We must stop thinking that depression is merely physical in origin and cure. It’s not. It never was. We are bodies and souls, and we must care for both bodies and souls comprehensively and well. 

Will you forgive me a short foray into my particular field of study? You see, my undergraduate degree is in psychology, and I currently teach biblical counseling. So you would be sympathetic if I were to say that counseling, the care of the individual, and an understanding of the human person is immensely interesting to me. I trust you would also see the practical and personal application that the field has to all of us, right? Therefore, if we were to discuss the cause of depression for a moment, then, you’d appreciate the importance and relevance, wouldn’t you? I ask all of these rhetorical questions because I’m about to launch into a discussion about a major paper that was published in the field of psychology/psychiatry just last week (July 20, 2022) and I don’t want your eyes to glaze over—at least not right away—so stay with me!
In a landmark systematic review released last week in the journal of Molecular Psychiatry, researchers concluded that the “chemical imbalance” view of depression has no evidence to support the alleged cause of depression. Here is where you might be asking “so what?”, and perhaps your eyes are already hazy. Well, if you have been attentive to psychological medication advertisements and commercials, at least since the 90s, you’ve likely heard of “the chemical imbalance” theory of depression. Or, if you know someone who is taking psychological medications, you’ve likely heard them reference “a chemical imbalance in their brain” a time or two if you’ve discussed the topic with them. Or if you yourself have sat down with your doctor about psychological medication, you likely heard him explain about the chemicals in your brain and why you feel the way that you do. That is because this notion of depression originating in the brain has been dominant in the western world for the past 30+ years (and has at least been around for the past 60). In fact, 80% of surveyed adults believe depression is caused by a chemical imbalance.¹ But last week’s conclusive study marks the end of such a theory (or at least should mark the end). The paper decisively concludes by saying that it is time to acknowledge that this particular theory of depression has no empirical evidence to support it!²
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Things are going well in the church at the moment, and I praise God for the growth he is bringing in people’s lives. I am encouraged by what I see and, I am fairly confident, that growth in maturity is being brought about by the Lord. So long as we remember that, there is nothing to worry about. The work is the Lord’s and he will give the increase (whatever that might mean in practice). The danger is when we subtly shift away from knowing that to be true and begin to believe that the work is ours.

I know I am in danger of making myself look particularly foolish writing this. But here goes nothing: everything at church is going pretty well at the minute. Even saying it immediately makes me wonder whether I am like that cartoon dog, oblivious to what is really going on, in that meme where the house is on fire:
Either that, or not oblivious to what is currently going on, just unaware of what is round the corner. No sooner than you voice these things, the rug is pulled from underneath you as if Satan was just standing there waiting, ‘he’s said it! Quick, do the thing now!’ But, whatever, I’m in it now. Everything seems fine and/or actually pretty good, as far as these things go.
The problem, when everything seems fine, is that it is dangerous. In fact, when everything is going brilliantly, it is even more dangerous still. Satan, I am convinced, has no interest in attacking people who are both ineffective nor making inroads for the kingdom. Why bother targeting them? But when people seem to be growing, unbelievers are being saved, if you hate Jesus, you’re going to want to have a go at stopping that, surely.
Then, without putting too fine a point on it, whatever Satan might decide to get up to, we have to contend with ourselves. When everything hard and difficult, it’s pretty easy to rely on the Lord. If you have no money, ministry is difficult, people don’t seem to be growing, you’ve no idea how anyone is going to be saved, nothing seems to be working – but you’re nevertheless committed to this ministry in this area – what else have you got but prayer? Trusting in the Lord is easy then. If we definitely can’t fix it or make it happen, and there’s no pretending otherwise, trusting in the Lord to build the house is nice and easy.
But when you happen to have the money to buy bricks, and employ builders, it looks a bit different. When the house is going up, apparently through various things you’re doing, and people are even coming along and wanting to make that house their home, the Lord can easily take a back seat. Of course, we know – because we have good theology innit – that all this only really happened because God is sovereign and determined it would be so. But it is hard to shake the feeling that if we weren’t doing what we were doing, it wouldn’t have happened. It is hard to think that it wasn’t really us wot did it. It is easy to begin thinking our work, our personality, our efforts did the building. Of course, we pay lip service to the Lord working through means. But the means are so often the thing that attracts our attention and reliance on the Lord seems less important. As long as we keep doing A, B and C, these results will continue to happen.
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While the God-centeredness of God might lead us to expect a simple Christ-centeredness of Christ in his earthly ministry, this is largely not what we (yet) find in his state of humiliation. In End, Edwards points to John 7:18 (one of several statements from Jesus renouncing the pursuit of his own glory) as characteristic of Christ’s humbled state: “The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood.” The incarnate Christ does not “[seek] his own glory” but the glory of his Father, “him who sent him.” Jesus sought his Father’s glory, says Edwards, “as his highest and last end.”6

“That one phrase, the glory of God” — says Jonathan Edwards — includes “all that is ever spoken of in Scripture as an ultimate end of God’s works.”1
This might be Edwards’s most memorable, and often quoted, summary of his Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World. In the final section, he argues that God’s supreme end in creation is one (not many), and that this one end is best captured as the glory of God — that is, the “true external expression of God’s internal glory and fullness.”2 God made the world, and rules all of history, to display his own glory.
So, many of us, gladly persuaded by the biblical refrain, speak reverently of “the God-centeredness of God.” As the Scriptures testify at many times and in many ways, and as Edwards catalogs and presents, our Creator righteously has a “supreme regard to himself,”3 rather than any mere humans. With patient instruction and careful reflection, biblically shaped minds often see the sense and rightness of the infinite value of the Creator compared to his creatures — yet the incarnation and human life of Jesus raises some fascinating questions.
What happens when the Creator himself, in the eternal person of his Son, takes on our full humanity, and in this way becomes a creature, with us, in the created world? How does the earthly life of Jesus, the God-man, in his so-called “state of humiliation,” from birth to the cross, relate to God’s God-centeredness? And how does this God-centeredness relate to Christ’s subsequent “state of exaltation,” beginning with the cross and resurrection, and including his ascension and sitting down on heaven’s throne?
Developing Theme
In both Edwards’s dissertation and his most celebrated work, The Freedom of the Will, he addresses (albeit indirectly) this often-overlooked aspect of our doctrine of Christ. In End, chapter 2, section 3 (on “particular texts of Scripture, which show that God’s glory is an ultimate end of the creation”), Edwards briefly notes that “Scripture leads us to suppose that Christ sought God’s glory as his highest and last end,”4 a theme to which he returns in section 6. In Freedom, Edwards draws in a relevant aspect of his christology as “a point clearly and absolutely determining the controversy between Calvinists and Arminians.”5
As we’ll see below, in both instances, Edwards leads us to consider our question diachronically, rather than statically. In other words, despite our tendency to press for a simple timeless answer, Edwards observes a progress and development of the theme across time as the incarnate Christ moves through his “state of humiliation” to his “state of exaltation.”
Today, in his exalted state, with the Son’s redemptive work complete, the glory of the Father and his Son are seen to be the one essential whole that they are, and always have been. But in the earthly life of Christ, the plan of the Father and Son unfolded in history as Jesus moved toward the cross.
Christ’s Goal in Life
First, Jesus, the God-man, lived his human life in utter dedication to his Father and his Father’s glory. Rightly did the angels proclaim, “Glory to God!” at Jesus’s birth (Luke 2:14), as the glory of the Father came to the fore in the life and ministry of the Son. In his state of humiliation, from manger to cross, the man Christ Jesus did not glorify himself, he says (John 8:54; Hebrews 5:5), but his words and deeds, and the effect and intent of his human life, were in full and glad submission to the will, and glory, of his Father. As Jesus summarizes his earthly life and ministry in John 8:49, “I honor my Father.”
The Son loves his Father (John 14:31). And he lived as man, and set his face toward the cross, propelled by his great delight in and love for his Father. Jesus instructed his disciples to so live, and bear fruit, that his Father would be glorified (Matthew 5:16; John 15:8), and he taught them to pray for the hallowing of his Father’s name (Matthew 6:9; Luke 11:2). The night before he died, Jesus summarized, in prayer, his life’s work as “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do” (John 17:4). When Jesus sees that, at last, his “hour” has come for the cross, he turns heavenward in prayer, “Father, glorify your name” (John 12:28).
While the God-centeredness of God might lead us to expect a simple Christ-centeredness of Christ in his earthly ministry, this is largely not what we (yet) find in his state of humiliation. In End, Edwards points to John 7:18 (one of several statements from Jesus renouncing the pursuit of his own glory) as characteristic of Christ’s humbled state: “The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood.” The incarnate Christ does not “[seek] his own glory” but the glory of his Father, “him who sent him.” Jesus sought his Father’s glory, says Edwards, “as his highest and last end.”6
In Freedom, Edwards observes that “the words [of Isaiah 42:1–4] imply a promise of [Christ’s] being so upheld by God’s Spirit, that he should be preserved from sin; particularly from pride and vainglory, and from being overcome by any of the temptations he should be under to affect the glory of this world; the pomp of an earthly prince, or the applause and praise of men.”7
So, to be clear, the God-centered God becoming man in the life of Christ does not produce one who is, in essence, a self-centered human. Jesus’s preservation from sin, says Edwards, is “particularly from pride and vainglory.” As demonstrated in rebuffing Satan’s temptations in the wilderness, Jesus did not pursue “the glory of this world.”
Rather, Edwards cites Isaiah 49:7 to show that Jesus, in his state of humiliation, is “one deeply despised, abhorred by the nation.” However, here in the same verse of prophecy comes the shift from humiliation to exaltation that will come at the cross: “Kings shall see and arise; princes, and they shall prostrate themselves” before the one who once was deeply despised.
His Near Approach to Death
As Jesus draws near to the cross, we discover a significant development. Edwards turns from John 7 to the “now” of John 12, with Jesus’s crucifixion “in a few days.”8
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