Press on in HIS truth and HIS love for HIS glory,
Lisa

and when Christ Jesus told Peter “Get behind me, Satan!” {Matthew 16:23}: this was done with a twinkle in His eye—like one good friend giving another an exaggerated hard-time in order to get their point across.

No, my friend, this was a rebuke because Peter was focused on Christ as the deliverer of Israel from its oppressors instead of Christ’s actual mission of redeeming His people from the bondage and curse of sin. That analogy you used is reading way too much into the text. Jesus rebuked Peter because that created a temptation for Christ to alter His mission.

God is merciful and desires for us all to come to forgiveness in salvation through Christ alone. However, those who DO NOT BELIEVE are condemned already. (John 3:1

In Christ

Mike Ratliff

My understanding of the incarnation of Christ is that He is God and Man. He had to be a Man or He could not be our Mediator. He had to be God as well or He would have been a creation BY God. No, He was incarnated by the Holy Spirit in Mary’s womb. His Human side is Holy and not subject to the Adamic curse because He is not descended from him.

Look at these two verses:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1 ESV)

Jesus is God

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14 ESV)

Jesus is Man, but not like us in that He is full of grace and truth from the Father, full of glory.

I suppose you and I could ask Him when we meet Him face to face.

In Christ

Mike Ratliff

I cannot see how anyone could deny He lived in a fully human body. Thirst, hunger, blood, and everything else accompanied that body. And to deny His deity is complete heresy. My question remains about the indwelling of a created human being albeit without sin.

If that is true, than Jesus could not have completely said before Abraham “I AM’ because part of His being/nature had just been created. God cannot be tempted, so only His body was tempted. But if a human lived inside that body, then, like Adam, he could have been tempted from within and by definition had the capacity to sin, like Adam.

I still believe He was God in human flesh, but I do not see in Scripture where the Divine Word shared that body with a created human being. And where is that created human being now? Is Christ still fully human on the throne today, or was the human being that was created annihilated?

I do not believe this is heresy since I do not deny His bodily humanity and of course His complete divinity. This all began with me when I saw the emergent movement begin to teach that we overemphasized His divinity to the detriment of His humanity. I went back to the Scriptures and still feel that Jesus was God, travelling for 33 years in a human body, and then giving His life as an atonement for us.

In actuality, humanity was supposed to be a visible expression of God’s nature until sin poisoned it.

Now, if you try to say that man is a consuming fire, then it just doesn’t fit. A consuming fire cannot die nor can He sin. Kenneth Copeland is teaching that Adam is and was a consuming fire. This is where he gets the idea that Adam was God. He and TBN teach that Christians are ‘little gods.’ I am sure that you have heard this blasphemy being trumpeted everywhere. And noone rebukes them openly or publicly on their TV station. I guess that would be a threat to their ‘godhood’.

Every Christian has to battle with his flesh. This war is ongoing. Notice that the scriptures encourage us to “put off” the old man and its corruptible desires. It doesn’t say, ” For your God is a sorcerer, who can wave his magic wand and presto you into the image of Christ.” Instead the scriptures guarantee opposition, hardship, and temptation because we still war with our flesh in this life. Success over our flesh is a war which cannot be won without the leadership of the Holy Spirit. Our own flesh cannot overcome itself………….Completely impossible!

It is impossible to “put off” the old man without the sovereign hand of the Holy Spirit working in the midst of adversity. Our Adamic nature is completely incapable of ‘putting off’ itself. The old nature does not have the desire, nor the ability to do the will of God. Man never was God, is not God, and cannot be.

You see: I was raised-up to believe in an angry God, who was quite eager to punish me for even the slightest transgression; but now that He has become real unto me: I have come to know and understand that He is nothing at all like I was taught. In fact: our Heavenly Father has a delightful sense-of-humor; and when Christ Jesus told Peter “Get behind me, Satan!” {Matthew 16:23}: this was done with a twinkle in His eye—like one good friend giving another an exaggerated hard-time in order to get their point across.

Subsequently: I now want to more perfect in all of my ways more than I ever did before; but the motivation has changed. For instead of being afraid of punishment: I now want to be pleasing in His eyes because of not wanting to be a disappointment unto the One who loves me more than can be put into words.

Yes, there will come a day when His wrath will be poured-out upon the wicked; but we would do well not to focus too much upon that. For the one who only wants to do what they have been taught is the right thing to do out of fear of what might happen unto them if they do not does not truly know our Heavenly Father. For it truly is as it is written: There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. {1 John 4:18 ESV}

It’s not from me. He doesn’t have my email address as I never left him a message and don’t have my own blog. Must be a million Deborah’s out in blog land. I should change my blog name to JustDeb. I don’t really care what he says as I don’t listen to false self proclaimed prophets anyway. Lisa I wouldn’t have said those things anyway. Ignore him.