in terms of a physical being.

The third one is in the next verse, verse 21, "Who through Him believe in God, who raised Him from the dead." The third point that has to do with the difference between a spirit being, like God, and a human being is that a spirit being, like God, does not die. He has life. But a physical human being can die.

Those are the three things that Peter points out in this passage here so that we can have faith and hope in God because we do have a Redeemer who had blood, who could be seen and felt, handled, and who could die. And He did all these things. He did die and God raised Him from the dead and gave Him His glory back, gave Him all the glory that He had before He became a man—and more. Because now He is the Redeemer and the High Priest and the soon-coming King, He fulfilled all those things that He needed to do so that He could lead us, then, into the Kingdom and all the world too. And one day, still future, every knee will bow to Him.

We have gone through some of these. Let us get John again because John is so fun. He puts things in such a unique way. Let us go to I John 1, verses 1 through 3. We will also jump down to chapter 4, verses 2 and 3. Notice how John starts this. It is John that we saw in II John 7 that said many deceivers have gone out there and one of the ways you can figure out whether he is a deceiver or a true speaker is whether he says Christ came in the flesh or not. Right?

So notice how he starts his first epistle, because this was obviously a big problem during the time when both Greek and Jewish Gnosticism were beginning to come into vogue. And one of their main teachings was that Christ was a spirit, but Jesus was a person, a human being, and the spirit of Christ came into Jesus just when it needed to but fled when it became too terrible up on the cross. Docetism, a stupid gnostic idea. But there were other ideas floating around at the same time. And this was because the Neoplatonists and others had concluded that flesh is evil and it is basically the farthest thing from God that you could get. But spirit was good, it was pure. And so if Jesus had flesh, then that would disqualify Him because Jesus would then be impure. He would be evil.

So they work themselves up into a frenzy to try to explain this and they came up with this silly idea that the Spirit of God never got any evil from the physical body of Jesus. Jesus was the supposedly the human one and Christ was the the spiritual one. And like I said, pretty dumb, but a lot of people believed it. So this is how John decides he is going to start his epistle because he wants to make sure that people know that he is not one of those false prophets, false preachers that are preaching about this weird division between spirit and flesh.

I John 1:1-3 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life—the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us [How many times does he have to tell us the same thing over and over again?]—that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us [fellowship is based on the shared belief and the shared goal and the shared understanding of who our God is]; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.

So John goes out of his way here to let us know that he was a personal witness to the humanity of Jesus Christ. He saw Him, he heard Him, he touched Him, and everything checks out. He was really a human, that life—that eternal life—was manifested in Jesus Christ, in this world for anyone to see.

I John 4:2-3 By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.

Now, this statement here in chapter 4 is quite pointed. Those who have the Spirit of God, preachers, lay members, it does not matter. Those who have the Spirit of God will confess or believe that Jesus Christ came as a fleshly human being. That is one of the foundational things that they have to believe, that Jesus Christ was a human being. And those who say He did not have flesh or come in the flesh are not of God.

To say that Jesus did not come in the flesh undermines God's very plan of redemption, His plan of salvation. And what it does, it causes the sacrifice of Jesus Christ to be of no effect. If Jesus Christ came as God only as a spirit, He could not have paid for human sin. He had to be human to pay for human sin. And of course, the God part allowed Him to be perfect, to be sinless as a man and pay for our sins.

I had another idea there. I just wanted to clear up what John says. This is one way to understand what he says here in verse 3 "And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world." What does he mean by this?

Well, he does not mean that it is exclusively this idea of Christ coming in the flesh that they get wrong. What he is saying basically is the spirit of the antichrist is teaching and believing a false Christ, changing the nature of Christ in some way. The spirit of the antichrist is the spirit of "against Christ." So the way that they show that they are against Christ is that their preaching, their philosophy, their conception of God is wrong, is untrue. So you can tell whether somebody is Christian or antichrist by their conception of Christ.

I hope I have explained that enough. It does not just mean this particular one, this Docetic idea. It could be any misconception or deceptive teaching about Christ that is antichrist. He is saying only those with the Spirit of God have a true conception of Christ. Those who believe a false conception of Christ are antichrist because they are not worshipping the true Christ, they are worshipping something else out of their own head. You understand what I mean? I am getting a few quizzical looks out there. But we do not have to narrowly define antichrist as only those who believe that Christ did not come in the flesh. It is broader than that. It includes that but it could be, you know, that Christ is an alien from the planet Gwakigo out in some other galaxy or whatever. That is a misconception of Christ that is antichrist.

Let us go to Romans 5 and just wrap this up.

Romans 5:6-11 For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. [So He accomplished His purpose of being the Redeemer.] For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dared to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. [That is, the wrath, justice of God that demands payment for sin.] For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have now received the reconciliation.

This is a finished work. This is a work that Jesus has done and it cannot be taken back. He has given Himself, His body, His blood, as the payment, the price for our forgiveness and for our salvation. That is done. And it is a wonderful thing that He accomplished this, yes, but He did it all by fulfilling everything that He needed to do to be that sacrifice. And we can have great joy and appreciation for what He has done.

So you can be sure that Jesus Christ was born into this world as a human being like us in every way. But because He was also God, the Lord of the Old Testament, our Creator, we can have both forgiveness of sin and eternal life.

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