The Virgin Birth, Part 4

THE VIRGIN BIRTH, PART 4

By Dr. Stephen Jones: Aug 09, 2019

Blog Post Date: 8-14-2019

Jesus was unique in that He was the first to be begotten by God Himself through the Holy Spirit. This alone set Him apart from the rest of humanity. It thus requires us to ponder the implications of His virgin birth in our theology about His nature, His ministry, purpose, and ultimately what He actually accomplished.

If we understand the goal, we may more easily find the path that leads in that direction. The goal is briefly stated in Acts 3:25, 26,

²⁵ It is to you who are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, “And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” ²⁶ For you first, God raised up his Servant and sent Him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways.

So Jesus was sent “to bless you,” and this is defined, not in terms of wealth and prosperity, but in terms of inner cleansing. He was sent to turn “every one of you from your wicked ways.” The question, of course, is whether or not He has succeeded or will yet succeed. Most Christians today read this to mean that Jesus was sent to make the way possible so that men could turn if they were so inclined.

In other words, the ultimate success of Christ’s mission yet depends upon the will of man. The will of God can be fulfilled only if the will of man cooperates. Unfortunately, very few people actually take advantage of the remedy for sin that Jesus procured on the cross. Hence, by this view, the realistic goal of history is to save a few and lose the many.

But the passage above shows that God intent to bless us is, in turn, to fulfill “the covenant which God made with your fathers,” Abraham in particular. The covenant with Abraham was a prime example of the New Covenant, which was established even prior to the Old Covenant at Mount Sinai (Galatians 3:17, 18). Any covenant where man makes a vow to God is part of the Old Covenant; any covenant where God makes a vow or promise is part of the New Covenant.

Hence, the promise to Abraham was part of the New Covenant in that it was made by God. God did not say, “I promise to make a way so that you can fulfill your promise.” No, He took the responsibility upon Himself to make it happen—not merely to help us make it happen. Whoever makes a promise is the one responsible to fulfill it.

So the New Covenant is fully dependent on the will of God and His ability to keep His word in spite of all opposition. If the opposition succeeds in any way, the one making the promise fails to keep His promise. That is why no one should make promises that they cannot keep.

Therefore, when God promised to bless all families of the earth, He took upon Himself the responsibility to turn every one of us from our wicked ways. Because we have New Covenant faith, which is faith in His ability to keep His promises (Romans 4:21), we believe that God will actually succeed in causing all men to repent, so that He can be the Savior of the world.

The Pattern

Christ was born in Bethlehem in order to that the promise of God could be fulfilled. Likewise, He had to be born of a virgin, fathered by God-seed, in order to set the pattern for all to become sons of God. He was the Pattern Son. Patterns are used to create duplicates. We are duplicated, one by one, each in his own order, either in our lifetime on earth or in the age to come. But in the end, “every knee will bow” (Philippians 2:10, 11), and all things will be subjected to Christ’s rule (1 Corinthians 15:27, 28; Hebrews 2:8).

In other words, by His infinite wisdom and the power of His own will, He really will succeed in fulfilling His promise to turn everyone from their wicked ways. The process involves the fire of the Holy Spirit, which burns the chaff from our lives (Matthew 3:12), whether it is applied in this lifetime or in the age to come (Revelation 20:13, 14).

Just as the Holy Spirit came upon Mary to beget Christ in her, so also does the Holy Spirit come upon us to beget Christ in us. The main difference is that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin from the start, whereas we ourselves were begotten first by mortal seed from Adam and only later by the incorruptible seed of our heavenly Father (1 Peter 1:23).

The New Breed

That which was conceived in us by the seed of the living and abiding word is “Christ in you” (Colossians 1:27). It is Christ, because, like Jesus Christ, this embryonic “man” or “self” has both a heavenly Father and an earthly mother. God is the Father, and we are the mother. Or we may also say that heaven and earth have come together as parents to produce a new breed that is unique in the universe.

Each of us, being a single person, is a product of two parents. Speaking naturally, having two parents does not make any of us two people, nor do our parents give us two natures. We each have one nature that contains characteristics of both parents.

Hopefully, the best characteristics of each parent has been passed down to each child, but alas, corruption since Adam has passed down mortality and corruption as well.

In the case of Jesus’ conception, since mortality and its resulting corruption comes through the male seed, this was not passed down to Him. That is the most important reason for the virgin birth. The same is true for all sons of God, although in our case, we must contend with the old man for the rest of our lives. We are set free from the old man only when the sentence of death upon Adam and his children has been fulfilled.

Yet meanwhile, the life of the old man may be interrupted by the new man that is begotten in us by the Holy Spirit. At that point, two “men” exist, but we ourselves—that is, our conscious identity or “self”—can be just one or the other. The divine plan is for us to shift our identity from the old man to the new, reckoning the old man to be dead (Romans 6:11 KJV). By reckoning the old man to be dead, we ourselves do not die because we have also reckoned ourselves to be the new man.

In essence, we may crucify the old man without fear of death, knowing that we are being set free from the curse that has been passed down to all men. We simply change our identity, leaving the mortal, corruptible, old man to die, so that we “might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).

This is something Jesus did not have to do, and that is one of the main differences between Him and us. He was a Son of God from the day He was conceived in Mary; we are not conceived until later in life. Nonetheless, the process follows the same pattern.

How Many Persons are You?

The new breed is not merely spiritual but also physical. The sons of God—including Jesus—have two parents and therefore have characteristics of each. That is why Jesus was both the Son of God and the Son of Man yet was not two persons. His flesh came through Mary, but His spirit came through His Heavenly Father.

One might argue that Paul talked about us being two persons: old man and new man. But if we were to compare ourselves to Jesus, the comparison must be done properly. The Holy Spirit begat Jesus Christ to produce just one Man. The Holy Spirit begat Christ in us as well, and that Christ is not two men either. The old man is part of the soul, whereas the new creation man is the only person residing in our spirit. The new man becomes the “real you” when you declare a change of identity. That new man, once begotten, begins to grow and develop, as any embryo does, and it will not actually be “born” until the feast of Tabernacles is fulfilled.

The birth of this new man will again be like Christ in His post-resurrection self. Jesus Christ was given all authority in heaven and in earth, because He had genetics, as it were, in both realms. Therefore, He could go to heaven to minister to the Father or come into the earthly realm to minister to His disciples at will.

In the biblical prophetic types, this was pictured in the garments of the priests. They were to minister to God in linen when they went into the Holy Place, but when ministering to the people in the outer court (earthly realm), they had to change into their woolen garments (Ezekiel 44:16, 17, 18, 19). This tells us that no son of God may go to heaven as flesh beings, nor can a son of God leave the heavenly realm to minister on earth without first putting on a flesh body.

The new creation man is yet developing, but it is the real you—your identity. When fully brought to birth at Tabernacles, the embryonic development process will be complete. Each son of God will then be “a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13). Paul tells us that the job of the five-fold ministry listed in verse 11 is to feed the body of Christ with proper food (life-giving truth) until it reaches full maturity.

Gnostic Docetism

The first ones to deviate from the truth were the Gnostics as early as the first century. They did not understand the principle of Sonship, they defined Him in docetic ways, splitting Him into two Beings. Their view was based on the dualistic view which said that spirit was good and that matter was evil. With that viewpoint, they could not admit that Jesus’ conscious self resided in a fleshly body. The body, after all, was “evil.” In fact, they could not accept the idea that the Holy Spirit would taint Himself by indwelling “evil” human flesh.

Hence, they denied that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh (1 John 4:2, 3), claiming that He only appeared to inhabit flesh. They separated the spiritual Christ from his physical body, turning Christ into two persons. The truth is that Jesus was one Person who was a tripartite man like all of us: spirit, soul, and body. But being tripartite did not mean He was three Persons occupying the same space. By splitting Jesus into two persons, one spiritual and the other physical (human), the Gnostic view soon elevated the spiritual Christ to the point where His humanity was lost entirely. This defeated the whole purpose of Sonship, where God intended to marry heaven and earth to bring forth not only the Son of God but also many sons.

Gnostic theology taught that the material earth was evil, so they denied that a good God would ever do such a thing. Their view was the very opposite of biblical teaching. One of the earliest principles in Scripture is that of marriage (Genesis 2:24). The goal was for heaven and earth to be in the unity of New Covenant marriage (Revelation 21:2; Matthew 6:10). But the Gnostic/Greek doctrine insisted that such a marriage was the cause of original sin and that the only solution was to separate the two into distinct domains—in essence, to divorce them.

At its core, the two worldviews begin on opposite foundations, and they end with opposite conclusions. Everything in the middle is just more detail about the process or path to the goal.

We see, then, that Jesus’ virgin birth was an event where spirit and matter came together in marriage to bring forth a new breed. We may call Him a God-Man, if we understand the term properly and not try to split Him into separate persons. We must think in terms of marriage, where every self is the product of two parents (except when cloned, which is unnatural). We must rid ourselves of the Greek worldview of the great divorce, which leads only to theological disaster.

The Virgin Birth Part 3

THE VIRGIN BIRTH, PART 3

By Dr. Stephen Jones: Aug 07, 2019

Blog Post Date: 8-9-2019

The first century church was established by Jesus and the original apostles. When they passed from the scene, a second generation of leaders arose whose worldview was Hebrew.

I say Hebrew, rather than Jewish, in order to distinguish between Christ’s understanding of the law from the traditions of men in popular Judaism. The traditions of men were the understanding of the rabbis, much of which synchronized with Christ’s own teaching, but in some key areas also differed with Him.

So I use the term Hebrew view to describe one’s view of the law and prophets that aligns with Jesus’ own view. I normally use the term Jewish to describe a popular view in Judaism that contradicts Jesus’ teaching. That is, of course, an inadequate definition for general use, because much in Judaism itself was also Hebrew, even by my own definitions. Much of rabbinic teaching was genuine truth. Nonetheless, I would be reluctant to put Jesus into the camp of Judaism, if for no other reason, Judaism rejected Jesus as the Messiah. By demanding His crucifixion and by persecuting His followers thereafter, they specifically distinguished themselves from the new way that later came to be known as Christianity.

It is clear from history that the religious leaders of Judaism violently opposed the Christians, and if it had not been for Roman intervention in those early days, the Christians might have been but a small footnote in Jewish history. Not only the book of Acts but their own writings reflect this hostility. The plain fact is that the violent conflict between Jews and Christians started with Jewish persecution—not the other way around. If Judaism had been open-minded enough to embrace alternative views, the church might have remained a sect of Judaism, and the conflict may have been limited to doctrinal disputes.

In later years, after the church was given power and influence in the government of Rome, Christians often took vengeance on Jews in characteristically unchristian ways that Jesus never condoned. The abused son became the abuser, as so often happens, perpetuating the problem instead of making the world a better place.

Unfortunately, the Holy Spirit’s power and demonstration largely died out by the second century, leaving the majority of Christians in a state of carnality. Christianity became a religion rather than a way of life. Christian teaching shifted its focus from identifying with the “new man” to improving or reforming the “old man,” hoping that the flesh would qualify to receive the inheritance of sons. Such is the character and goal of religion.

The Greek Worldview

Even as Judaism was based on law as the standard of perfection, Greek culture was obsessed with the root idea of “the perfect man” through its own philosophies. Classical Greek art and beautiful sculpture set forth their ideal body forms. Philosophies sought wisdom to perfect their spiritual souls, as they called them, so that they might attain their place among the fixed stars.

These ideas were rooted in the culture itself, and their Hellenism even affected Judaism itself, particularly the Sadducees. Greek wisdom originated in the souls of men, which they mistakenly believed to be spiritual. Hebrew wisdom originated with God via Moses (Deuteronomy 4:6), but few had the capacity to receive it with spiritual eyes and ears, so it was interpreted by the carnal, soulish mind of rabbis, who, though often brilliant and educated, fell short of the divine truth.

Neither group appears to have had a firm grasp of the difference between soul and spirit. Certainly, no Old Testament book presented a clear teaching on the subject. The Apostle Paul presented an alternative to both Jewish and Greek teaching by telling us that true wisdom came from “the spirit of the man” within (1 Corinthians 2:11). One’s spirit, enlightened by the Holy Spirit that indwells our temple, has begotten a new man through whom true revelation of the wisdom of God is imparted and passed on, to some degree, to the willing soul.

The Church’s Adoption of the Greek Worldview

Because the Church was persecuted in Judea and Jerusalem, the apostles and many other believers fled to other parts of the empire. The Greeks soon made up the majority of the Church. Without adequate teaching, it did not take long for them to overwhelm Paul’s tripartite view of man’s nature as well as his contrast between the old man and the new man. Though Paul laid down all the foundations of the truth of Sonship, this truth was one of the first to be lost in the torrent of Greek thought patterns.

In the second and third centuries, it was common for Church leaders to evangelize the Greeks by adapting Christianity to Greek culture and its philosophers. To be sure, they presented Jesus and the apostles as superior to the philosophers, but nonetheless, they emphasized their similarities rather than their differences. Some of this was positive, of course, for we can always learn from others, regardless of their viewpoints. But the downside was that they soon interpreted Paul through Greek lenses, which hid some key elements of Pauline teaching.

It has only been in recent decades that theologians have begun to explore the Hebrew roots of the Church, perhaps coinciding with the modern Zionist movement which drew attention to this problem. Unfortunately, much of the shift has been toward Jewish roots rather than toward Hebrew roots, since many have not recognized the difference. Hence, the alternative to the Hellenism has often been a form of Christian Judaism. Many churches have thus reverted, not only to a study of the divine law but to Old Covenant applications of the law.

When combined with the Dispensationalist view of prophecy, which, in its classic form, presents the future Kingdom in Old Covenant terms. This reversion to Judaism (with Jesus added to it as an appendage) has again raised the problem of Judaization that Paul strenuously opposed. Such churches have not fully appreciated the third alternative given in Paul’s writings. The result is that while they may have been dehellenized, they have become Judaized. They have yet to discover the real distinction between soul and spirit, old and new man, and the basis of Sonship.

On September 12, 2006 Pope Benedict XVI gave a speech to the University of Regensburg in Germany, where he had previously served as a professor of theology. He bemoaned the “dehellenization” of Christianity and praised pagan Greek philosophers, even so far as equating the ideas of Socrates to God’s revelation to Moses at the burning bush. He said, in part,

“Biblical faith, in the Hellenistic period, encountered the best of Greek thought at a deep level, resulting in a mutual enrichment. The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance.”

(Faith, Reason, and the University, Memories and Reflections, quoted in The God of Jesus, by Kegan A. Chandler, pp. 269, 270)

In this, he openly admits that the Greek philosophers played an important role in developing Church theology. This would not have been a problem if the church leaders had had a firm grasp of Pauline theology. But because they did not understand Paul, they allowed the pagan Greek philosophers to define Paul’s terms. They should have understood that Paul was using Greek terms to express Hebrew equivalents that had been set forth in the Septuagint Greek translation of the Old Testament.

Religious Creeds vs. Spiritual Revelation

In the expulsion of the church from Judea into a Greek arena, much was lost in translation. At the forefront was the loss of some core Christian concepts such as how to become a son of God. This problem, in turn, led to a wider problem in their attempt to understand the nature of THE Son of God, Jesus Christ. From the fourth century onward, the church struggled to understand and to express how Jesus was both Son of God and Son of man. Frankly, they never could resolve this, although their creeds were enforced by the power of the state and dissenters were threatened with excommunication, death, and even torture.

But truth that needs such enforcement is hardly self-evident or even understandable to the average person. When the precise wording of creeds became unintelligible to the masses—and even to the bishops and scholars themselves—the people were told to accept the creeds by faith and not to use reason. Hence, Christianity soon became a mystery religion, having secrets that only the religious superiors could hope to know. But controversies still remained among the church leaders even unto this day.

Perhaps if they had understood Paul’s dissertation in the second chapter of First Corinthians about the source of true wisdom, they would have elevated men who were spiritually minded rather than soulish men who were merely religious. Their actions speak for themselves. Historians of all denominations have looked back on those tumultuous times with horror, as ambitious bishops, motivated by their jealousy to maintain power, perpetrated unspeakable atrocities upon their opponents. Men were killed for failing to confess the precise wording of creeds that were determined by majority vote, even when majority votes were obtained by threats or bribery.

Paul defines carnality and spiritual immaturity in 1 Corinthians 3:1-3,

¹ And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to babes in Christ. ² I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able, ³ for you are still fleshly. For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and are you not walking like mere men?

Are we, then, to accept such creeds from these church councils as if “God moves in mysterious ways,” using carnal men, by virtue of their religious title, to reveal divine truth? Personally, I believe it is better to believe God than religious men. I am hopeful that at the second coming of Christ, we will have a new beginning. In fact, I believe that the church creeds will be swept away, and real truth will remain standing.

For that to happen, we need someone of sufficient stature to establish truth, to make it understandable, and to make the Unknown God knowable again. Such truth will be proven by its peaceable fruit of righteousness. Moses had problems in his day, but for the most part he had sufficient stature to command the respect of the Israelites—even when they rebelled against him. Jesus Christ, too, had problems in His day, but most Christians give Him honor (or at least lip service), even if they rebel against His teaching.

We need another appearance of Christ to settle matters of truth and to bring the Kingdom to a new level in the age to come. For my part, I will be asking Him for a full dissertation on the path to Sonship, so that all will know how to become a son of God.