The apostle John never lost the wonder of having been in the company of the Son of God. When in later years he wrote his first epistle it began with the memorable words:
“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life: (For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us);” I John 1:1-2.
In the most expressive language John is describing one unique among men and relating that singular character and ability to his origin.
He was “from the beginning”; not because he existed bodily but because he was ever in the mind of the Father. Hence in the very first expression of promise he is referred to as “the seed of the woman”, which must have surely been surprising to the primeval pair since the woman was “first in the transgression”. The real point being made was that his paternity would not be of men but of God: from the beginning the Saviour was always going to be the Son of God.
When later, to David, a Saviour was promised, it was not surprising to find the same emphasis,
“I will be his Father and he shall be My Son.” (II Samuel 7:14).
This greater than David was to sit upon his throne for ever governing among the nations “and ruling over men” but it was first essential that he should “be just, ruling in the fear of God” and thus having “power over the enemy and the avenger”, the power of sin and death. (II Samuel 23:3; Psalm 8:2, 6; I Corinthians 15: 25-26).
For the salvation of men a Son of God was essential. Isaiah spoke of the joyous significance of this matter in the famous words,
“Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel” (7:14).
No further detail is given until Gabriel announces these words,
“The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee, therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God”.
It is inappropriate that we should wish to describe more than what Scripture expresses just as it would be alarmingly wrong to discount the enormous significance of the promised Saviour being the begotten Son of God.
John’s gospel has many passages that link Sonship with the conquest of sin. Note the implied relationship in all the following Scriptures:
John 1: 14 “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father ,) full of grace and truth.”
John 3:13 “And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.”
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him, should not perish but have everlasting life.”
John 3:31 “He that cometh from above is above all: He that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the earth: he that cometh from heaven is above all.”
John 5:19-23 “Verily, verily, I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do. for what things soever He doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth him all things that Himself doeth: and He will show him greater works than these, that ye may marvel. For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them: even so the Son quickeneth who he will. For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son: That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father.”
In all of these passages there is specific linkage between Sons-in-law and the character and powers of the Saviour of men. It is not conjectural or obtuse; the passages are emphatically linking the two matters and without that linkage the passages would lose all their significance. That is to say, because Jesus was the only begotten of the Father so it can be comprehended that he was full of grace and truth and able to save men from perishing and grant them eternal life. There is nothing difficult in those passages. As Jesus himself expressed his unprecedented powers, “this is the will of Him that sent me, that everyone which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6: 40).
Clearly the Lord Jesus Christ, though absolutely a man, was more than other men, with peculiar insight, abilities and spirituality and wherever we look these singular qualities are related to his origin as Son of God. It is that linkage which Bro. Robert Roberts incorporated into our Statement of Faith in the following clauses:
Clause 9: “That it was this mission that necessitated the miraculous begettal of Christ of a human mother, enabling him to bear our condemnation and, at the same time, to be a sinless bearer thereof, and therefore, one who could rise after suffering the death required by the righteous God.”
Clause 10: “So begotten of God and inhabited and used by God through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, Jesus was Emmanuel, God with us, God was manifest in the flesh — yet was during his natural life, of like-nature with mortal man, being made of a woman, of the house and lineage of David, and therefore a sufferer in the days of his flesh, from all the effects that came by Adam’s transgression, including the death that passed upon all men, which he shared by partaking of their physical nature.”
“Made Like Unto His Brethren”
Hebrews 2:17 and 4:15.
Is the vastly greater ability and capacity of the Lord Jesus at variance with the statements in Hebrews:
“Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren …” and;
“For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities” (2:17; 4:15)
The principal thought of Hebrews chapters two and four is the identity of the Lord Jesus with our human nature in order that he may taste death for every man and qualify as a merciful High Priest on behalf of his brethren (2:9, 14, 17, 4:14-16). Hebrews chapter two is not teaching that every human being, including the Lord, is equal in understanding, awareness of sin and ability to overcome its temptations. Everyone born of woman is a partaker of flesh and blood and one in nature, being tempted of the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes and the pride of life; but within that one nature there are varying abilities for varying responsibilities.
Whence have come these varying abilities? Are not all our faculties of the Father? “For who maketh thee to differ from another and what has thou that thou didst not receive”? (I Corinthians 4:7) To every man has been given talents, “according to his several ability” (Matthew 25:15). “As every man hath received gifts, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God” (I Peter 4:10). We have received of the Father according to His pleasure. But upon none of us was placed the responsibility of “Saviour”. This was for God’s own Son. “Look unto Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God and there is none else”. (Isaiah 45: 22). The babe of Mary was yet Son of God, begotten of the Holy Spirit and “curiously wrought in the parts of the earth”, “fearfully and wonderfully made, all his members written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them” (Psalm 139: 15, 14, 16).
There can be no doubt then that in the ‘preparing’ of the body of Jesus there were incorporated those faculties that should allow him to be the Saviour. Just as it is true that to whom much is given much will be expected, so must it be true, in the Father’s economy, that from whom much is expected, talents sufficient for the task will be granted.
“The Gracious Act of God”
This was the heading that Bro. Robert Roberts used in his section on these matters in “The Blood of Christ”. The beauty and balance of his words are so impressive that we commend them to the enquiring reader:
“It is the grace of God then — the act of God — that we see in the introduction of Christ upon the scene to open a way for mercy conformably with wisdom and justice. This required that he should appear in the nature of Abraham and David, which was sinful nature. How then, some say, was he, with sinful flesh, to be sinless? God’s relation to the matter is the answer. God did it. The weak flesh could not do it. Jesus was manifest in the flesh, that the glory might be to God.
The light in his face is the light of the Father’s glory. As to how the Father could be manifest in a man with an independent volition, we need not trouble ourselves. We are ignorant as to how the Father performs any of the myriad wonders of His power— so small a matter as the modus operandi of the germination of the grain in the field to its multiplication twenty-fold is a mystery. We know a thousand things as facts, but we are utterly ignorant of the mode of invisible working by which these facts have their existence. We receive them, though we do not understand them. If it be so with things in nature, our inability to define or conceive the process need be no difficulty in the way of receiving a heavenly fact, not only commended to us on the best of all testimony, but self-manifest before us.
For who can contemplate the superhuman personage exhibited in the gospel narrative without seeing that the Father is manifest in him? When did ever man deport himself like this man? When spoke the most gifted of men like this? Is he not manifestly revealed the moral and intellectual image of the invisible God? Is he not — last Adam though he be — is he not “the Lord from heaven”? But what are we to say to the plain declaration emanate from the mouth of the Lord himself, that the beholder looking on him, saw the Father, and that the Father within him by the Spirit (for as he said on the subject of eating his flesh, it is the Spirit that maketh alive: the flesh profiteth nothing) was the doer and the speaker?
The answer of wisdom is, that we must simply believe; and true wisdom will gladly believe in so glorious a fact. What if our understandings be baffled? Shall we refuse to eat bread because we fail to comprehend the essences in which the flour subsists? A childlike faith is alone acceptable in this matter. The words used by Jesus to his disciples we may presume to be applicable to us, if they are true of us:
“The Father Himself loveth you because ye believe that I came out from God”.
Those who make the mistake of the Pharisees, and “judge after the flesh”, stand back in gloomy quandary and talk of “mere man”: others who think to make a great mystery “simple” and plain, speak of the flesh of Christ as a mixture of human with “divine substance”. Wisdom takes her stand between the two, and seeks to dive no deeper than the testimony that God was manifest in Jesus and that Jesus was of our nature, and “touched with the feeling of our infirmities”, as Paul declares, and “tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin”.
To these wise words we add the succinct summary of Bro. John Carter:
“We often create our difficulties by looking too narrowly at one side or the other of what is revealed in connection with Jesus. We can so focus our attention on him as the manifestation of the Almighty that we cannot see how “filthy garments” can have any place in a representation of him. We can dwell on the human side of Jesus so much that we fail to appreciate that he was a stone engraved by God and at the end make him nothing more than a man. The wise way, is to take all that is written and find the appropriate place for every aspect.”
Conclusion
Here then is an appealing balance for our understanding. All the relevant Scriptures on the subject are brought together in an harmony. The reality of Christ’s temptations is upheld but the Father’s role is honoured in all the victory of His Son. Jesus is indeed man yet Emmanuel also; not mere man but the Son of God, His “fellow” (Zechariah 13:7).
Clearly this is the heritage of our Christadelphian pioneer brethren and the emphatic understandings of Bro. John Carter, the architect and teacher of our Australian Unity Basis.
Let us all seek to grow in this beautiful and elevating subject, standing firmly for the right way yet seeking by clear reasoning to bring understanding to those who may still be searching for the balance of the subject.
“But of him are ye in Christ Jesus who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, that, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.” (I Corinthians 1:30, 31).
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One