Meditations on the Man, Christ Jesus
Understanding Jesus
"In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the
beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not
any thing made that was made. … And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,
and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of
grace and truth." (John 1:1-3, 14)
The moment the Incarnation ceases
to amaze us is the moment our faith loses its wonder, luster, and impact on our
daily lives. God became human – what wondrous love is this!
Additionally, while studying church
history, and especially the early councils and heresies, I have been meditating
on a statement from A. W. Tozer:
“We tend by a secret law of the
soul to move toward our mental image of God. This is true not only of the
individual Christian, but of the company of Christians that composes the
church. Always the most revealing thing about the church is her idea of God,
just as her most significant message is what she says about him or leaves
unsaid, for her silence is often more eloquent than her speech. She can never
escape the self disclosure of her witness concerning God.”[1]
Tozer makes this statement regarding idolatry,
arguing that our incorrect mental images of God are at heart idolatry and that
these images need to be corrected by Scripture. Yet, though he does not make this specific connection, I think Tozer would agree with me that we are in the same
danger when we imagine Jesus Christ, the God-man as less than he is: fully God
and fully human.
We struggle to believe that Jesus is truly human
We are still living in the days of the popular TV show “The
Chosen,” and there has been no end of debate about the show among both
believers and unbelievers alike. The arguments against the show range from
calling it a violation of the second commandment against images of God,
to accusing it of adding to Scripture, and even calling it false teaching.
In favor of the show, some have argued that it helps them to feel a personal
connection to Christ and to better envision what the incarnation means. I will
not be commenting on these arguments; rather, I want to bring up a side matter
that has been exposed in this debate: while orthodox Christians
enthusiastically accept and advocate for Jesus’ deity, we struggle to believe
that Jesus is truly human.
History of the Issue
The tension between the two natures of Christ is not new to
modern Christianity, but the exact nature of this perennial struggle is unique to its
times. When Christ was on earth, nobody doubted his humanity – they saw that he
was human (John 10:33), knew his hometown (John 1:45-46) and his family (Matt.
13:53-56), and further witnessed him experience the frailties of human existence (Matt.
4:2; John 4:6; 19:28). Even the disciples themselves often failed to understand
that Jesus was more than a man (Mark 8:14-21; John 6:51-53). This remained the
struggle of the early church in proclaiming the Gospel (Acts 2:22-24). However,
once Christianity became established and its adherents grasped the divinity of
Christ, the struggle was reversed – now they would wrestle with his humanity.
The first few centuries of Christian history were marked by disputes and false steps in doctrine, largely centered on defining the
nature of Christ and hammering out the doctrine of the Trinity. There were heresies
like Manichaeism, Gnosticism, and Docetism that flatly rejected Christ’s
humanity because they had embraced the philosophy of their day that matter is
evil and God, as spirit, is good. Apollinaris suggested a middle road: Jesus’
body and life force (soul) were human, but his human spirit was replaced with
deity so that Christ was not fully human. On the other side, Arius watered down
not Christ’s humanity but his deity, envisioning him as the first creation of
the Father, of a similar nature (homoiousios) but not equal with him in essence; according to legend, this warranted a slap in the face from Nicholas of Myra, a bishop whose fellow Christians were being executed for faithfully holding to the truth Arius so lightly dismissed. Nestorius sought to keep the
natures distinct, and so ended up arguing for two persons: one the human Jesus
Christ, the other the divine Son of God. Eutyches, seeking to preserve both
Christ’s deity and humanity, proposed a blended nature of both, which in
reality preserved neither.[2] In the end, four ecumenical councils were needed to formulate the final answer,
contained in the Chalcedonian Definition (AD 451):
“Therefore, following the holy fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin … recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence."[3]
In our modern setting, we also find ourselves affected by the philosophies of our day, just like the believers in the early centuries of the church. The trends of Enlightenment thinking and Theological Liberalism in the late 1800s to the mid-1900s argued for a return to the “historical Jesus,” implying that Scripture's picture of our Lord is incomplete and even inaccurate in places. This led the liberal scholars of the famed "Jesus Seminar" to proclaim that over 80% of the words attributed to Jesus in the New Testament were not his own. Scholars such as Rudolf Bultmann advocated “demythologizing” the supernatural elements added to the 'legend' of Jesus, such as his deity, incarnation, death and resurrection. In response, Evangelicals and Fundamentalists fought these attacks against the deity of Christ, and rightly so. The result, however, seems to be that the divinity of Christ was emphasized over his humanity. And that is where we find ourselves in 21st-century American Christology.
The divinity of Christ was emphasized over his humanity
Why did I bring “The Chosen” into this? Simply because the
show’s representation of Jesus has placed great weight upon his humanity, and
this has ruffled some feathers. Twice in season 4 of the show (the current
season as I write this) the character of Jesus has made the plain statement
that he is human. He also exhibits frustration at the failure of his disciples
to comprehend his mission, and in the show’s rendition of the Lazarus story he is
overcome by emotion and falls to the ground sobbing, a far cry from how your
typical sermon portrays “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). Are these
representations of Jesus accurate, or are they blasphemous? Do they allow his
humanity to outweigh his deity, or are they a helpful corrective? If nothing
else, this debate should lead us to study again what Scripture and church history teach about
the two natures of Christ.
Two-Natures Christology
A. T. Robinson, a liberal New Testament scholar, has mocked orthodox
Christology as follows:
“However guardedly it may be stated, the traditional view leaves the impression that God took a space trip and arrived on this planet in the form of a man. Jesus was not really one of us; But through the miracle of the virgin birth he contrived to be born so as to appear one of us. Really he came from outside."[4]
Part of Robinson’s point is that most modern
orthodox Christians are at best flippant and at worst ignorant regarding the
nuances of Christology, and in fact if pressed on the matter tend toward the
Apollinarian heresy that Jesus was something akin to God possessing a human
body. It grieves me to say that he may be right. This leads me to understand better the grave
need of properly understanding the natures of Christ.
First, Scripture is clear that Jesus is divine – that is, he
is “God with us” (Matt. 1:23) and “the Christ, the Son of the living
God” (Matt. 16:16). Christ’s full deity is required in the formula (counter
Arius) for it to be true that “God gave us eternal life, and this life is in
his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God
does not have life” (1 John 5:11). If we ask the question, “Who is Jesus
Christ?” the answer must take into account his own claim: “I and my
Father are one” (John 10:30). He is one with the Father and so shares all
his attributes of divinity, with the following explicitly stated in Scripture:
life (John 1:4), omniscience (John 4:17–18), omnipotence (John 1:3), omnipresence
(Matt. 28:20), eternality (John 1:1), holiness (Acts 3:14), love (Rom. 8:37–39), truth
(John 14:6).[5] Though
the mysterious miracle of the incarnation will always elude us as finite
beings, we can know that when Christ “emptied himself” (Phil. 2:7), he
did not lose his deity; rather, as “Remaining what he was, he became what he was
not."[6] And yet, the answer to the question “Who is Jesus Christ?” is not the same as that
to the question “Who is God?” for the answer to the question about Christ must
include not only his deity but also his humanity.
Both natures are necessary for our salvation
Second, then, Scripture is clear that Jesus became human in the incarnation and remains human today, else we have no high priest to intercede for us. This is the section of Christology at which we often stumble practically. While we know intellectually that Jesus is both 100% God and 100% man, the idea that our God should experience “The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to"[7] seems unintelligible to us. Yet, Scripture tells us that he experienced hunger (Matt. 4:2), thirst (John 19:28), fatigue (John 4:6), and sorrow (John 11:35), as well as gut-wrenching compassion (Matt. 9:36). In that scene in which we tend to downplay his humanity most of all, Jesus experienced temptation – which is impossible for his divine nature to experience (Jas. 1:13) – and rather than drawing upon his divinity, resorted to those same tools that we employ in fighting sin: the Holy Spirit, the Scriptures, and prayer (Matt. 4:1-11). It is in this way that he “in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15). And it must be so!
“For surely it is not angels
that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be
made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and
faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins
of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to
help those who are being tempted.” (Heb. 2:16-18)
As Chalcedon concluded, both natures are necessary for our
salvation, and therefore both natures must be fully preserved and not diluted
or mixed.
Implications of Jesus’ Full Humanity
In the doctrine class that I teach, I go on to bring out the
implications of both Christ’s deity and humanity, but my burden in this post is
that it is specifically Christ’s humanity with which we typically wrestle. Indeed, though
Christ is the “one mediator between God and men” (1 Tim. 2:5), we often foist
upon ourselves that same situation which Job lamented when he cried, “There
is no arbiter between us, who might lay his hand on us both” (Job 9:33). We need to grasp that Jesus is not just 100% God – that would make the
incarnation unnecessary! – but that he is also 100% man, like us in every way
that makes us human, and in fact he bears that fuller humanity which will be
ours in the future, for “when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as
he is” (1 John 3:2).
We need to grasp that Jesus is not just 100% God, but that he is also 100% man
So, what does it mean that Christ was and is fully human? It means that he has fully shared in the human experience in everything short of sin, and that only because he succeeded where we have failed in enduring temptation. Though he is sometimes problematic, Max Lucado’s insight on the humanity of Christ is helpful:
“Jesus may have had pimples. He may have been tone-deaf. Perhaps a girl down the street had a crush on him or vice versa. It could be that his knees were bony. One thing’s for sure: He was, while completely divine, completely human. For thirty-three years he would feel everything you and I have ever felt. He felt weak. He grew weary. He was afraid of failure. He was susceptible to wooing women. He got colds, burped, and had body odor. His feelings got hurt. His feet got tired. And his head ached. To think of Jesus in such a light is – well, it seems almost irreverent, doesn’t it? It’s not something we like to do; it’s uncomfortable. It is much easier to keep the humanity out of the incarnation. Clean the manure from around the manger. Wipe the sweat out of his eyes. Pretend he never snored or blew his nose or hit his thumb with a hammer. He’s easier to stomach that way. There is something about keeping him divine that keeps him distant, packaged, predictable."[8]
If reading this quotation is shocking to you, remember that far above any of the indignities mentioned above (Lucado notes elsewhere, “Angels watched as Mary changed God’s diaper”), far greater was the indignity of the Cross. In a world where the cross has become the symbol of Christianity and so is worn on necklaces, bracelets, and earrings, we tend to forget that it was the most ignominious way to be executed in the Roman Empire, to the point that the famed Roman Orator Cicero said within a century of Christ’s death:
“Let the very word ‘cross,’ be far removed from not only the bodies of Roman citizens, but even from their thoughts, their eyes, and their ears."[9]
Indeed, the cross became synonymous with torture and
torment, with the ancient equivalent of our modern Christianized “Go to Hell!”
finding its Roman equivalent in “Go to the cross!"[10] We should not so blithely read over the words of that ancient text, possibly a
hymn itself:
“[W]ho, though he was in the
form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied
himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the
point of death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:6-8)
And without the humiliation of the cross and the subsequent
resurrection, we would be without our salvation. So not only does the cross
show us the depths to which Christ was willing to go to save us, it also shows
us the extent to which he was human, for God cannot die, yet death was necessary
to bring about our reconciliation – and that not just of our souls, for as Paul
says”
“And not only the creation, but
we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait
eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” (Romans 8:23)
In the words of Gregory of Nazianzus, one of the three Cappadocian Fathers who worked so hard to establish and preserve true Trinitarianism in the fourth century, “That which was not assumed was not healed.” That is, whatever aspects of our humanity were not shared by Christ were not redeemed by him and so reconciled to God. Perhaps nowhere else in Paul’s writings do these themes come together in such stark and lofty language as they do in Colossians:
“For in him all the fullness of
God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things,
whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.”
(Colossians 1:19-20)
We must remind ourselves often of Isaiah’s song:
“[H]e had no form or majesty
that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was
despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and
as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him
not.” (Isaiah 53:2b-3)
It is only through the lens of Christ’s full humanity with
its human will that we can makes sense of his sorrowful prayer in Gethsemane:
“And taking with him Peter and
the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to
them, ‘My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with
me.’ And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, ‘My
Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I
will, but as you will.’” (Matthew 26:37-39)
Conclusion
Why am I writing this post? I am concerned that, in our
battle to rightly defend the deity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we have
drifted too far from the balance between Christ’s natures to all but exclude
his humanity from our minds. We do so not only to the detriment of our
theology’s accurate picture of the God who delights to save and does so at his
own expense, but also to the detriment of our daily spiritual walk. If we
do not have the man Christ Jesus as our example, who “grew and became strong,
filled with wisdom” (Luke 2:40), “learned obedience through what he
suffered” (Heb. 5:8), and “continued entrusting himself to him who judges
justly” (1 Pet. 2:23), we cannot accept his invitation to follow him who
calls himself “gentle and lowly in heart” (Matt. 11:29).
If we do not have the man Christ Jesus as our example, we cannot accept his invitation to follow him
“Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness:
He was manifested in the flesh,
vindicated by the Spirit,
seen by angels,
proclaimed among the nations,
believed on in the world,
taken up in glory.” (1 Timothy 3:16)
[1] A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy.
[2] For
an introduction to these heresies and their proponents, see “Know the Heretics”
by Justin S Holcomb in Zondervan’s “Know” series.
[3] The
Chalcedonian Definition, https://thewestminsterstandard.org/the-chalcedonian-creed/
[4] A. T.
Robinson, quoted in Justin S. Holcomb, “Know the Heretics,” 105.
[5] Paul
P. Enns, The Moody Handbook of Theology, 251.
[6] Wayne
Grudem, Systematic Theology, 700.
[7] William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act III scene i.
[8] Max Lucado, https://maxlucado.com/it-began-in-a-manger-christmas/
[9] Cicero, 106-43BC, Pro
Rabirio Postump, 16.
[10] Lewis
and Short, Harper’s Latin Dictionary, 485.
All Scripture verses come from the ESV.
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