THE PERSON OF THE CHRIST
[p. 268] THE PERSON OF THE CHRIST
While extremely unwilling to enter on the field of controversy, especially on subjects touching the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ, I have thought it right, in the interests of the truth and of the Lord’s people, to put out a few remarks on two points of importance which have been in question. In so doing I decline to reply to any attacks which have appeared, based on isolated statements culled from letters I have written, partly from reluctance to notice them, and partly because I see in these attacks the tendency to shift (it may be almost unconsciously) the ground of conflict, in order to gain a point of vantage. In what I have to say I adhere therefore to two points that have been in question, which are these (1) As to whether Christ is ever viewed in Scripture as man, distinct and apart from what He is as God.
(2) As to whether the truth of His Person consists in the union in Him of God and man; a favourite formula with those so holding is “God and man one Christ” — and with this is connected the idea that every title referring to Christ covers the whole truth of His Person.
Now I affirm that the denial of the first, while claiming to maintain orthodoxy, is destructive of Christianity in its real power; and I would affectionately warn saints against giving up, in zeal for orthodoxy, the blessed foundations of Christianity. Further, that the assertion of the second is derogatory and dishonouring to the Son; and I proceed to show that both the denial and the assertion are contrary to the teaching of Scripture.
The first betrays a singular inability to apprehend the great reality of the incarnation, at all events in a most essential aspect of it, namely, the fact of Christ [p. 269] having by it a place as man God-ward. As the Word become flesh He dwelt among men and revealed God, and in Him all the fulness was pleased to dwell; but He Himself filled and still fills a place as man toward God (see Psalm 16); and the two thoughts are wholly distinct conceptions, which cannot be grasped at one and the same time by any finite mind. “No one knows the Son save the Father”. As Man He is both Apostle and High Priest. In other words in the Apostle God has, so to say, come out, and in the High Priest man has entered in. Now these two thoughts, though realised in one Person, must of necessity be separately and distinctly apprehended. The one presents God, the other, man.
The reality of Christ’s manhood in its aspect God-ward is amply presented in the New Testament. There we have the truth, that Christ, having died to sin once, lives to God; Romans 6. The having put off the old man and having put on the new is said to be, “as the truth is in Jesus”, Ephesians 4. Christ Jesus before Pontius Pilate witnessed the good confession; 1 Timothy 6. He sings praises to God in the midst of the assembly; Hebrews 2. He praises in the great congregation; Psalm 22. He has entered in for us as Forerunner; Hebrews 6. He appears in the presence of God for us; Hebrews 9.
Now, while fully admitting that morally Christ’s manhood had its unique and blessed character from God, for in becoming man He gave character to manhood, yet in the thoughts above presented it is utterly impossible to introduce the idea of Deity in its proper character and attributes, because in every case it is man that is presented, or rather, Christ is viewed in the light of man God-ward.
The refusal of this is destructive of Christianity in its true power, for it is on the side that I have indicated that Christ is placed within the reach of our appropriation, so that we can eat Him and live by Him. He is,
[p. 270] as second Man, the pattern of our blessing, the Leader of our salvation. He draws us to Himself by making known to us His love; and the affection on our part begotten by this appropriates Him as the expression and pattern of what we are according to the counsel of God; and it is in this way that the believer is led into the true sense of the greatness of his portion, and even partakes morally in the life of God. As “Lord” Christ is the Object of faith, as Head He is held by the believer, who is led by Him into heavenly blessing. Hence I am entirely at a loss to understand how the truth of Christianity can be maintained in the absence of the apprehension of Christ in His place as man God-ward, distinct and apart from the glory and attributes which belong only to God, and in which Christ has part as Himself being a divine Person.
I may observe here that Christians are, as a rule, uninstructed in three important points of Christian doctrine:
(1) Reconciliation, which they do not know as in the mind of God. The distance between God and the sinner must have been removed to effect it, and but few know the nature of the distance. They do not see that the man after the flesh has been terminated judicially in the cross in the Man Christ Jesus.
(2) Christ as manna. They do not apprehend in any degree the manner of life of Christ here as Man, “the life of Jesus”.
(3) The mystery. They have no true conception that the church is the complement of the Man who glorified God here; but while admitting that all saints are united to Christ, they are leavened with the error that they are united to the Son of God, and they thus betray their ignorance of the mystery.
Hence, it is not surprising that many find difficulty in the apprehension of Christ in the point of view which I have sought to make plain.
[p. 271] The second error maintains that the truth of Christ’s Person consists in the union in Him of God and man.
Now, this idea arises, I judge, from confusion of thought as between person and condition, and has been fostered by expressions found in hymns, and the like, which have been used simply and devoutly by Christians without any very strict inquiry into their real force; but it involves a thought very derogatory to the truth of the Son, namely, that in becoming Man a change has taken place as to His Person — He is in Person something which He was not before. This is not the teaching of Scripture, nor do I think that it can be entertained. When I come to the word, I find that while in three gospels the truth of Christ in certain official positions is prominent, the fourth (John) is given to us to afford full light as to His Person, that is, “the Son”; and in this respect He is seen in three positions, namely, as eternally with the Father, as come into the world, and as going back to the Father, the same Person unchanged and unchangeable.
Further than this, the Person is even viewed as acting in regard to His form or condition, divine or human; “Being in the form of God, he emptied himself and took on him a servant’s form, becoming in the likeness of men”.
He comes to do God’s will in the body prepared for Him.
He raises up the temple of His body.
He gives His flesh for the life of the world.
He lays down His life (human condition) to take it again.
We have thus a divine Person presented, even apart from the question of form, and the idea of the unity of the Person in the sense asserted is not found.
The One who being in the form of God, emptied Himself, and took on Him a servant’s form, is the same who, having become Man, humbled Himself,
[p. 272] and became obedient to the death of the cross, and is now highly exalted. There is no idea either of unity, or of change, in the Person. It is the same Person in servant’s form, and entering into what that form involved.
The truth of a divine Person assuming human condition, the Word becoming flesh, and in such wise as that He can be viewed objectively as man, I believe; but that is not a question of unity of a Person. It is a Person in a condition in which He was not previously.
Another idea connected with the above appears to be that every title or name inherited by the Son or applied to Him in Scripture embraces or covers, if it does not describe, the whole truth of His Person. Now I believe this to be a fallacy, and a mistaken way of apprehending Scripture. Unquestionably the Lord is identified or designated, and designates Himself, by official names or titles, as “the Christ” or “Son of man”; but such titles, though serving sufficiently to identify or designate the Person, do not cover the truth of His Person; and different titles applied to or fulfilled in Christ have to be understood each within its own appropriate limits. They describe the office, but not the Person that holds the office. In the same way we commonly use official and acquired titles, as ‘The Queen’, ‘The Colonel’, ‘The Doctor’, to identify or designate a person, but we have no idea that such a title is descriptive of the person, or covers all that is true of the person, though once the person is so designated, many things can be said which refer to the person, and have nothing whatever to do with the particular designation; for instance, I might say, ‘When the Queen was a child’. She was not queen as a child. It is simply a title used for designation, which has its own particular force and meaning.
Jesus is the anointed of God, that is, the Christ, but not properly so until He was anointed, whatever might be true in purpose. So too, He was not Son [p. 273] of man until He became Man, yet He says, “The Son of man came to minister”. “What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?” “The Son of man which is in heaven”. The simple fact is that a title serves to designate the Person, without being descriptive of the Person, or involving any question of the unity of the Person. The titles “The Christ” and “Son of man” are both official titles which could have had no place or meaning except in the Son having become Man; and it is remarkable that the Lord does not in the gospels use what is, perhaps, the nearest approach to a personal name, that is, Jesus, in the same way.
In conclusion, I earnestly entreat saints to come prayerfully and patiently to Scripture to get their thoughts of Christ formed by the word of God; and not to adopt the creeds or moulds into which men, often with pious intent, have cast the truth in the vain effort to guard against error; and it is significant that those who have of late come forward to expose what they deemed to be error, have shown a tendency in their minds in the direction of a kind of Tritheism. It is not in this way that the truth of Christ’s Person is guarded, or that of the unity of the Godhead maintained.
24th December, 1895.
My dear brother,
I have received your letter of 10th November, and am glad to reply to it — I am thankful that you have read the little paper, “The Person of the Christ” — and have found any profit in it. Some have found fault with it, but I am more and more convinced that it presents only what is substantially right. That others might have put the points better is likely enough, but they have not done so.
My use of the term “divine Person” in reference to our Lord was not from any lack of faith or sense on my part that He is God — but to avoid the idea of His being God in such an absolute and exclusive sense as to trench on the unity of the Godhead — that “God is one” may be said to be the backbone of Scripture — but in the New Testament we have the additional light that in that unity are three Persons all equally divine — and I should speak of the Holy Ghost being a divine Person in the same way as I would speak of the Son being so.
I have no doubt that you know something of Greek — and that in the use of a noun as a predicate it makes a distinction by the use or omission of the article which we cannot so well make in English. When a noun is used as a predicate and has the article the proposition is reciprocal and the subject and predicate may be reversed — for instance it says “sin is lawlessness” — it may equally be said that “lawlessness is sin”. When, however, the article is not directly before the predicate the predicate is characteristic, and the proposition is not reciprocal. This is the case in the expression “The Word was God” — there is no article before God — God is characteristic of the Word — but the expression is not reciprocal — for if God were the Word you would exclude the Father and the Spirit from the thought of God, and thus set aside the unity of the Godhead.
It is only in this sense that I would apply the term “divine Person” to Christ, in the same way that I would apply it to the other Persons of the Godhead, viewing each in His distinctiveness and yet with the sense in the soul that each is as truly and as characteristically God as the other.
The passages in my paper in which the term occurs would not admit of the substitution of “God” in its place. For instance “we have thus a divine Person presented” — I mean here the particular Person who became man. So too “the truth of a divine Person assuming human condition”. In neither sentence could I rightly say “God” — the statement would not then be right.
What I understand by “God has been manifested in the flesh” is, that all that God is (Father, Son and Spirit) has been set forth down here in words and works, all the fulness was pleased to dwell in Christ.
I do not think that Deity and Divinity mean the same thing in common language — the former applies exclusively to God as such — the latter is often used in a much more general sense as of writings, etc.
I have no difficulty in saying that Jesus is God — but in the same way that I have referred to in the expression “the Word was God”. In all such statements the unity of the Godhead must be maintained in the soul.
I think if you weigh the above you will see that there is no attempt to trespass on any ground other than that of what is revealed.
With love in the Lord.
Believe me.
Your affectionate brother,