Given two thousand years of church history, and the large number of TV evangelists, spiritual gurus, and cult leaders running around’all of whom seem bent on conjuring up tailor-made Jesuses to suit their purposes’there are plenty of false Jesuses to for us to consider. We begin by noting that the nature of our Lord’s incarnation almost guarantees the presence of false Jesuses. The very idea of God taking to himself a true human nature is in and of itself a unique and somewhat mysterious historical event. That Jesus was a real flesh and blood human, who is also the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, while remaining as one person, raises many profound and important questions.
Those who heard Jesus preach about the kingdom of God were said to have marveled at his words, for he spoke as someone having authority’unlike anyone they had heard preach previously. He performed miraculous signs and wonders that were obviously not trickery or chicanery. He instantaneously healed people known to the crowds following him and even raised the dead. All of this confirmed that his preaching had its origin in the will of YHWH. The buzz surrounding Jesus was that he might be the long-expected messianic prophet.
It was impossible to hear or see Jesus and not ask, ‘Who is this? Where is he from?’ In Matthew 16:13’15, we read an interesting exchange between Jesus and his disciples regarding this very matter.
When Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ They said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’
People have been attempting to answer Jesus’ question ever since.
A Stumbling Block and a Folly
Then there were others so convinced that the Bible is God’s word and so zealous to defend one point of doctrine to the exclusion of all others that they formulated an answer to Jesus’ question by considering only one slice of New Testament teaching. One example is those who sought to preserve the unity of God while allowing for a special role for Jesus. Others developed their Christology to satisfy prevailing philosophical considerations. The most famous of such groups, the so-called Arians, identified Jesus as God’s first and preeminent creature, the ‘firstborn of all creation,’ who in turn created everything else. Their answers are profoundly and dangerously wrong.
We must not overlook the fact that when Jesus asked his disciples this question, he accepted Peter’s answer before answering his own question.
Simon Peter replied, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.’
Jesus accepted Peter’s answer as a confession of faith and an acknowledgment that Jesus is the Christ (Israel’s Messiah) as well as the Son of the living God (a reference to Jesus’ eternal relationship to the Father, which at the very least implies that Jesus shares in the Father’s divine essence; that is, Jesus is in some sense God). After accepting Peter’s answer, Jesus told the disciples that his true identity could be known only through God’s revelation’that is, only through God’s revealed word. If we want to know who Jesus is, then we must go to the one place where Jesus’ question is definitively answered: in the New Testament testimony of Jesus’ true identity.
There are three inescapable conclusions from even a brief survey of the pages of the New Testament regarding the person of Jesus: (1) Jesus is fully human and at the same time (2) Jesus is truly God, and (3) these two natures are united in such a way that Jesus remains one true human person. Therefore, the sure-fire way to spot a ‘false Jesus’ is to determine whether Jesus’ true deity or his true humanity is in any way denied, compromised, or ignored. Any ‘Jesus’ who is not fully human or truly God is a false Jesus.
But these two natures’one human and one divine coexisting in one person’raise additional questions. How do these two natures relate to each other? Are they blended into one? Are they united like two boards glued together? Are they arranged in such a way that we can determine from the Gospel accounts whether Jesus acts as God or only as a man? If Jesus has two natures united in one person, then how does this work? Is he really one person? This is why the very nature of the incarnation generates ‘false Jesuses.’
We begin with the affirmation that Jesus is as human as any of us, and then consider some of the ways in which our Lord’s humanity is denied by false teachers. The New Testament writers universally affirm Jesus’ humanity, and routinely describe Jesus as demonstrating real human needs and attributes. The Gospels speak of Jesus’ birth as natural; it was his conception by the Holy Spirit that was miraculous. In Luke’s account of Jesus’ early life, Luke tells us that Jesus grew in wisdom and knowledge just as any human does (Luke 2:40, 52). The author of Hebrews tells us that Jesus experienced temptation as any human does, except that Jesus did not have a sinful nature as we do (Heb. 2:10, 18). Jesus learned obedience through suffering (Heb. 5:8), which tells us that his growth and development were as necessary to his personality as they would be for any human. This means Jesus was once a toddler. Jesus was once a kid. Jesus was once a teenager. Jesus had friends, played, learned, and grew to adulthood’just as every one of us has done. We read of Jesus being hungry, growing weary, and needing sleep. We read of Jesus weeping angrily at the sight of the tomb of his friend Lazarus, and then suffering deep anguish of soul while praying in Gethsemane (when he was praying for himself, for his disciples, and for us). We read of Jesus experiencing human emotions such as anger (Mark 3:5).
The question, however, remains: Was Jesus truly human? Was he divine yet merely appeared to be human? I ask this particular question because there have been notable but infrequent occasions throughout church history when certain teachers (especially those influenced by Greek thought or proto/full-blown Gnosticism) denied that Jesus was truly human.
Docetism
The ancient version of this is the heresy of Docetism’which comes to us from the Greek word dokein (to seem) or dókesis (apparition, phantom). Operating on the assumption that there is an absolute dualism between pure spirit and matter, if Jesus is God in some sense, then his essence must be pure spirit. Since matter is defective, a flawed copy of the ideal form, how could God ever be united in any real sense to human flesh that, being material, is flawed or even evil? God manifest in the flesh is understood as God’s presence among us, his divinity veiled or concealed by a physical appearance or form; but Jesus does not possess a true human nature, so these teachers claim.
Not long ago someone asked me what the outcome would be if Jesus took a DNA test. The question is profound, because if Jesus swabbed his cheek and had the cells analyzed, his maternal line (mitochondrial DNA) no doubt would take us back to Eve, just as Luke reports in his genealogy of Jesus in Luke 3:23’38. As for Jesus’ paternal line, Jesus’ y-DNA must have been miraculously created and then united to Mary’s. The question seems speculative, but it actually raises an important theological point: God incarnate had human DNA, just as he had RH-typable blood, shed for the complete remission of our sins. If Jesus could submit his cheek swab to one of the DNA companies, he would have received a concrete result. Jesus is not God in human disguise. Jesus is fully human.
The New Testament specifically addresses this particular heresy of Docetism. In the prologue to his Gospel, John speaks of Jesus as becoming flesh and dwelling among us, the human race. In John 8:40, Jesus identifies himself as a man. In 1 John 1:1’3, the apostle takes direct aim at those who question Jesus’ true humanity:
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life’the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us’that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us.
John spent three years with Jesus. He saw Jesus in the flesh, doing all the things humans do. He heard Jesus speak, preach, and teach, and his voice didn’t sound like it had been modulated by reverb unit. Jesus is truly human in every sense of the word. In fact, it is John in his second epistle (2 John 7) who warns the apostolic church: ‘For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist.’
To deny the human nature of Jesus is to imbibe from the spirit of the antichrist. That is a strong and serious charge. The prophecy pundits have done us a massive disservice by playing ‘pin the tail on the antichrist,’ instead of focusing upon what John actually says about the antichrist. John uses the term not for a future ruler who makes a peace treaty with Israel, but for anyone who denies that Jesus has a true human nature’in other words, anyone who teaches the Docetic heresy.
I’ve long thought that Bible-believing Christians have a much harder time with Christ’s humanity than with his deity. As best humans can, we grasp the idea of God coming to us in the flesh. This is easier for us to embrace because of our reverence for Jesus as our Lord, Savior, Redeemer, Creator, friend. We have a harder time thinking of Jesus needing to eat, sleep, and go to the bathroom. The very nature of the incarnation forces us to wrestle with the question, ‘Just how human is Jesus?’ The answer given by Jesus himself and as he is described in the New Testament is that he is fully human’a man. To deny this is to preach a false Jesus. It is to do the work of antichrist.
The Divine Christ
Space precludes me from doing full justice to this aspect of Christ’s divine nature, so I will refer to only a few significant passages. There are the seven ‘I am’ statements in John’s Gospel, where Jesus speaks of himself as ‘I am’ (ego emi), which is a direct allusion to YHWH, the great ‘I am.’ The most famous of these ‘I am’ sayings is Jesus’ declaration in John 8:58. After accusing Jesus of being demon possessed, the Jewish Bible scholars asked him,
‘Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets died! Who do you make yourself out to be?’ Jesus answered, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.’
In these words, Jesus is claiming to be the I am (YHWH) who spoke to Moses from the burning bush (Exod. 3:14). We know this is how the Jews understood Jesus’ words because we read in verse 59 that ‘they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.’ The penalty for blasphemy was death by stoning. If Jesus was not one with YHWH, then the death penalty was completely appropriate. If Jesus was not who he claimed, then he was blaspheming! But from the Jews’ immediate reaction, it is pretty clear that Jesus was claiming he was the one who spoke to Moses from the burning bush. In other words, he is God.
And then there is Jesus’ question and answer as recounted in Matthew 16, mentioned earlier. Jesus accepted Peter’s assertion that he himself was both Israel’s Messiah and the Son of God (that is, in some way Jesus is identified as one with YHWH). In other words, Jesus is God in human flesh. Peter believed as much, confessed it, and more importantly, Jesus accepted his answer and gave it his blessing.
Although few today preach the false Jesus of the Gnostics and Docetics, many of our contemporaries deny that Jesus was truly God in human flesh, because in their estimation such a thing is impossible. But the real reason why people deny Jesus’ divine nature is virtually self-evident. If Jesus is God in human flesh, then he is the only Savior, his words are God’s words, and all other religions and religious claims are false. Jesus has a remarkable way of opening the ground under the feet of all those who encounter him. When he declares that he is God in human flesh”before Abraham was, I am’’you must either jump into his arms or fall into the chasm now open under your feet. You cannot hear Jesus’ claim, ignore it, and then go merrily on your way.
A Different Kind of Adoption
The Jews of Jesus’ day knew exactly what he was claiming’that he was God. They rejected his claim and put him to death. In light of the difficulties the Jews faced in accepting the fact that YHWH’the one true and living God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob’took on true human nature in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, we should not be surprised that one of the earliest false Jesuses arose early in the second century among a sect of Jewish Christians called ‘Ebionites.’ Ebionites were Jews who believed that Jesus was Israel’s Messiah and that he was given God’s Spirit at his baptism. The Ebionites believed that Jesus had no preexistent divine nature and was merely human until ‘adopted’ by God. This is known as adoptionism, in which it is argued that God ‘divinized’ the man Jesus through the work of the indwelling Holy Spirit given to him at his birth, or his baptism, and which departed from Jesus before his crucifixion, leaving him to die as a mere man.
The appeal of the Ebionite (adoptionist) version of Jesus is that this notion allows the adherent to defend monotheism by stressing that Jesus is not eternally God, even if for a time Jesus functioned as a semi-divine figure with divine attributes. Ebionites held tightly to Jewish monotheism and ritual customs, yet they allowed for Jesus’ messianic office (ironically) by denying his eternal relationship to the Father. Adoptionists were reacting against the problem supposedly created by affirming the deity of Jesus. If the Father is God, and Jesus is also God, then why are there not two Gods? If the Holy Spirit is also God, then why are there not three Gods? Defenders of adoptionist Christologies explain references to Jesus’ deity and manifestations of divine attributes to be temporary endowments added to the man Jesus and then taken away from him, which also explains Jesus’ death, because God cannot die.
False Jesuses most often arise within the Christian community because the advocates are trying to protect something they think vital. In the case of Ebionites, they were protecting monotheism from what they perceived to be a denial of monotheism’namely, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.
Although Ebionite and adoptionist Christologies were among the earliest false Jesuses, the most pernicious false Jesus was that of the Arians and other so-called subordinationists arising a century or so later.
Arianism
Arianism comes to us from its principal teacher, Arius (c. AD 250’336), a Christian presbyter in Alexandria, Egypt. Arius argued that Jesus (the Son of God) did not always exist (that is, he was not eternal), but was created by and is therefore different from the Father. Arius and his followers appealed to John 14:28 (as well as other texts affirming that God is one) as biblical support for his view. In John 14, Jesus says, ‘You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.’ For Arius, Jesus’ assertion that the Father is greater meant that Jesus was subordinate to the Father as to Jesus’ very nature and therefore in a profound sense inferior to the Father in essence.
The logical consequence of Arianism is that Jesus was understood to be a creature (albeit the greatest creature), who had his origin in a moment in time, however long ago, and who possessed a different and inferior essence from that of the Father. As Christians began to realize the depths and extent of Arius’ error, some (the orthodox) rejected this notion altogether, correctly renouncing Arianism as a heresy. Others attempted to synthesize Arianism (which was surprisingly popular) with the orthodox view by slightly moderating Arius’s teaching, affirming that Jesus possessed a similar essence with the Father (homoiousia), not the same essence (homoousia) as the orthodox affirmed.
The result of all forms of subordinationism’ which means that the Son is under the Father and subordinate as to his divine essence’is denial that Jesus is fully God. Whether Arianism or Sabellianism (from the false teacher Sabellius, who lived a bit earlier than Arius), the basic idea is that Jesus is inferior to the Father as to his essence, and although possessing divine attributes and exercising divine prerogatives, Jesus is not eternal. This arose largely in an attempt to preserve the oneness of God, and to explain Jesus’ exalted nature against the backdrop of Greek thought that permeated North Africa where Arius lived. But since Arians reject the full deity of the Son, then their Jesus is a false Jesus just as the subordinationist Jesus is a false Jesus. Whenever anyone denies Jesus’ eternal divine essence and contends that Jesus is inferior to the Father and/or a creature (no matter how exalted), you can be sure you have encountered a false Jesus.
One Person, Two Natures
The third way to spot a false Jesus is to look closely to see how the two natures of Jesus relate to each other. One group’the fourth-century Apollinarians’argued that while Jesus was truly human in most ways, the divine Logos in the incarnation took the place of Jesus’ rational nature (his mind). The goal here was to explain the incarnation to Greeks, who believed that the Logos was the universal principle of human reason. Physically, Jesus was a true human’he had kidneys, a heart, and so on’but the Logos (reason) took the place of Jesus’ soul/spirit. The divine Logos then provided Jesus with his thinking, his rational nature. But as Gregory of Nazianzus once affirmed, that which Jesus did not assume he did not redeem. If Jesus did not possess human reason (a true human mind), then he wasn’t fully human.
Another controversial group known as the Nestorians’who embraced a fifth-century heresy taught by Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople’argued that the divine Logos indwelt Jesus in a moral sense but not essentially. Nestorians sought to explain how Jesus could die when God cannot. But the Nestorian answer to this conundrum was to erroneously affirm that Jesus’ human nature was completely distinct from and completely controlled by the divine nature, making the man Jesus essentially like us; only that he’being possessed by the Logos’was completely submissive to the divine will, unlike the rest of humanity. In other words, we understand the divine and human natures in Jesus to be like two boards glued together. As Nestorius put it, there is a difference between the temple and the one who lives in it. Jesus is that one person in whom God manifests himself more than all others. Nestorius famously refused to refer to Mary as Theotokos, the ‘God-bearer’ or ‘mother of God.’ For Nestorius, Christians could only properly refer to Mary as Christotokos, the mother of Jesus, because there was no union of any kind between Jesus’ divine and human natures.
Another fifth-century group worth mentioning is the Eutychians. The Eutychians affirmed that our Lord’s true human nature was swallowed up by the divine nature, so as to create what amounts to a third thing’a tertium quid‘a unique nature composed of Jesus’ divine and human natures. The goal here was to reject and prevent the error made by the Nestorians. But the consequence created a new error: a Jesus who was truly one person but with no real distinction between the divine and human natures. Rejecting the Nestorian idea of two boards glued together, the Eutychians understood Jesus’ two natures to be like particle board’a mixture of two different things (wood and glue), forming a new third kind of thing.
Although it’s clear that any discussion of Jesus’ two natures can quickly become complicated, we can keep the matter relatively simple. Whatever attributes we ascribe to either nature (divine or human) we simply affirm of the person. For example, we know that God cannot die. We know that God cannot be hungry or tired. We also know that humans cannot raise the dead or die a death that can save others from their sins. So we simply affirm that Jesus was tired, he grew to manhood, he died on the cross. We do not divide him in two; nor do we mix the two natures or try to identity which nature was active’even though such implications do arise from within the accounts of Jesus’ life and ministry. But we do acknowledge that both natures are present in one person’Jesus of Nazareth, who is Israel’s Messiah and the Son of God.
