Is Jesus the same as Christ?

[Loveroftruth]

In some groups people say that "the Christ" is different then Jesus - What do you see?

[Taffy]

Mat 16:20 Then charged he his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ .


YHVH IS salvation through the Annointed one

Act 10:38 How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him

Act 4:12 Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.

Blesings
Taffy

[SeekerSA]

Personally I use the names interchangeably.  Jesus said He was The Christ and we are to be Christlike but we can never be Christ.

Blessings

[hopeful]

Christlike?

[reFORMer]

"For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." (Eph 5:30)
"For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.  For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body..." (1 Cor 12:12-13)
"But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. (1 Cor 6:17)

Jesus      30 fold    Passover's lamb
Christ      60 fold    Pentecost's bride
the Lord  100 fold   Tabernacle's manchild

[AbbasChild]

Here another writing of John Gavazzonie:

The Glorified Christ
John R Gavazzoni
Thousand Oaks, CA

It is not uncommon as we advance in years to become increasingly aware of our weaknesses and strengths. To walk with our Lord in the awareness of our weaknesses without succumbing to condemnation, and of our strengths without yielding to pride is, I think, a mark of a life that can touch others with great lasting effect; with that effect traceable to a keen awareness of being a man among men, and paradoxically, quite uncommon by that very awareness.

I assure my readers that an investigation, listing, and thorough examination of this man's weaknesses would require an essay of considerable length, but, on this occasion, by way of introduction to our subject, "The Glorified Jesus," I will dare to commend myself to you all as one having come to some level of uncommon spiritual discernment by the grace of God as He has found opportunity in my very common weakness.

That level of discernment has not been without a painful price because discernment has come in part because of having been so singularly lacking in that quality at crucial times in my life. Pain is a great instrument in the hands of the Spirit of Truth; a quite fine tool in the required preparation for the imparting of wisdom. One area of discernment that I cannot but notice has been cultivated by the Spirit in this disciple's life might best be described this way:

Very, very often, I find myself reading some theological treatise, listening to or reading some passionate devotional exhortation, or exposed to some brother's or sister's "revelation," and, as it were, a bright orange anointing-planted caution flag pops up, and I find myself thinking, "Ooh, I don't think so! Anyone incorporating this into their understanding of God's relationship to man will find themselves down the road a ways at a not-so-good spiritual place."

This has been particularly so as I've become aware of how Jesus, as Jesus--- both historically, and now again in the contemporary truth-seeking scene---is suffering the violation to His Personhood by an assumption (along a spectrum ranging from coal black to light grey) that He has taken a back seat to "the Christ." There is some kind of notion that Jesus can take you just so far spiritually, but then, you've got to get beyond Him to where only "the Christ" can take you.

Within this religious conceptualizing, there is the willing admission that Jesus is the Door, but, with that admission, is either the flat-out assertion, or subtle suggestion, that that's all He is, the mere opening to vast palatial dimensions where He is no longer that singular Personhood-dynamic of our journey into a full partaking of, and participation, in the Divine Nature.

Now rather than, on this occasion, going into a long, detailed expose of such nonsense, I will simply point out a very obvious biblical thread, that if kept in the forefront of those things that we hold precious, will save us from the great embarrassment and pain that comes when wrong-thinking fleshes itself out as dysfunctional living.

Let your mind dwell on the following passages of scripture quoted from the NAS translation: (Emphasis, mine) "He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, 'From his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.' But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, BECAUSE JESUS was not yet glorified." (Jn. 7: 38, 39)

"We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the DYING OF JESUS, that the LIFE OF JESUS also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for JESUS' SAKE, that the LIFE OF JESUS may be manifested in our mortal flesh." (2 Cor. 4: 8---11)

"But (Stephen) being full of the Holy Spirit, he gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God, and JESUS standing at the right hand of God;...." (Acts 7: 55)

"And he fell to the ground, and heard a voice saying to him, 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?' And he said, 'Who art Thou, Lord?' And He said, 'I AM JESUS whom you are persecuting.' " (Acts 9: 4, 5)

" and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, that is JESUS..." (1 Thes. 1: 10)

That's enough. I could go on and on with scripture passages to make my point, but for now, let those suffice. Now for some very serious exegesis: The Holy Spirit could not, according to John, be given until He, JESUS (He did not say Jesus Christ, or Christ Jesus, simply JESUS) was glorified. The reason the Holy Spirit--- the very Life-giving Spirit Who is to us the indwelling Christ, according to Paul---could not be given until JESUS was glorified is because JESUS, the MAN, JESUS, as our Kinsman-Redeemer, the One Who shares our Humanity, and Whose Humanity we share, had to be glorified in that Humanity, because we were to receive from Him, not only the Holy Spirit as Deity, but the Holy Spirit Who is also the Spirit of glorified Humanity in Him.

Listen saints; the indwelling Presence that is our Reality is the SPIRIT OF JESUS. He summed up, in Himself, bodily, the fullness of the Godhead and the totality humanity and true essence of humanness, and was sent by His/our Father to undergo an aeonion experience that required a self-emptying and then a return to the glory He had with the Father before the world began, and the Holy Spirit, His Spirit, JESUS' SPIRIT, imparts to us the glory which we, together with/in Him, had in eternity.

In and by Him, JESUS, our eternal being, the being we have in God, becomes existential in the aeon(s) and undergoes a metamorphosis whereby the divorce of the natural and the spiritual is healed forever. In JESUS, God, out from eternity and into time, fleshed out His own hidden Humanness and gave that fulness to us all.

Think of it, dear ones, could the Word have become flesh if flesh (being in this context, humanness)? is essentially contrary to the Divine Nature? Could God manifest Himself in the Humanity of His Son, if such a manifestation was not consistent with His Nature? The mystery (hidden secret) of godliness (godlikeness) is God manifested in the flesh.

The eternal Word, the singular Christ-SEED, the eternally Begotten Son of God, became JESUS, AND HE'S STILL JESUS!!! Yes, Yes! The resurrected One, in full glory, identified Himself to Saul as "JESUS" Whom thou persecute." He's still Jesus sitting at the right hand of the Majesty on high.

The Man, JESUS, transfigured, is fully identified with the Christ in Whom we are made to sit in heavenly places, and His life is identical to the life of Christ which is our life. You can't separate "them." If you're in Christ, you're in JESUS. If Christ dwells in you, JESUS does. We have one mediator between God and man, the Man, Christ Jesus. The connecting point of God and Man is the Man, Christ Jesus. Please note: Not a de-humanized spirit, but the glorified Christ, Who is JESUS.

There's a Man, a Man of self-sacrificial, lamb-like character Who, according to John's revelation, is in the midst of the throne of God; more accurately in the cross-hairs center of the throne, that is, He is the very Center of universal dominion.

In this passage, it is His (specifically JESUS') dying that we bear in the body, and it is His life, the LIFE OF JESUS (specifically) that is manifested in our body. Paul, in 2 Cor. 4, takes great pains in his rhetoric to establish that, repeating himself for great emphasis. To be sure, it is not Jesus, pre-resurrection, pre-glorification, who lives in us. He's no longer walking the dusty roads of Galillee, unless we're walking there. He's in the very fiber of what makes us.

You will find Him in the depths of who you are, as you no longer yield to the world's identification of yourself. Deep within, you "feel the thrill of glory" as the old gospel song put it. That's where Jesus is; in that transcendent joy and peace that the carnal mind cannot finally resist. He's not in the religious collage of mental pictures that distract us from Him, all those "things" that promise to make you spiritual if you listen to their siren song.

"When I'm with Him,
When I'm with Him,
The fairest pleasures of the world grow dim.
And in my heart, I feel the thrill of glory, When I'm with Him, When I'm with Him."

Stay tuned for future serious, seminal samplings.

John Gavazzoni

[SeekerSA]

Christlike?

There are no exact texts with this word but here is what I mean:

Joh 13:15  For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you

Joh 13:34  I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. As I have loved you, you should also love one another.

[Loveroftruth]

Isnt this where christianity and new age take different roads? New age is based on "the christ" as a POWER, not the Son of God and so we have "The power" in us..

Its a very fine line..

[SeekerSA]

I may need to digress here to explain.

We know the faith we have is of Christ and is one of the 9 gifts.

Eph 2:8  For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God,

1Co 12:8  For through the Spirit is given to one a word of wisdom; and to another a word of knowledge, according to the same Spirit;
1Co 12:9  and to another faith by the same Spirit; and to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit;
1Co 12:10  and to another workings of powers, to another prophecy; and to another discerning of spirits; and to another kinds of tongues; and to another the interpretation of tongues.
1Co 12:11  But the one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing separately to each one as He desires.

1Co 13:13  And now faith, hope, charity, these three remain; but the greatest of these is charity.

The article Floyd posted I differ on slightly as there were many manifestations of the Holy Spirit before Jesus and while He was still "alive."  We are not to see the earlier manifestations as being a different Holy Spirit, it was the same just that it was not available to all but a select few.

Once Jesus had ascended, the Holy Spirit is imparted to all believers and not to a few selected believers.

We had the 70 elders of Moses being filled with the Holy Spirit and they prophesied once.

We had the Holy Spirit Conception, we had Simeon being led by the Holy Spirit and the wise men.  In these cases they were selective workings of the Holy Spirit.

Now with the Gift of salvation, the Holy Spirit is part and parcel of the package.  It gets confusing as to who's Spirit this is when the trinity is not adhered to.

Jesus mentions He would send the Comforter, and again He says He will pray the Father sends the comforter, semantics maybe?

Yet it also says "...We will come and make our abode with him" John 14:23

But then again, God has never left us since we were born, we just do not sense Him.

Confused yet?

Joh 6:44  No one can come to Me unless the Father who has sent Me draw him, and I will raise him up at the last day.

When He does the drawing, only then are we able to see Spiritually and sense Him.

Jesus becomes the focus as He is the Way to the Father, the ultimate goal is to be reconciled to Father and not to Jesus, Jesus is the Way and plays a big part in the process and He too never leaves us. 

So my view may well be seen a new agey but God is not somewhere distant for me.

Blessings

[Kept]

Yes to your last post loveroftruth. It is one of the jumping off points into newage. All kinds of teachings based on seperating out Jesus Christ into parts and then putting him back together again and some not putting him back together again at all but rather leaving the man behind and out of the picture (and that is newagism, no more man, only God).

Keeping HIM whole is essential for me personally as i went thru that stage but wanted to come back to say , to me its mystery the God/man equation.

great article Floyd  :thumbsup:

kept

[AbbasChild]

Jesus becomes the focus as He is the Way to the Father, the ultimate goal is to be reconciled to Father and not to Jesus, Jesus is the Way and plays a big part in the process and He too never leaves us. 


Blessings

Completly agree with that. The only difference for me is that I am seeing that still much more from a kind of trinitarian view (even though I don't like the term Trinity, nor some of its explaniatons, but it seems no one can really agree on how to explain it). I know you see this a bit differently, but that's ok with me. The point I wanted to make is that I agree with you on that Father is the Goal and also the Source. Jesus is the Way. I think the problem with new age thinking is that it tries to eliminate any Personhood- in God as well as in man.

[Loveroftruth]

But so many make "Christ" the goal and All things? They say "Christ this and Christ that"  :dontknow:

[Kept]

The Word Christ comes to mean that place of union with the Father where we are One for so many of us

and most are simply speaking from that center using the title Christ as representing that center of union if you will, to me

kept

[Cardinal]

 :cloud9: Truthfully I haven't taken time to read it yet, but someone emailed me with this when Gary first put it up. I think it goes along with this topic. Check it out at http://sigler.org/incorruptible_seed.htm

[Loveroftruth]

Good stuff everyone!!

[noname]

you cannot split the two...they go hand in hand

Christ is from the Greek word Christos...which means the Messiah, annointed one...HaMaschiach in Hebrew

of the Messiah it was prophesized from Moses to the Prophets...the King annointed by the Most High to be the Saviour of the Israelites and the world

Jesus' REAL name (ie the name given to Him by God and his parents in Hebrew)...is Yehoshua...pronounced Yeshua...which means Saviour/Salvation in Hebrew

David prophesized about Yeshua the Messiah when he said in one of his psalms...
"YHVH (Yahweh/Yehovah) has become my salvation(Yeshua)"

we should be careful where we tread with this one...for John says clearly that he who denies the Messiah as the son of God coming to earth in the flesh and who is the Saviour of mankind, he is the anti-Christ...

do not go down that hole

[AbbasChild]

The Word Christ comes to mean that place of union with the Father where we are One for so many of us

and most are simply speaking from that center using the title Christ as representing that center of union if you will, to me

kept

Interesting thought!  :thumbsup: Can agree with that. Reminds me of Jesus saying that we would come to know that we are one with Him and the Father. Just love this explanation of being in Christ.