JESUS CHRIST IS OUR LORD AND OUR GOD

JESUS CHRIST IS OUR LORD AND OUR GOD 

TO be a Christian not only in name but in reality, one must believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ, that He is true God and true man. To be a Christian means to believe that the Infinite Creator of heaven and earth became a speechless child who was conceived of His Virgin Mother, born at Bethlehem, died on the Cross, rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of His heavenly Father. 

Since the dawn of Christianity, the divinity of Christ has been the single most frequently and strongly challenged mystery of our faith. We say that the Church is going through the most serious crisis of the more than twenty centuries of her history. At the center of this crisis is the widespread doubt and denial that Jesus Christ, the Son of Mary, is the Son of the Living God. There is nothing else in our Catholic faith that needs to be more clearly understood and firmly believed than Christ’s divinity. 

Between Christ’s Ascension and the death of St. John the Evangelist were circulated the earliest heresies which denied that Jesus was indeed the Son of God. That is why the writings of the fourth evangelist are such a precious treasury of revealed wisdom testifying to the divinity of the Savior. The Apostle is so explicit about Christ’s oneness with the Father and Christ’s divine nature (see Jn 1:1-5 and the rest of the prologue), that critics of the faith have resorted to dismissing John’s writings as Hellenistic theory superimposed on the simple message of the other three synoptic Gospels. 

The heart of Christianity is faith in the incarnation: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth …”  (Jn 1:14). We believe that the Second Person of the Holy Trinity became man. We believe the Incarnation is the union of the Divine and human natures. John begins his Gospel with a prologue that leaves nothing to the imagination. Even if the Gospel were not the last inspired writing of the Apostle, it was certainly occasioned by the rise of Gnosticism. The Gnostics claimed to know the mysteries of the universe. According to them, matter is hostile to spirit. On these terms, God could not have become man. Why not? Because God, who is pure spirit, could not have united Himself with a human body. More importantly, the Gnostic denied an objective divine Revelation that was completed in the apostolic age and which the Church founded by Christ alone has the teaching authority to interpret decisively the meaning of what God has revealed. 

All the errors that are plaguing the modern age are rooted in Gnosticism. That is why the cardinal heresy among professed Christians is some form of Gnosticism disguised under a variety of clever names that fill so many books that are supposed to be Catholic. 

It is St. John who records the dialogue between a group of Jews and Jesus. It was the feast of the Dedication at Jerusalem; it was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. So the Jews gathered round Him and said to Him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If You are the Christ, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in My Father’s name, they bear witness to Me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to My sheep. My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” The Jews took up stones again to stone Him. Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of these to you stone Me?” The Jews answered Him, “We stone You for no good work but for blasphemy; because You, being a man, make Yourself God” (Jn 10:22-33). 

The crowning witness to His profession of divinity occurred a week after the Resurrection. The doubting Thomas was not among the apostles when the Savior appeared to them on Easter Sunday night. When the others told Thomas that they have seen the Lord, he stubbornly replied that he would not believe unless he put his fingers into the wounds in Christ’s hands and his hand into Christ’s opened side. A week later, Jesus appeared to the disciples, called Thomas to Him and asked Him to do exactly what Thomas had demanded as a condition for believing. Thomas repented of his doubt and pronounced the words that by now have been repeated millions of times by believing Catholics at the elevation during the Mass, “My Lord and my God,” Thomas declared (Jn 20:28). Human language could not be more clear. Jesus Christ is our Lord and our God. 

Jakarta, 6 February 2013

 

A Christian Pilgrim