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Week	Date	Topic	Student Notes	Audio	PowerPoint	Teacher notes
2	2/18	Biblical Christianity	Notes	MP3	PPT	Notes

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Chapter Summary

Levels of Doctrine

The Basic Outline

I. The Nature of Jesus

II. The Fallen Nature of Man

III. The Authority of Scripture

Homework: Read and Review

Three Articles on Theological Essentials:

• Not all doctrines are at the same level: How to make some distinction and determine a doctrine’s importance[1]
• Theological Triage[2]
• Should Christians cooperate with those with whom they disagree theologically?[3]

Intro: The Plumb line of Scripture

“In essentials: unity; in non-essentials: liberty, in all things: charity (love)”

“They are the main and the plain things… which form the line of demarcation between the kingdom of Christ and the Kingdome of the Cults.”

The Essence of the argument of this book are from 1 Corinthians 15:3-4:

I. The Nature of Jesus

1. Duel Nature: Fully God and Fully Man[4]

1. Jesus is God
2. The Bible clearly teaches that Jesus is God

John 1:1; 14

1. Jesus referred to himself as God

John 8:58-59 (note Exodus 3:14)

C.S. Luis – trilemma

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

– Mere Christianity

Note: DA Carson on What is Jesus’ Essential Nature? From his book on the gagging of God Here[5]

“We need to pause to reflect a little on the ways in which not only the Evangelists, but other New Testament writers as well, pick up on Jesus’ unique status. We ought not confine ourselves to the relatively small number of passages in which Jesus is explicitly called “God” (e.g.. John 1:1, 18; 20:28; Titus 3:4-5). We ought to remember a wealth of other phenomena: the proclamation of the Son of God’s last word and the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being in the prologue of Hebrews (1:1-3), [not to mention the angels who are said to worship Him] an epistle which also insists on the humanity of Christ, both as a witnessed reality and as a theological necessity…; Paul’s penchant for taking verses from the Old Testament that refer to Yahweh and applying them without hesitation to Jesus; Peter’s capacity to do the same thing (cf. 1 Peter 3:14 and Isa 8:12-13); Paul’s insistence that “in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form” (Col 2:9); the constant linking of “the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb” in the Apocalypse; the parables of Jesus in which implicitly he identifies himself with the figure in the parable who in the Old Testament symbolism is none other than God; Jesus remarkable question to his opponents, “Can any of you prove me guilty of sin?” (John 8:46)–attesting an astonishingly clear conscience; John’s remarkable witness to the effect that Jesus takes on his own lips the divine title “I Am,” in self-conscious application to himself of the content and the context of passages in Isaiah where the title refers to Yahweh (see especially John 8). And what must we make of God’s declared purpose that all should honor the Son just as they honor the Father (John 5:23)? Indeed, “He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him” (John 5:23).”[6]

– “The Gagging of God” (640pp/paperback) by D.A. Carson (buy it here)

iii. Trinity

Matthew 3:13-17

 Jesus born as Man

1. To a virgin

Luke 1:35

1. Still fully God and yet fully man: Hypostatic Union

Philippians 2:5-7

Jesus as God[7]	Jesus as Man
He is worshipped (Matt. 2:2, 11, 14:33).	He worshipped the Father (John 17).
He is prayed to (Acts 7:59).	He prayed to the Father (John 17).
He is sinless (1 Pet. 2:22, Heb. 4:15).	He was tempted (Matt. 4:1).
He knows all things (John 21:17).	He grew in wisdom (Luke 2:52).
He gives eternal life (John 10:28).	He died (Rom. 5:8).
All the fullness of deity dwells in Him (Col. 2:9).	He has a body of flesh and bones (Luke 24:39).

2. Jesus is the only Savior of Man

1. Jesus’ death saves sinners

1 Corinthians 15:3

For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures…

• The significance of this doctrine cannot be overestimated
• Note especially the argument of 1 Corinthians 15, “The doctrine of the resurrection is the foundation on which Christianity rests.” (20)

Corinthians 15:17

And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins!

1. Only Jesus saves sinners

John 14:6; Acts 4:12

II. The Fallen Nature of Man

1. Born sinners

1. The Bible teaches that we are born sinners

Ephesians 2:1

1. How this got started: Adam Sinned[8]

Genesis 3

iii. Why this is affecting us: Federal Headship of Adam

“Adam represented all of us, and his initial act of sin had consequences for everyone, for all time.” (22)

Romans 5:12-21

 12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned–

2. Sin defined

Sin is “breaking God’s laws or going against God’s will” (24)

Every one sins

• Actively doing what they ought not to do: sins of commission (Rom. 3:23)
• Passively not doing what they ought to do: sins of omission (Jam. 4:17)

“According to the Bible, God has clearly shown us how to know what is objectively and absolutely right and wrong.” (24)

Jesus died for everyone’s sin

The Bible teaches that Jesus Christ redeemed us from sin by dying on the cross.

Romans 3:23-24

Justification by faith

“When we place our faith and trust in the fact that Christ died to pay the penalty for our sins, we are justified, meaning that God’s justice has been satisfied through the substitutionary death of His Son Jesus Christ, and we have been brought into a correct relationship with God.” (25)

III. The Authority of Scripture

The OT and NT are “the final authority for faith and practice” (27)

All claims of correct faith and practice must square with Scripture

1. Inspired by God & Authoritative

2 Timothy 3:16-17; 2 Peter 1:21

2. Evidence for Inspiration

1. Internally consistent
2. Externally coherent
3. Miraculously confirmed

_________________________________________________

[1] https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/not-all-doctrines-are-at-the-same-level-how-to-make-some-distinctions-and-determine-a-doctrines-importance/

[2] https://www.9marks.org/article/theological-triage/

[3] https://www.9marks.org/answer/should-christians-cooperate-those-whom-they-disagree-theologically/

[4] For more on this topic see https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/how-can-jesus-be-god-and-man

[5] https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/ChristDeity.html

[6] “The Gagging of God” (640pp/paperback) by D.A. Carson (buy it here)

[7] For more on this topic see https://carm.org/dictionary-hypostatic-union

[8] For more on this read: Is Adam our Federal Head? https://carm.org/adam-our-federal-head or Adam and Federal Headship https://www.monergism.com/adam-and-federal-headship