In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. -John 1.1

¹⁵ The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. ¹⁶ For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. ¹⁷ He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸ And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. ¹⁹ For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, ²⁰ and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. -Colossians 1.15-20

The deity of Jesus Christ is key. If He is not Deus incarnatus (‘God incarnate’) then He cannot be Deus revelatus (‘God revealed’). And if God be not revealed we are of all people most to be pitied. If God is salvation for us, then no matter what magnitude of sophistication is mustered, we must become little gods striving to save ourselves; we must somehow bridge the ditch between God’s holiness and our relative filthiness (before the Holy God). And yet such a task would require more than even an Übermensch (‘Superman’) could hope to muster. If God upholds all things by the Word of His power, if God is before all created things (as the Creator), then an attempt for humanity simpliciter to reach God on God’s terms would require that we become God ourselves. Of course, this is the original lie the Serpent fed Eve and Adam; i.e., that we could be as God. You can maybe better appreciate the need for God to be God for us if we have any hope of being with God, on His terms, in the beatific bliss that He has always already been in Himself.

Unfortunately, theologians such as Dale Tuggy, Steven Nemes et al. have imbibed the lie that Jesus is a creature; that Jesus is a subordinate to the singularity of God’s unitarian being as the actus purus. For such theologians Jesus is nothing more than an organon, an instrument, a demi-urge of Gnostic ilk. Jesus becomes a ladder, an exemplar, a bodhisattva, who shows the way to release into the eternal One through an attainment of special knowledge that Jesus has been suffused with. Of course, such thinking, such christological heresy has been engaged with rather decisively by the ecumenical church councils in the 4^th and 5^th centuries, respectively. Karl Barth picks up on the biblical and patrological thinking as he pens the following:

This is because it is already God’s Word as Creator. That according to His Word God wills to draw us to Himself, to reconcile us to Himself, and finally to redeem us (making a new heaven and a new earth and ourselves its inhabitants), is something which He has already promised in creating heaven and earth and ourselves by His Word. Revealing and speaking this Word to us, He tells us only that He will stand by the promise of His Word as Creator, and fulfill it. Luther’s exposition of all things were made through him (Jn. 1.3) has to be considered if we are fully to understand the inner scope of Gen. 1.3f: “In this way St. John indicates and proves forcefully that the Son of God who is here the image of the invisible God is not created or made. Before the world, all creatures and even angels were created, and before all things commenced, the Word or Speech, and that without it nothing was made that was made. This Word or Speech is from the creation of the world, over four thousand years before Christ was born and man made; yea, it was the bosom of the Father from all eternity. If this is the case, then the Word must be higher and greater than all created things, i.e., it must be God Himself, for apart from God the Creator everything was created—all creatures, angels, heaven, earth, man, and every living thing. But John says that when in the beginning God created all things, the Word was already and had its being. He does not say that God created the Word, or that the Word became, but that the Word was already. From this is follows that the Word was neither created nor made. It is not a creature, but all things were made by it, as is made clear in the passage, and therefore it must be God if the principle is established that the Word was before all creatures. It is a very lofty way of speaking of the divine nature and majesty of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to say that in His divine essence He is the Word of the eternal Father. There is, therefore, no doubt, and reason can conclude, that if the Word was from the beginning, before all things commenced to be, it follows the same Word is God. Reason can clearly distinguish that if anything exists and has its being before the world and the creation of all creatures, it must be God, for apart from the creature we can speak only of the Creator. All that exists is either the Creator Himself or else His creature—God or creation. But the Holy Spirit speaks through St. John and testifies: ‘In the beginning was the Word,’ and again: ‘All things were made through him,’ etc. The Word therefore cannot be counted among the creatures, but has its eternal being in the Godhead, and from this is follows invincibly and incontrovertibly that the same Word is God, as St. John also concludes” (Exposition of John, chs. 1—2, 1537-38, W.A. 46, 547, 29).[1]

It seems incredible that anyone who knows the history of biblical interpretation, or who knows Koine Greek, could arrive at any other conclusion that Jesus is God ensarkos. Sadly, once the person crosses that line they are no longer Protestant, post-Protestant, or biblically Christian; they are now in the kingdom of the cults, the kingdom of the heretics. And if the logic above was missed it is simply an elaboration, really, of Colossians 1.15-20. Jesus was and is always already before all created things. The Pauline theo-logic is crystal here: if the Son, who is the Christ, is before all created things, then eo ipso He is in fact the true God; He is a hypostases in the Monarxia (‘Godhead’).

As was noted: since Jesus is God for us, God in the flesh; God is revealed. And if God is revealed from within the frailties of human flesh in the incarnation this entails that God has deigned, has freely chosen to speak to us, for us, and with us by the Spirit. And if God has entered into the dust and dreg of these fallen human bodies in the particular human body of the Man from Nazareth, this means that we have hope. This means that we can genuinely experience peace with the living God because the living God has freely elected to be peace for, with, and in us through the mediatorial, priestly, and vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. It is because the Holy and living God has so stooped that the filthy and wretched fallen humanity can be exalted in the risen, ascended and exalted humanity of Jesus Christ. It is through God’s participation with us, in Jesus, the Theanthropos, that we can now truly participate with Him at His Right Hand where there are pleasures forevermore. This is the ‘peace to all men’ that the angelic host announced to the shepherds on that cold and dark night so long ago in the hills of the Galilee. This is the Evangel, the Good News, that Christ is risen; and in His divinized humanity and humanized divinity (without admixture between the two), as we say Yes and Amen from His Yessed and Amened life for us, it is in this doubly consubstantiating combine wherein we are saved. But only if Christ is indeed God for us; and indeed, He is. amen amen

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/1 §41 The Doctrine of Creation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 115-16.