Finding Jesus in the Bible…So We Can Follow Him in Life
Bible Reading Plans
- Plan One: New Testament Only
- Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
- Plan Three: New Testament + History
- Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3
Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.
Extras
Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute
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Christ Is God
Chapter 21 – The Unanswered Question
Further to all those epistle salutations you saw in the previous chapter, consider the vision given to Stephen just before he was martyred for his faith. We’ll begin at the point he was finishing his testimony before the religious elites of Jerusalem:
Acts 7:51 “You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit; you are doing just as your fathers did.
Acts 7:52 “Which one of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? They killed those who had previously announced the coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become;
Acts 7:53 you who received the law as ordained by angels, and yet did not keep it.”
Acts 7:54 Now when they heard this, they were cut to the quick, and they began gnashing their teeth at him.
Acts 7:55 But being full of the Holy Spirit, he gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God;
Acts 7:56 and he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened up and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”
I trust that you immediately recognize this scene. It is the one portrayed in Psalm 110:1 – the prophecy that Jesus fulfilled when He rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. And it’s the picture reinforced by those 21 epistle salutations.
The only thing we see different in this portrayal from all the epistle greetings is 1) another synonym for Jesus (“the Son of Man”), and 2) Jesus standing instead of sitting. Otherwise, it’s the same two beings – God and Christ – in the same ranked order. This consistent picture is portraying the way things were at the top of reality 1) before creation of the heavens and earth, 2) throughout Old Testament times, and 3) after Jesus was raised from the dead.
So, we have all this data from the New Testament showing the 1st-century church fully embracing a clear view of God and Christ that carries more detail than what the Old Testament had conveyed. It’s still about one God, but magnifies Christ beyond anything we saw in the Old Testament.
Given all that I have put before you, you may wonder why I titled this book Christ is God. The evidence I’ve put before you has elevated the status of Christ greatly from the faint hope that He was in the wake of Adam’s and Eve’s fall. But it is not pointing to Christ being God. On the contrary, it repeatedly portrays Him as being under God’s authority…in verses such as this:
1 Corinthians 11:3 But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ.
And beyond all that, even Jesus Himself declared His Father to be the one true God.
John 17:3 “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
My answer to all that is that we have not yet examined the Second Coming. That’s where you’ll see everything fall into place. But we have one more step before we can take that step.
The New Testament revelation that there had been a pre-creation period before Old Testament times helped explain the fulfillment of Psalm 110:1. It made sense that Jesus was returning to the place from which He had come. But it also raised a very important question: What was Jesus doing during the 4,000 years between creation week and His being made flesh in Mary’s womb?
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