What are common ways people mischaracterize Christ?

John Latham explains in this video that there are many contrary and unbiblical teachings about Jesus Christ. Many either want to strip away His deity or His humanity. They say that he was merely a good man or a good teacher.

The Bible speaks of Him being our Redeemer. He triumphed over sin and He died on the cross. Because of His perfect obedience, the price was acceptable to God. He was our propitiation. We are no longer slaves to sin but we are slaves to God.

Colossians 2:8-9 (NKJV) – “Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.”

There are many teachings today in the world that are contrary to teaching the Bible concerning Jesus Christ. Certainly, you think of the Muslims, the Jews that would view Jesus as a mere prophet or teacher, or the Mormons who view him as just a good example of how we all ought to live and how if we live like him, we can become God just like he did, as though he weren't already God, but by his good deeds became God. So many around the world again they take Jesus and they want to either strip away his deity or his humanity. We see in both respects those who again say he's just a mere man, a good example, a good teacher. And in the early days of the church, one of the issues there was denying that he'd come in the flesh.

That what happened there on the cross was just a spirit, a phantasm. Not a real man dying, not real blood being shed, because after all, God can't die. And so that view has been perpetrated at both the beginning of the church and throughout church history. We still see it today and again people want to deny one truth or the other. Either that Jesus is truly God or that he was truly man.

The Bible speaks of Jesus Christ being the Redeemer, speaks of our redemption. It's the picture of being bought back. We might think of a slave who, certainly in the case of our sin and our just condemnation as a slave who did it to himself, a slave that because he's part of humanity was enslaved to sin, was captured and trapped with the domain of darkness. And yet Jesus comes and he pays the price that God the Father demanded, which was death. And yet our death would not satisfy, and yet the death of the Son of God, because of his perfect obedience to the Father in keeping the law and fulfilling the mission that God had given him, that the price was acceptable to God.

He was the propitiation, the atoning sacrifice, the acceptable debt payment was made. We owed a debt we couldn't pay. We were slaves and could not free ourselves. The price was too high. And if Jesus came and paid the price, He bought us back that He might deliver us to His Father, that He would redeem unto Himself a people for His own possessions.

So Now we are no longer slaves to sin, as Romans 6 says, but we are slaves to God. We have a master. We have a God over us who has purchased us, and not with something as trifling as gold or silver, but he has redeemed us by the precious blood of the Lamb, the precious blood of His Son.