Truly Man. Truly God
A Sermon on John 1:16
Scripture
16And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.
Sermon Description
In this sermon on John 1:16 titled “Truly Man Truly God,” Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones touches on the importance of receiving Christ’s fullness and understanding Christ’s nature for the life of a believer. The Scripture tells the Christian to receive Christ’s fullness, but how are Christians supposed to do this? First, Dr. Lloyd-Jones says that the Christian is to spend time meditating on Him and His fullness. Second, the Christian must move from thinking about this fullness merely as a theological concept, and instead see it as deeply personal. Dr. Lloyd-Jones states that moving from the intellectual perspective to a more personal one is the end goal of looking at Christian doctrine— it is a means of learning about the Lord so He can be known better. Dr. Lloyd-Jones also preaches on what Scripture means when it says that He is both fully God and fully man, and the questions regarding whether Jesus emptied himself of his deity completely, or is there some other possibility. Dr. Lloyd-Jones explains the nature of this topic and answers common questions and provides an encouragement that it is okay to admit that some things about God’s nature are a mystery and are hard to understand.
Sermon Breakdown
- The Christian life can only be explained in terms of our relationship to Jesus Christ.
- All of God's dealings with humanity are through Jesus Christ alone. He is the sole channel of God's grace.
- Jesus Christ is the head of a new humanity. The first humanity failed in Adam, the second humanity finds salvation in Christ.
- Jesus Christ has an essential, inherent fullness as the eternal Son of God. He is co-equal and co-eternal with the Father.
- Jesus Christ's fullness is also seen in his role as our representative. The eternal Son of God had to become incarnate in order to save humanity.
- The incarnation was absolutely necessary for salvation. God the Son could not deliver us if he remained only divine. A man was needed to redeem mankind.
- Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man. These two natures are joined in one person. He is the God-man.
- The virgin birth was necessary to produce a sinless human nature in Christ. He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin.
- In Christ "all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily." Though he became poor, he remained eternally God.
- We receive grace upon grace from Christ's fullness. We must know the truth about Christ and what is available to us in him.
- We must not start with ourselves and our needs but with Christ and his fullness. We go to him, not ourselves, for all we need.
- The incarnation, virgin birth, and full deity and humanity of Christ are essential to our salvation. We must believe these truths to receive of his fullness.
The Book of John
Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981) was a Welsh evangelical minister who preached and taught in the Reformed tradition. His principal ministry was at Westminster Chapel, in central London, from 1939-1968, where he delivered multi-year expositions on books of the bible such as Romans, Ephesians and the Gospel of John. In addition to the MLJ Trust’s collection of 1,600 of these sermons in audio format, most of these great sermon series are available in book form (including a 14 volume collection of the Romans sermons), as are other series such as "Spiritual Depression", "Studies in the Sermon on the Mount" and "Great Biblical Doctrines". He is considered by many evangelical leaders today to be an authority on biblical truth and the sufficiency of Scripture.