John urges us to believe in a Jesus who is authentically a human being, not an angel who became man, nor an eternal Son of God who became a man. Throughout the New Testament we are exhorted to believe that Jesus is the Christ. The Church is to be founded on Peters confession of Jesus as the Messiah (Mat. 16:16). John wrote his entire gospel to persuade us to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God (John 20:31). The early church in Acts kept right on teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ (Acts 5:42). Paul proved that this Jesus is the Christ (Acts 9:22, cp. Acts 17:3, 18:5, 18:28). It is the Man Messiah who is the one mediator between the One God and man (I Tim. 2:5). No wonder, then that the spirit of antichrist denies that Jesus is the Messiah. This is the arch-lie: Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? (I John 2:22, 5:1).
It is crucially important to understand that the Messiah promised by the Old Testament was to be a real descendant of David (II Sam. 7:14). God would be the Father of this descendant, according to the promise, but the Messiah would be the fruit of Davids body (Psalm 132:11). There is no hint here or elsewhere in the Old Testament that God had been the Father of the Messiah for all eternity, much less that the Messiah was to be the uncreated member of an eternal Trinity. Rather, he was to be a prophet like Moses raised up from an Israelite family (see Deut. 18:15-18, Acts 3:22, 7:37). The traditional Jesus of the creeds is alien to this Biblical picture of the Messiah.
The real Jesus of history in whom Luke believed was the Son of God, not because He had been God from eternity but because of his miraculous conception. In Marys womb a real human person came into existence.
It is crucially important to understand that the Messiah promised by the Old Testament was to be a real descendant of David (II Sam. 7:14). God would be the Father of this descendant, according to the promise, but the Messiah would be the fruit of Davids body (Psalm 132:11). There is no hint here or elsewhere in the Old Testament that God had been the Father of the Messiah for all eternity, much less that the Messiah was to be the uncreated member of an eternal Trinity. Rather, he was to be a prophet like Moses raised up from an Israelite family (see Deut. 18:15-18, Acts 3:22, 7:37). The traditional Jesus of the creeds is alien to this Biblical picture of the Messiah.
The real Jesus of history in whom Luke believed was the Son of God, not because He had been God from eternity but because of his miraculous conception. In Marys womb a real human person came into existence.