Tag Archives: The Person of Christ

“In faithful wonder” by Herman Bavinck

Posted on by
Reply

“The theological task calls for humility. Full comprehension is impossible; wonder and mystery always remain.

This must not be identified with the New Testament notion of mystery, which refers to that which was unknown but has now been revealed in the history of salvation culminating in Christ.

Neither is it a secret gnosis available only to an elite, nor is it unknown because of the great divide between the natural and the supernatural.

The divide is not so much metaphysical as it is spiritual—sin is the barrier.

The wonder of God’s love may not be fully comprehended by believers in this age, but what is known in part and seen in part is known and seen.

In faithful wonder the believer is not conscious of living in the face of mystery that surpasses reason and thus it is not an intellectual burden.

Rather, in the joy of God’s grace there is intellectual liberation.

Faith turns to wonder; knowledge terminates in adoration; and confession becomes a song of praise and thanksgiving.

Faith is the knowledge which is life, ‘eternal life’ (John 17:3).”

–Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Prolegomena, vol. 1, Ed. John Bolt, and Trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 1: 602.

“Christ is the law and the gospel in His own person” by Herman Bavinck

Posted on by
Reply

“According to the New Testament, all the different testimonies of the Law and the Prophets culminate in Christ. The whole Old Testament is basically fulfilled in Him. In Him all the promises of God are yes and amen (Rom. 15:8; 2 Cor. 1:20).

He is the true Messiah, the king of David’s house (Matt. 2:2; 21:5; 27:11, 37; Luke 1:32); the prophet who proclaims good news to the poor (Luke 4:17); the priest who, according to the Letter to the Hebrews, in His person, office, appointment, sacrifice, and sanctuary far exceeds the priesthood of the Old Testament.

He is the Servant of the Lord who as a slave (δουλος, Phil. 2:7–8) came to serve (Mark 10:45), submitted to the law (Gal. 4:4), fulfilled all righteousness (Matt. 3:15), and was obedient to the death on the cross (Rom. 5:19; Phil. 2:8; Heb. 5:8).

As such Jesus made a distinction between the kingdom of God as it was now being founded by Him in a spiritual sense and as it would one day be revealed in glory; between His first and His second coming, events that in Old Testament prophecy still coincided; between His work in the state of humiliation and that in the state of exaltation. The Christ had to enter glory through suffering (Luke 24:26).

The work that Christ now accomplishes in the state of humiliation is described in the New Testament from many different angles. It is a work that the Father gave Him to do (John 4:34; 5:36; 17:4); generally speaking, it consisted in doing God’s will (Matt. 26:42; John 4:34; 5:30; 6:38) and specifically included the “exegesis” of God (John 1:18), the revelation and glorification of His name (17:4, 6, 26), the communication of God’s words (17:8, 14), and so on.

Christ is a prophet, mighty in words and deeds (Luke 24:19); He is not a new legislator but interprets the law (Matt. 5–7; 22:40; Luke 9:23; 10:28; John 13:34; 1 John 2:7–8), proclaims the gospel (Matt. 12:16–21; Luke 4:17–21), and in both preaches Himself as the fulfiller of the former and the content of the latter.

He is the law and the gospel in His own person. He is not a prophet only by the words He speaks but primarily by what He is. He is the Logos (John 1:1), full of grace and truth (John 1:17–18), anointed without measure with the Spirit (John 3:34), the revelation of the Father (John 14:9; Col. 2:9).

The source of His message is Himself, not inspiration but incarnation. God did not even speak with Him as He did with Moses, face to face, but was in Him and spoke through Him (Heb. 1:3). He is not one prophet among many, but the supreme, the only prophet.

He is the source and center of all prophecy; and all knowledge of God, both in the Old Testament before His incarnation and in the New Testament after His resurrection and ascension, is from Him (1 Pet. 1:11; 3:19; Matt. 11:27).

The will of God that Jesus came to do further included the miracles He performed. The one work (ἐργον) is differentiated in many works (ἐργα, John 5:36), which are the works of His Father (John 5:20; 9:3; 10:32, 37; 14:10).

They prove that the Father loves Him and dwells in Him (John 5:20; 10:38; 14:10), bear witness that the Father sent Him (John 5:36; 10:25), and manifest His divine glory (John 2:11; 11:4, 40). He not only performs miracles but in His person is Himself the absolute miracle.

As the incarnate Spirit-conceived, risen and glorified Son of God, He is Himself the greatest miracle, the center of all miracles, the author of the re-creation of all things, the firstborn of the dead, preeminent in everything (Col. 1:18).”

–Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 3: Sin and Salvation in Christ, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 3: 337-338.

“The supreme mystery” by J.I. Packer

Posted on by
Reply

“The real difficulty, the supreme mystery with which the gospel confronts us, does not lie in the Good Friday message of atonement, nor in the Easter message of resurrection, but in the Christmas message of Incarnation.

The really staggering Christian claim is that Jesus of Nazareth was God made man– that the second person of the Godhead became the ‘second man’ (1 Cor. 15:47), determining human destiny, the second representative head of the race, and that He took humanity without loss of deity, so that Jesus of Nazareth was as truly and fully divine as He was human.

Here are two mysteries for the price of one– the plurality of persons within the unity of God, and the union of Godhead and manhood in the person of Jesus. It is here, in the thing that happened at the first Christmas, that the profoundest and most unfathomable depths of the Christian revelation lie.

‘The Word became flesh’ (John 1:14); God became man; the divine Son became a Jew; the Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, unable to do more than lie and stare and wriggle and make noises, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child.

And there was no illusion or deception in this: the babyhood of the Son of God was a reality. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the Incarnation.

This is the real stumbling block in Christianity. It is here that Jews, Muslims, Unitarians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and many of those who feel the difficulties concerning the virgin birth, the miracles, the atonement, and the resurrection have come to grief.

It is from misbelief, or at least inadequate belief, about the Incarnation that difficulties at other points in the gospel story usually spring. But once the Incarnation is grasped as a reality, these other difficulties dissolve.”

–J.I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1973), 53.

“He saved us from alongside us” by Donald Macleod

Posted on by
1

“One final point may be made in connection with the humanity of Christ: He came into, and shared, our environment. This too, is made plain in John 1:14. He dwelt among us.

This involved the most complete sharing of our experiences on the part of the Son of God, accentuated by the fact that He chose not simply to be born, but to be born in a low condition. Hence the ‘low estate’ of His mother (Luke 1:48).

Hence the manger. Hence the flight into Egypt. Hence Nazareth. Hence the homelessness (Matthew 8:20). Hence the penury which has no money to pay the temple tax (Matthew 17:24) and no place to celebrate the Passover.

Hence the reputed lack of learning and the scorn of the rulers (John 7:48). Hence the notoriety gained through friendship with publicans and sinners.

For the Son of God, the incarnation meant a whole new set of relationships: with His father and mother; with His brothers and sisters; with His disciples; with the scribes, the Pharisees and the Sadducees; with Roman soldiers and with lepers and prostitutes.

It was within these relationships that He lived His incarnate life, experiencing pain, poverty and temptation; witnessing squalor and brutality; hearing obscenities and profanities and the hopeless cry of the oppressed.

He lived not in sublime detachment or in ascetic isolation, but ‘with us’, as the fellow-man of all men, crowded, busy, harassed, and stressed.

No large estate gave Him space, no financial capital guaranteed His daily bread, no personal staff protected Him from interruptions and no power or influence protected Him from injustice.

He saved us from alongside us.”

–Donald Macleod, The Person of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1998), 180.

“The great Liberator” by Donald Macleod

Posted on by
Reply

“Jesus is the great Liberator. He is not, like Che Guevara or William Wallace, a mere inspiration from the past. He is alive; and He is in control, possessing authority over the whole of heaven and the whole of earth (Mt. 28:18). He has liberated; He is liberating; and He will liberate still. We, to change the metaphor, are mere builder’s labourers. He is the great Master Builder.

He is not an absent Christ, once active in history but now withdrawn. He is an ever-present one, the great freedom fighter who has already destroyed the powers and who, following His death and resurrection, continues to bring liberation to the world’s spiritual slaves.

Our hope for the world rests not with the great stream of Christian pilgrims following in the footsteps of Jesus, but with the living Jesus Himself: still able to conquer every potentate and still able to open every heart. Everyone who comes to Him finds instant freedom (Mt. 11:29).”

–Donald Macleod, The Person of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1998), 260.

“By comparison, we are pygmies” by Donald Macleod

Posted on by
1

“We can never be content with parrot-like repetition of the definitions of the past. Yet it would be presumptuous to speak before we have listened to the fathers. Men like Athanasius and Augustine, Basil and Calvin, are the Newtons and Einsteins of theology. By comparison, we are pygmies. Our only hope of far-sightedness is to stand on the shoulders of the giants.”

–Donald Macleod, The Person of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 16.