Hello there,
Romans 5:8 came into my mind this evening, and I wanted to record it somewhere, in a discussion concerning the deity of Christ: for it shout aloud the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ is the physical manifestation of God.
'But God commendeth His love toward us,
in that, while we were yet sinners,
Christ died for us.'
(Romans 5:8)
Praise His Holy Name!
In Christ Jesus
Chris
I don't see where it shouts aloud that the Lord Jesus Christ is the physical manifestation of God.
Who commended His love toward us? Who died for us? ----- This indicates two entirely different persons here.
God and His Messiah.
'But if I tarry long,
that thou mayest know
how thou oughtest to behave thyself
in the house of God,
which is the church of the living God,
the pillar and ground of the truth.
And without controversy great
is the mystery of godliness:
God was manifest in the flesh,
justified in the Spirit,
seen of angels,
preached unto the Gentiles,
believed on in the world,
received up into glory.'
(1 Tim. 3:15-16)
Praise God!
This is another verse that seems to have a textual variant indicated in the footnotes of most Bibles --- (ESV reads "He" in the verse) the footnote - 'some manuscripts God, others which' (ESV)
AI-------The main textual variant in 1 Timothy 3:16 concerns whether the original Greek reads "God was manifest in flesh" (Θεός,
Theos) or "
He who was manifest in flesh" (
Hos), with later Byzantine manuscripts favoring
Theos and earlier manuscripts supporting
Hos (or the neuter
Ho, meaning "which"), making it a key debate over Christ's deity, though most modern scholars lean towards "
Hos", reflecting the grammatical agreement with "mystery" (
mysterion). The difference arises from a scribal contraction (ΘΣ for
Theos) potentially misread as OC (
Hos) or vice versa, with later copying often inserting
Theos for theological emphasis.
No uncial (in the first hand) earlier than the eight or ninth century supports theos ---- all ancient versions presuppose 'who' or 'which' and no patristic writer prior to the last third of the fourth century testifies to the reading theos. The reading theos arose either a) accidentally, through the misreading of ὁc as Θε or b) deliberately, either to supply a substantive for the following six verbs, or with less probability to provide greater dogmatic precision. (Bruce M. Metzger,
Textual commentary on the Greek New Testament, pp. 573-574)
Who came in the flesh? Jesus Christ
What are we to acknowledge? that Jesus Christ came in the flesh.......