Another Jesus

Start with a question Paul was afraid of something. What was it?

The warning

Paul warns of "another Jesus." That means there is a Jesus that he preached, and the test of anything else is whether it matches. So the question is: Which Jesus did Paul preach?

The Jesus Paul preached "And straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God." (Acts 9:20) "God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord." (1 Corinthians 1:9)

The Jesus Paul preached is the Son of God. To the same Corinthians he wrote: "But to us there is but one God, the Father... and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things." (1 Corinthians 8:6) "The head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God." (1 Corinthians 11:3)

So the Jesus in Paul's preaching is the Son of the one God, the Lord by whom all things were made, whose head is God.

How each view handles "Son" Remember the three views from Lesson 9. Here's how each deals with the Son's sonship:

1. Oneness: There is only one Person, so "Son" is a role or mode. There is no other to be the Father.
2. Tritheism: Three separate Gods, none begotten from another. "Son" is a title.
3. Trinity: Divided: some hold eternal generation (the Son is eternally begotten). Some hold the Sonship began at the incarnation. Some call it a role or metaphor.

Where do they agree? None of the three views says that the Son was begotten from the Father before creation, sharing His nature and not co-eternal in the sense of having no source. Trinitarians who hold eternal generation come close, since they say the Son is eternally begotten, but they redefine it to avoid any concept of a beginning or origin.

The question to ask is not "is this person sincere?" but "does the view fit Paul's Jesus, the Son of God?" Which of these fits best, in your reading? Where does your own view stand?

Why it matters: the temptation Hebrews gives a reason why the Son's real sonship matters: "For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." (Hebrews 4:15) "Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered." (Hebrews 5:8)

Now put this next to another verse: "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil." (James 1:13)

If Jesus is the second person of an indivisible Godhead, sharing the exact same indivisible divine substance as the Father, then He is God in the fullest sense. And if He is God in the fullest sense, He cannot be tempted.

Many Trinitarian theologians admit this exact point. They teach the doctrine of "impeccability"—that Christ could not have sinned. As one prominent systematic theology puts it: "Because of the unity of His Person, the humanity of Christ could not sin without necessitating the deity to sin... He is the same yesterday, today, and forever."

If Jesus could not have sinned, in what sense was the temptation "in all points... like as we are"? How real was the risk? If the temptation was just a theatrical performance where the outcome was already locked in by His indivisible divine nature, then the battle with sin was a metaphor. And if the battle with sin was a metaphor, the victory is a metaphor. And if the victory is a metaphor, the gospel is a metaphor.

But if the Son has a begotten, received divinity—if He is the literal Son of the Father, possessing the Father's nature but having His own distinct personhood and will—then the temptation was real. He could have chosen Himself. He could have stepped down from the cross. He prayed, "not my will, but thine be done." That prayer only makes sense if He had a distinct will that was submitting to the Father's will.

Hebrews itself ties the Son’s temptation to His Sonship: “Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8). The way we understand the Son’s sonship decides how we answer this.

The Indwelling Test In The Indwelling Hope, we looked at the mechanism of salvation: Christ in you. The Apostle John gives us a test for this exact issue.

"Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist..." (1 John 4:2–3)

Notice the tense. John does not say "did come." The demons believed Jesus did come in the flesh. They cried out, "I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God" (Mark 1:24). Intellectual belief in the historical Jesus is not the test of the Spirit of God.

John says "is come." The present tense. The Spirit of God confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh and is currently dwelling in the believer.

If a theology teaches that the Holy Spirit is a "third person" who comes to dwell in you, while Jesus stays in heaven, it has denied that Jesus is come in the flesh to dwell in you. It has replaced the indwelling Christ with a proxy. It has received "another spirit."

Paul makes this explicit: "Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty" (2 Corinthians 3:17). "God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts" (Galatians 4:6). The Spirit we receive is the Spirit of the Son. It is Jesus Himself, coming to make His home in us. To preach anything else is to preach another Jesus.

A test, not a verdict Paul's warning does two things:

1. It tells us there is a true Jesus and a false one.
2. It gives us the means to tell the difference: what did Paul preach?

He preached the Son of God, the Lord by whom all things were made, whose God is the Father.

Which Jesus am I confessing, and does the confession match the one Paul preached?