GOD MANIFESTED IN FLESH. THE MAN CHRIST JESUS NO. 10

GOD MANIFESTED IN FLESH. THE MAN CHRIST JESUS NO. 10

I do not agree that the question is — What is divine and what is human in our Lord’s course? This question is raised in my judgment to evade the real question, which is — Did our blessed Lord take a bondman’s form, taking His place in the likeness of man? I am sure the more simply we accept in faith that He, the Son of the living God, took the form of a bondman, the better we shall know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I believe that for thirty years in private life He was a Man in every way suitable to God. He not only magnified the law, but He made it honourable, and as the manna He was ever in perfect communion with God. He was entirely dependent on God. He could say, “Man shall ^[p. 133] not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 8: 3). He was perfect and beautiful as a Man in the eye of God. “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 17: 5). All His springs were in God. In all this beautiful path He did not depart for a moment from the form He had taken, while all the time the Son in the Father’s bosom. Then in the three years of His public service He declared the heart of God to man. His power was infinite to effect this. On the mount of transfiguration the glory of God claimed Him. The voice from the excellent glory proclaimed, “This is my beloved Son: hear Him” (Mark 9: 7). From this point He descends to die. What He — a Man — has done, He can enable His disciples to do; and it is here, I doubt not, that many, through unbelief, refuse to see His wonderful pathway as a Man because we all would naturally shrink from it. First a Man in every detail, beautiful in the eye of God, and next, a Man declaring God to man. He had not where to lay His head, He continued nights in prayer. “When he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously” (1 Peter 2: 23).

The church — His body — is the complement of Him that filleth all in all. Every bit of the moral beauty that was in Him as a Man will come out in His body — the church. I need not add more. It is not easy to express one’s mind on so great a subject. I quite agree with you that our blessed Lord was ever in full concert with the Father and the Spirit, and thus the Trinity were expressed in Him.