Who is like our God who speaks with perfect clarity? Who speaks with such wisdom and truth and faithfulness. Who can thunder with a voice like His in total authority? Only our God has words like this. And every single word of God is true. 

As I was listening to the radio the other day about current events, I found myself asking, “I wonder how much of this is true?” It’s an unfortunate fact that you can’t believe everything someone tells you. Not only are there obvious biases in every conversation and purposeful misdirections, but also sometimes people just have their facts wrong. Even the most careful and well spoken individuals sometimes fall into innocent miscommunications and unintentional misrepresentations. What blew me away as I was thinking about this report on the radio was that I never have to ask that question when I read God’s word. Really let this sink in: Every word of God is true.
When God speaks, it is absolutely perfect. Perfect in its delivery, perfect in its content, perfect in its timing. He always speaks with proper soberness and weightiness. He’s never too harsh or too soft. His words are not only true, they are truth (Psalm 119:116). Which means that when I hear from God on any subject, I can take it to the bank. There is not one chance that He has said the wrong thing. Sure, I can misunderstand, but it’s not because the content is faulty. “Every word of God proves true; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him” (Prov 30:5). Every. Single. Word. Amazing.
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Written by Samuel G. Parkison |
Monday, November 22, 2021
The person of Christ is no less than his human nature. That human who lived and died and rose and ascended and will one day return really is Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity. He is human, yes, and he is infinitely more. His person is truly human in nature, but his person is not circumscribed by his human nature. Christ exceeds. This is why you should feel absolutely no embarrassment or shame in reading through the gospels while worshiping Jesus Christ, the man—son of Mary, brother to James, cousin to John, eater of fish, drinker of wine. The man who said things and felt things and did things with his hands. You should feel absolutely no embarrassment about longing to hug his resurrected body with your resurrected body—and feel no embarrassment about longing for the day when you can look into his human eyes and say “thank you,” and to watch his human lips curl into a human smile.

In the incarnation, God reveals his Triune beauty for us in language we can understand. He communicates his astonishing beauty with human language, and with skin and bones, and he does this for our benefit. He does this for our worship. I have devoted a rather significant portion of my life considering this idea of Christ revealing divine beauty for our benefit, but for all my attempts to articulate it, nothing I’ve ever written or said holds a candle to this paragraph from fourth century church father, Athanasius:
For since human beings, having rejected the contemplation of God and as though sunk in an abyss with their eyes held downwards, seeking God in creation and things perceptible, setting up for themselves mortal humans and demons as gods, for this reason the lover of human beings and the common Savior of all, takes to himself a body and dwells as human among humans and draws to himself the perceptible senses of all human beings, so that those who think that God is in things corporeal might, from what the Lord wrought through the actions of the body, know the truth and through him might consider the Father.[1]
What exactly is he saying? He’s saying that God, recognizing our inability to lift our gaze up from the created order to heaven, came down from heaven to the created order to stand at our eye level. He’s saying, “Since human beings couldn’t seem to stop worshiping creation instead of the Creator, the Creator became a creature to accommodate their limitations!” This is what I do when I need to get my son’s attention while he is preoccupied with making a mess all over the floor: I drop down to the ground. I stoop to bring myself to his eye level.
That’s what God does for us in the incarnation: he stoops and makes himself available. In this way, he becomes intelligible enough for us to worship him. We can identify this human being—Jesus Christ, the most beautiful human being ever to exist—as the central object of our worship and offer all of our praise to him without the fear of dishonoring God precisely because he is no mere human: he himself is God. He has become man in order to accommodate our limitations in worship. We couldn’t reach up onto the top shelf to get God, so God places himself on the bottom shelf—right within our reach—in the person of Jesus Christ, the carpenter from Nazareth.
“Without Ceasing to Be God”
It is precisely at this point, however, that many well-meaning evangelicals go astray. For they often miss the very central point that while, in the incarnation, God the Son brings himself down to the bottom shelf in one sense, there is another sense in which he stays right where he is. Every Christian agrees that the incarnation—with its doctrinal emphasis on Christ’s two natures, one human and one divine, united in one person—is one of Christianity’s central mysteries. But often, this mystery is neglected for the sake of rhetorical convenience. “Christ was so generous he left behind his divine attributes,” is how this point typically appears. And to be fair, it sounds attractive on the surface. Isn’t this how Christ “sympathizes with our weaknesses” (cf., Heb. 4:15)? Doesn’t he sympathize with our weakness by giving up his divine strength? As shocking as it may sound, I want to say no.
Some might object to a very important section of Scripture that appears to make the very point I intend to reject, however. This passage is Philippians 2:4-8, which says, among other things, that Christ, “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking on the form of a servant, being born in 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.” There you have it! What else could his “self-emptying” mean but a relinquishing of his divine attributes or divine prerogatives? But the issue is not as simple as that. For one thing, the central phrase of this passage does not provide its own direct object. Christ “empties himself” … of what? To assume that the answer to this question is, “his divine attributes,” or “his divine prerogatives,” is a bridge too far. The passage simply doesn’t make that point. Instead, we see a grammatical tangle, that very intentionally keeps Christ “in the form of God”—wherein he “did not need to grasp for equality with God” because he already had it—and yet, while being in the form of God, he “self-empties.” Paul is very careful with his language precisely to bring us to the very limitations of language itself. Again, we would expect this verb “self-empties” to have a direct object explicitly stated. Instead, we have to look for the direct object from within the context, and the direct object turns out to be a grammatical paradox—which is fitting, given how mysterious the incarnation is. Christ empties himself, not by giving anything up, but specifically by “taking on the form of a servant.” The way Christ “empties himself” is not actually by emptying—how our self-emptying would necessarily work—rather, Christ “empties himself” precisely by adding to himself a human nature: his “self-emptying” is a subtraction by addition!
So, no, Philippians 2:4-8 (and other similar passages) do not teach us that Christ leaves his divine attributes behind when he assumes a human nature. But we can and must reject such a notion not only because it isn’t taught in Scripture, but also because it contradicts important doctrines that are taught in Scripture. Let me conclude this section with two reasons for rejecting the idea that Christ gave up any part of his divine nature or glory in the incarnation.
Chalcedon and the Gospel
First, to say that Christ “gives up his divinity” or “gives up his divine attributes” (or even some of them) in the incarnation is to misunderstand the hypostatic union (i.e., the doctrine that describes how the divine nature and human nature are united in the Person, Jesus Christ). The fifth-century statement on Christology from Chalcedon emphasizes the hypostatic union by describing how Christ is “truly God and truly man.” It goes on to say that Christ is “consubstantial with us according to manhood,” and “begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead.”
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Young men should be encouraged to be thoughtful in their consciences. Simply put, the conscience is our moral awareness. Young men are being taught by the world that the difference between right and wrong, good and bad is a difference of opinion or mere preference. Against this they need to be urged to form a sense of moral goodness as informed and rooted in the Bible. In fact, this is a true mark of maturity.

In human history there’s been any number of memorable speeches. They’ve been spoken by philosophers and orators, military leaders rushing onto the battlefield, or statesmen and politicians. In many of them there is a common theme – they often given an ideal to strive after with manly strength.
When I was in basic training a poster hung on the dormitory wall containing an excerpt from Theodore Roosevelt’s famous “Man in the Arena” speech. With rhetorical flare, Roosevelt said: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly.” Cliche and overused as the quote may be, Roosevelt harnessed the power of words to inspire and refine the character of a man.
To his true child in the common faith, the Apostle Paul — without the artistry of rhetoric but in a demonstration of the Spirit and power — gave a direct word of exhortation to young men. Writing to Titus he said: “Likewise, exhort the young men to be sober-minded.” The word used for sober-minded can mean similar things — self-controlled, thoughtful, or careful. Perhaps why this is particularly urged for younger men, is that it’s a rare grace to be found in them. The young are often marked by carelessness, thoughtlessness, and a lack of control. But in Jesus Christ this is the ideal young men are to strive after in the strength of the Holy Spirit.
In a way that matches Paul’s instruction to Titus, I want to write eight encouragements to young men to urge them toward this ideal.
First, young men should be encouraged to be thoughtful in their perspective on life. We live in a cultural context that resembles, in many ways, the days before the world-wide flood. God had given Noah a warning about coming judgment and a means of escape, yet the people of his generation, we are told, were busy eating and drinking. Jesus said that they were unaware “until the flood came and took them all away” (Matthew 24:39). Young men aren’t being encouraged to live prospectively but to live in and for the immediate moment, and almost everything around them is lulling them into a stupor to be unaware of what lies ahead. Against that, the Wise Preacher said: “Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes. But know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment” (Ecclesiastes 11:9).
Second, young men need to be encouraged to be careful in their estimate of themselves. With youth — often which is untainted with any real sense of failure, defeat, and loss — there can be a certain degree of boastful pride and arrogance. Youthful egoism isn’t a virtue esteemed by Christ and is contrary to the basic law of love, as love doesn’t boast and isn’t arrogant (1 Corinthians 13:4). Young men need to restrain their self-inflated opinions of themselves. While wisdom teaches: “Let another man praise you” (Proverbs 27:2), it should also be kept in mind that the true measure of a man is never what he or others think of him, but only what the Lord approves: “For not he who commends himself is approved, but whom the Lord commends” (2 Corinthians 10:18).
Third, young men should be encouraged to be thoughtful in their consciences. Simply put, the conscience is our moral awareness. Young men are being taught by the world that the difference between right and wrong, good and bad is a difference of opinion or mere preference. Against this they need to be urged to form a sense of moral goodness as informed and rooted in the Bible. In fact, this is a true mark of maturity.
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