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THE NATURE OF CHRIST

HARRY TENNANT

A TOUCHSTONE for most of our doctrines is to be found in the nature of Christ and his work of atonement. If we misunderstand his nature we are almost certain to fail in our understanding of the atonement. Similarly, if we fail to grasp the true nature of mortal man we shall not comprehend the nature of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We speak of the nature of Christ, and not of his natures. This is to avoid entanglement with the orthodox teaching that Christ pre-existed as God the Son. The orthodox doctrine of the two natures of Christ in one person derives from and is a part of Trinitarian teaching. For the same reason it is better for us to avoid using such terms as ‘the humanity of Christ’ and ‘the divinity of Christ’, even though careful and precise usage might be consonant with true teaching. Since Scripture does not employ those phrases it is wiser for us not to do so.

Christendom’s beliefs about the nature(s) of Jesus arise from other erroneous beliefs or from misuse of Scripture. These are:

We too must avoid the pitfalls created by item 3 above. Our study commences with the nature of Christ before his death.

Stepping stones to understanding

Useful stepping stones to our understanding are to be found in verses which tell us of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ at his first coming:

These verses relate also to our own condition. We are sinners who will die. The Lord Jesus Christ came to save us from our sins and from death. This was to be accomplished by the grace of God, a gift which was totally unmerited on our part. In order to bring about this great work Christ was to share our nature, by which means he would be able to destroy the devil and thereby provide a way to release us from death.

The battle ground

The battle was thus to be fought on the territory of sin and death, and not remotely in some other way. Furthermore, it was no mechanical achievement brought about by effortless work. It was to be accomplished by Christ’s being touched with our infirmities and tempted in all points like his brethren (Heb. 4:15), by his humbling himself (Phil. 2:8), by suffering, strong crying and tears (Heb. 5:7), and by his becoming obedient even unto death.

Jesus experienced the things of the childhood of a Jewish boy: he was circumcised (Lk. 2:21), he was subject to Joseph and Mary (v.51), and he increased in wisdom as he grew older (v.52). As an adult he knew joy (Lk. 10:21) and sorrow (Mt. 26:37), compassion (Lk. 7:13) and anger (Mk. 3:5). He knew what it was to be under stress (Jno. 10:39), to weep (Jno. 11:35), to need friends (Mk. 3:14; Ps. 69:20), to be hungry and tired (Mt. 4:2; Jno. 4:6), to be alone (Jno. 16:32), and to be heartbroken (Ps. 69:20).

There can be no doubt that the Lord was a man of fellow feeling. He was “in all things ... made like unto his brethren” (Heb. 2:17), he was “from among (his) brethren” (Deut. 18:18) and was truly of “the seed of Abraham” (Heb. 2:16), “of the seed of David according to the flesh” (Rom. 1:3), and thus was descended from Adam (Lk. 3:38).

Some problems

From time to time some brethren, whilst giving ready assent to this teaching, have held back from its deeper implications. All of the experiences we have described were possible because Christ was mortal. This being so, would he not also share those things which the Spirit has expounded in such expressions as “I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing”; “a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me”; “another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind” (Rom. 7:18,21,23)? All of these things are summed up in such well-known words as, “God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom. 8:3); and, “He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin” (2 Cor. 5:21).

We have all inherited the downward pull of the flesh towards sin and death. Indeed, this has been the great dilemma of mankind, the impasse from which man had no escape. All men have cried, with Paul: “who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Rom. 7:24).

It appears to have been from a mistaken regard for the person of Christ that some brethren have shrunk from applying these words to Jesus; or, if they have applied them, they have sought to redefine ‘sinful flesh’ by saying that we do not inherit a bias toward sin. We believe that this is to misunderstand both the nature of Christ and the nature of his atoning work. It is to confuse the character of the Lord Jesus Christ with the background against which it was achieved. In fact, it diminishes the magnitude of the victory of Christ and the glory which now attaches to him.

On the other hand, there have been those who wholly accept the teaching concerning ‘sinful flesh’, and are prepared to say that the Lord fully shared this infirmity; but they want to go further and say that all mankind is subject to some additional condemnation or uncleanness simply because of the flesh we bear; and that this would rest also on Christ. The Truth is set out in our Statement of Faith:

Clause V. –That Adam broke this (Edenic) law, and was adjudged unworthy of immortality, and sentenced to return to the ground from whence he was taken–a sentence which defiled and became a physical law of his being, and was transmitted to all his posterity”.

By birth we suffer from no legal impediment or guilt other than that which we physically inherit. This was true also of Christ.

Error complicates doctrine

All erroneous teaching complicates doctrine and makes even the refutation of it a matter which is far from easy. The truth is simple: as a result of his transgression Adam was condemned to die; his “very good” nature became evil. We physically inherit the results, but not the guilt, of that condemnation. When we sin we come under personal condemnation, and deservedly so. The condemnation in our physical natures cannot be removed by baptism. by faith, by law or by anything other than a change to immortality at the hand of Christ should we be found faithful. The condemnation because of sin, however, can be removed by forgiveness through faithful baptism into the death of the Lord Jesus.

Sinful flesh is flesh inherited from the sinner, Adam. It is flesh in which the consequences of his sin are working towards death. and in which “the motions of sins” (Rom. 7:5; RV, RSV, NIV, sinful passions) are at work. The promptings and urgings of the flesh are not themselves sin until they are yielded to, and then they bring forth sin. This is the difference between temptation and actual sin (Jas. 1:14,15). Every man before and since Christ has sinned; that is, has been overcome of sin and is personally a transgressor.

Why was Christ victorious?

If this is so, and it is, how was it possible for Christ, who was fully of our nature, to be different from all other men by remaining sinless? Did he do what other men could have done had they gone about it the right way? In other words, was the difference in Christ solely a difference in what he achieved but not in anything else?

The answer is that no man other than Christ could attain unto perfection. Christ was provided to do what no one else could do. The hopelessness of man is set out in a variety of places. Take, for example, the stated truth: “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son … “(Rom. 8:3). The law was holy, just and good, but it could not work salvation because of the weakness of the flesh. This must be true of any law. There was not a law which was ordained unto life: “For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law” (Gal. 3:21, NIV). Man could not keep law, and therefore righteousness could not come by law.

Divine begettal

We have now come to the heart of the matter. Salvation came from God. The Lord of the vineyard sent His only Son. This was the only way. Here are the critical Scriptures:

The uniqueness of Christ

No other child has ever been born in this way; Christ was God’s only begotten. The Holy Spirit was the power which overshadowed Mary and caused her to conceive (Mt. 1:20). The Son of God did not exist before he was born of Mary; he was born of her. He was “made under the law” and not outside of or above it.

Nevertheless, he was truly God’s Son; God was his Father. It was for this reason that he is said to have come down from heaven. There would have been no Son of God had not God moved. His Word, His Divine intent hitherto made known in mighty promises, was now made operative by His Spirit, and Christ was conceived, “not ... of the will of man, but of God” (Jno. 1:13).

It must be made clear that Jesus was not called Son of God because of things external to his person, the circumstances around him, for example; he was Son of God in his actual being because he was begotten of the Father by the Spirit. There are those who would wish to call him Son of God because of his response to the Word of God, and because of God’s care for him in his Divine education and the circumstances of daily life. Certainly these things were special, but they were not what was meant by the words, “therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God” (Lk. 1:35). There had never been such a child from conception to birth.

How can this be?

Others have wanted to define precisely how Christ was the Son of God, and have entered into genetic explanations to make their case. This is to presume that we have knowledge which in fact has not been vouchsafed to us, and any such speculation or supposed understanding has no sure foundation.

Brother Roberts wrote wisely when he said: “When we are asked to sanction some definition of ‘how’ (as a matter of literal, scientific, metaphysical process) this dayspring from on high hath visited us, we are at once in the region of the incomprehensible and impracticable; for not only can we not know, but even if we could, it would be of no practical value. It is not the comprehension of Divine modes, but the doing of His will that commends us to God. We cannot know the Divine modes. When He works, it is sufficient to believe that He works. It is bootless to trouble ourselves as to the ‘how’ ” (Seasons of Comfort, exhortation entitled “Crotchets”;).

A better question

We are, however, entitled to ask a different question: not how did God work the miracle of the birth of Jesus, but why did He do it? The answer is that it was the only way in which to provide a man who could and would conquer sin. There had to be help from God in order to provide a deliverer and redeemer.

This, too, has caused some to stumble. In seeking to ensure that the Lord Jesus was truly one of us they have found it difficult to consider how he could have been helped. If he received help by virtue of his being God’s Son, they say, how then could he be truly like us? Once again Brother Roberts’s advice not to seek to find out ‘how’, but to accept the fact of the case, is sound and helpful.

We are told that he was “the son of man whom Thou madest strong for Thyself” (Ps. 80:17), a body ... prepared” (Heb. 10:5). Isaiah adds: “the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him ... and shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the LORD” (11:2,3).

Jesus was helped by his birth, and by the blessing of God during his life, to bear a burden which no other man could bear. He was not a substitute for us in his life, any more than he was in his death. He was not doing what anyone else could have done had they gone about it the right way; he was doing what no one could possibly have done, and in that he needed help. The help he received did not remove in any way the fact that Jesus was like unto his brethren. It provided him with the means whereby, despite being like us, he could overcome the mastery of sin in human flesh, if he submitted himself by the surrender of his own human will.

In ways beyond our experience he knew altogether what was in man, and that included a knowledge of himself as man. His mind was the battle ground between the law that was in his members and those things which were of his Father. These were not two separate persons within him, two separate parts; they were ingredients of his one nature. The stress he bore is beyond our comprehension. Something had to yield, and in the final agony of bloodlike sweat he said: “not my will, but Thine, be done” (Lk. 22:42). He refused to yield himself unto sin, and instead committed himself totally to his Father.

The Christ who surrendered was the whole man, the “I myself”, as Paul describes himself, victorious over sin. John does not write that the Word was made flesh, and we beheld the glory of God; he wrote (of Christ) that “we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father” (Jno. 1:14). God’s glory was made manifest in the Son, who was made in our nature.

A final question

There is one further aspect to consider, and it is vital to our own salvation. What is the Lord’s nature now? He now bears the “name which is above every name” (Phil. 2:9); “All power ... in heaven and in earth” (Mt. 28:18) has now been committed to him; “all things” are “in subjection under his feet” (Heb. 2:8), for “God ... hath highly exalted him” (Phil. 2:9). Certainly he is the Lord the Spirit, and he is a partaker of the Divine nature, but he is also man made perfect, man clothed upon with immortality; and he is still, even after his glorification, called “the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5). The victory of Christ is complete: first over sin whilst he lived, and then over death and corruptibility by dying sinless, rising again, and receiving immortality from his Father.

We are left to wonder at the wisdom and knowledge of God. The Lord God has perfected a son of Adam, even though the first Adam brought all men to sin and death; and He has perfected it righteously in accordance with His own judgement on the heinousness of sin. He has accomplished it in grace and love. He brought redemption despite our unworthiness and without compromising His utter abhorrence of sin. The one who redeemed us was the one who condemned sin on its own ground, even our sinful nature. Christ was one of us in nature, but was altogether not of us in his sinlessness. Thus he was the perfect Son of God and the perfect Son of man. Christ the righteous, the Holy One of God, commended the love of God to us as sinners, and by his redeeming work we now have hope of life everlasting.

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