How Not to Be a Docetist

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It's common to ask someone the question, “Do you believe in God?” But it's actually a tricky question to answer, because it assumes that we all know what the word God means. And that only begs more questions. Well, what do you mean by God? Are you talking about some old man in the sky with a long white beard? Are you referring to Aristotle's first mover, the uncaused cause, the unmoved mover? Are you talking about a deist clockmaker? Or when you say God, do you mean a supreme personal being or some kind of impersonal force like Star Wars? Or are you talking about the God within you or the transcendent mind written into the laws of nature. See, what exactly do you mean by God? You can't start with the word God. That won't get you anywhere. And that's why, for centuries, literally, Christians have begun with Jesus — and have allowed the word God to be reframed and recentered around him.

As we prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ, Advent provides us with an opportunity to consider what does it actually mean for God to become a human being in the person of Jesus, and why does it matter? I would suggest that if we don't stop to consider the meaning and the significance of the Incarnation, then it's very likely that we could slip into embracing ancient heresies without even realizing that some of these same heresies had been debated long ago and settled in ways that bring true comfort and joy to every longing heart.

So during this Advent season, we're going to do something a little unusual. It's not what you would expect. We're engaging in a series which we have entitled How Not to Be a Heretic. I only mean that sort of tongue in cheek. It's tongue in cheek, but only kind of, because the fact of the matter is that even though many of these heresies were debated centuries ago, they continue to pop up, and we don't even realize that they were rejected back in the first or the second or the third century. So we'll take a look at some of those heresies that circulated during the early centuries of the Church in order to determine the meaning and the significance of the Incarnation for us today.

Now you might be thinking to yourself, Jason, are you out of your mind? Do you really want to talk about heresy in light of the practical problems that I'm facing in my life? My marriage is on the rocks. I'm out of work. My relationships are fractured. I'm suffering from a broken heart. I can't pay my rent. I'm not even on speaking terms with family members. I'm depressed, I'm angry, I'm upset, I'm disappointed with God, and you want to talk about heresy? Come on. And by the way, it's Christmas. Aren't we supposed to talk about something positive and uplifting at Christmas time? And I would say, yes, I know. I know that it's Christmas time. And that is precisely why I think we should address these ancient heresies. Because nothing brings more strength, more encouragement, or more hope than a fresh, clear vision of the real Jesus. And so we're going to try to discover, once more, the real Jesus, revealed to us in the Scriptures.

So last week, Andrew Smith kicked us off with a sermon entitled "How Not to Be an Adoptionist," and today I'd like to address the question of how not to be a Docetist. But I'll explain what I mean in a minute. First, let's turn to John 4, and as we do, I'd like us to consider three questions this morning: 1) What did God become? 2) Why did he do it? and 3) Why does it matter?

¹Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John ²(although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), ³he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. ⁴And he had to pass through Samaria. ⁵So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.

⁷A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” ⁸(For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) ⁹The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) ¹⁰Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” ¹¹The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? ¹²Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” ¹³Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” ¹⁵The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

John 4:1-15

What Did God Become?

So today we're considering how not to be a Docetist, but let me explain what I mean. Docetism comes from the Greek verb dokeo, and it means “to appear or to seem.” The idea with Docetism is that Jesus didn't actually become a human being; he only seemed to be a real flesh and blood person, but the entirety of his earthly existence was just an illusion. He just appeared to be human for the sake of his disciples, but he really wasn't.

Now this view arose within the Greco-Roman world in the early second century. It was a form of Gnosticism. See, the ancient Greeks were Gnostics. They had a dualistic view of the world. They took a split level view of the universe, and they said that the spiritual world is good, but the physical world is bad. So in the mind of a Gnostic, there is one supreme God, but this one God is pure spirit, and God would have nothing to do with material existence, because the material world is evil. So the Gnostic belief is that God did not create the world. No, the world must have been created by evil or by some lesser demigod. And what about human beings? Well, Gnostics believed that human beings were essentially sparks or little droplets made out of that same spiritual substance of God. But the only problem with human beings is that that spiritual substance was imprisoned in physical bodies, and salvation, therefore, for a Gnostic, meant being set free from the prison of a physical body, being set free from material existence in order to become pure spirit.

Now you can understand that if that was in the background in the first, second, third centuries, as Christianity was spreading through the Greco-Roman world, many ancient Greeks were syncretistic, and they merged and mixed Christianity with the Gnosticism that was prevalent, and that's how you get Docetism. So they didn't believe that God actually became a human being and the person of Jesus, he only seemed to be human. God could not possibly have taken on flesh and blood because that would have been degrading. That would have been defiling. That would have meant that God was taking on evil, the evil of the material world. The whole point was to escape physical reality, not to become physical reality. The problem is that this whole line of thinking runs against the grain of historic Christian belief. Because the belief that God actually became a real human being in the person of Jesus is at the very heart of things. In 1 John 4, for example, the author, John, says that there's a lot of spirits, but you have to test every spirit to see if they're actually from God. Because a lot of false prophets have gone out there into the world. And he said, here's the test: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ came in the flesh is from God.

So God didn't just appear to be human in the person of Jesus; he actually became a human being in the person of Jesus. Jesus is fully God and fully human at one and the same time. Our passage from the Gospel of John helps us see that. Now,we may be familiar with the story of the Samaritan woman, but I want us to look again at this passage and focus on what it has to tell us about the person of Jesus. See at the very beginning, we learn that Jesus is aware. He senses that things are starting to get a little intense in Jerusalem, so he decides to leave Judea in order to go to Galilee, and therefore he has to pass through Samaria. And as he's making this journey, he gets tired. He gets worn out. He's wearied by his journey. And when he reaches midday, he's starting to feel the heat of the noonday sun, and so he plops himself down beside this well in order to take a breather, and it's just then that this unnamed Samaritan woman approaches, and he asks her for a drink of water.

So right here, we learn that Jesus is tired, he's hot, and he's thirsty. And let me just remind you that there's no literature from the ancient world that would emphasize little details like this unless they were true. Realistic fiction wouldn't be invented for centuries after this. So the only reason why John would tell us that Jesus was tired, hot, and thirsty is because that's what really happened. He's just telling us the facts. He's just reporting these little details. He wouldn't include them if they were made up. Therefore, what that shows us is that the gospel writers knew that Jesus really was a full human being. He was a flesh and blood person, just like the rest of us. And the Gospel accounts of Jesus' life bear this out in remarkable detail. Jesus experienced everything that we do, and more: physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Physically

Physically, we know that Jesus was born to a human mother and he grew up, he developed like any other child. Luke 2:52 tells us that Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with both God and man. The gospels repeatedly tell us that Jesus knew what it was like to be hungry, to be thirsty, to be tired. He experienced pain when he was flogged, and Jesus bled like the rest of us when he was pierced in his side. So physically, he experienced everything that we do.

Emotionally

Emotionally, he experienced the full breath of human emotions: grief, anger, compassion, love, even agony. Jesus was tenderhearted. In John 11, we read that he's standing beside the tomb of his friend, Lazarus, that he's overcome with sadness, and he weeps tears of grief. But at the same time, Jesus could be firm. John 2 tells us that Jesus deliberately made a whip out of cords and then used that whip to drive people out of the temple because they had turned God's house into a circus. Jesus could get angry. And most of the time, he reserved his anger for the religious leaders because they distorted the worship of God. They led people astray. They led people down the wrong path. And yet at the very same time, Jesus could be filled with deep compassion. Jesus looks out over a crowd of people, and he's filled with compassion because he sees that they're harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. Oh, and he drew from such deep wells of love. Consider his encounter with the rich young ruler. Even though this rich young ruler decides that he would rather part with Jesus than part with his money, Jesus looks at him and loves him. And Jesus experienced even deep agony. In the Garden of Gethsemane, he experiences such agony that his sweat becomes like drops of blood. And he pleads with his father that somehow, some way, if he could take this cup away from him so that he wouldn't have to go through the cross, please do it. But even then he says, not my will but yours be done. And as a result, he ends up being denied, deserted, abandoned by his friends, falsely accused, wrongly condemned. He's experienced all the emotions that you and I have and more.

Spiritually

But he's also experienced everything that we have spiritually, too. Jesus knows what it's like to be tempted. He knows what it's like for his faith to be tested, almost to the very breaking point. It's amazing to me that the author of Hebrews states that Jesus learned obedience through what he suffered. Even Jesus had to learn obedience through what he suffered. And you realize that in his humanity, there were some things that Jesus just didn't know. Some people think, well if he was fully human and fully divine, the divine side of him would mean that he knew all things. But no, Jesus actually deliberately, willfully limits himself, constrains himself as a human being, and therefore he doesn't know everything.

Consider Mark 5, where there's a woman who knows that she's suffering from this medical condition, but if she just touches the fringe of Jesus' clothes, she'll be made well. And so she makes her way through the crowd, and she touches the hem of his cloak. And Jesus turns to his disciples and says, who touched me? Now, some people think that Jesus is just putting on a show. This is just an act for the disciples. But no, he really didn't know. He didn't know because he had limited himself to the cramped quarters of human nature. He limited his own knowledge. He didn't know who touched him, and he explains that he perceived that power had gone out of him, but he didn't know why or to whom. He really didn't know. And when it comes to the day of Jesus' return, he says he doesn't know when that'll happen. No one knows the day or the hour — not Jesus, not the angels, but only his father in heaven.

So Jesus became a real flesh-and-blood human being. He experiences all the restrictions, all the limitations of humanity. He knows what it's like physically, emotionally, and spiritually to be us. So the first point is that the Gospels make it abundantly clear that Jesus didn't merely appear to be human or seem to be human; he really was a full human being. And I wonder if you've ever stopped to really think and consider the difference that that makes? He can identify with you no matter what you're experiencing in life right now.

Why Did He Do It?

But the second question we need to ask is, why did he do it? And this is how theologians have often summed it up. Athanasius, a fourth century theologian, said, God became what we are, so that we might become what he is. In Jesus Christ, God became like us, so that, by His grace, we might become like him.

And we see that spelled out for us uniquely in this encounter with the Samaritan woman, because Jesus becomes capable of experiencing thirst, real thirst, so that he might become the one who can satisfy our cosmic, existential thirst for more. See, notice the woman is surprised when Jesus asks her for water. But Jesus says to her in verse 10, well, if you knew the gift of God, and if you knew who I am, you would have asked me for living water. Now, living water would be water from a river or a spring that's fresh and clean, unlike water that might come from a pool or even a well. Pool water grows stagnant; it could become polluted. Water from a well could run dry. But water from a spring? Well springs provide an ever-flowing stream of fresh, clean water — living water. And Jesus says, therefore, in verse 14, that if you drink the water that he gives, well then it will become a spring welling up into pools of deep, lasting eternal life — the kind of life that begins now and lasts forever, the kind of life that only God can bring, the kind of life that only God can offer. And that's why Jesus says, whoever drinks the water that I give will never be thirsty again.

But the question, of course, is how? How can Jesus do that, especially in light of who this woman is? If we're familiar with the story, we know that this is a woman with a past, as we might say. She's got a past. She's got a reputation. We know that she has chased one relationship after another, looking for someone to satisfy her deepest longings for love, for acceptance, for significance, for security. But it's not working. And let's face it: We all have a past. It may not be as public. It may not be as shameful as this woman's past, but we all have a past. And we've all done more than enough to exclude ourselves from that deep, lasting life that God has to offer us. In our own way, we spend most of our days also chasing after things that are never really going to satisfy.

So how can Jesus offer this living water to this woman, to us, in light of who we are, despite who we are? And the answer is the Incarnation. The only reason why Jesus can offer us His living water despite who we are and despite what we have done is because of the Incarnation. Jesus became like us so that he might make us like him. Jesus undergoes an exchange. He changes places with us. He takes on our thirst in order to satisfy our existential thirst. Do you realize that when Jesus is hanging on the cross, he speaks seven last words, seven last sayings. And you know what one of those seven last words was? “I thirst.” And he wasn't just physically thirsty. By taking on the sins of humanity, all of our transgressions, all of our debts, all of our wrongdoing, all of our failure, he becomes cosmically thirsty. He's cut off from the source of life. He becomes cosmically thirsty so that he can finally satisfy our existential thirst for more — something that only God can offer through his living water. So Jesus becomes capable of experiencing thirst to satisfy our thirst.

But just imagine the humility that that required of Jesus. I mean, how condescending of God to become a little human being like us. It's a wonder to us that God would be willing to make such a sacrifice. So think about how much Jesus was willing to give up. Now I've got an analogy from the Oxford professor C.S. Lewis, and I think this analogy is going to play well in New York City, because we love our dogs in New York. So C.S. Lewis says,

Lying at your feet is your dog. Imagine, for the moment, that your dog and every dog is in deep distress. Some of us love dogs very much. If it would help all the dogs in the world to become like men, would you be willing to become a dog? Would you put down your human nature, leave your loved ones, your job, hobbies, your art and literature and music, and choose instead of the intimate communion with your beloved, the poor substitute of looking into the beloved’s face and wagging your tail, unable to smile or speak? Christ by becoming man limited the thing which to Him was the most precious thing in the world; his unhampered, unhindered communion with the Father.

Do you see the humility of God? Do you see the condescension of God? For Jesus to become a human being would be like you or I becoming a dog. But he became what we are so that he might make us what he is.

So Jesus did not merely seem or appear to be human; no, he really became flesh and blood like us. And why did he do it? He did it because this was the only way to redeem us. Another great theologian, Gregory of Nazianzus, said that what is not assumed cannot be healed. By assuming the full extent of our humanity, Jesus is in a position now to heal us of all that's broken. That which is not assumed cannot be healed. He assumes it all in order to heal us all.

Why Does This Matter?

But the last question we need to ask ourselves is, so what? Who cares? What difference does this actually make? Well, here's why this matters. Christianity is the only religion in the world where God experiences weakness, temptation, and suffering. Do you realize that? It's the only religion in the world where God experiences weakness, temptation, and suffering. And therefore Jesus is uniquely in a position to help us in the midst of our weakness, our temptation, and our suffering.

Weakness

First, consider our weakness. Now some of you might say, I'm not a Docetist. This heresy doesn't apply to me. But let's make sure. Here's the test. And the test is appropriate for Christmas time. We like to sing the Christmas carol beloved by children Away In a Manger. But have you ever stopped to consider that there is something seriously wrong with that song? Consider the second verse: “The cattle are lowing, the poor baby wakes, but little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.” What? Jesus didn't cry? Only a Docetist would sing that song. So don't sing that verse. If you do, you're a Docetist. I'm sorry, I taught my children when they were very young. They're not allowed to sing the second verse of that carol.

But you see, this shows us something really important. Jesus cried. He had to be fed. He had to be changed. And do you realize what that means? Jesus became weak. He became frail. He became vulnerable. And we need to hear that. It is sinful to be fallen, but it is not sinful to be finite. Do you see the difference?

I think a lot of people have an uneasy conscience. Sometimes they feel badly about all the things that they haven't been able to get done, or they haven't been able to do it the way that they wanted to. But you see, it is sinful to be fallen but not to be finite. It's sinful to willfully rebel against God, or to cross a line, or to refuse to meet one, but it's not sinful to be weak or to be frail or to be vulnerable, because that's what Jesus did. That's what Jesus became. And you see, that's why he can help us in our weakness. He knows what it means to be small. He knows what it means to be frail. He knows what it means to be vulnerable. And that's why the author of Hebrews tells us, in Hebrews 4, we don't have a high priest who's unable to sympathize with us in our weakness; no, he knows our weakness, and therefore he can meet us in that weakness and show us how to be strong.

Temptation

So we have a God who uniquely can help us in our weakness, and we have a God who can help us with temptation. All three of the synoptic gospels — Matthew, Mark and Luke — they all tell us that Jesus experienced temptation. In fact, he endured 40 days of temptation in the wilderness. Now look, some people might say, no, Jesus can't help me with my temptations with relationships or sex or my addictions to alcohol or drugs or food, my temptations to control or to seek comfort. Some people complain, well look, if Jesus was God, if Jesus was really divine, then everything he did, even his suffering and his temptation, loses all value and significance because it must have been so easy for him, because he was divine, unlike us. And Jesus, therefore, had the advantage of knowing that he was divine. Therefore it wasn't all that bad for him. It wasn't that hard, no matter what he faced.

But no, the reality is that he faced far more temptation than we ever will. He faced an intensity of temptation to which none of us will ever come close. You know why? Because he was unrelenting in the face of temptation. He never gave in, and that makes the biggest difference. C.S. Lewis, again, changes our whole way of thinking about temptation. He says,

No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the [ENEMY] army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of the wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. [That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.] We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means – the only complete realist.

Do you realize that? He endured temptation unlike anything you ever will. And that is so good, because that means that no matter what we have been tempted with, he is strong enough to strengthen us underneath it. We read in Hebrews 2 that because he himself has suffered and been tempted, he can help those who are tempted.

Suffering

And then finally, what about suffering? Well, some also complain that if Jesus was divine, well then that would mean that he knew that his suffering would not last, and therefore he didn't face suffering in the same way as all of us. And he could have stopped it at any minute. But no, he experienced suffering beyond all imagining.

Now it's unlikely, but it's possible that another human being perhaps could have experienced the same kind of physical torture as Jesus, or maybe the same kind of emotional abuse as Jesus, maybe. But no one has experienced anything like the spiritual torment that Jesus endured. And that was the worst part, because from the cross, Jesus cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” For the first time — because he takes our sin upon himself — Jesus is cut off from his father. For the first time, the second person of the Trinity, the beloved Son of God, is forsaken. He experiences God abandonment. Do you realize what happened on the cross? Jesus went to hell and back again. No one's experienced suffering like that. And therefore, no matter what you might be going through now or later in your life, he understands. He's been there. He's been to the bottom. There's no depth of suffering you could experience to which he could say, I don't get it. I don't understand. No, he understands it all. He assumed even death and hell in order to heal us of it completely, so that it might never touch us.

So no, don't think that life was easier for Jesus just because he was divine. He became like us in absolutely every way. And therefore you can never turn to Jesus and say, “You don't understand,” because he does. There is no joy too high, there is no grief too low, there's no pain too severe that it falls outside the circle of his experience. Therefore there's no experience, no emotion, no tragedy, no relationship that could fall outside the compass of his compassion. It all falls within the circle of his love. And we need to understand that — especially at Christmas time, when the hurts and the pains of our lives and of our years sometimes seem even more acute.

So as we approach Christmas, consider the fact that Jesus really became a human being, and therefore he knows what you're going through better than even you know yourself. Have you been mistreated or misunderstood? Falsely accused? Wrongly condemned? So has he. He was despised and rejected by men. Is your body wracked with pain? Do you feel like you can't take on anymore? Well, he was wounded for our transgressions. He was pierced for our iniquities. Have you felt passed over or ignored? Marginalized or excluded? Well, Jesus came to his own and his own people refused to receive him. They rejected him. Is your heart overwhelming with sorrow? Are your eyes flooded with tears? Well, he was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Are you suffering from a broken heart? Jesus was betrayed with a kiss. Are your most precious relationships lost? Well, he was denied, deserted, and abandoned by his closest friends when he needed them the most. There is no aspect of our human existence that Jesus does not understand and for which he does not have sympathy, compassion, but more than that, strength.

I don't know about you, but I could never be a Docetist. There's nothing like the strength, the encouragement, the hope that only the Incarnation can provide. So you can go to Jesus, no matter what you're dealing with today, you can cry to him in your pain, you can shout at him in your anger, you can plead with him in your agony. You know why? Because Jesus is human, too.

Let me pray for us.

Father, we thank you that we have a God who became like us, so that despite all of our faults and failures, you might make us like you. And thank you that we have a God who's experienced all that we have and more — physically, emotionally and spiritually. He's the only God who ever experienced weakness, temptation, and suffering. And therefore Jesus and Jesus alone can uniquely help us in the midst of our weakness, our temptation, and our suffering. And therefore we come to you now as we are today — in all of our humanity, in all of our weakness, frailty, vulnerability, and yes, even in our sin — and pray that you would make us whole. And we know that you can, because that which is not assumed cannot be healed. You assumed at all in order to heal us completely. Do that work in us by your grace, we pray. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Sermons

How Not to Be a Heretic: How Not to Be a Docetist

Related Resources

What Did God Become?

Why Did He Do It?

Why Does This Matter?