What does it mean when we say “Jesus is Saviour, Lord and God”? I think the problem with this statement is that it packs so much meaning and also requires context, without which both the modern western and eastern man will struggle to relate to and understand it. In saying that, I also want to qualify that this is not only a statement that must be understood with your mind, but it must be accepted in your will and received by your spirit. While I will do my best on this blog to deal with the element of the understanding, whether you receive this message into your heart is a decision of your will and whether your spirit ultimately enjoys communion with God, is a matter of God’s grace.

Before we start, we need to overcome the obstacle in our mind that makes us mistakenly think of Jesus as just an ordinary man, with perhaps some special giftings. Let’s break this down a little more: when we think about Jesus’ words and deeds, we try to contextualise them through people we know or may have heard about. For example, if we say Jesus was a humble servant, we might think of Mother Theresa; if we think he was an astute politician (I’m not saying he was, just repeating what others have said!) we might compare him to Nelson Mandela; if we think of him as a great moral leader we might compare him to Ghandi or if we think he was a skilled and wise orator, we might compare him to Winston Churchill. But there is a serious problem with this approach, because it reduces who He was and what He said and did to a merely human level. This is not the case at all, if you care to peel away the layers of the onion and look a bit deeper into who Jesus the Man was. We will discover that Jesus was tempted in every way like we are (Hebrews 4:15), but more than that – in a way that no man has ever been tempted to sin. Let’s look at some examples: Firstly, he was offered to rule over all the kingdoms of the world, to becomes a world ruler with absolute power over all mankind (Matt 4:8); secondly he was approached by many beautiful women that surely would have appealed to the natural desires of a man (Luke 7:38); thirdly He had the opportunity to call on the supernatural resources of heaven to vindicate him at any time things got difficult and this would instantly prove His point (by brute force if necessary!) in such a spectacular fashion that he would have been accepted as the Messiah by all people (Matt 26:53); fourthly, he was betrayed by all of his closest friends (no, it wasn’t just Judas who betrayed Jesus, although he did it for greed, but every one of his disciples fled in fear when Jesus was arrested!) (Matt 25:56); fifthly, He was maligned as a bastard child by those who grew up with Him (try tell your friends when they ask who your daddy is that you were conceived by God out of wedlock…in a culture where they used to stone people for infidelity!) (Matt 1:18); sixthly He wasn’t exactly socially acceptable i.e. cool to hang around with – he wasn’t handsome to look at (Isaiah 53:2) and He came from Nazareth (an insignificant town of low repute) (John 1:46) – so He would have been tempted to seek social acceptance from His peers. I could go on with this list, but I will make my point: Jesus was tempted by greed, lust, fear, self-doubt, anger, bitterness, arrogance, pride, envy and every other imaginable temptation we might face in our lives – but I would argue in a far more intense way. Yet, in the face of all of this, He did not once sin. And by not sinning, I don’t just mean by your and my standards of sin e.g. He didn’t just not sleep with any of the beautiful women that approached him, but it never even crossed His mind to look at them lustfully (now any honest man would suddenly become very dishonest if he claimed such a thought never crossed his mind!). I could go on and on by giving examples of all the other temptations and how Jesus did not cave into them and if we have any modicum of self-awareness we’ll quickly admit that neither Mother Theresa, nor Ghandi, nor Nelson Mandela nor any other “saintly type” (sorry, had to omit Winston from that list!) and especially not ourselves could make any claim of equivalence to Jesus in these areas.

Now we’ve established that Jesus was not just a man but truly the Son of Man, let’s go on to look at the rest of that statement “Jesus is Saviour, Lord and God”.

Firstly, what does it mean that He is our Saviour? This is probably the easiest concept for us to access – if we are honest with ourselves. We’ve already established that we are all tempted – and that we all fail and sin in many areas in our lives. Just to clarify what I mean by sin – it is any point where we fail to adhere to the commands of God, to “miss the mark” so to speak. Now you might be familiar or at least aware of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20) but there are in fact 613 commandments in the bible. And by Jesus’ own definition anyone who breaks even the least of these commandments is a sinner (Matt 5:19). I can’t even get very far through the 10 commandments before I have established myself to be a sinner and if we are honest with ourselves, none of us will fare much better! To be clear, the penalty for any and every sin, no matter how big or small, is death (Romans 6:23). Fiddled your taxes? Death. Told a little white lie? Death. Committed mass genocide? Death. Now that might seem harsh because the spectrum of sins is very broad, but you need to understand how big a problem sin is. Sin isn’t just what we do, it’s who we are in our very nature – sinners estranged from a holy God. It might help if I use an analogy: when I was at high school (an all-boys school) we got up to a lot of mischief (as boys do!). We did an experiment in chemistry class where we put a little bit of potassium in a little bit of water and watched an interesting reaction take place. Of course, we couldn’t help wonder what would happen if we threw a lot of potassium into a lot of water. So we snuck in after class and stole all of the potassium in the lab and threw it into the school swimming pool. As you can imagine, the results were spectacular (see here https://youtu.be/u20yy-CycGU?t=292 so you don’t go attempt this at home please!). But here’s my point: God is like an ocean and you are like a lump of potassium (representing your sinful state) and if you try to approach God just like that, there isn’t going to be anything left of you. Not because God is unkind or unloving, but because you are unholy and He is holy. The problem is one of our very nature. This is why we need to be saved from the very nature of who we are.

Now, sadly, many people in the world seek salvation in all kinds of places, but probably the most common path is ironically that we attempt to save ourselves (which if you think about it is as absurd as a drowning man trying to save himself). Let’s look at some examples to make this a bit clearer: we try self-help programmes to improve our lives or escape bad habits; we go to the gym or diet to perhaps address some underlying insecurity about how we look; we use alcohol or drugs to numb some underlying emotional or physical pain; we seek wealth or fame to feel significant; we seek the love of a significant other so we can address the deep want for love in every human heart. These seem like pretty obvious statements about life, but if we unpack all of this it’s all a form of seeking to save ourselves from the problems of our human condition. The reality is that while all of the above may offer some temporary reprieve, they are no solution to the underlying problem, which is that we are by nature sinners in need of a Saviour. Now Jesus alone is qualified as the Saviour of all men because (i) as we have already established, he lived fully as a man and was tempted as we were, yet did not sin so not only does he understand our pain, but He alone is qualified to deliver us from the sins we battle with since He overcame them all (ii) He also paid the highest price to be able to forgive us from the penalty of our sins. This is really important to understand and again why Jesus is distinct from any other god/holy man/prophet/psychic/choose your own hero that ever lived: Even though Jesus never sinned, He chose to die in our place to receive the penalty for our sins. This is what the cross of Christ represents – a place of exchange where God offers His sinless holiness in exchange for our dreadful sinfulness. A place of transformation for the hopeless sinner into a hopeful saint. It’s crazy and no-one would ever conceive of entering such a deal because the economics of it suck, but the goodness and mercy of God led Him to offer this incredible gift to us freely – and indeed, it was and is the only valid and effective solution to our massive problem of sin. Please see my other topic about the cross for more elaboration on this point: http://www.wisdomhub.net/thesis/christ-criminals-and-the-cross

Secondly, let’s address the point that Jesus is God. As I said previously, Jesus is fully man, but He is also fully God. I’m not going to cover here again what is dealt with elsewhere on this blog i.e. evidence for Jesus’ claim that He is God, but rather what it means to us if He is indeed God. By being God I mean Jesus is all-knowing, all-powerful and all-present (and to qualify that statement, when Jesus was on earth for 33 years, he temporarily laid down these divine rights to accomplish His mission before He ascended and took up these attributes again). If Jesus (in his now ascended and glorified state) indeed possesses these qualities – and yet remains humanly approachable as the spiritual Man – this must profoundly impact our understanding and therefore relationship with Him. So, firstly, if I know that Jesus is God, I will not attempt to engage with Him in a buddy-buddy casual relationship (I will of course always engage with Him as the friend of sinners, for I am a sinner and it is true that He has, despite my sinful state, chosen to be my friend, but I will never cross that line of treating Him like a casual acquaintance for He is and remains God – the One who created and rules the whole universe). Secondly, if I know that Jesus is God, I will fear Him (The Fear of God is something hard to reconcile in our understanding because it has to be seen in balance with the Love of God, like two wings of a bird. 1 John 4:18 says “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear” but Ephesians 5:21 “submitting to one another in the fear of God” and Hebrews 12:28 “we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear” make it quite clear that we should fear God. I think it might help a little to distinguish what kind of fear we should have of God: it’s certainly not a cowering in fear in the corner like an abused child terrified of its abuser. But it certainly is a fear based on the deepest and sincerest respect for the fact that while He is the friend of sinners, He is the almighty God who dwells in unapproachable light, as 1 Timonthy 6:15-16 beautifully puts it: “He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honour and everlasting power.” So to summarise, if I know that Jesus is God, my relationship with him will be based on a profound acceptance of his love for me – despite the fact that I am a sinner – but at the same time a humble fear of Him, knowing that He holds the very essence of my life in His hands and retains the power to give and take that away).

Thirdly and in closing, if I know that Jesus is Lord it will have a profound impact on my relationship to his words and commands. I’m not a military man, but I have many friends that were or are in the military. There is a profound respect for order in the military and it’s all based on the system of ranks. Irrespective of the ago, character, persona of the person of rank, if he issues a command, all those of lower rank follow it without question. Now when dealing with fallen human leaders with corrupted morals or worse psychopathic tendencies, this can have devastating consequences (see Nazi Germany and the Holocaust). However, we are referring here to the Lord Jesus as our commander-in-chief. Let’s look in brief at his character:

1. Loving – John 15:13; John 3:16

2. Forgiving – Like 23:34

3. Humble – Mark 10:45; John 13:15

4. Compassionate – Matt 9:36

5. Gentle – Matt 5:9

6. Self-controlled – Matt 4:1-11

7. Patient – 1 Tim 1:16

8. Obedient (to the Father) – Phil 2:8

9. Truthful – John 14:16

10. Meek – Matt 26:52-54

Now if Jesus embodies all these characteristics, what reason could we have to not whole-heartedly embrace Him as Lord and obey His every command?

Jesus Christ is Saviour, Lord and God and my prayer is that you would know Him as such – not just in your head, but in your heart and your spirit.