ROMANS UNWRAPPED 10

"THE GOSPEL OF GOD...........CONCERNING HIS SON, JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD..."




                          WHO IS HE?

Who is this one who brings, nay who is GOOD NEWS TO THE ENTIRE WORLD, to me, to you, to everyone?   Just who is Jesus Christ?; for certain there is no one like Him in the entire universe.


In Romans 1 v 3-4, some of the answers are given. Today we shall consider v3, it's time to get excited folks, we are about to look at one who is unique,  beyond human imagination;  the people of his day were astonished at Him, at His words, at His grace, at His miracles, at His suffering; there was no one like Him, then or since; and the story never ends...........He is risen, He is coming, He will reign in glorious dominion and every eye shall see Him and every knee shall bow to Him and every tongue shall confess that HE IS LORD.........yes, every eye, every knee, every tongue, of everyone who has ever lived, including you and me.

1)  HE IS GOD'S SON----His deity

2)  HE BECAME ----------His humility

3)  FLESH ------------------His humanity

4)  SEED OF DAVID -----His royalty

Let us consider each of these in turn, but, firstly putting them together we now see that Jesus Christ is God, that He humbled Himself to do a task, that He became a real human being, and that as a human being He will rule the world!

1) HIS DEITY       He is God's Son. The Jews understood His claim that God was his Father was in fact saying that He was equal with God.          John 5 v 18.
 He is described as "the only begotten"            John 1 v 18; John 3 v 16, the word used is monogenes
"pertaining to being the only one of its kind, or class, -  UNIQUE.

He existed before the world began            John 1 v1
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God;    John 17 v 5 "And now O Father glorify thou me with the glory that I had with thee before the world was.             1 Peter 1 vs 19-20
 "Christ........who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world.".........and many, many more.He created all things,   John 1 v 3  "All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made."   Colossians 1 v 16  Paul expands this to say "for in Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through Him and for Him"

"IN HIM WERE ALL THINGS CREATED " - He is creation's ARCHITECT.

"THROUGH HIM WERE ALL THINGS CREATED" - He is creation's AGENT.

"FOR HIM WERE ALL THINGS CREATED" - He is creation's HEIR.

The above is only a tiny sample of this amazing biblical truth that Jesus is God.

2) HIS HUMILITY      "He became"  -   For us He changed His outward appearance, though not His essence. Phillipians 2 v6-7  "Who being in the form of God - - - He took upon Himself  the form of a servant."   He did so to fulfil a task agreed between Himself and His Father and came to this earth on a mission to deal with the problem of human sin.   Galatians 4 v 4  - "When the fullness of time was come, God sent forth His Son."   He exchanged the glory of heaven for the shame of earth.   He exchanged the comfort of heaven for the rigours of earth.   He exchanged the praise of heaven for the mockery of earth, He exchanged the love of heaven for the hate of earth.   The Sovereign became the servant, the Eternal stepped into time, He stooped from walking sapphire stones of heaven, to treading the dusty streets of earth, such humility as has never been witnessed.   He became something other than what He was because He had a task to perform.

3) HIS HUMANITY    It says in   Romans 1 v 3    "According to the flesh"  - He was a real man, with a human body and a human soul and a human spirit just like we have.   He was not an apparition - a ghost in a body, He was not any kind of different flesh, He was born into this world like you and I are - "born of a woman"   Galatians 4 v 4  He grew up with his parents in Nazareth and worked in the family business until the age of thirty before going into public ministry.   In the words of John the apostle   John 1 v 14   "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us"  He knew all the limitations of the human experience, apart from illness because He had no sin.   He possessed miraculous powers, but only ever used them to help others, not once did He perform a miracle to save Himself but He was called "THE SON OF MAN " the greatest man who ever lived, man as God intended him to be, man whom God recreated through His Son Jesus Christ by taking away the ravages of the fall.

4) ) HIS ROYALTY    "He came of the seed of David" -   Every Jew would understand what the seed of David would mean.   They understood the promise given by God to David   2nd Samuel 7 v 12- 16   "........ I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom.   He shall build an house for MY NAME, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever.................and thine house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever before thee; thy throne shall be established for ever"
By this every Jew knew that the seed of David signified the One in whom God would establish his eternal kingdom with his people reigning with Him.   This is the fulfilment of that.

Jesus Christ is the seed of David according to the flesh.   We look just a little deeper and we go back to Genesis 1 v 26    "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion."

On the very day of creation God declared that a man with his bride would rule the world.   This is exactly what we have here, the man Jesus Christ, with His bride the church, in universal dominion  for ever.   The force of this will be seen shortly in the commission God has given to the church with all the authority and certainty that comes from a God whose purposes in the hands of Jesus Christ will not fail.   What He declared at the beginning will come to pass.


                                        MAKE SURE YOU ARE PART OF THIS!

Tomorrow we will look at His resurrection.