10 Truths Everyone Must Know about the Incarnation
As a result of the incarnation, the divine Son lives and acts within the normal physical, mental, volitional, and psychological capacities of an unfallen, sinless human nature. As the Son, he experienced the wonder and weaknesses of a human life. He grew in wisdom and physical stature (Luke 2:52), experienced tears and joy (John 11:35; 15:11), and suffered death and a glorious resurrection for his people and their salvation (John 11:33, 35; 19:30; 1 Cor. 15:3–4).
In our final essay for “Christology at Christmas” theme, I want to offer a tenfold summary of key truths for a biblical and orthodox Christology.
1. The person or subject of the incarnation is the eternal, divine Son.
John 1:14 states this well: “The Word became flesh.” In other words, it was not the divine nature, it was the divine Son from eternity (John 1:1) who became incarnate. The Son, who has always been in eternal relation with the Father and the Spirit, and who shares the same, identical divine nature with them, freely chose to humble himself by assuming a human nature in order to redeem his people (Phil. 2:6–8), and to reverse all that Adam did by ushering in a new creation (Col. 1:18–20).
2. As the divine Son, the second person of the triune Godhead, he is the exact image and correspondence of the Father, and is thus truly God.
Along with the Father and Spirit, the Son fully and equally shares the one divine nature. As the image and exact correspondence of the Father (Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:3), the Son is truly God. All of God’s perfections and attributes are his since our Lord is God the Son (Col. 2:9). As the Son, he indivisibly shares the divine rule, receives divine worship, and does all divine works as the Son (Ps 110:1; Eph 1:22; Phil 2:9–11; Col. 1:15–17; Heb. 1:2–3; Rev. 5:11–12).
3. As God the Son, he has always existed in an eternally ordered relation to the Father and the Spirit, which now is gloriously revealed in the incarnation.
It was fitting that the Son alone became incarnate and not the other divine persons (John 1:1–2, 14, 18). In the incarnation, the Son revealed his eternal divine-filial relation to the Father and always acted from the Father and by the Spirit (John 5:19–30; Mark 1:12; Luke 4:1–21). These eternally ordered relations within God are eternal and necessary.
- The Father is first, has paternity due to his relation to the Son, and is the one who initiates and sends.
- The Son has filiation and is eternally generated from the Father.
- The Spirit has spiration and eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son.
In God’s acts, all three persons act inseparably through the one divine nature. Yet each person acts distinctly, with specific actions terminating on the divine persons according to their eternally ordered relations.
The result: every external act of God is one and undivided, yet the Father initiates and acts through the Son, the Son from the Father, and the Spirit from the Father and Son. Thus, from eternity and in the incarnation, the Son never acted independently but always acted in relation to the Father and the Spirit, and he alone became incarnate.
4. The incarnation is an act of addition, not subtraction.
From eternity, the Son, in relation to the Father and the Spirit, subsisted in the divine nature. Now, as a result of the incarnation, the Son, without change or loss of his deity, added—or to use a better term—assumed, a second nature, namely, a human nature consisting of a human body and soul (Phil. 2:6–8). As a result, the Son added a human dimension to his personal divine life and became present to us in a new mode of existence as the incarnate Son. Yet the Son’s subsistence and action in both natures is consistent with the integrity of both, without either nature ever being mutually exclusive of the other. Given the incarnation, the Son is able to act by his two natures and produce effects proper to each nature and thus accomplish our salvation as the divine Son who obeys for us in his life and death as our covenant head and substitute.
5. The human nature assumed by the divine Son is fully human and completely sinless.
Christ’s human nature was unfallen and untainted by the effects of sin. Christ’s human body and soul had all the capacities of original humanity, thus enabling the Son to experience a fully human life.
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Sincere and Pure Devotion to Christ
How many of you are taking your eyes off Christ to see if there are any other cute alternatives in the room? Paul says that he is jealous to make sure that he presents Christ’s bride to him not as a roving-eyed adulteress but as a single-minded, pure bride. Paul means for all of us not to be roving-eyed adulteresses but to be single-minded in our devotion to Christ. We never take our eyes off the prize, and the prize is Christ.
For I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. –2 Corinthians 11:2-3
The law of Moses implies that it is the father’s responsibility to present a pure bride to her betrothed husband (Deut. 22:13-21). Paul says that he plays the father of the bride in Christ’s “betrothal” to his church. His goal is to present God’s people to Christ a as pure virgin at the wedding ceremony.
Even in our own modern wedding ceremonies, we at least symbolically portray the same thing. A bride wears white to symbolize purity. A father walks the bride down the aisle to present her for marriage to her fiancé and to say that the responsibility of care and protection now belongs to the groom.
One of the best parts of a wedding ceremony is watching the faces of the bride and groom when they first see each other as she comes down the aisle. Their eyes lock, they are looking at one another, and everything and everyone in the room fall away from their attention. All of us watching are craning our neck to see the beautiful bride. Then we are leaning and looking to make sure we see the look on the groom’s face as his eyes meet hers. We want to witness the mutual delight reflected on their faces.
But imagine for a moment what it would be like if while walking down the aisle, their eyes don’t meet.
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A New Religion With a New Sacrament?
Written by R. Scott Clark |
Wednesday, November 3, 2021
For us Christians, let vaccines be vaccines and not sacraments. Let science be science and not a new religion. If something may not be questioned, however, it is a religion and not science.John Calvin (1509–64) famously wrote that the human heart is a “perpetual factory of idols” (Institutes 1.11.18).
What he meant is that since human beings are irrevocably and naturally religious and, after the fall, profoundly corrupted by sin, our religious inclinations do not disappear but are misdirected. The question is not whether humans will be religious but how? Yesterday on Twitter Jules Diner posted a quotation from a certain Thomas Sheridan, a writer hitherto unknown to me:
The ‘Pandemic’ has been a kind of religious event for most people. For the first time in [their] entire existences they had something meaningful to live for. It gave them rituals, fear of damnation, and hope for redemption and salvation with the vaccine[s] being the keys to ‘the kingdom of heaven.’ They could point fingers at heretics and unbelievers like their ancestors did back in the Middle Ages. [Ed. note: revised for punctuation and grammar]
I do not know if this is an original analysis but it seems true. There is a religious quality to some responses to the pandemic (and to other crises too). Consider the global cooling [1970s]/global warming [1980s–90s]/climate change [2000s] crisis. There are reasonable grounds for questioning the claims being made about anthropogenic [man-made] climate change but increasingly debate on this issue is being silenced. By definition science operates on the principle of doubt not trust. Anyone who knows just a little about the history of science or even its most basic principles knows that it operates on doubt, questions, discussion, and even debate. When scientists publish their results the first thing that happens is that other scientists try to replicate their methods and results to verify them. Science does not trust. It doubts and tests. Anyone who tells us to “trust the science” is advocating a dogmatic, unreasoning religion not science. Christianity, by contrast, has dogmas to be sure but it is not unreasoning. It is grounded in historical claims. We claim that the bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is a historical event the evidence of which (i.e., Jesus of Nazareth) was witnessed by hundreds of people. We have written accounts, produced by sane, reasonable people of these historical events. Further, we claim that there is more evidence to come: Jesus will return bodily and there will be more bodily resurrections.
It has been observed that lab-coated scientists are the priests of Modernity. They are the clerics who diagnose the ills of our bodies (e.g., medicine) and souls (e.g., pyschiatry) and it is they who prescribe the cure of bodies and souls. Steadily through the Modern period their pronouncements have become unquestionable and dogmatic. So, the turn of the culture, during the pandemic, to lab-coated priests is understandable. It is interesting that Dr Fauci’s NIH staff photo shows him in a lab coat. The lab coat, of course, is the vestment for the new priesthood and Fauci is arguably the new pope of the new priesthood. Consider why Dr Fauci would have his lab coat on for his staff photo? It is not because he had just stepped out of the lab for the photo. He has been an administrator for years. His actual working uniform is a business suit not a lab coat. My grandfather, who was a farmer, did not wear his overalls for the family photo. Fauci wore his lab coat for his staff photo for the same reason a priest wears his vestments for a photo: to signify his office.
Yesterday afternoon my better half was remarking on the comments she was reading below a story in the New York Times about the airline strikes and the vaccine mandates. As she described the tenor and language of the comments I was struck by how much they reminded me of the angriest of witch-hunting medieval mobs. This is quite striking because I imagine that the subscribers of the NYT think of themselves as enlightened and tolerant but there was precious little of either evident in the comment box.
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What’s a Sermon?: A Perspective for People in the Pews (Part III of III)
We should not be passive participants in the work of the church as members, even when it comes to the sermon or the life of our pastor. He is meant to serve you, and you him. He is meant to teach you, but you are not therefore absolved from the commandment to make disciples.
“Five-billion people.” I answered, “There are five-billion people online right now, according to the latest data.”
I had been asked to come on the radio to talk about three news stories that stood out to me from the previous week. Two had come to mind easily, but for the third I decided to look for something encouraging; I wanted to find a story about a local pastor doing the work of the gospel or who was being celebrated for ministry faithfulness.
I searched everywhere.
I found nothing.
The “five-billion people online” statistic jumped out to me on my search, and so I decided I would use it to make a point. If there are that many people online, then a good deal of them must be Christian. So where are all the stories about tremendous pastors? I know they’re out there ready to be told! Yet, it doesn’t seem like anyone is telling them.
I finished the interview by saying something to the effect of, “I’d just love to use my time here to say how thankful I am for my pastor. He loves our church and loves God, and that might sound boring, but I think that is awesome.”
It wasn’t flashy, it wasn’t controversial, it was just true.
As much as I would love to see more people publicly praising their pastors, the work starts closer to home. In the first two installments of this series, I’ve talked about what a sermon is and how to get the most out of a sermon each Sunday, but in this article, I want to look at how and why we should encourage the man standing in the pulpit. How do we love our pastors well, submit to them, and encourage them? To be clear, this is an area we all need to grow in—myself included.
Be most known for encouragement. “We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves” (1 Thess. 5:12–13).
I make it a point to ensure everyone whom I love, knows that I love them. The words “I love you” hold a specific weight when spoken to my wife, but they aren’t reserved merely for her. Jesus taught us that people would know who we belong to and whose disciples we are if we “have love for one another” (John 13:35). It is, therefore, no surprise that this extends to our leaders. Pastor Jared C. Wilson has mentioned on several occasions that he never leaves the pulpit without expressing his love for the congregation.
If your pastor did this, would that expression of love be reciprocated?
My guess is that if you’re plugged into a local church, whatever differences you might have with your pastor, you do love him. Like a cheesy 90s rom-com, however, this love might go days, weeks, or years without being revealed, leading both parties to question its existence.
This commandment to love is accompanied by another that seems to be intrinsically linked to the first. “Esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves.”
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