You understand that I brought all that up in refutation of your use of Scripture to suggest that Jesus was not God and that your acknowledgement of the truth of my point is an acknowledgment that your use of Scrpture is (was) faulty - right?
Yes, God the Son humbled Himself and became a man and submitted Himself, not only to God the Father but to the Law of Moses and even to human authority. None of which is relevant to the notion that Jesus was God become flesh and that the Logos which became Jesus was with God and was God in the beginning and John states quite explicitly.
Becuase God is just!
God is not arbitrary as the Calvinist would have you believe. He cannot just do anything at all and remain just. He has to act justly to remain just because that's what it means to be just. The Calvinist teach that God can do whatever He wants and that it would be just by virtue of the fact that it was God doing it. This renders justice meaningless, as applied to God's character. Thy believe that God could have snapped the Holy Finger and allowed the sound of it to atone for the sins of man. It isn't so. The bible states that there was only "One found worthy". That was said in relation to opening the seven seals in Revelation but if God can just declare anyone worthy by fiat then where's the need to search for someone? Why even bother with the seven seals judgment in the first place, for that matter.
God does what He does because it is the right thing to do. This goes for atoning for sin as well as everything else God does.
We are saved by His death, marhig. His slow, painful, physical and spiritual death. He died so that we wouldn't have to.
Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.
Romans 6:6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.
Further, Jesus lived (and died) under the Law and taught people to do the same. You would not know and could not practice Christianity without the Pauline epistles. But that's a topic for another thread.
You can play around all you like. You can rationalize this all to death and back again if you really feel like you need too. You can argue all you like about the specifics of the Trinity doctrine itself but there is nothing - NOTHING - that the bible teaches more clearly than it teaches that Jesus is the incarnate Creator God Himself. If you deny it then you are denying the authority of the scripture to define your religious beliefs. In which case, you might as well go join up with the Mormons. You'd be no less a Christian if you did.
Resting in Him,
Clete
