Introduction
Christianity is not based on reason or
tradition, but on a revelation from God. Unlike the religions of the
world, it is not the product of man’s mind but is simply what God
has been pleased to make known to His creature. Once we step outside
the bounds of that revelation then our thoughts are no longer
concerned with what God has said, but with what man thinks. Stay
with the revelation and we can be completely certain it is absolute
truth,
for it is what God has said.
Abandon the revelation or indulge in speculation concerning it and
we will be “tossed and carried about by every wind of
that teaching [which is]
in the sleight of men” (Eph. 4: 14). The peril is more real than
many are conscious of.
These things are particularly important when
we come to the Lord Jesus Christ and who He is. In Matthew 16, the
Lord asked the disciples “But ye, who do ye say that I am?” (v15).
He not only commends Peter’s answer that “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (v16) but gives the
basis for that commendation: “for
flesh and blood has not revealed [it] to thee, but my Father who is
in the heavens” (v17, my emphasis). Peter spoke the truth about the
Lord Jesus because he was giving utterance to the divine revelation
he had received. By contrast, many since, both infidel and
believing, have engaged in speculation as to “[the] person of
Christ” (2 Cor. 2: 10). This is the height of presumption and
foolishness—the divine revelation is explicit that “no one knows the
Son but the Father” (Matt. 11: 27). There is thus a divine mystery
attached to His person, and this makes it all the more imperative to
restrict our pronouncements concerning Him to
what God has revealed in His
Word.
God and Man
not God–Man
That the Lord Jesus is both God and man is
given ample testimony to in Scripture. As to His deity, the book of
Hebrews is conclusive: “but as to the Son, Thy throne, O God, [is]
to the age of the age, and a sceptre of uprightness [is] the sceptre
of thy kingdom” (Heb. 1: 8). The same book is equally clear about
the reality of the Lord’s manhood: “What is man, that thou
rememberest him, or son of man that thou visitest him? Thou hast
made him some little inferior to the angels; thou hast crowned him
with glory and honour, [and hast set him over the works of thy
hands;] thou hast subjected all things under his feet … But now we
see not yet all things subjected to
him, but we see Jesus …”
(Heb. 2: 6–9). This is not the
God-Man that some talk about, a repulsive title that implies a
hybrid, part God and part man—no, this is the One who
is God and
is man. He is both the
root
and the offspring of
David (see Rev. 22: 16). We may not be able to explain it, but we
believe it, and we believe it because God has said it.
My God and
Your God
Ephesians 1: 3 begins “Blessed [be] the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ …” (v3). Some would make a
difficulty here. So anxious are they to guard the deity of Christ
that they will not allow the force of what the revelation clearly
teaches, namely that
God is the God of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Why do they have a difficulty? Because they
are attempting to explain the unexplainable rather than simply
accepting at face value what the Bible says.
Does God have a God? To say so is not only
ridiculous but blasphemous. What does God tell us about Himself? “I
[am] the first, and I [am] the last, and beside me there is no God”
(Is. 44: 6). Is the Lord Jesus God? Unquestionably. Thomas addressed
him as “My Lord and my God” and the Lord did not correct him (John
20: 28). Yet a few verses earlier, the Lord told Mary of Magdala
that “I ascend to my Father and your Father,
and [to] my God and your God” (v17, my emphasis). So how could
One “whose goings forth are from of old, from the days of eternity”
(Mic. 5: 2) say such a thing? Because not only was He God, but
perfect man—and a perfect man must have a God. Can we explain these
things? No more than we can unravel the mystery that in the
beginning the Word was both with God and was God (see John 1: 1).
God does not expect us to be able to explain everything He has
said—but He does ask us to believe it all.
Jesus Christ
Coming in Flesh
It is possible to make the wrong sort of
progress in the Christian profession. Thus John warns that
“Whosoever goes forward and abides not in the doctrine of the Christ
has not God” (2 John 9). Christ is a title that belongs to the Lord as God’s anointed man in
this world. Thus if God is the God of the Lord Jesus Christ,
then it is equally true that
God has a man—“[the] man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2: 5), the
One “whom I have chosen, my beloved, in whom my soul has found its
delight” (Matt. 12: 18). God’s man is “the second man, out of
heaven” (1 Cor. 15: 47) and as you and I “have borne the image of
the [one] made of dust” so the purpose of God concerning us is that
“we shall bear also the image of the heavenly [one]” (v49).
Now the doctrine of the Christ refers to the truth concerning the Lord’s
blessed person. He is God and He is man. It is what John had in mind
when he writes about those “who do not confess Jesus Christ coming
in flesh” (2 John 7). Why is this so important? Because if Jesus
Christ did not really come in flesh, then He did not really die
either and there is no salvation. God prepared Him a body (see Heb.
10: 5) in order that we who believe might be sanctified “through the
offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (v10). He was a
real man, and He really died.
However, the expression “Jesus Christ coming
in flesh” (2 John 7) not only involves the Lord’s manhood but His
deity. That too must be confessed, for the doctrine of the Christ
takes in both. You and I did not come in flesh—we did not exist
before we were in flesh. He did. You and I “partake of blood and
flesh” and “he also, in like manner, took part in the same” (Heb. 2:
14), but He ever existed. He is the One that bears the title “Father
of Eternity” (Is. 9: 6). Thus “God” (probably better ‘He’, meaning
the Lord Jesus) “has been manifested in flesh” (1 Tim. 3: 16)—the
condition into which the Lord entered brought into view what was
previously unseen. Again, Luke begins his Gospel by speaking of the
disciples as the “attendants on the Word” (Luke 1: 2)—the same Word
that John informs us was “In [the] beginning” (John 1: 1). Deny the
Lord’s deity and you make Him merely a wonderful creature instead of
“our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ” (Titus 2: 13).
Nor do we have to be theologians to grasp
these things. The apostle wrote to “[the] elect lady
and her children” (2
John 1, my emphasis). It was within the compass of their
understanding. Let us then, young or old, “prove the spirits”,
recognising that “every spirit which confesses Jesus Christ come in
flesh is of God; and every spirit which does not confess Jesus
Christ come in flesh is not of God” (1 John 4: 1–3).
The Son who
does not Know
Now while everything that the Bible says about
the Lord is true, it is also true that everything that is said is in
its right place. The Spirit of God has seen fit to present the Lord
in different ways in different passages, and we have no licence to
read into those passages everything that is true of the Lord. In a
great many instances, for example, His deity is veiled and we have
to accept that the divine author has a purpose in this. On other
occasions, the veil is drawn aside (as on the Mount of
Transfiguration—see Matt. 17: 2), but whether veiled or not, in each
passage we need to see the Lord as the Holy Spirit intended us to
see Him, and not intrude our own ideas. This does not detract from
who He is in any way, nor take away one iota from either His Deity
or perfect manhood. Indeed, those who
do read everything
into every Scripture will
inevitably end up in the very position that they are so anxious
to avoid—in error as regards the Lord’s person. The words of
Scripture are exact, and we are to accept them simply as they are
for they are “words … taught by the Spirit” (1 Cor. 2: 13).
The Bible tells us that God is
omniscient or all–knowing. He is “perfect in knowledge” (Job. 37:
16), and His “understanding is infinite” (Ps. 147: 5). Yet we are
also told as regards the coming of the Son of man that “of that day
or of that hour no one knows, neither the angels who are in heaven,
nor the Son, but the
Father” (Mark 13: 32, my emphasis; see also Matt. 24: 36). How can
this be true when we also read of the Lord that “in him all the
fulness [of the Godhead] was pleased to dwell” (Col. 1: 19)? How can
such a One be said not to know? Indeed, how
can it be true, when He saw Nathanael under the fig tree (see John
1: 48) and on more than one occasion read the thoughts of others
(see Matt. 9: 4; 12: 25; Mark 2.8), thus lifting the veil to reveal
His deity?
The force of Mark 13: 32 cannot be entirely
explained by the fact that Mark presents the Lord in his gospel
particularly as God’s servant. That is surely true and significant,
“for the bondman does not know what his master is doing” (John 15:
15), but it does not alter the fact that the Lord is presented in
this verse as the Son of the Father. It is
as such that He is there said not to know. Substitute the word
God for
Son, and you will end up in the blasphemous position of asserting
that the all–knowing God does not know. No, we simply have to accept
what the revelation tells us—namely, that as presented here, the Son
does not know of that day or hour. It is part of the holy mystery of
His person, in the same way that the weary One who slept in the boat
(see Mark 4: 38) was also the One who will “neither slumber not
sleep” (Ps. 121: 4), and the One born into Bethlehem’s manger is the
same One who declared “Do not I fill the heavens and the earth?”
(Jer. 23: 24).
Do you think these things demand explanation?
How can anyone explain it, if God does not? The Lord Himself tells
us that there is what is unknowable as regards His own person (see
Matt. 11: 27), and yet you—a creature—presume to think that you are
sufficient for such things! Some have dared to say that Christ on
earth knew as God what He did not know as man. That is speculation,
not revelation, theology and not Scripture.
Mary not the
Mother of God
Logic is the practice of reasoning something out
to arrive at the truth. In essence, it is using the human mind to
explain things. While it has its place in science, business and the
like, logic is no guide to understanding spiritual matters. The
spiritual believer arrives at the understanding of Scripture by the
Spirit—the mind is used, but in subjection to God. The rationalist
(whether believer or unbeliever), follows after the pattern of the
natural man and remains unenlightened for “[the] natural man does
not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to
him; and he cannot know [them] because they are spiritually
discerned” (1 Cor. 2: 14).
Perhaps the most well–known example of the use
of logic in relation to the Lord Jesus is the Romanist assertion
that as Mary was the mother of the Lord Jesus then she must also be
the mother of God. In Luke 1, when Mary came to see Elizabeth, the
older woman exclaimed “whence [is] this to me, that the mother of my
Lord should come to me?” (v 43). Read a few verses on, and we find
Mary’s response: “And Mary said, My soul magnifies the Lord, and my
spirit has rejoiced in God my Saviour” (v46, 47; see also v68). Thus
the One who was to be born is described by Elizabeth as
the Lord, while Mary
clearly viewed the Lord
and God as being one and
the same (as they truly are). Human logic will then tell us that
Mary must therefore be the mother of
God, but Scripture
never says so. We are
to believe what Scripture says, not what we make it say. Elizabeth
refers to the mother of her
Lord but she does not speak of the mother of her
God. Scripture is exact in
its choice of words. Of course
Lord is a divine title, but it does not carry the same explicit
level of meaning as theos,
the word used for God. As the son of Mary, it is the Lord’s
manhood that is in
view—His deity, though present, is veiled. Thus throughout the NT
(see John 2: 1; Acts 1: 14), Mary is called the mother of
Jesus—His name as a man
amongst men, and a name which was not, in itself, remarkable. Mary
was the mother of a child who was God but she was not, as human
logic dictates, the mother of God.
He became Dead
What we believe should be acquired from the
Word of God and not elsewhere. However, it is an undeniable fact
that we pick up much of what we believe from a wide variety of
sources and not all of them adhere as closely to the divine
revelation as they should. Popular hymnology is a case in point. One
well–known composition has the words
Amazing love! How can it be,
That Thou, my God shouldst die for me? Now hymns are not
Scripture, and as the products of men, however spiritual, we cannot
expect perfection in every line. We ought, however, to be alive to
the danger of taking what they say at
face value.
So did God die for me? Scripture never says
so—and yet it is very clear that the One who died on Calvary’s cross
was God. If we turn to Revelation 1 we find the Lord Jesus
speaking: “Fear not; I am the first and the last, and the living
one:
and I became dead, and
behold, I am living to the ages of ages, and have the keys of death
and of hades” (vs 17, 18, my emphasis; see also Rev. 2: 8). Now if
we go back to the OT we find that
the first and
the last are divine
titles: “Thus saith Jehovah, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer,
Jehovah of hosts: I [am] the first, and I [am] the last, and beside
me there is no God” (Is. 44: 6). So how could the first and the last
of Isaiah’s prophecy, who said “beside me there is no God”, also say
in His revelation to John the apostle that “I became dead”? Did God
die—indeed,
could God die? Of
course not: “Thy years are from generation to generation … thou art
the Same, and thy years shall have no end” (Ps. 102: 24, 27). And
yet the One who “himself bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1
Pet. 2: 24) was and is God! Can we explain it? No, but we who are
saved are very thankful for it. The man who died at Calvary was God
(see Matt. 27: 54)— indeed, He “became flesh” (John 1: 14) in order
that He might die—but God never died. Death relates to the body, but
“God [is] a spirit” (John 4: 24).
The Son who
learned Obedience
The Bible is one book and must be taken as such.
As the apostle Peter writes, “[the scope of] no prophecy of
Scripture is had from its own particular interpretation” (2 Pet. 1:
20)—each verse should be interpreted in the light of the whole.
However we also need to remember to take the Scriptures as find them
and not attempt to force them into some theological system of our
own invention using other passages to alter, however slightly, the
plain meaning of any particular verse.
Hebrews 5 contains a most wonderful account of
the reality of the Lord’s manhood: “who in the days of his flesh,
having offered up both supplications and entreaties to him who was
able to save him out of death, with strong crying and tears; (and
having been heard because of his piety;) though he were Son, he
learned obedience from the things which he suffered” (vs. 7, 8). The
writer speaks of One who in “the days of his flesh” offered up
prayers to His God. It is a picture of a dependent man. Why did He
thus pray? Because He lived to do His Father’s will, and His
Father’s will was that He be “made sin for us” (2 Cor. 5: 21). As
sinless, death had no claim on Him—hence His horror of it, and His
praying with “strong crying and tears”. Truly this was One who had
“emptied himself, taking a bondman’s form, taking his place in [the]
likeness of men” (Phil. 2: 7). However, when we come to verse 8 of
Hebrews 5, we are forcibly reminded that the Lord was not only man,
but God—indeed His deity shines so bright in the word
Son that it causes confusion if we were to introduce the thought of
man into it (and yet the
One who was Son was also man).
Right from birth, man is familiar with the
idea of obedience. Even Nebuchadnezzar, of whom it was said “whom he
would he slew, and whom he would he kept alive” (Dan. 5: 19), would
have known subjection as a child to his parents. In Hebrews 5: 8
however, we are introduced to One who “learned obedience from the
things which he suffered”—the notion of obedience was totally
foreign to Him. Why? Because He was the Son. What was this obedience
but submission to His Father’s will, a will that involved Him
suffering and, ultimately, dying? “I do not seek my will” He said,
“but the will of him that has sent me” (John 5: 30). Even as a child
He asked his earthly parents “Why [is it] that ye have sought me?
did ye not know that I ought to be [occupied] in my Father’s
business?” (Luke 2: 49). This statement is coupled with the
remarkable fact that “he went down with them and came to Nazareth,
and he was in subjection to them” (v51)—that is, He was obedient to
them. Now there is nothing remarkable about the Lord as a man being
subject to His God and Father—He would expect and be expected to
obey. No, what we have before us in Hebrews 5: 8 is One who “though
he were Son”, that is, in spite of the fact that He was God He
learned obedience. He who had never had to obey and was only ever
used to commanding and it was done, had come into this world and put
Himself in subjection, as a man, to the will of God. Let us take the
Scriptures as find we them!
Conclusion
In John 2, the Lord Jesus told the Jews that
“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” and He
was referring not to Herod’s temple, but “the temple of his body”
(vs. 19, 21). He had a body—He was a real man. He also said He would
raise Himself from the dead—making himself equal with the God, who
“raised from among [the] dead Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 4: 24). We need
to hold tenaciously to these twin truths—He is truly God and truly
man. Of course some things in the Word are inexplicable and (to our
human way of thinking), even illogical, but they are not
unbelievable. As the apostle says, “confessedly the mystery of piety
is great. God has been manifested in flesh …
has been believed on in [the]
world” (1 Tim. 3: 16, my emphasis). Let us then hold to the
saving truth that “in him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead
bodily” (Col. 2: 9).
