Worship of Christ

Continuing the biblical case for Christ's deity, Pastor Martin brings four more witnesses (Philippians 2:6, Titus 2:13, Hebrews 1:8, and 1 John 5:20) in which Jesus Christ is explicitly called God in contexts that admit no lesser meaning. He summarizes the sevenfold witness in Colossians 2:9 — in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily — and applies the doctrine: the one who invites sinners is God able to fulfill every promise and every threat, He demands supreme religious affection, and He is the object of faith, worship, and a jealous guarding of the heart.

Pastor Martin introduces the third group of witnesses to Christ's deity: passages where He performs works that only God can do. He shows from John 1, Colossians 1:15-17, and Hebrews 1:2-3 that Jesus Christ is the Creator of all things, then from John 17:2, Ephesians 1:21-22, Colossians 1:17, and Hebrews 1:3 that He is the upholder and governor of providence, in whom all things hold together and by whom all things are upheld by the word of His power — the same Christ who made purification for sins.

Pastor Martin now sets out the biblical demonstration of Christ as one undivided person subsisting in two distinct, unmixed natures forever. Using a glove and hand analogy, and the witness of John 1, Philippians 2, Acts 20, Romans 1 and 9, and Colossians 2, he shows that the eternal Word became flesh without ceasing to be all that God is. He then shows from Christ's own consciousness and the apostolic witness that the natures remain distinct, with the one person speaking sometimes from the form of consciousness of his deity and sometimes from the form of his humanity, applying the doctrine to interpretation of Scripture, worship, and gospel proclamation.