Let us turn to our Bibles to 2 Timothy chapter 1. 2 Timothy chapter 1 verse 2, specifically the latter part of verse 2. Let us listen attentively to the Word of God. Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father in Christ Jesus our Lord. Let us pray.
And in this benediction, God, a prayer of blessing, as Paul is often doing in his letters, writing down, may this be our prayer and blessing for one another as well. But as we learn and meditate upon it, God, may we see depth and significance of it, where the grace, mercy, and peace is not just and only from God the Father, but also from Christ Jesus our Lord, therefore proving that He is divine. For such grace that covers a multitude of sins of mercy upon our wretchedness and peace that is reconciliation between the judge and man is only and can only come from God Almighty, from the divine, and Jesus, therefore, is divine.
Lord God Almighty, we live in a day and age of much confusion of who Jesus is, even in the church, unfortunately, depending, I suppose, how broadly defined the word church or evangelical. And may this truth, as we dig into it, be reaffirmed in our hearts and minds and strengthen and encourage us, God, to follow the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, knowing that each are three divine, yet one God. We ask these things, Lord, in your name alone.
Amen. So one unique thing about the Bible, beyond its amazing message of redemption and hope and love, the incredible stories of redemption and the miracles go over and over these things, is that logical deductions can be garnered from, in a way not found in human literature, logical inference, we call it. When you or I, excuse me, write or assert something, write a letter to our friend, to our family members, and we’re talking about matters of this world or even matters of the Word of God, someone else reading it or listening may draw a logical inference about something we had no intention at all.
So what you’re saying is this, and you look at them like, where did that, I don’t, no, no, no, that wasn’t my intent at all. It happens a lot, catches us off guard, and so we further explain ourselves. This is what we mean.
Since we cannot see the full logical outworkings of our own words or way of thinking even, we expect courtesy from one another in listening and reading. That is, we give people the benefit of the doubt. Oh, he probably doesn’t mean that.
I can’t draw that inference from his words. But with the Word of God, logical inferences are valid in all cases because God knew exactly the necessary implications of his own words. He sees all the logical consequences of verses and teachings because he put them there, and we see this in how Jesus handles the Word of God and argues by logical deduction as well.
But what does this look like? The Trinity is a perfect example of this. We see the words, works, and acts of Jesus, for example, of the Holy Spirit that only the divine God can accomplish, do, or say, and therefore draw the necessary conclusion that Jesus is divine and the Holy Spirit is divine. We do the same, both those.
And so reading here through the Epistle, such as 2 Timothy, we read verses here and sentences that necessarily assume certain doctrines and implications like the deity of Jesus as we read here in verse 2. Peppered throughout the New Testament in Paul’s writing are references to Jesus and the Holy Spirit that necessarily imply his divine nature. They necessitate, in other words, the Trinity. There are also explicit verses, those are the ones we’re often more familiar with, and we may talk about some of those a little bit.
But when you add the implied, necessarily ones, such as this one, with the explicit ones, Jesus is God, and they bow down before him, my Lord and my God, as Dowding Thomas said, for example. We see, and I hope it opens up a vista of so many verses of truth of Jesus as our Lord and Savior. So let us go through these verses.
I break it down here into three settings or topics, explicit deity of Christ and then implicit deity of Christ.
Explicit Deity of Christ: Lord
Explicit deity of Christ here, we read when he’s named what? Christ Jesus, our Lord. Paul writes to Timothy, the young pastor Timothy, Christ Jesus, our Lord.
One of Paul’s favorite titles for Jesus is Lord. It is a divine title in the New Testament when used with respect to Jesus. We see it here because it’s coordinated with God the Father in what? Grace, mercy, and peace that can only come from the divine.
Other uses in the New Testament of the of them. But I’m going to highlight a few here. Dowding Thomas, as you heard me allude to before, John 20, verse 28, and Thomas answered and said to him, my Lord and my God, this is after the resurrection, and he sees the nail imprints in his hand, the scars.
Here, Lord and God are coordinated about the one who is ruling, and the other is about the power, divine power. Jesus does not correct him. Joel 2.32 and Romans 10.9, this is another approach to seeing the deity of Jesus.
When we understand often in the New Testament, when they’re quoting the Old Testament, they’re quoting passages a number of times, which has the word Lord or Jehovah in it in the Old Testament, right? The Psalms and Joel here, for example, Jehovah. We have capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D as the English translation in the Old Testament. When you see the footnote of the intro to the Bible, it’ll tell you that’s for his holy name Jehovah, his covenant-keeping name.
So over and over again, the Old Testament, as we know, tells us to what? Trust, rely, depend, flee to whom? God for refuge and deliverance and salvation. For what? It is only He who can save us through the Psalms. And the prophets say this over and over again.
We don’t go to a man. We don’t trust in chariots. We trust in the name of the Lord, our God, neither angels.
When you see that New Testament where they bow to an angel and the angel’s like, don’t bow to me. You can’t do that. In Joel 2.32, we read, and it shall come to pass that whoever calls in the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Calls upon who? Calls upon the name of the L-O-R-D, all caps. You can look it up in your Bible in the Old Testament. Shall be saved.
Jehovah. Salvation is only from him. You call upon him, he will not only deliver you from physical and danger and the like as he did the Old Testament saints in Israel often, but specifically and especially the soul.
Redemption of the soul. Because why? As God, he is the creator and what? Judge of the universe. You go before the judge to ask for deliverance and salvation.
Not to anyone else. I can’t do it for you. You can’t do it for me.
Even when Moses prays and cries out for the Old Testament church, he doesn’t do it in his own name. He does it because of the Messiah, of God’s mercy. He pleads for God’s compassion.
By example and by word here more explicitly, it shall come to pass whoever calls upon the name of God, he shall be saved. Calling upon context of redemption and help and deliverance. Not just, well, I’d just like to talk to God someday.
That’s not what’s being spoken of here in Joel 2. But we go and work our way back to Romans 10.11, we find out a longer passage here that quotes Joel chapter 2. The larger passage of Romans 10.11, we read that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. And there are people, cults like Jehovah Witnesses and Mormons, who say you can call upon Jesus and he’ll save you, but they don’t believe Jesus is divine and therefore calling upon him is evidence of calling upon the divine. They deny all that.
Jesus in the Mormon way of thinking is the brother of Satan. It’s absolutely horrendous. Jehovah Witnesses believe he’s an angel, maybe semi-divine, I haven’t looked into them for a long time, but not God.
They absolutely deny that. And so they have but a man or an angel who saves them. That’s their religion.
But we read here, if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus Christ and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. And Paul continues here and gives four fours. F-O-R, right? For this reason, for this cause.
Let me explain to you how I can make this assertion that if you call upon Jesus, you already have the, or confess, he says here. You can say call, it’s a synonym. Why you can do this? One, verse 10, for with the heart one believes into righteousness and with the mouth confession is made into salvation.
Right? You got to believe. That’s what he’s saying here to the, any of those Jewish readers. Verse 11, for the scripture says, now I’m going to go to the Bible and explain this to you.
Whoever believes on him will not be put to shame. Well, who’s the him there? Well, that’s Jehovah in the Old Testament. But here, verse 12, for there is no distinction between Jew and Greek for the same Lord over all is rich unto all who call upon him.
So there he makes a theological assertion. Let me give you a third reason why you can call upon Jesus and be saved or confess him before men, because the Lord is the Lord of everyone. And if you save some, he’ll be able to save all.
Being Gentile doesn’t mean you can’t be saved. You’re under God’s rule as creator, as judge as well, and you can also be saved. He’s the same Lord who’s rich in mercy upon all who call upon him.
It’s not just Jews who are saved, anybody who calls upon him. And then lastly, for whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. That’s his end argument.
That’s a direct quote from Joel 2.32. Well, in the Greek, of course, whoever calls in the name of the Lord shall be saved. If you have a translation like mine, the Romans 10 verse you’re reading there has LORD in all caps, and it’s in quote marks, because it’s a quote from Joel. You’ll see your foot reference there, usually, and say, go to Joel 2.32. Paul’s argument, don’t lose sight of that.
You get all these fours, you finally get to the end of verse 13. Don’t forget verse 11. Keep your finger up there, and it says, if you confess with your mouth, why does he use Joel 2 for confessing with your mouth? Because confessing with your mouth and calling upon him obviously the same thing, just different ways of talking about it.
If you call upon or confess Jesus, you will be saved, because if you call upon the Lord, if you call upon Jehovah, you will be saved. Paul is clearly making a connection that if you want deliverance, Jesus must be divine. This text is applicable to my assertion, Paul is saying, that you will be saved if you confess or call upon Jesus, because the Bible tells us if you call upon God, you will be saved.
Implicit Deity of Christ: Grace, Mercy, and Peace
Jesus is therefore God. Implicit deity of Christ, that’s just here, Christ our Lord, Christ Jesus our Lord. Implicit deity of Christ, and the remaining of this, you already heard a little bit about this, grace, mercy, and peace.
Grace, again, in the Old Testament, it’s a description of divine deliverance that is all of God and not of man. It is based upon unmerited favor. Nothing that Israel ever did could draw God to save and deliver them.
It is what? Because of his grace or his care and compassion upon them, unmerited favor. Isaiah 43, 11, I, even I am the Lord, and beside me there is what? No Savior. And yet we read over and over again that what? Jesus is our Savior.
What’s going on here? Is the New Testament contradicting the Old Testament? Of course, the unbelievers believe that. The atheists believe that. We do not.
It’s the assumed theological belief of the New Testament. That’s why over and over again, the New Testament saints, the apostles, Jesus himself quotes the Old Testament to show us we can go to the Old Testament and learn our doctrine and have the proper understanding when we come to the New Testament, because they’re assuming it. Why do they keep quoting it? They’re like, you should know this stuff already.
Here’s my evidence. And if we don’t understand that when he says, I am the Lord, and beside me there is no Savior, it’s still true, not only in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament times, even to today. Then when we go to this text, we read of Jesus giving us what? Grace.
And if he’s a Savior, that means he’s the source of grace. If God is the only Savior, he’s also the only source of grace, Isaiah 43, 11. It’s all of a piece.
New Testament over and over again, of course, as well, ties grace to Jesus. Romans 16, 18, and the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you, amen.
Why would I care about the grace of an angel, the grace of mere man to be with me? What does that even mean? Why do I care? I want God’s grace upon me. He’s my what? Only Savior, Isaiah 43, 11. Without that, I have no hope of redemption.
And yet we read again, over and over again. You see, I’m giving you these verses here and there. You can see every time Jesus is spoken of in this way and grace is attached and described of his work.
The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you. And I would argue, of course, in Romans 16, 18, it’s coordinated here. And the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. You want both. Often, as a side note, Paul writes about God, and he’ll say, God, and he’ll say, our Lord Jesus Christ, and sometimes mention the Holy Spirit, such as the benediction I give in the morning sometimes from 1 Corinthians.
God, in that kind of combination, always means God the Father. You see more explicitly here, God the Father, and Christ our Lord. So you have here two-thirds of a trinity.
2 Corinthians 13, 14, we read, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen. There’s that benediction.
And do you want, as one who wants an assuaged conscience before God, are you satisfied with just a mere man or the power of the force, as the JWs think of the Holy Spirit as but a force of some sort? You want communion with the force? Of course not. All three here are coordinated in a divine sense. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, right, the Father is implied there, and the communion of the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
You’re like, this is a great blessing. Why? Because it’s a divine blessing. It’s not an angelic, divine, and then force.
Kind of odd, coordinated, kind of a blessing, but that’s not helpful at all. This is all of God, and therefore all of grace, love, and communion are divine blessings that come from Him and Him alone. We can have our own kind of grace and love, compassion for one another, but it does not calm our conscience before Him.
It may settle things between us. That’s not what we’re talking about here. He’s talking about salvation.
He means no longer going on your way to hell, that you’ve been saved from that, and condemnation and judgment. That’s only from the judge, and that judge is divine, and He’s the only Savior. Yet grace and salvation comes from Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, because He is divine.
He is our Lord. Mercy, not just grace, but mercy or compassion. You can kind of have these as overlapping ideas.
Often we do the same thing in English. We pile up a number of adjectives or nouns together, and we’re kind of saying all the same thing with different words, and that happens a number of times in the New Testament. Sometimes it’s more precisely differentiated, but grace and mercy often overlaps here, because clearly if grace, and it is grace, is unmerited favor, and it’s given to you, that’s an act of what? Compassion or mercy.
Jude, a little book of Jude. I should preach to that sometime. Not very long, but a lot of strong stuff in there.
Jude 1, because it’s the only chapter we have, verse 21, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the, what? Mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. So again, we have it coordinated. Two things going on here.
Talking about God, God’s mercy, or God’s love, or God’s compassion here, God’s love, and then He, in the same sentence, starts talking about Jesus, another attribute of God, which is mercy. Jesus, we want His mercy. Don’t you want the judge’s mercy? Well, He is our judge, and we have the word judge here, but you don’t see the word judge, because we don’t think of it this way sometimes, probably because we’re Americans, and we have separation of our branches, right? You got the judge, you got the president, which would be what? A lord, although a very truncated lord, and we have the legislative branch.
In the Bible, in the ancient Near East culture and context, the lord, the king, the master is also judge, and therefore, to have the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ is to have the mercy of a judge. He’s our judge lord, and you want that mercy, because He’s divine, and you want divine mercy. That’s the only thing that can save you.
Deuteronomy 7, 9 reminds us of this fact that divine mercy only comes from God alone. Therefore, know that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and what? Mercy for a thousands of generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments. That’s the God I want to plea clemency from and for and through unto, not a mere angel or a man.
Yet, Paul, New Testament writers say mercy. We’re looking for not the mercy of God the Father, the mercy, certainly His mercy, but the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life, Jude 1, because He is divine. 1 Kings 8.23, Solomon’s prayer, Lord God of Israel, there is no God in heaven above or on earth below like you, who keep your covenant in mercy with your servants who walk before you with all their hearts.
Echoing the same theme of Deuteronomy 7, 9. Peace, grace can only come from God, must be divine, mercy must be divine from the divine judge, and same with peace. The restored relationship with the heavenly judge, and thus we have evidence again of Jesus Christ, is divine. We are no longer, therefore, condemned by the law.
This is the peace that we have that passes all understanding, no longer condemned by our conscience, but at peace and no longer at conflict with God and His kingdom. Acts 10.36, the word which God sent to the children of Israel, preaching peace through Jesus Christ, He is Lord of all. Peace through Jesus Christ.
It’s supposed to be peace through God, God our judge. God is the source of peace, the kind of peace that we need, the everlasting peace, but we’re being told that Jesus gives us this peace, because Jesus is divine. And He has the title of God as well, Lord of all.
Lord of all, not Lord of a few things or just the church. Some Christians kind of think that way, He’s Lord of the church and the rest of the world’s on their own. No, He’s Lord of all, all creation.
Ephesians 1 especially highlights that fact. In sum, with just these three words here, blessings from God the Father and the Son, that grace, peace, and mercy is from Christ, but these things can only come from the divine, therefore Jesus is divine. It comes from the Father as well, because He is divine, and thus we have two-thirds of the Trinity here.
The Shorter Catechism gives us a very simple definition here. How many persons are there in the Godhead? There are three persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory.
And that’s why we can honor all three. And we go to Jesus, and in going to Jesus we are not violating the Word of God which says, salvation is only mine, Jehovah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and other prophets of old. When He says mine, He means divine, which is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
And all three should be praised and honored, and we get grace and mercy, communion and fellowship, and peace from them. Peace from the Holy Spirit. Amen and amen.
Implicit Deity of Christ: Source of all Blessings
Third point, implicit deity of Christ, I’m broadening this out, source of all blessings. Not just these three blessings, of course, all the blessings. Forgiveness of sins, for example, Acts 13.38. Therefore let it be known to you, brethren, that through this man is preached to you the forgiveness of sins.
Forgiveness can only come from God the judge. Divine forgiveness is what we’re talking about here. Nor God, the Father, there in Romans 8.39, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
So love here of God is tied with Jesus Christ our Lord, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. It’s divine love. How can the love of God, which must be an infinite love, a love without ending, a perfect love, be in an imperfect vessel or person, specifically here, person of Jesus? Because Jesus is divine.
Jesus is infinite. Jesus is perfect. He has that perfect love.
Jesus is the object of our trust, not just forgiveness of sins and love, love from God the Father, the object of our trust. Jeremiah 17.7, blessed is the man that trusts in the Lord and whose help the Lord has found. It’s a blessing.
It’s a special thing. It’s a good thing to trust and to rely upon what? The Lord, Jehovah, because He is what? Divine. And yet we’re told over and over again to trust in Jesus.
That’s the gospel message. We all know this. Trust, we tell people, you must not trust in yourself, your good works, or anything else, but trust, rely, and depend upon Jesus to save you from your own sins and misery because He is divine.
The Old Testament is clear. He is the reason we ought to trust and rely upon Him because He can save us because He is infinite and divine. Our hope as well.
1 Timothy 1.1, so there you have a similar doxology, excuse me, benediction, a prayer, a blessing. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope. Jesus is our hope because Jesus is divine.
Our Father is our hope. The Holy Spirit is our hope as well because they are divine. This is significant.
This is important because anything else will not give us deliverance from eternal damnation, death, but the eternal God who can overcome that. Titus 2.13, looking, we are called to be looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Jesus is described here as both God and Savior, and we are looking to Him for our deliverance.
This is a glorious thing, and it’s more explicit, of course, Titus 2.13, but again and again, it can multiply and just go through all the various attributes of God, His mercy, His loving kindness, His compassion, and you’ll find Jesus is described in those terms as well. Not in human description, that is, of course, He was a man, but He was more than a man, but with respect to the context of the saving of your soul, your eternal soul requires eternal, everlasting redemption from God Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is indeed, in fact, the source of all blessings, and this is said explicitly in Ephesians 1, verse 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
Not most, not 99%, but every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places that is the source of them is divine. For God to sit in the heavens is not only a picture often in the Bible of His rule and His power as Lord and Master and King of the universe, and the earth is His footstool, but also a description of divine origin, not humanly, but above the human, supernatural. Grace, mercy, and peace, love and hope, forgiveness of sins, adoption, justification, every spiritual blessings are found where? In Jesus Christ, in our Lord and Savior, the second member of the Trinity, the Son of God, because He’s divine.
These are divine blessings. They’re given to us, therefore, by a divine being, Jesus Christ. It’s as simple as that.
Now, brothers and sisters, I think I hope you see by now the comfort of this doctrine, knowing that God is involved not just in arranging redemption, but accomplishing it in history. It’s not as though the Father from eternity past arranged our redemption, gave us the covenant of redemption, the covenant of grace, and made this plan, eternal plan, and then sent an angel, sent a man, but the second member of the Trinity was also involved. It was a divine deliverance, not just in a divine arrangement, but a divine accomplishment by Jesus our Lord and Savior.
It is the only way to make sense of these and other verses. Otherwise, we have a mere man of our Lord, a mere man of grace and peace, which is but an earthly peace, an earthly grace, which we do not want and do not need. There is no hope of salvation if Christ indeed is not divine, fully divine, because anything less than infinite perfection, infinite power, infinite love and might, and infinite mercy will ever assuage our conscience, will ever deliver us.
It will not and cannot. These are, as I gave a few choice verses of the Old Testament, directly attributed to divinity. Only God is our Savior, and no other.
Jesus is our Savior. The syllogism is simply this, that which is a work of the divine, and he who works the divine must be himself divine. Jesus works the divine, therefore he must be divine.
A divine act, a divine word. And pray for your friends or any members who are playing around with cults or confused about who Jesus is, that they would see the true light and that we would embrace Jesus, our Lord and Savior, and thank him for our eternal redemption because he himself is eternal. Let us pray.
Lord God and Savior above, help us as your people to stand firm upon these truths, that when you say you are the only Savior, and we also read that Jesus Christ is our Savior, that Jesus must be therefore divine because it is a divine act and attributed only to the divine that is God. God in three persons, the blessed Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be with us, we pray, God, day by day, that we would rely upon Jesus and to know that our redemption is made certain and true and full because God himself, the person of Jesus Christ, came and lived and died for us. Amen.