The Nugget:
Isa 55:8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.
The Muslim Challenge:
- If he is fully man, he must be created. If he is fully God, he is uncreated. So if he is both fully man as well as fully God at the same time, then he is both created as well as uncreated at the same time.
My Response:
- If he is fully man, he must be created. If he is fully God, he is uncreated. So if he is both fully man as well as fully God at the same time, then he is both created as well as uncreated at the same time.
We must come to the Bible, the source of what information we have about Jesus Christ, and understand what the text of the Bible actually declares about Jesus Christ. We must understand the text from the worldview of the text and the culture that produced the text.
Even the Bible itself cautions us about the folly of thinking we can by our own unaided reason either understand or refute or devise an improvement upon the revelation God has given in His written Word, the Bible.
Isaiah 55:8
8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.
King James Version
Rom 11:33 O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!
Rom 11:34 For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? (KJV)
Rom 11:33 Who can measure the wealth and wisdom and knowledge of God? Who can understand his decisions or explain what he does?
Rom 11:34 "Has anyone known the thoughts of the Lord or given him advice? (CRV)
You no doubt are well aware that Jesus Christ was born as a human person to the Virgin Mary. So indeed He was fully human, or fully man.
Yet His birth was different from all other human beings in that He was conceived supernaturally, for as Mary asserted to the angel who brought her the news of the impending birth of Jesus, "How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?" (Luke 1:35).
But His existence as a man, His birth as a human being, was preceded by an eternal existence as a divine Person. This is affirmed by many direct and indirect statements in the Biblical record.
John the Baptist stated that Jesus "was before me" in John 1:30. Yet John the Baptist was older by at least six months than Jesus Christ on a human level.
Consider the following statements from the Bible in regard to the pre-existence of Jesus Christ before He was born in human form:
John 1:15
15 John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me.
King James Version
John 3:13
13 And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.
King James Version
John 8:42
42 Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me.
King James Version
John 8:58
58 Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.
King James Version
Joh 17:5 And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.
John 1:1-2
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 The same was in the beginning with God.
King James Version
Isaiah 9:6
6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
King James Version
Micah 5:2
2 But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.
King James Version
Philippians 2:6-8
6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
7 But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:
8 And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
King James Version
Colossians 1:15-17
15 Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature:
16 For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:
17 And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.
King James Version
1 Peter 1:20
20 Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you,
King James Version
The Biblical evidence, therefore, is that Jesus as a man had a definite beginning in Bethlehem, but as a Person, He had an eternal existence prior to His human birth.
His becoming a man in time is in theology called the Incarnation of Christ. That He possessed two natures, a human nature, and a divine nature, is called in theology the Hypostatic Union. It is a Biblical doctrine derived from the statements in the Bible by necessary inference.
