Twentieth century liberalism invited the church to abandon its historic faith in the infinite, transcendent and yet personal God in favor of a nebulous and impersonal concept called the ground of being. This attack on historic Christianity led in turn to a call to abandon its faith in the deity of Jesus in favor of deification. That is to say, Jesus was only a man who came to be deified through the devotion of his followers even though he never claimed to be God. It is here that the attack is being directed today. This is such a radical denial of historic Christianity that those who make this denial can no longer be called Christians in any meaningful sense of that term. There is a pressing need today for the Christian church to reaffirm its conviction of the full deity of Jesus Christ. The Christian faith is a historic, Christ-centered faith, a faith in the living God revealed in his incarnate Son, Jesus Christ. Thus the deity of Christ is an absolutely fundamental truth of Christianity.
I take it that most readers of this blog are Christians. We claim to be, we want to be, genuine followers of Jesus. We gladly acknowledge him as fully God and fully man. But how can we grow in our knowledge of him? How can we come to know him better, to serve him more faithfully? How can Jesus Christ become to us more real, more central, until he is actually indispensable? Let us use marriage as an analogy. Just as a married couple grows in their knowledge and respect and love for each other until each feels that the other is indispensable to him or her, so we are to grow in our knowledge and reverence and love for Jesus Christ until he becomes indispensable to us, and life is literally inconceivable without him. That's just like God, isn't it? When you give him your first love, he gives back far more than you could ever hope to give him.
Thank you, Dear Father, for making it plain in your word how married people should love each other. And now you tell us to honor Christ by submitting to him. He is not only in charge of his body the church, but he gave his very life to take care of it and be its Savior and to make her holy and clean so that he could give her to himself as a glorious church without spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Thank you, Father, thank you! May you be given glory forever and ever through endless ages because of your master plan of salvation for the church through Jesus Christ.