Who is Jesus Christ?
This is the most important question that any person will ever face. The deepest joys we will ever know in this life and our very hope of eternal life depend on the proper answer to that question. Because this is true, we may be sure that the primary activity of Satan will be to obscure as much as possible the true nature of the person of our blessed Saviour, the Lord Jesus.
In all of the history of the Church, the most grievous heresies have been those which have advocated a view of the person of Christ other than that which is taught in the Word of God. Satan knows that an improper understanding of the person and the work of Christ makes salvation impossible.
The attack on the understanding of the nature of Christ began in the early days of the Church. The intellectually disposed Colossians began to be infected by a heretical view called Gnosticism. This doctrinal error taught that a human approached the Godhead through progressive steps of higher and higher angelic beings who bridged the gap between man and God. It taught that Christ was one of these angelic beings who was more than man but less than God. It advocated the worship of these angelic beings and included worshipping Christ as merely a part of the duty of a Christian.
The Apostle Paul, knowing the peril the Colossians were in of turning to a religion other than the faith of Jesus Christ, wrote them a most earnest epistle. He warned. "Beware, lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily" (Colossians 2:8-9; 2:18-19).
These people prided themselves in possessing knowledge. Paul told them that knowledge was not enough; they must have "full knowledge" (epignosis). He insisted that this full knowledge was the knowledge of the person of Jesus Christ Himself. The Scripture therefore insists that in worshipping Jesus Christ, we are worshipping God Himself. "He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father" (John 5:23).
Later in the history of the Church there grew up another sub-Christian point of view called Arianism. This was one of the first heresies of the Church, and it was declared so because it denied the true deity of our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.
The advocacy of Arianism by the satanic opponents of Christianity produced great doctrinal clarity in the ranks of the early Christians. These confrontations lead them to the greatly reinforced conviction that one's attitude towards the nature of Jesus Christ is primary to his Christianity. A false view of the Saviour produced a false religion which presented no salvation at all. This conviction lead the Early Church fathers to earnestly contend for the faith. They knew what was at stake. The issue was the survival of Christianity itself.
The central truth of Christianity is therefore related to the question, "What think ye of Christ?" The Christian is commanded to test the spirits of these suspicious alternative messengers. The doctrinal test of those spirits is very clear. (Read 1 John 4:1-3). It is clear then that the test of a true representative of the Gospel has to do with his definition of the person and the work of Jesus Christ. The central doctrine of Christianity is Christology, the doctrine of the nature of the person of Jesus Christ.
Christianity affirms the true deity and true humanity of our blessed Saviour, which deity and humanity is conjoined together in one personality on the basis of the hypostatic union. By this we understand that Jesus Christ was not partly man and partly God on the basis of some percentage or formula. He is true humanity. He is true deity in human form. The characteristic of biblical faith is that it has a proper understanding of the nature of the person of Christ.
There are those today who claim to be Christians who deny the true deity of Christ. Religious liberalism can be judged as heretical on the basis of its denial of the sure deity of the blessed Son of God. Liberalism is not Christianity, it is a heretical, anti-Christian view, being defective in its view of the deity of Christ.
There are religions that deny the true humanity of the Saviour. Christian Science, as an instance, denies the existence of the physical, claiming the essential substance of the universe is mind. If the physical does not exist, then deity did not become true humanity in the person of Christ. This is the doctrine of antichrist, according to Scripture.
The thoughtful Christian will carefully analyze the doctrine of a cult that is being pressed upon him paying special attention to the Christology of that alternative religious message. The message that in effect declares Christ to be the automaton of the Father and not a real person in Himself, is a cult. The message that denies the virgin birth of Christ, holding Him to be merely the natural son of Joseph and Mary, is a cult. An examination of the doctrinal base of any religion in the light of its views on the person and the work of Jesus Christ can be most revealing.
The question, "What think ye of Jesus?" is only answered correctly by the believing Christian. The Christian gladly answers, "Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of the living God, God incarnate in the form of human flesh. He is the Son of man, the only Saviour of the world, the Author and Finisher of our faith, who, through His death on the cross, provides redemption for all who believe in Him. He is the One who died for our sins, rose again on the third day who lives to make intercession for us before His Father and who one day will come in His glorious returning to judge the quick and the dead at His appearing in His kingdom. He is Lord and God, and in Him alone we have life, and life more abundantly."
Closely related to the fatal heresy of defective Christology is a denial of the trinity of the Godhead. The only true God is one God, eternally existent in three persons, Father, Son. and Holy Spirit. Each person of the Godhead is co-equal and co-eternal with the others. This view is not held by the Jehovah Witnesses. Many cults are blind as to the nature of God and in their theology deny the deity of Jesus Christ or the deity of the Holy Spirit. An improper faith in the only true God makes impossible any real hope of salvation.
These critical doctrinal problems concerning the nature of the Godhead should come to each Christian as a new reminder of the need for Christian scholarship. For too long we have been influenced by foolish leaders who say, "We don't need doctrine; we just need experience!"
In the same vein is the mindless claim, "We don't preach doctrine, we just preach Christ!" Preachers who talk like this need to move up from their spiritual kindergartens and realize the shameful neglect of their own personal scholarship and the consequent neglect of doctrinal preaching to their people. The cults will have a field day in exploiting experience-orientated saints who have no time for the study of Christian doctrine.
(from Know the Marks of Cults - the 12 Basic Errors of False Religion by Dave Breese)
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