For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, (Rom 8:3)
To be a Christian it is essential to understand Christ. If you take out the Christ from the Christian you are taking out the essence of faith. So who is Jesus? Is Jesus God? Is He one of many Gods? Is He a demigod? The concept of Jesus as the only begotten Son of God is a bit tricky to understand. Let us understand this by the process of elimination.
Jesus is the image that God paints for us to know Him. Jesus Himself says this of Him that if we have seen Him we have seen the Father who send Him. However at the same time Jesus is not God the Father because then whom does He pray to or allude to.
“But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. (Mat 24:36)
The prophet Isaiah however refers to Jesus as the Eternal Father. The angel Gabriel names Jesus as Immanu-El meaning God with us. How do we reconcile the two contradictions.
Human mind is finite but God is infinite. When we are drawing a portrait on canvas we are drawing a two dimensional representation of a three dimensional world. Similarly Jesus is the finite image of the infinite God, and this image is made in flesh rather than paper.
Everytime a Christian brings up the concept of the Trinity a pagan smiles a smug smile. For an outsider it is easy to see Jesus as a separate entity from God the Father. Their personalities seem to be quite different on the surface. While God is all about wrath and justice Jesus stands for Grace and forgiveness. However the two are two faces of the same coin.
The grace of Jesus covers the wrath of God the Father and the forgiveness of Jesus makes allowance for the justice of the Father. Jesus would never need to die on the cross as a propitiation of our sin if God the Father was not a God of Justice.
All of it falls into a plan. God knows man cannot defeat sin. So He becomes man in the form of Jesus and defeats sin, not through divine intervention but human obedience, according to the original design for mankind. Sin was not defeated at the resurrection of Christ. Sin was defeated on the Cross. The resurrection only served to fulful the promise of the eternal King. That King is not a cloud of fire and smoke. Yet neither is it a human being prone to sin. It is the sinless human born in the image of God. And we know what Jesus says of Himself.
I and the Father are one.” (Joh 10:30)
Classical mythology gives us a very wide range of demigods. In the time of Jesus the Romans were in control. The Greek had lost power yet the prominent trade language was Greek. The Greek influence was so strong that the entire New Testament is mostly composed of Greek and Aramaic. Greek Mythology gives us a lot of demigods like Hercules and Persius. They are, like the name suggests, myths. However Jesus was never a myth. His presence left a political impact recorded in historical documents. His followers are mentioned in contemporary chronicles.
Jesus is not half a God. He is fully God.
Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” (Joh 8:58)
The Gospel of Matthew shows Jesus as the fulfilment of several age old prophesies. He is the long awaited Messiah who was desrined to be rehected by His very own people. Jesus is the Sin of God conceived through the Holy Spirit. There is no denying that. Jesus is the Gift of Himself wrapped in His love for us.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (Joh 3:16)
The resurrection was not necessary for the redemptive work of Jesus. However it was necessary to provide a human yet eternal King according to God's promises to David. The people of Israel had rejected the Kingship of God and in return God had appointed Saul as King. However such kings were full of falacy. There was the need for an eternal King that would not fall prey to sin. Hence God promised David of the future eternal King that is Jesus.
No one other than God is righteous and sinless. For the redemption to be effective the sacrifice on the cross had to be sinless. The divinity of Jesus ensures that we are redeemed from the bondage of sin because a perfect sacrifice was laid on our behalf.
The sin brought by the disobedience of one man could only be removed by the sacrifice of another. The humanity of Jesus allowed him to be our propitiation on the cross. If Jesus was not human he could not have replaced humanity in taking on the wrath of God.
Also the humanity of Jesus means that as he sits on the right hand of God and pleads for us he knows what we experience. To him humanity is not an idea but a state of being. The human Jesus can sympathize with the wants and needs of humanity.