In Matthew 16, Jesus asked His disciples who people say that He is. Some claimed he was a teacher, a prophet and a number of other possible theories. Then Jesus brought the question home, "But who do you say that I am". This one question must be answered by every man or woman who will ever walk the earth. How we answer this question determines whether or not Jesus is our Savior or just another teacher we pass by. This question is the foundational issue of Christianity. If we get this wrong, nothing else matters.

Jesus is Jehovah
Satan will always attack the identity of Christ. If we miss the mark on who Jesus is, everything else becomes mere religion. We recently completed a study on the doctrine of the Trinity. One section was devoted to deity of Jesus. Even though Jesus veiled His glory to become flesh and die for our sins, the Bible makes no mistake about it – He was God in the flesh. There are pages of passages that testify to the fact that Jesus is God in the flesh. Since I have already hashed this out in an earlier study, I will only use a few reminder passages here. The Gospel of John in the first chapter tells us that the Word was God, became flesh and dwelled among us. This agrees with Zechariah 2

The word ‘LORD’ is the Hebrew word YHWY or Jehovah. In this passage Jehovah is declaring that His people should rejoice for He will dwell in their midst and they will know that Jehovah has sent Him. Jehovah has sent Jehovah to dwell with His people. John 1 uses similar wording:

John 1:10 tells us that the world was created through Him but did not know Him. Colossians 1:15 states, "For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth". This agrees with Isaiah 45:

In Isaiah, God calls Himself the ‘First and the Last’. In Revelation, Jesus calls Himself the ‘First and the Last’. There are many more examples of how the Bible identifies Jehovah (God) and Jesus Christ as being the same. In spite of this, Joseph Good of the United Pentecostal Church states:

I think the key phrase in this statement is, ‘we do not see’. I would like to point out that there is a big difference between the United Pentecostal Church (UPC) and other Pentecostal denominations. The UPC openly denies the deity of Christ and has many teachings contrary to the Bible. The reason I am using Joseph Good as an example is because he was affiliated with the Word of Faith movement but has since moved to the ‘Christian’ satellite broadcasting company called ‘Prime Time Christian Broadcasting’. As we will see, the Jesus of the Word of Faith movement is not any more divine than you and I are. The majority of Word of Faith teachers divide into two main views concerning Jesus – He is a mere man or He is divine and so are we.

No Right?
Even with the departure of Joseph Good, the Word Faith doctrine openly demotes Christ by saying:

In one statement, God is demoted, Satan becomes a god and Jesus is reduced to a created being formed by faith filled words. In the previous section we saw that the Bible refutes Faith teacher’s claims that God does not have the right in this world. Did God have to use deception to sneak Jesus around Satan? Could Satan have hindered God? Does God have the right to do as He pleases? Isaiah 14 answers these questions:

Who is the owner of this land according to Word of Faith teachers? Satan. Whose land is it according the God’s word? God said, "My land and My mountains". According to scripture, God does not sneak around to fulfill His purposes but He executes His plans with an outstretched arm that no one can turn back. In fact, Isaiah 48:16 refutes this Word of Faith teaching directly. Faith teachers say that God had to secretly sneak Jesus into this world, but concerning Jesus’ coming, the Bible says,

It is not hard to see that this doctrine about Jesus did not come from scripture and does not agree with scripture.

Do Words have Power?
The Bible does not teach anywhere that words themselves have power. The Bible does teach that by your words you are justified and by your words you are condemned. In the last section we look at this Word of Faith quote:

The principle taught by the Word of Faith doctrine is that words spoken have the power to create. However, let’s examine what Jesus said in context and then we will understand that words are not the power, but rather are a testimony to what is in our heart. Look at Matthew 12

The intent of this passage is not to put the focus on words, but to put the focus on the heart. Sin is born in the heart and the words we speak will inevitably reveal what we have in our heart. This passage teaches just the opposite of what Faith teachers claim. We are not being taught that our words create reality, but rather that we should measure our words because one day we will give an account for every word we speak. We just saw that Word of Faith doctrine demotes Christ into a created being, but many Faith teachers take it a step further. Instead of God creating Jesus (which is blasphemy in itself), some claim that the prophets used words to create Jesus. Here is an example:

Now it is no longer the Word of God that has become flesh, it is the word of man that has become flesh. Through positive confession, the prophets created the body of Jesus which was indwelled by their words of faith. This is far from Christian doctrine. Jesus has now been reduced from God incarnated by His own power to a mere man created by the power of man through man’s positive confession. The Bible says that Jesus Christ spoke the heavens and the earth and all that is in it (including man). Word of Faith teaches that man spoke Jesus into existence. Only one of these two doctrines can be true.

Did Jesus became one with Satan?
This belief is consistent among all the prominent Word of Faith teachers. They believe that Jesus became one with the very nature of Satan on the cross. I have audio of dozens of comments from most major faith teachers, but I will include only 2 here.

Let’s examine scripture to see how these statements add up. We will look at the redemption and the cross in the next section. The cross is the central theme of the Bible and the power of Christianity. If the cross is polluted, true Christianity is void. The doctrine surrounding redemption and the cross is absolutely vital; therefore we will soon go into great detail on topic. For the remainder of this section we will look at 1. Did Jesus become one with the nature of satan? 2. Is Sin the nature of Hell? 3. Did God cease to be Jesus’ Father? 4. What does it mean, ‘He became sin for us?’

1. Did Jesus Become One with Satan?
I challenge anyone to find a single verse in the Bible that remotely implies that Jesus became satanic. Jesus warned the Pharisees of the eternal consequences when they claimed that His work was a part of Satan. Now will we do the same thing? They attributed His ability to cast out demons with the power of demons, now we have teachers that attribute the cross to Satan. This is a very serious claim. If we are wrong, we are committing blasphemy against God. We have heard the Word of Faith teachers speak, now let’s let the Bible speak. Hebrews 13:8-9a tells us,

Can Jesus become one with the nature of Satan and still remain the same yesterday, today and forever? We hit on this earlier, but a foundational doctrine in scripture is that God does not change. His word does not change. He is our immovable, unchangeable Rock. Sin is sin because it is contrary to the nature of God. God cannot change because God’s nature cannot change. People often ask, "Is there anything God cannot do". The answer from scripture is yes. God cannot lie. God cannot sin. God cannot change. God cannot violate His own word. Therefore, to claim that Jesus (God in the flesh) took on the nature of Satan violates everything that God has revealed to us about Himself. Any search of scripture will put to rest any idea that God could become sinful in nature on any level. The Word of Faith doctrine challenges the first sentence in the above passage and fits perfectly in the warning of the second sentence – ‘do not be carried about with various and strange doctrines.’

2. Is Sin the nature of Hell?
Sin is not the nature of hell. Hell has no nature at all. Frequently you will hear Faith teachers talk about the demons and the devil torturing Jesus in hell, but this only shows that they don’t understand what the scriptures reveal about hell. Satan has no throne in hell. Satan is not the ruler of hell. God is the ruler of all things – including hell. In Luke 8, Jesus was about to cast out demons and they begged him not to send them into the pit. Clearly, this is not a place of Satan’s dominion, but a place of judgment to await a greater judgment. 2 Peter 2:4 says:

Hell was created for the judgment of Satan; it is not where Satan lives. Matthew 25 makes it clear:

Our sin nature comes directly from our own fallen human nature. We don’t inherit Satan’s nature; we inherit Adam’s sin. Satan may have deceived Adam at his fall, but Satan’s fall has absolutely nothing to do with our own sinful nature. Man is not paying the price for Satan’s fall. We pay the price for our own fall. Examine the scriptures and you will see that sin is always called ‘of the flesh’. It is not spiritual – though it does affect our spiritual lives. Our flesh is sinful, but our spirit comes from God. Our entire life is a struggle to die to the flesh and live in the spirit. Adam’s fall did not change the fact that we are still in the image of God and we are still called to reflect God’s glory. Our sin is in the body or flesh. 2 Corinthians 5:

The Bible makes it clear that the nature of sin is according to the flesh, not according to the spirit and not according to Satan’s nature. Outside of a relationship with Christ, it is impossible to walk in the spirit. Galatians 5 explains:

As Christians, we have been given the power to be led by the Spirit instead of being driven by the flesh. Outside of a relationship with Jesus Christ, no one can be Spirit led.

3. Did God cease to be Jesus’ Father?
"At the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" which is translated, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’"

All we have to do is read the rest of the story and we see that the Father – Son relationship had not changed. Jesus’ last words on the cross were, "Father, into Your hands I commit My Spirit". According to Word of Faith doctrine, Jesus remained one with Satan until after three days of torture in hell. How then did He triumphantly declare, "It is finished (or literally, ‘it is paid in full’) and then commit Himself into the Father hands at His death on the cross? Clearly, Jesus could not have taken on the nature of Satan and committed His spirit to the Father.

Was Jesus estranged from God as Faith doctrine teaches? Why did Jesus cry out, ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?’ instead of calling Him Father as before? I believe the answer is clearly seen in Psalm 22. Jesus was making it clear that the prophecy of Psalm 22 had been fulfilled. In this passage, we are given the privilege of an inside look as to what happened on the cross.

Jesus is quoting prophecy from the cross so that we could look to Psalm 22 and see what God has done. Even though He had the presence of mind to reveal to us the prophecy being fulfilled, we still know that Jesus suffered immensely on the cross. He did not shield Himself from all the human agony He chose to endure. Jesus bore our pain and that pain included the emotions of rejection and feelings of separation, but if we read through this prophecy, we see that God has not despised Him nor did He turn away from Jesus on the cross. As Jesus cried out, the Father was answering. The darkness of emotions does not nullify the truth of God’s grace and mercy. Look at Isaiah 53:

Who counted Jesus as despised and who considered Him as stricken and rejected? It was not God, but man. Every man abandoned Christ and alone He went through the pain of the cross. Man failed, but God was always there. Understanding this is essential in order to understand how God deals with us. If Jesus bore the sins of the world and God did not turn His back on Him, then I know for certain that He will not turn from me. Contrary to common belief, God can look upon sin. Sin does not affect God; God affects sin. It is sin that cannot stand before God, not the other way around. Sin becomes my barrier, not God’s. Because of this, God can look upon me as a sinner and hear my prayer of repentance, forgive me and cleanse me. If God turned His back on sin, I would be hopelessly lost in my sins. Since only God can make me righteous, how can I become righteous enough to come before God? No, the Bible teaches that we come just as we are and He purifies and justifies us. I can never remove my sin. As a sinner, I come before God and He takes my sin and covers me with His own righteousness.

4. What does it mean, ‘He became sin for us?’
When the Bible states that Jesus became sin for us, does this mean that He took on a sinful nature? This is not possible. We have already seen that God does not change and the Bible clearly says that Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. He is God, and God cannot change, therefore Jesus cannot change. Look at Colossians 2:

This passage tells us that Jesus took our sins and nailed them to His cross in triumph.

Ephesians 2 gives us another piece to the mystery of God’s revelation:

Notice verse 15. He abolished our sin in His flesh. Sin has put us at enmity (or at war) with God. Romans 5:9-10 echoes this by saying that we were enemies of God but are reconciled through His blood. To understand the cross, we have to go back to the Old Testament. God painted a picture of salvation through the sacrifices in the Old Testament. When Adam sinned, God sacrificed an animal and used the skin to cover Adam’s shame. This is a picture of the cross. Isaiah 61:10 tells us that God covers us with the robe of His salvation and the garments of His righteousness.

Abraham’s covenant was sealed with a sacrifice, once again pointing to the cross. When God made the covenant (Genesis 15), Abraham killed the animal and made the preparations as God commanded, but Abraham was not allowed to participate in the actual covenant. The blood was spilled by man, but the covenant was between God and Himself. Abraham benefited, but God swore by Himself (Hebrews 6:13). Neither Abraham’s sin nor the sins of his descendents could nullify the covenant because he was not allowed to be the one to seal it. This points to the cross. It was man’s sin; it was man who shed the blood; but our salvation is a covenant between God and Himself with us as the beneficiary.

When Moses received the command to observe the Passover sacrifice, it was a symbol of the cross. The lamb was sacrificed and the blood was splattered on the head of the door and both sides. This is a foreshadow of the greater work of the Lamb of God dying on the cross. When scripture says that Jesus became our sin, it doesn’t mean He took on the nature of Satan, nor did He take on our sinful nature; it means that He became the sacrifice for our sin in our place. The Old Testament sacrifices did not become possessed by the devil. They were not the nature of Satan. The wages of sin is death, therefore the sacrifice was judged in the place of the sinner. They were counted as sin in the place of the person obeying God out of faith. In other words, the sacrifice was credited with sin so that the person being atoned could be credited with righteousness through Christ.

This is an important point to note, the Old Testament saints were not made righteous by the sacrifice. They were made righteous by faith in God’s provision for sin which pointed directly to Christ. Hebrews 10:4 tells us that it is impossible for the sacrifice of an animal to take away sin. These were only acts of obedience, but the atonement would ultimately be paid by Jesus Christ. A bull does not have the righteousness of God, so it cannot take my sin and exchange it for His righteousness. The sacrifice was merely an act of obedience through faith in the atonement God would soon reveal in Christ. Romans 4 explains:

So we can see that Jesus became sin for us by being credited (or accounted) with our sin. We become the righteousness of God by being credited (or accounted) with His righteousness. He is still God and we still have a flesh nature. We are born into God’s kingdom – or born again. To be born again simply means that the spirit God created within us is made alive through Christ. Romans 8:10 puts it this way:

Until you are born into the Spirit through Christ, you cannot live according to the spirit.

Was Jesus Born Again?
Because almost all Word of Faith teachers call Jesus the first born-again man, I believe it is necessary to examine this as well. Word of Faith doctrine teaches that Adam had the nature of God and was reborn into the nature of Satan when he sinned. In turn, Jesus took on the nature of Satan and was reborn into the nature of God. We have already seen that Adam did not have Satan’s nature and Jesus did not take on Satan’s nature. We do take on a spiritual nature, but it is not God’s nature – at least not the way Word of Faith believes. (This will be covered when we get to the deification of man section). Here are a few quotes that describe the Word of Faith doctrinal belief that Jesus was a born again man.

It is not hard to see the serious errors that arise when we begin to allow false teaching to go unchecked. The born-again heresy alone has reduced Jesus to a mere man; it claims that He died spiritually (which we will study later); the transformation of our spirit and new life in God’s kingdom has been lost; and man becomes the redeemer rather than the redeemed. A Word of Faith teacher is actually claiming that he could have redeemed mankind if he had known what Jesus knew – Jesus just beat him to the punch. As we saw in the first study, this is not the Spirit of God talking.

When someone claims that Jesus is the first born again man, it is clear that they do not understand scripture. Jesus cannot be born again because He cannot sin. To be begotten does not mean to be reborn. Begotten comes from the Greek word ‘monogenes’ which literally means, single of its kind. This is a term used only to refer to sons or daughters. Simply put, it means to have a child that is yours as opposed to adopting a child. If we compare this our place as children of God we see a big difference. We are called adopted children. We are called children of adoption in Romans 8:15, 23; Romans 9:4, Galatians 4:5, and Ephesians 1:5.

The Bible compares our adoption to the legal adoption of that time. In Roman law a son or daughter inherited the same legal right as a natural son. As a child, there was no legal distinction between the two. When we compare this to Christ, we are called joint heirs together with Him. We are not as He is, but we are partakers in His kingdom. We don’t become a god, nor does He descend to the same level as man. It is a legal inheritance that God has given to us as a promise. We know that Jesus was veiled in His glory and the Bible tells us that He will return as King of kings and Lord of Lords. Every knee will bow in heaven, earth and under the earth. No exclusions. Even Satan will bow. So we know that it is the promise of our inheritance that we share with Christ, not His Godhead.

Eddie Snipes
Exchanged Life Outreach
http://www.exchangedlife.com

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