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Declaring the most powerful at Christmas is that Christ “according to the flesh” is “God blessed forever” (Rom. 9: 5). We are surprised by the unequivocal testimony of Holy Revelation about the divinity of Christ. The one who was born in Bethlehem, to Mary, the daughter of David, is not just a prince of royal lineage, not just a prophet who carries the message of the parents and completes it. He is “He who is above all. He is God. He is blessed forever.” He is the One who “was born from ancient times, from the days of eternity.”
The Jews rejected this fact and did not recognize Jesus as God, King and Christ, so the apostle Paul suffered greatly for them. The pain penetrated the depths of their hearts, which was exaggerated between them until Jesus revealed himself to them. Why does Paul suffer for the one who did not accept the deity of Christ? Because he knew that the loss of that is great and eternal and irreplaceable. And Paul, like Moses of old, and out of love for his people, desired to be deprived of Christ and perish for their salvation, so he moved to preach to them, declaring to them the divinity of Christ. He does not accept to go to eternity without being enlightened and without knowing the true God.
And many through the ages, being Jews, did not accept the deity of Christ for theological, religious or dogmatic reasons at the time when they believed in God and respected Christ as prophet, teacher or reformer. It is next to these atheists, materialists, humanists, agnostics and followers of various philosophies, without recognizing, indifferent, or rejecting that Jesus Christ is a blessed God and is above all.
It is the duty of those who knew that Christ is “who is above all, God blessed forever” to announce this to the whole world. A preacher will not be sincere with people if he negotiates the truth of Christ with those who reject it. The concern of the early church and of faithful Christians throughout the centuries was to preach Jesus as Lord and Savior who came in the flesh to save humanity. The main concern of the apostle John was that those who reject the coming of Christ in the flesh must believe that “he is the true God and eternal life.”
The emphasis is that Christ came in the flesh, not to say that he did not come by the spirit, but to confirm that he was “God” and came in the flesh. The disciples did not exaggerate their claim that Christ is God. They saw and knew him closely. And he demonstrated his deity to them with his miracles, perfection, resurrection, and direct declaration that “he came down from heaven” and that “he who comes from heaven is above all.” He returned to heaven where he was first, and from there he returns to take his loved ones. Christ “who, being in the image of God, was not surreptitiously counted as equivalent to God,” rather he was.
The “secret of godliness”, or the central truth of Christianity, is that Christ is “God (who) appeared in the flesh.” And that “everything was done with him, and without him nothing that was done was done.” And that “all things were created by him and for him”, and “because of him, by him and for him are all things”, and he is the one who died and rose again “to prevail over the living and the dead.” We know all this from Jesus’ explicit declaration of himself: “Before Abraham was me.” In this birth, will you accept Christ “who is a God blessed for all ages”?
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