The Hypostatic Union
1 John 2v22
3rd July 2020
In our study of 1 John 2v18-27, We've taken some time to establish that:
- The last hour includes the time when Jesus and the 12 apostles were on earth.
- John is the only Bible writer who mentions the antichrist by name. He says that the antichrist is coming but nothing about who he will be.
- The antichrists are those people who leave a true church to join a false church, which teaches a false gospel.
Verses 18 and 19 talk about the antichrists, and verses 20-21 talk about the true Christians, saying that they all know the truth.
John now goes back to talking about the antichrists. He says:
1 John2v22
Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is
the antichrist — denying the Father and the Son.
The Bible is completely true, but perverse people can pervert anything, including Scripture. People will lie about God. Particularly, Satan and the antichrists, the false teachers who claim to be Christians, will lie about the things of God. And some Christians will unwittingly listen to and believe some of the lies.
The greatest lies, the most damaging lies, the most blasphemous lies, are lies about Jesus. Satan is a liar. In John 8:44, Jesus calls Satan, "the father of lies". He would love to deceive you about Jesus. Antichrists, leaders and attenders of false churches, will teach you falsehoods about Jesus.
Jesus is the "Christ", the "Messiah", the "Anointed One". He's the only Christ, prophesied many times in the Old Testament. Both Satan and the antichrists want you to believe He isn't.
There are many lies about Jesus. Some say He isn't truly God. Some say He isn't truly a man. Some say He didn't die on the cross. Some say the "God" part of Jesus descended on Him after He was born, and left Him before He was crucified, and so didn't have to suffer. Some produce a perversion of the Bible with just enough alterations to throw doubt on some aspect of Jesus's person, or His death, or his ministry, just enough untruth to hide the Gospel and make it ineffective in the hearts of those entrapped by their lies. Thanks be to God that He is able to blow all the smoke away, and present even fallen people like you and me with the truth, clear and simple, so we can believe.
It wasn't easy for the very early church to define exactly who Jesus was, and for the first 400 years there were many heresies about Jesus but, at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD, the church agreed that Jesus Christ is "the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man", that He is "consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Manhood", He is "to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of the natures being in no wise taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons".
This is called the Chalcedonian Declaration. Its words can be difficult to grasp, but it just means that Jesus Christ is one person with two natures: a complete divine nature and a complete human nature, and these two natures cannot be separated. The theological name for this co-existence of Christ's two natures in one person is the "Hypostatic Union".
That definition has remained unaltered in the church ever since, because it's the truth about Jesus and, once you write it down and think about it, it's obviously the truth. The Holy Spirit guides us into all truth.
To anybody who's wondering why we're bothering with all this difficult doctrinal stuff, let me say that it's vitally important because Jesus couldn't share our humanity without becoming a man, and he couldn't pay for our sins if He wasn't God.