Before we continue with our incarnation series we want to tie up some loose ends on the subject of the deity of the incarnate Jesus Christ. So consider what we will be saying for the next wee bit as a tag on, on last week’s sermon.
We hinted at the idea that in conservative churches today there is no way that someone could get ordained if they went all Arian and explicitly denied the deity of Jesus Christ in the incarnation. But does that mean that therefore the error of denying that Jesus Christ was truly God and truly man does not exist, at least implicitly in conservative Reformed denominations?
I would say no … it does not mean that.
We have to understand that while someone can hold to the deity of Jesus Christ in the abstract they can at the same time deny the deity Jesus Christ in the concrete. In this way affirming the deity of Jesus Christ is like affirming the inerrancy of Scripture. Everybody orthodox affirms the inerrancy of Scripture until the issue of the authority and sufficiency of Scripture becomes the subject and then suddenly the fear of theonomy finds scads of people jumping ship as to the real practical issue of inerrancy so while they affirm it in the abstract they deny it in the concrete.
The same is true about Christology and the deity of Christ. None of it means anything if you don’t affirm the cosmic Lordship of Christ over every sphere; including all the nations of the world.
So, while abstractly considered the conservative Reformed church likely has ZERO Arians in our pulpit, concretely considered we do have a remaining problem with asserting the deity of Jesus Christ. What good does it do us to affirm the deity of Christ in the abstract if in the concrete we shy away from the implication that because Jesus Christ remains very God of very God all men must bow to this King’s Word at every point? (I’m looking at you R2k.) If we affirm the deity of Jesus Christ it doesn’t strike me that we can avoid being both theocrats and theonomists. Either Jesus is God and so has definitive cosmic Lordship or Jesus is not God and Lordship is optional.
The next loose end I want to tie up – and this will lead us into looking at the humanity of Jesus is my continued insistence that this look at the incarnation reveals how integrated and interdependent worldviews are.
In week #1 of this series, we saw that we could not speak about the Incarnation without at the same time speaking about the Trinity. If Jesus Christ is very God of very God then that means there is plurality in the Godhead. In week #2 we considered saw that the doctrine of the deity of Jesus Christ impacts our doctrine of soteriology. If Jesus Christ is not very God of very God we cannot be saved from our sins.
Question 17: Why must He in one person be also very God?
Answer: That He might by the power of His Godhead sustain in His human nature the burden of God’s wrath;3 and might obtain for, and restore to us, righteousness and life.4
If Jesus Christ was not very God of very God then He could not sustain God’s wrath against humans and so we even now remain dead in our sins and trespasses.
When we take up the matter this week of the humanity of Jesus Christ we also learn that likewise if Jesus Christ was not very man of very man then likewise the doctrine of soteriology is affected.
Listen to the Heidelberg Catechism
Question 16: Why must he be very man, and also perfectly righteous?
Answer: Because the justice of God requires that the same human nature which hath sinned, should likewise make satisfaction for sin;1 and one, who is himself a sinner, cannot satisfy for others.2
You see, it is absolutely essential that Jesus Christ being 100% or else man’s sin – our sin – could not have been paid for.
So, here we are talking about the doctrine of the incarnation and yet at the same time, we have had to delve into the doctrine of the Trinity, and the doctrine of soteriology. But if one listens closely one can hear that we are also talking about Christian Anthropology – the doctrine of man – here. It is because man is fallen that Christ must come and pay for sins. The fallen-ness of man is the cornerstone of our Christian anthropology so in examining the doctrine of the incarnation a host of other worldview doctrines are brought in so that we see that while we can and should speak about different categories of truth all those categories are integrated and interdependent. This is why we repeatedly say that one can’t change one aspect of their doctrine without sending reverberations of change through their whole system of thought.
This teaches us that we should be slow to move the boundary markers of our undoubted catholic religion for moving doctrinal boundary markers is a dangerous business that may end up finding us with a different religion.
But what of this humanity of Christ? Well, we see it clearly taught in the passage read this morning.
Philippians 2:5-8-“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”
Here we the explicit affirmation that Jesus Christ was a man. But this is an affirmation expressed repeatedly in Holy Writ. And we pause to take a tad bit of time to look at some of this teaching;
I Timothy 2:5 For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus,
I Timothy 3:16 And without controversy great is the [a]mystery of godliness:
God[b] was manifested in the flesh,
Justified in the Spirit,
Seen by angels,
Preached among the Gentiles,
Believed on in the world,
Received up in glory.
Then there are the implicit affirmations in Scripture that reveal Christ as truly man.
Scripture teaches that
Jesus thirsted (John 19:28-29) / Gods never thirst
Jesus wearied (Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey) [John 4:6] / Gods never tire
Jesus wept (John 11:35) / Gods never have reason to weep
Jesus hungered (Mk. 11:12) Gods don’t get hungry
Jesus was all points tempted (Hebrews 4:15) Gods are not tempted
Jesus was killed (Acts 5:30) The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging Him on a tree. / Gods by definition can’t be killed.
These are all indicators of the man’s manishness.
Now if you remember even some of last week’s sermon the circuits begin to melt. At least mine do. How can it be that these two distinct natures – 100% God & 100% Man – be a reality in the one person of Jesus?
Yet this is the testimony of Scripture and even if I can’t completely fathom it, it is what I am compelled to believe.
If you find this difficult remember the adage … finitum non capax Infinitum. The finite can not contain the infinite.
It is the testimony of Scripture that Jesus the Christ has two distinct natures that exist in one person. In the words of the 451 AD Council of Chalcedon;
We all teach harmoniously [that he is] the same perfect in Godhead, the same perfect in manhood, truly God and truly man, the same of a reasonable soul and body; homoousios with the Father in Godhead, and the same homoousios with us in manhood … acknowledged in two natures without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.
Next, we would say that the Messiah’s humanity was the expectation of God’s people upon listening to God’s Word.
Isaiah 11:1 There shall come forth a shoot from the trunk of Jesse, And a Branch shall grow out of his roots.
Luke 1:55 – Mary can say in her Song referring to the Messiah;
As He spoke to our fathers,
To Abraham and to his seed forever.”
God speaking to Isaac
Gen. 26: 4 And I will make your descendants multiply as the stars of heaven; I will give to your descendants all these lands; and in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed;
God speaking to David
II Sam 7: 12 “When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.
Ps. 32: 11 The Lord has sworn in truth to David;
He will not turn from it:
“I will set upon your throne the [a]fruit of your body.
Acts 13:23 From this man’s seed (David), according to the promise, God raised up for Israel a[a] Savior—Jesus
So, if Jesus was not 100% man then God would have been found a liar.
In a short rabbit trail, we also see from these texts that God did not believe race was a social construct. Jesus had to come from the Hebrew race, through the line of David.
Now the Church had to fight mightily to beat off this denial of the humanity of Jesus the Messiah.
Different Heresies
Docetism – Denied Christ’s genuine humanity. Believed that Jesus was human but not Christ. From the Greek, dokein = “to seem”. Jesus ‘seemed’ to be human. Being a branch of Gnosticism, Docetism believed that the Material world was intrinsically evil therefore Christ could not be corporeal. The Docetist taught that at Jesus’ baptism the Spirit of Christ descended upon the illusionary human Jesus; at his crucifixion, the Spirit of Christ departed. Jesus did not suffer human frailties, since he was not fully human; he was not crucified but had another (Simon the Cyrene) stand in his place at Golgotha.
Legend has it that St. John took the denial of Christ’s humanity so seriously that one day he bumped into Cerinthus in one of the Ephesian baths and instead of completing his ablutions he ran screaming from the baths … “Let us fly, lest even the bath-house fall down because Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is inside.”
Marcionism – Marcion taught that the God of the OT was a different God from the NT’s Jesus. Marcion so emphasized Christ’s better divinity that he lost Christ’s humanity.
Apollinarianism – Held that Jesus’ body was a spiritualized form of humanity but that the soul and mind of Jesus was the logos. The teaching here was that Jesus did not have a human soul. The importance of the rejection of this Apollinarianism is by its rejection what was retained is that Jesus had a human soul. And of course w/o a human soul one can’t be 100%, God.
Modal Monarchianism / Sabellianism – I briefly mention this one because we have Sabellian Church in Charlotte. This error asserted the deity of Christ but denied the humanity of Christ teaching instead that the Father, Son, & Holy Spirit were merely different modes of God. One God who wore different hats. Oneness Pentecostalism.
Gnosticism
The Gnostics are ubiquitous in Church history. Many scholars think that NT books like Colossians and some of John’s epistles were written to refute Gnosticism. Gnosticism taught that the material and corporeal were inherently evil. Because of this Jesus could not have been human. One Gnostic named Valentinus (100-160 CE) taught the Christ of Jesus was sent to awaken within humanity a “divine spark,” setting it free from enslavement to the body.
A deeper knowledge (Greek “gnosis”) and a more spiritual version of Christianity can be achieved by giving Gnostic meanings to Christian texts.
It is interesting that the early Church struggled with maintaining the humanity of Christ while the Church since the Enlightenment has struggled to maintain the deity of Christ.
Let’s close with a few Implication/Application
Implication/Application
1.) At Christmas we can especially revel in the truth that Jesus Christ was truly man. The primary meaning of Christmas is found in the name assigned to the yet birthed child; “You shall call His name Jesus for He shall save His people from their sin.” Here we sit as a portion of His people and we are reminded again during this Christmas season that the God-man — the Lord Jesus Christ – has;
saved us from our sins,
ransomed us from our former empty life passed on to us by our forefathers
reconciled the Father to us by paying for the sins that we as men committed
Has reckoned to our account the righteousness of the God-Man Jesus.
But we are not finished.
There He remains … He who shares our nature at the right hand of the Father interceding for us men that we will finish well the course started.
Because of Jesus the Christ being very man of very man we can sing as men resting in Christ during this Christmas season
God rest ye merry gentlemen
Let nothing you dismay
Remember Christ our Saviour
Was born on Christmas Day
To save us all from Satan’s pow’r
When we were gone astray
Oh tidings of comfort and joy
Comfort and joy
Oh tidings of comfort and joy
2.) At Christmas we can be reminded that the God-Man did not fail of His mission.
Bound up in the Advent celebration is a recognition of the fact that the man Jesus the Christ came as the serpent crusher (Genesis 3:15) to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8).
Christ has been victorious over the dragon. His birth was the beginning of the story of the victory the God-man would have. A victory that is now part of our story. Scriptures record the narrative of the conflict that is there from His birth where the agent of the Dragon, Herod, seeks to end the story in its beginning. In the end, Christ as our champion, who shares in our nature, is the victor over all His enemies even taking captivity captive. At Christmas, we are reminded that we walk in His victory anticipating that promised postmillennial victory that is already present and is yet still ahead.
For lo, the days are hast’ning on,
By prophet bards foretold,
When with the ever circling years
Comes round the age of gold,
When peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendor fling,
And the whole world give back the song
Which now the angels sing.
So, away with the Christmas depression that is so often written about. Remember our representative is the God-Man, Jesus Christ and His arrival means that we have peace with God and walk in His triumph.
3.) Let’s remember during this Christmas season that this Victorious Jesus who has saved us from our sins and who leads us in triumph is a man who knew what it meant to be acquainted with sorrow. We remember He is a savior who calls to himself those who labor and are heavy laden. We remember that He was at all points tested as we yet w/o sin. There are those around us that are struggling during this Christmas season and we should remember that we are called to bear one another’s burdens. We are to be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as Christ in God forgave you.
The Church is a hospital as well as an armory. It needs to be both.
Upon keeping these things in mind I am confident we will be thankful for the human nature of our Lord Christ and be able to say with great earnestness….
MERRY CHRISTMAS.
