The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum Jesus, fully God and fully Man

I think it is crucial to state the biblical teaching concerning the 'hypostatic union' of Christ, i.e., what was the relationship between the divine nature and the human nature of the Lord Jesus Christ. The true Church has always embraced as biblical that which is found particularly in the Creed of Chalcedon:

Hopefully, this will shed some light on both your view and that of your pastor's view.

1) The Son, the divinity of Christ, did not divest himself of any power nor anything else. God cannot deny His very being or nature, nor can He be diminished in any of His attributes, e.g., His absolute sovereignty; authority and power (which btw, the Arminian/semi-Pelagian system unabashedly believes). The Son as God certainly exercises His authority and power as He Himself determines to do. Having taken upon Himself human flesh and becoming the person of Jesus Christ, God and man, did not in any way change either the essence of the Son nor of His manner of providentially ruling all of creation.

2) The human nature of Christ was fully man and not divine nor supernatural in and of itself. Therefore, the human nature of Jesus Christ has no inherent divine ability nor power, e.g., to perform miracles. The apostles likewise, had no inherent power to perform miracles but rather they were able to do so because of the authority given to them by God and by the power of the indwelling Spirit of God. In short, Jesus the Christ was not some supernatural man, but rather as Chalcedon states most succinctly, He was fully man, not some superman, no different than you or I yet without sin. The two natures existed in the one person and cannot be intermixed nor separated.

This relationship is admittedly extremely difficult to comprehend and due to its complexity many have embraced error from one degree to another, e.g., Socinianism, Modalism (i.e. Sabellianism, Noetianism and Patripassianism), Arianism, Docetism, Ebionitism, Adoptionism, Partialism. We are told something of this relationship, even Jesus himself revealed who He was and how He functioned as the God-man, e.g., Joh 5:31; 7:17,28; 8:14,18,28,42; 10:18; 12:49; 14:10.

There are some very good articles on The Highway that deal with the divinity and two natures of Christ which you can find HERE.

Addendum: You may find Bavinck's article most helpful: The Divine and Human Nature of Christ