Ronald H. Hanko is pastor of Trinity Protestant Reformed Church, Houston, Texas.

2. Denials of this doctrine (continued).

Though the false teaching of the sects regarding the divinity of Christ is still a threat to the church, especially because of the deceitfulness of these false teachers, the greatest threat to church doctrine at, this point comes not from without but from within. That threat is the neglect of this doctrine by the church herself. Such neglect of Christ’s divinity is at least as malignant as the outright denials of this doctrine that characterize the sects, perhaps even more so since it appears relatively harmless and benign. Any denial of the deity of Christ, whether by neglect or open denial, is a deadly threat to the very existence of the church, for the redemption, the life, and the hope of the church are all grounded in the truth that Jesus is the Son of God.

The church today neglects the doctrine of Christ’s divinity especially by a one-sided emphasis on His humanity. In the teaching of the church only those attributes of God in Christ that have a reflection in man are mentioned, while such attributes as His sovereignty, immutability (unchangeableness), and independence, especially in judgment, are entirely passed over. One hears only of His love and compassion and His concern for the poor and helpless, but nothing of the Christ Who reveals the wrath of God in crying against the cities of Galilee, beating the buyers and sellers with whips in temple, and cursing an unfruitful nation and its leaders. Even in speaking of His love and compassion, it is not the burning holiness of those attributes as attributes of God that is emphasized, but the weak, sentimental emotionalism of those attributes as they belong to man that is stressed.

The prayers of the church reflect this abnormality also. The church no longer prays to God in and through Jesus Christ, but to Jesus Himself (or to the Holy Spirit), thus consciously or unconsciously separating Him from the Godhead. Likewise, in her singing the church no longer sings of God and His glory in Christ as the Psalms teach us to sing, but of Christ alone, and then with the weak sentiment of the popular hymns and with all the emphasis on that which is most human in Him. It is striking too, that the church in her hymns sings only about Christ and not inHim, that is, with His own words and songs as the Psalms teach us to sing. This reflects a neglect of His divinity also, since it is by virtue of His power as the Son of God that we are in Him. It is not at all surprising, then, that it was Arius, the first great enemy of the truth of Christ’s divinity, who said: “Let me make a people’s songs, and I care not who makes their laws.”

In her preaching the church no longer presents a Christ in Whom all the wrath of God against sin is revealed, and in Whom God shows Himself as the only Savior, but rather presents a Christ Who is little more than a kind helper or fine example. The cross is reduced to a mere expression of the desire (again a very human desire) to help and save all men. The work of Christ is not seen any longer as the working out of the will of God by Him Who is Himself the counseling and decreeing God, but more as the working out of Christ’s own will on behalf of His earthly brethren over against an angry and threatening God. So a wedge is driven, and driven ever more deeply between Christ and the Godhead; and the church, for all practical purposes, is left without the Christ of the Scriptures, Who is above all else the holy Son of God.

This widespread neglect of Christ’s divinity is evidence of an even more serious problem, if that is possible: that is, that the Church no longer needs or wants a Christ Who is God’s Son, the Only Begotten God. She has no use for such a Christ because she has in large measure substituted a gospel of man’s ability and power for the gospel of the sovereignty and power of God unto salvation. Teaching free will, believing that faith is man’s own work, and denying total depravity, she has no need of God in Christ. And abandoning Christ, the Son of God, she abandons her own salvation and safety, and loses her character as the church of God.

J.I. Packer sums it up well:

From current Christian publications you might think that the most vital issue for any real or would-be Christian in the world today is church union, or social witness, or dialogue with other Christians and other Faiths, or refuting this or that -ism, or developing a Christian philosophy and culture, or what have you . . . The issues themselves are real and must be dealt with in their place. But it is tragic that, in paying attention to them, so many in our day seem to have been distracted from what was, is, and always will be the true priority for every human being—that is, learning to know God in Christ (Knowing God, p. 254).

3. The importance of this doctrine.

The importance of the doctrine of Christ’s divinity cannot be over-emphasized. It lies at the very heart of theology, for one thing. It is, for example, so closely bound up with the doctrine of the trinity that the two really cannot be separated. This is abundantly clear from the early history of the church. The first heresies with which the church had to deal were the so-called trinitarian heresies, some of which are named in Article IX of the Belgic Confession. Without exception these early heresies either touched on the whole question of Christ’s divinity, or involved a direct attack on that doctrine and led, in the history of the early church, directly into the so-called christological controversies.

It is obvious, too, that the truth that Christ is God cannot be separated from His work as Savior and the whole doctrine of the atonement. He has power over life and death—power to lay down His own life and take it again, power also to conquer death for us and to give us His own everlasting, heavenly life—only because He is the Living God. Only as almighty God was He able to bear the wrath of God against sin, and only as the righteous Lord could He obtain for us righteousness and peace with God. The whole value and power of His sacrifice depends not only on what He did, but on Who He is.

In an even more practical vein, this doctrine as confessed and believed by the church, is the church’s unshakeable and forever firm foundation. Built on this foundation the gates of hell cannot prevail against the church. Built on anything else the church is built on treacherous, shifting sand and cannot endure. Notice, however, that the church is built not on the doctrine of Christ’s divinity as such, but on that doctrine as it isconfessed and believed in the church (Matt. 16:13-18). The church which has that doctrine only in her official documents is not built on that doctrine or assured that she shall last. That doctrine must be alive in the churches, as Daniel says regarding the church in the last days; “But the people that do know their Godshall be strong, and do exploits” (Dan. 11:32).

The significance of this doctrine for the church is seen in the fact, on the one hand, that Reformed churches have always recognized the Roman Catholic Church as a church in spite of its long-standing apostasy, while counting Jews and Mohammedans outside the pale of Christianity (cf. the Belgic Confession, Article IX). Because the Jews trace their roots back to the Old Testament, we are inclined to assume that they worship and teach the same God as we do. The truth is that in rejecting Christ as the Son of God they have become as much idolaters as the heathen who have never known Christ. Here also the church has at times neglected the truth of Christ’s divinity, and lost her witness among the Jews as well, by telling the Jews that they can retain their Judaism and still be saved, or by speaking to and about the unconverted Jews as brothers in the faith, as the Pope did recently. John points out in II John 9, that a person who does not have this doctrine of Christ does not have God. This is what Athanasius, the greatest defender of this truth the church has ever produced, said about the Arians of his day, “Being Arians, they are not Christians.” The church must insist on this in her witness to the Jews and to the sects. We also must insist on it in our witness to those of the various sects who come knocking on our doors, that they are unbelievers and idolaters, who shall die in their sins, unless they repent and are converted to God.

So critical is this doctrine that John tells us in II John 9, 10that we are not even to have fellowship with those who deny that Christ is God, lest we be tainted with their unbelief or become partakers of their blasphemies. John is not warning against the possibility of our beginning to teach and believe what they teach, but against the possibility of our being partakers of their blasphemy and evil simply by countenancing even in the smallest way their presence. The doctrine of Christ’s divinity is the dividing line between Christianity and paganism, church and world, salvation and condemnation.

This, too, the church has forgotten in large measure. And to the extent that she has forgotten it she shows how little she really cares for Christ as the divine Son of God. Everywhere she seeks “dialogue” and fellowship with those who deny Him by Whose Name she is called. To put it in other words, the whole ecumenical movement today, insofar as it includes Unitarians, the Sects, the Jews, the Muslims, and the various heathen religions and philosophies is simply a denial of God in Christ.

The Nicene Creed as originally written gets at the heart of all this when it curses those who deny the deity of Christ. And though the creed is no longer printed with this anathema, it said therein nothing less than what the Scriptures themselves say. Those who reject and deny Christ, the only begotten Son of God, shall be and are accursed. “He that honoreth not the Son honoreth not the Father which hath sent Him” (John 5:23).

As Athanasius pointed out, the denial of Christ’s divinity is “a heresy more than ordinary . . . and harbinger of Antichrist.” Let the church, therefore, keep her faith “in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, only begotten, that is, of the substance of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten and not made, of one substance with the Father” (Nicene Creed).