“The incarnation of the Son of God, therefore, without anything further, cannot be the reconciling and redeeming deed. It is the beginning of it, the preparation for it, and the introduction to it, but it is not that deed itself.
For, if the incarnation had itself effected the reconciliation and union of God and man, there would have been no place for a living, and especially not for a dying, of the Lord Jesus.
It would have sufficed then for Him, be it by way of conception and birth or by some other way, to have assumed a human nature, to have gone about on earth for some while, and then to have returned to heaven. There would have been no need for the whole, deep humiliation of Christ.
But Scripture teaches us something very different. It tells us that the Son of God not merely became man, became like us in all things, sin excepted, but also that He took the form of a servant, humiliated Himself, and became obedient to death, even to the death of the cross (Phil. 2:7–8). It became Him to fulfill all righteousness (Matt. 3:15), and to be Himself sanctified by suffering (Heb. 2:10).
This was appropriate and becoming not only but also had to be so. It was written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day arise from the dead (Luke 24:46 and 1 Cor. 15:3–5). The Father sent Him in order to fulfill His work on earth (John 4:34), and even gave Him a commandment to lay down His life and to take it up again (John 10:18).
All that Christ experienced therefore was the carrying out of what God’s hand and counsel had before determined to be done (Acts 2:23 and 4:28). On the cross for the first time Christ could say that everything was finished and that He had done all that the Father had given Him to do (John 17:4 and 19:30).
Although in the gospels the life of Jesus is comparatively briefly depicted, His last passion and dying is comprehensively told. Just so the apostolic preaching rather rarely goes back to the conception and birth of Jesus, but puts all emphasis upon the cross, the death, and the blood of Christ. It is not by the birth but by the death of His Son that we are reconciled to God (Rom. 5:10).
By way of this view of Scripture the whole life of Christ takes on a unique significance for us and a surpassing value. It is a perfect work which the Father has given Him to do. It can be regarded from various points of view and approached from various sides, and it is so that we must view and approach it if we are to survey its content and its scope.
But we must never forget that it is one work. It comprehends and fills Christ’s whole life from the conception up to the death on the cross. Just as the person of Christ is one in the differentiation of His natures, so His work too is one work. It is pre-eminently the work of God on earth.
It is a work which, looking backward, is related to the counsel and foreknowledge of God with its revelation in Israel and its guidance of the nations, and which, looking forward, continues itself in modified form in the work which Christ even now still does in His state of exaltation.
It is a work which has its central point in time on this earth, but which comes up out of eternity, roots in eternity, and extends into eternity.”
–Herman Bavinck, The Wonderful Works of God (trans. Henry Zylstra; Glenside, PA: Westminster Seminary Press, 1909/2019), 313-314.
Leave a Reply