The Lord from Heaven (1958, 1974) by Leon Morris, Book Review

 The Lord from Heaven: A Study of the New Testament Teaching
on the Deity and Humanity of Jesus Christ (1958, 1974) by Leon Morris

This is a very worn-out book. But it is very good, insightful, and surprisingly still relevant amidst the many books on the same topic. I’ve read it during my flight to Cambodia a few years ago. Due to the holiday mood, I forget most of the contents (this is good because I can read it all over again as if it's new for me) but I remember thinking that I must read it again slowly and thoughtfully. I’m glad I did. Because over the years as I’m gaining more knowledge of the Scripture, interest in theology, and passion for the Person of Jesus Christ, I can appreciate it even more now. What I like about Leon Lamb Morris (1914-2006), a respected New Testament scholar, is that he writes in such a way that is both scholarly and yet readable, with depth and yet simple, just like the late John Stott and Michael Green. I highly recommend his Bible commentaries too especially on the Gospel of Matthew, John, and Romans.

Why this book is important? Simply this: Jesus Christ is. His question to the disciples, “Who do you say I am?” (Matthew 16:15) is what we - the believers and the potential believers - must discover over and over again for the rest of our lives. Knowing Jesus is not enough. Knowing the right Jesus as taught in the Scripture is essential. Knowledge of truth leads to saving faith, faith leads to eternal life. Our theology affects our doxology. What do we say and believe about Jesus matters! The main purpose of Leon Morris in this book is to give a short and simple outline of what the New Testament says about the Person of Jesus. He concludes that the Scripture taught clearly that He is BOTH God AND man. I agree. Morris writes, “The great thought of the New Testament is that God has taken action in the Person of His Son to put away man’s sin. This is not the idea of one or two writers, but the whole of the early church. Nowhere in the New Testament do we find any such thought as that Jesus is like one of the angels, or that He can be fully explained in purely human terms. With one accord the New Testament writers insist that Jesus must be thought of as God in the fullest sense. His relationship to the Father is the very closest relationship possible. There is no doubt about the place they ascribe to Jesus.”

He continues, “This is all the more remarkable in view of their convinced monotheism. They do not seem to have envisaged the possibility of a multiplicity of gods. They took it as an axiom that there can be only one God. Without compromise on this basic tenet, they yet affirmed the deity of Christ.” Right. When someone asks me to explain about the Doctrine of the Trinity, how can one God exist in three Persons, I usually added one more challenging issue to the inquiry by stating the Doctrine of the Incarnation, that God became human, and He - Jesus - was truly God and truly man. How can it be? Well, I can help him or her to examine the Scripture but I can never explain it fully. “How these two, the deity and the humanity, are related, or even how they could come to co-exist in the one Person, we do not know,” said Morris honestly. “The evidence does not indicate that Jesus was partly God and partly man, that He did some things as God and others as a man. Rather He was one Person, though a Person with divine and human characteristics.” This is a mystery beyond any man’s power to solve or to explain it away. I think we are free to reject this doctrine if we also reject the consistent testimonies of the Scripture, particularly the New Testament, regarding the Person of Jesus. But if we accept the Scripture as the written Word of God (I do), there is no way for us to deny that Jesus was God incarnate. As H.E.W. Turner, quoted by Morris, emphasizes strongly, “The Person of Jesus does not come apart in our hands into the two halves of humanity and divinity, one of which we have to set on one side when we begin to examine the other. His Personality is a seamless whole.”

This book is divided into eight (8) chapters, namely, 1) Jesus of Nazareth; 2) Jesus’ View of Himself; 3) Jesus the Man; 4) A Prince and A Saviour; 5) The Lord of Glory; 6) A Great High Priest; 7) God the Word; and 8) Conclusion. In each chapter, Morris unpacked what the New Testament taught about the humanity and divinity of Jesus from multiple angles, genres, and themes but leave the verdict for us to answer ourselves: “Who do you say about Jesus?”

#ServeToLead #LeadersAreReaders #TheLordFromHeaven #LeonMorris #LetsMakeReadingCoolAgain

Related book review: The Forgotten Trinity (1998) by James R. White, CLICK HERE
To read my other #1Book1Week book reviews, CLICK HERE

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I Could Hear Christ Praying for Me

"[Jesus] is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them" (Hebrews 7:25, ESV) #ServeToLead #PreachTheWord #ChristIntercedesForUs

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Lord, Heal My Tongue: The Importance of Your Confession (Part 9/9)

We need to see how the right use of the tongue links us in a very special way to Jesus Christ as our High Priest. The high priesthood of Jesus is an eternal ministry that goes on continually in heaven. After He had dealt with our sins, died, risen again and ascended into heaven, He entered into a ministry as our High Priest forever, always representing us in God's presence. He is our High Priest on the condition that we make the right confession with our tongues.

[This is a reading from Derek Prince's Does Your Tongue Need Healing? (1986) by Derek Prince Ministries International. Published by Whitaker House] #ServeToLead #HealMyTongue

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How to Bring Trouble to the World? Mix Religion with Politics But... This One Can (Genesis 14:14-17)

“After Abram returned from defeating Kedorlaomer and his allied kings, the king of Sodom came out to greet him in the Valley of Shaveh, the King’s Valley. Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine—he was priest of The High God—and blessed him: ‘Blessed be Abram by The High God, Creator of Heaven and Earth. And blessed be The High God, who handed your enemies over to you.’ Abram gave him a tenth of all the recovered plunder. The king of Sodom said to Abram, ‘Give me back the people but keep all the plunder for yourself.’ But Abram told the king of Sodom, ‘I swear to God, The High God, Creator of Heaven and Earth, this solemn oath, that I’ll take nothing from you, not so much as a thread or a shoestring. I’m not going to have you go around saying, ‘I made Abram rich’’
(Genesis 14:17-23, The Message)

Melchizedek (Hebrew means “my king is righteousness” and his title king of Salem means "king of peace") is one of the most mysterious figures in the Bible. In the midst of a pagan land, this man of God appears out of nowhere to greet and bless Abram, and he disappears just as suddenly as he came. His name, I think, is easily forgotten (and assume as unimportant) like those names from genealogies, except for the fact that the Book of Hebrews refers to Jesus as “a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek” (Hebrews 5:6).

I’m puzzled by this phrase. It seems like the only connection with Jesus is the fact that Melchizedek was both a priest and a king. Mind you, throughout the Bible, the role of priest and king are kept very separate. For example, King Saul got serious trouble for mixing the two roles (I noticed that the recipe for disaster is when religion mix with politics. Proof? Church history and contemporary issues). The two exceptions are Melchizedek and Jesus.

Lord Jesus rules over His people as King, but He also mediates between God and His people as Priest. Jesus the “great High Priest with ready access to God” (Hebrews 4:14). Perhaps it is appropriate that one of the first foreshadowing of Jesus be such a mysterious figure as Melchizedek. But Jesus is more than priest-king, He is also priest-king-prophet. One (higher) level than Melchizedek.

In the world where kings and leaders prone to be corrupt; and religious leaders and ministers tend to be abusive; using power for personal gains, lord over others in the name of spirituality – be hopeful and praiseful – Jesus, the King and Priest, is alive!

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Jesus: the Perfect Priest

When we see Christ, what will we see?

We will see the perfect priest, “clothed with a garment down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band” (Revelation 1:13). The first readers of this message knew the significance of the robe and band. Jesus is wearing the clothing of a priest. A priest presents people to God and God to people.

You have known other priests. There have been others in your life, whether clergy or not, who sought to bring you to God. But they, too, needed a priest. Some needed a priest more than you did. They, like you, were sinful. Not so with Jesus. “For such a High Priest was fitting for us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and has become higher than the heavens” (Hebrews 7:26).

Jesus is the perfect priest.

He is also pure and purifying: “His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire” (Revelation 1:14).

What would a person look like if he had never sinned? If no worry wrinkled his brow and no anger shadowed his eyes? If no bitterness snarled his lips and no selfishness bowed his smile? If a person had never sinned, how would he appeared? We’ll know when we see Jesus. What John [the apostle] saw that Sunday on Patmos [place where John wrote the Revelation] was absolutely spotless. He was reminded of the virgin wool of sheep and the untouched snow of winter.

And John was also reminded of fire. Others saw the burning bush, the burning altar, the fiery furnace, or the fiery chariots, but John saw the fiery eyes. And in those eyes he saw a purging blaze which will burn the bacteria of sin and purify the soul.

[From When Christ Comes by Max Lucado, bracket mine]

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Francois Turrettini on the Threefold Office of Christ (Prophet, Priest and King)

The writings of John Calvin, especially his Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559), established a pattern which would become widespread within the Reformed Christology. The significance of Christ was explored using the model of the “threefold office,” which depicted him as prophet, priest and king. As a prophet, Christ declared the will of God; as a priest, he made atonement for sins; and as king, he rules over his people. The noted seventeenth-century Genevan theologian Francois Turrettini, a major exponent of the Reformed tradition, here sets out this understanding more fully, in a text originally published in Latin in 1679:

“The office of [Jesus] Christ is nothing other than a mediation between God and humanity, which he was sent into the world by the Father and anointed by the Holy Spirit to carry out. It embraces all that Christ was required to achieve during his mission and calling in relation to an offended God and offending humanity (erga Deus offensum et homines offendentes), reconciling and uniting them to each other…

This mediatorial office of Christ is distributed among three functions, which are individual parts of it: the prophetic, priestly and kingly. Christ sustained these together rather than separately, something which he alone was able to do. For what would, in the case of other people, be divided on account of his supreme perfection. There could indeed be people who were both kings and priests (such as Melchizedek) or kings and prophets (such as David), or priests and prophets (as in the case of some high priests) – but there is no other who perfectly fulfilled all three. This was reserved for Christ alone, in that he was able to uphold the truth which is embodied in these types…

The threefold misery of humanity resulting from sin (that is, ignorance, guilt, and the oppression and bondage of sin) required this threefold office. Ignorance is healed through the prophetic office, guilt through the priestly, and the oppression and bondage of sin through the kingly. The prophetic light scatters the darkness of error; the merit of the priest removes guilt and obtains reconciliation for us; the power of the king takes away the bondage of sin and death. The prophet shows God to us; the priest leads us to God; and the king joins us together with God, and glorifies us with him. The prophet illuminates the mind by the spirit of enlightenment; the priest soothes the heart and conscious by the spirit of consolation; the king subdues rebellious inclinations by the spirit of sanctification.”

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References:

1) Institutio theologiae elencticae, topic 14, q. 5; in Institutio theologiae elenticae, 3 vols (Rome: Trajecti, 1734), vol. 2, pp. 424-427.

2) The Christian Theology Reader, edited by Alister E. McGrath (Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1995), pp. 153-154.

Good Bye Religion

Jesus said to the Pharisees, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17, NIV). When Jesus says he is not coming for the “righteous,” he does not mean that some people don’t need him. The clue to what Jesus does mean is his reference to himself as a physician. You go to a doctor only when you have a health problem that you can’t deal with yourself, when you feel you can’t get better through self-management. What do you want from a doctor? Not just advice – but intervention. You don’t want a doctor simply say, “Yes, you are sick!” You want some medicine or treatment.

Jesus calls people “righteous” who are in the same position spiritually as those who won’t go to a doctor. “Righteous” people believe they can “heal themselves,” make themselves right with God by being good or moral. They don’t feel the need for a soul physician, someone who intervenes and does what they can’t do themselves. Jesus is teaching that he has come to call sinners: those who know they are morally and spiritually unable to save themselves.

Because the Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus Christ, said, “It is finished,” we can rest from religion – forever.

The renowned British minister Dick Lucas once preached a sermon in which he recounted an imaginary conversation between an early Christian and her neighbour in Rome.

“Ah,” the neighbour says. “I hear you are religious! Great! Religious is a good things. Where is your temple or holy place?”

“We don’t have a temple,” replies the Christian. ‘Jesus is our temple.”

“No temple? But where do your priests work and do their rituals?”

“We don’t have priests to mediate the presence of God,” replied the Christian. “Jesus is our priest.”

“No priests? But where do you offer your sacrifices to acquire the favour of God?”

“We don’t need sacrifice,” replied the Christian. “Jesus is our sacrifice.”

“What kind of religion is this?” sputters the pagan neighbour.

And the answer is, it’s no kind of religion at all.

[Reference: Jesus the King: Understanding the Life and Death of the Son of God by Timothy Keller (Riverhead Books, 2011) Page 50-51]

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Part 1: Jesus Christ – His Names (iv)

Actually, this series is from Understanding Bible Truth booklets by Robert Hicks and Richard Bewes (1981), but I have expanded some texts for modern readers (to make it easier to read) and added Scripture quotes (I’m using ESV Bible) into these writings to clarify its points more clearly. My purpose of making this series available in the internet is single: So that you can be clear the essential facts about the Bible’s teaching in a readily understandable form.

First, What is “Name”?

A name is a word or term used for identification. Names can identify a class or category of things, or a single thing, either uniquely, or within a given context. Wikipedia further explained: “In the ancient world, particularly in the ancient near-east (Israel, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia) names were thought to be extremely powerful and to act, in some ways, as a separate manifestation of a person or deity”.

The many different names of Jesus Christ reveal the distinctive characteristics of His person and the work that He came to do. Below are six of His most important names in the Bible:

Son of God

As no one else, Jesus taught His disciples to think of God as their Father in a particularly intimate way. But because of His use of the terms “My Father” and “Your Father” (John 20:17) it is clear that He saw His own relationship to the Father in a quite different way from that of His followers. “It is clear that,” write J.I. Packer, “just as Jesus always thought of himself as Son of God in a unique sense, so he always thought of His followers as children of His heavenly Father, members of the same divine family as himself”.

The Jewish authorities recognized this and accused Jesus of making Himself equal with God. When Jesus said, “My Father is working until now, and I am working” (John 5:16), they “were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God” (v.18). [The term ‘Son of God’ occurs most frequently in John’s Gospel].

The Word

The Old Testament tells us that God created all things by His word. He spoke and it came to be. “Let there be…” and it be (Genesis 1). “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host… For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm” (Psalm 33:6, 9).

The Apostle John in the New Testament shows that this Word was in fact God’s Son, without whom nothing would exist. The Word involved in God’s creation in another important way. He is the perfect expression of God to men. Because Christ is the Word, He did not merely bring us God’s good news, but He is Himself that good news. John 1:1-3 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.”

High Priest

This title, given to Christ in the book of Hebrews (7:23-28), is drawn from the Old Testament system of sacrifices. A sacrifice had to be made every year by the High Priest on behalf of God’s people to atone for their sins (Leviticus 9:7-8). Christ, by His sacrificial death (never to be repeated) are the perfect mediator and High Priest. “…we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God…” (Hebrews 4:14).

Messiah

For centuries the Jews had looked for a future King who would be a descendant of David. This person was called the ‘Messiah’ by the Jews (which in the Greek language is ‘Christos’, from which we get ‘Christ’). He would have God’s authority and power to bring in the end of the age and establish the kingdom of God.

It was Simon Peter who made the first clear declaration that Jesus was the Christ. Peter said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). Jesus, however, saw His messianic role as one of suffering and death for the salvation of men. Matthew 16:21 continue, “From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”

Son of Man

Jesus used this name more than any other to describe Himself. Although it seems to speak of His humanity, in reality it is a pointer to His deity, for the term is drawn from the book of Daniel, where the Son of Man rules an everlasting Kingdom (See chapter on “The Son of Man is Given Dominion”, Daniel 7:9-14).

Jesus used the title in three ways – when speaking of His earthly ministry, His death and His coming glory. It is suggested that He favored this title because it carried no nationalistic association, it implied identification with man, and it had both “overtones of divinity and undertones of humanity” writes Leon Morris, in his commentary of The Gospel according to Matthew.

[Refers to Matthew 8:19-20, 20:17-19, 24:30]

Lord

To call Jesus Lord was, in the New Testament church, the mark of a true Christian. To use this name invited opposition – from the Jewish authorities on the grounds of blasphemy (because it equate Him with God) and from the Romans on the ground of treason against the Emperor (because the Romans thought that their emperor is God). This was the name that ascribed all the authority to Jesus. Paul writes, “…no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3). Jesus said, “You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am” (John 13:13). The Scripture declares,

“Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9-11).

My Conclusion about Jesus’ Names

Here we only described 6 most important titles, but there are more than 700 names of Jesus throughout the Bible. To really know God, you must get to know Him by name. The names of God in Scripture are really a self-revelation of God in His nature and attributes. The sheer number of such names and titles in Scripture suggests something of the immensity of God. “A devout Moslem exhausts his knowledge of his god when he knows the ninety-nine names and attributes of Allah in the Koran” writes Elmer L. Towns, “But the Bible identifies more than 700 descriptive names and titles of Jesus Christ”. And as Charles Haddon Spurgeon once put it, “God the Father never gave his son a name which he did not deserve.”
Jesus’ names are all about Him for He deserves such names. Amen.

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