Athanasius377
Member
So I have a question since I saw that you were quoting the ESV. What do you do with Jude 5?Christ’s reference to Abraham @David Lamb affirms his pre-eminence in God’s purpose, not his pre-existence. The Jews had claimed Abraham as their father (John 8:39), so Jesus responds by asserting his superior role in God's plan: “Before Abraham was, I am.” He did not say, “Before Abraham was, I was,” as is often misread. Yet, like many today, the Jews misunderstood his meaning. Jesus was not claiming to be older in years than Abraham. This is clarified by his earlier statement: “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56). Abraham, to whom the gospel was preached (Galatians 3:8), saw Christ’s day by faith as you correctly interpreted. Jesus was ‘foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times’ (1 Peter 1:20). He existed in God’s purpose, not in literal form. In the same way, he is described as the ‘Lamb slain from the foundation of the world’ (Revelation 13:8), though his actual death took place under Pilate, at a specific point in time.
The real issue lies in how you approach the Word of God, along with the non-biblical ideas you impose on the text. As a result, you're unable to fully grasp the true knowledge of Christ as he is revealed in Scripture.
It feels as though you filter everything through a lens just as you have shown with 1 Tim 2:15 you also do with John 8.
Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. (Jude 5, ESV)
Which is echoing what Paul wrote:
For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 and all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. 5 Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. (1 Corinthians 10:1–5, ESV)
We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, 10 nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. (1 Corinthians 10:9–10, ESV)
But perhaps the greatest evidence is from Jesus’s own mouth:
give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. 30 I and the Father are one.”
31 The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. 32 Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” 33 The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.” 34 Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? 35 If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken— 36 do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? 37 If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; 38 but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” (John 10:28–38, ESV)
And later in John we read:
I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. (John 17:4–5, ESV)
One has to ignore so much of the Old Testament and practically the entirety of the New Testament to come up with your Adoptionist view. To say nothing of the great I AM passages. As @David Lamb pointed out, that is the translation of God’s name from the Greek translation of the OT, the Septuagint (LXX), ἐγὼ εἰμί which comes from the Exodus 3.14:
Καὶ εἶπεν ὁ Θεὸς πρὸς Μωυσῆν, λέγων, ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ Ὤν· καὶ εἶπεν, οὕτως ἐρεῖς τοῖς υἱοῖς Ἰσραὴλ, ὁ Ὢν ἀπέσταλκέ με πρὸς ὑμᾶς. (Exodus 3:14, Brenton LXX Gk)
God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you. (Exodus 3:14, ESV)
The Jews certainly got what Jesus was saying, and immediately accused him of blasphemy. So either Jesus was insane (another accusation of the Jews), he was a blasphemer, or he really was God enfleshed (incarnate). Unless you want to try and make the case that Jesus was some sort of time traveler where he and Ziggy try and right certain wrongs Quantum Leap style.
I get the difficulty in trying to figure out how God became a man; yet we are not told how all the pieces fit together. That is why it is considered a mystery. Meaning we only see a portion of what God has revealed.