American Heresy: Docetism
Recently we discussed how the American church seems to be plagued with a Pelagian notion of sin: sin equals the bad behaviors you do. And this has me thinking about some other heresies that continue to plague us.
One such heresy involves the denial of the full humanity of Jesus. In many Christian churches there’s sort of a vague agreement that Jesus was a man. But he’s sort of a superman. He had magical powers and was far far above us. There are several problems with this:
- It means that Jesus can’t really sympathize with our weaknesses (contra Hebrews 4.15). When we are tempted or oppressed, we can’t expect Jesus to understand. He’s so far above us, he never had to deal with this.
- It means that we can conveniently ignore Jesus as an example, and blame it on his being God.
- It means Jesus can’t save us. Mankind is who owed the debt to God. If Jesus was not fully human, he could not have been our substitute and saved us.
This heresy is called docetism (from the Greek dokeo= “to seem,” meaning that Jesus only seemed to be human). In contrast to this, though, we affirm that Jesus was a true flesh and blood human being (John 1.14), he ate, slept, cried, bled, used the bathroom, had genitals. Everything that makes us human was found in Jesus.
This means that he knows exactly what it’s like to go through human life. He has faced the same struggles we face. This also means that he is our example for human life. He shows us how true humanity is supposed to be. This means that our humanity (joined to his divinity) is forever represented in heaven before the Father.
The heresy of docetism still manifests itself when we act like God doesn’t care about our day to day lives (he does…he lived one), or when we think that no one else understands us, or when we refuse to take Jesus’ example seriously because he had super powers and we do not, or when we think that “little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.”
So, this Christmas, as we prepare to celebrate Christ’s coming, let’s take seriously his incarnation. He was and is fully human. He is exactly like us in his humanity, except for his sin. And because of his work on the cross, he offers us his own sinless record. Let us worship our perfect God-Man!
Posted by: Gene Schlesinger
Excellent piece. Just excellent. Thank you for putting into words I can not only understand but also agree with.
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