Doctrine of Christology ~ the Person of Christ
Typically, the doctrine of Christology is separated into the Person and the Works of Christ. It’s really the only way to think through this doctrine without getting all tied up in knots.
Let’s start with the Person of Christ.
PERSON OF CHRIST
Who is Jesus? If you’ve read the Bible, then you know that he is a historical figure from the ancient near east world, around the years 0 – 33 AD. He was born in Bethlehem to Mary and Joseph. Mary was a virgin who was conceived of the son of God through the power of the Holy Spirit. This is essential to who Jesus is. The virgin birth is a core doctrine of the Christian faith. There was no seed of man to impregnate Mary – it was the Holy Spirit! Thus, as we’ll see, Jesus was fully God and fully man – having been born of a woman – Mary. He was raised in Nazareth. Joseph was a carpenter by trade, and likely Jesus would have been raised in that trade as well. And around the age of 30 he began his public ministry among his people – the Jews – the people of God, teaching and preaching about the Kingdom of God and salvation through himself. He showed himself to be the Son of Man, the son of God – the Messiah!
The apostle Peter’s confession sums up the historicity of Jesus’s identity in Matthew 16: 13- 16 where he says, “You are the Christ (Messiah), the Son of the Living God.” In this we see his divinity as the Eternal Son of God. Through the incarnation, he was human – God made flesh in the person of Jesus.
Here we see the crucial and true doctrine of the Person of Christ – his dual nature.
Dual Nature
The Dual Nature of Christ is simply that he is fully God and fully man. 100% and 100%. Not 50% God and 50% man. In the incarnation, the eternal Son of God became fully human. This is what we celebrate with so much joy at Christmas! In his incarnation, Jesus was the divine, eternal Son who took on humanity – becoming like us in every way – “Therefore, he had to be like his brothers and sisters in every way, so that he could become a merciful and faithful high priest…” (Heb 2:17) except without sin – “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin.” (Heb 4:15) He entered into humanity as one of us.
Trying to explain how Jesus was fully God and fully man creates a tension that we must live with in order to be faithful to what God’s word says. It’s a mystery – as are many aspects of God! We have finite, limited minds. And when we try to comprehend the infinite – we can’t. It’s utterly incomprehensible. An infinite nature taking on a finite nature? It’s truly beyond our grasp. The truth is: Jesus had a true human nature that was perfectly united to his divine nature.
Hypostatic Union
“Chalcedon produced the standard orthodox definition of the person of Christ, which says that in the one person of Christ are perfectly united the divine nature and a human nature, and that this union is without confusion, mixture, separation, or division, each nature retaining its own attributes. This is what is called the hypostatic union: Christ is one person with two natures…. because each nature retains its own attributes, Christ is truly human and truly divine. He is not one at the expense of the other, and because these natures are not confused or mixed, he is not a third kind of being, neither truly human nor truly divine. The natures are united in one person without separation or division, so Christ is a single person or subject.” (1)
Jesus’ 2 natures, human and divine are said to be without mixture – there’s no mingling of the two natures, there’s no confusion or disorder, there’s no separation, no division. Yes, this is a negative explanation – or guardrails for what is not true about the dual nature. It’s important to make sure that several factors are understood:
- Christ has 2 natures, but 1 “subsistence” (one person) {the Greek word translated as subsistence is the word ‘hypostasis’ or “being”}
- The Son of God is pre-existent; his divine nature is not created. John 1:1-3: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created.” Here the Word is the Son of God. The Son of God is eternal.
- The Son has always related to the Father and the Holy Spirit the same way.
- In his human nature, he is just like us! With the limitations of the human body, he experienced the brokenness of humanity without being ‘broken’ himself. He was just like us, but without sin.
- These 2 natures are conjoined together without mixture or separation; the 2 natures are distinct but inseparable.
- His natures are without confusion – not a partial + a partial = a whole, not a newly created person, not a new essence.
- His natures are without change. The incarnation is an addition to his divinity, not a subtraction. The 2 natures do not change – one doesn’t empty out the divine nature. He does not cease to be God. He took on a human nature, but his divine nature did not change. (2)
Jesus as Human
Christmas is coming. While the season of Easter is my favorite theological celebration, Christmas is my favorite from a human perspective as a mother. I usually write a blog post at Christmas imagining what it was like to be mother to Jesus. To see Jesus as a baby – not some ethereal angelic baby with a halo surrounding the manger. To ponder the humanness of Jesus and all its attendant realities.
Bavinck states, “The incarnation of God is the first principle of all life and history. All things must be understood in terms of the idea of incarnation.” (3) The immaculate conception is a cornerstone in the Christian faith. He did not inherit sin or a sinful nature. He was not born in Adam as we are. Because he was not born of a man (Joseph), the line of descent from Adam was partially interrupted. Some would ask why Jesus didn’t inherit a sinful nature from Mary. Grudem suggests “A better solution is to say that the work of the Holy Spirit in Mary must have prevented not only the transmission of sin from Joseph (for Jesus had no human father) but also, in a miraculous way, the transmission of sin from Mary: ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you … therefore the child to be born will be called holy.’ (Luke 1:35)” It shows that salvation is ultimately from the Lord. Salvation can never come through human effort but must be the work of God himself. (4).
Jesus was conceived in Mary by the Holy Spirit – how, we do not know, but this baby inside Mary grew like anyone of us did. He grew and developed all the physical characteristics that his DNA generated. Unseen by Mary because there were no ultrasounds back then (!), his finger prints formed, his spinal cord lengthened, his heart began beating, the brain waves started sending signals, his ears were formed and eventually he could hear sounds through the womb, he started to suck his thumb, turn and roll and get up under Mary’s ribs. He was born as we all are. And he lived as we all did as a baby: completely dependent on Mary and Joseph for his every need. He needed to be held, fed, changed, cuddled and loved. And he learned to roll over, crawl, and walk. And talk. And dress himself. And share with other children. As a teenager he went through hormonal changes – who knows, maybe he had acne. And in all of this, he experienced everything we did: he got tired, he worked physically and got sore, he dealt with people who were unkind, mean, greedy, arrogant. He had to learn the trade of carpentry. He didn’t just magically know everything. He went to Torah school to learn about God’s laws and the history of his people. He sweat in the hot sun. He got cold at night. He got hungry and thirsty and knew the relief of cold, fresh water to relieve that thirst. He was tempted to sin – to lie, to be unkind, to be impatient, to roll his eyes at his mother’s commands, to talk back, to cheat. He knew what it was like to hurt himself – yes, before his years of ministry, he likely had falls, or accidents with a hammer. He knew what pain was. He knew the joy of family and friends. He knew the celebrations of weddings and births, and all the festivals of the Jewish year. He knew the warmth of the sun on his face, the feel of rain after a hot spell, he knew the scent of flowers on the wind. The aroma of baking bread. He knew the pain and sorrow of deaths. At some point his earthly father Joseph, died. He would have mourned him.
Jesus had a human body. A human mind – he “increased in wisdom” (Luke 2:52). This shows that he went through a learning process. He had a human soul and human emotions. A full range of human emotions! Wonder, sorrow and tears, joy, laughter, sadness, anger, disappointment, happiness.
That is the humanity of Jesus. Except for one thing. A major difference. He. Did. Not. Sin. Ever. Remember that little white lie you told to cover for a mistake? Well, he wouldn’t have done that. Remember the pride you felt at your own success? Well, Jesus didn’t. Isn’t that amazing? No sinning. Oh, how I long for that to be reality!
But why did Jesus have to be fully man? Couldn’t he have just been mostly divine? In order to be the Messiah – he had to be fully man. Where Adam failed as our representative, Jesus would obey. And in his obedience – “many will be made righteous.” (Romans 5:18-19). He had to be a substitute sacrifice in our place. He had to die in our place; take the penalty we owed. He had to be human, not an angel, because God was concerned with saving men, not with saving angels. Hebrews 2 speaks of how God’s Son became a little lower than the angels by becoming human. As the Divine Son he was superior to the angels, as the human Son he was less than the angels. So, he had to be made like us in every way, so that he might become the propitiation for us – the sacrifice that is acceptable to God in our place. A man needed to die for men. Jesus had to be our mediator between God and ourselves – we who had alienated ourselves from God through our rebellion. He needed to represent us to God – and needed to be human to do so. He had to be man to fulfill God’s original purpose for man to rule over creation. Adam and Eve sinned. They were made in the image of God and given dominion over creation to rule and subdue it. But they were cast out of Eden when they sinned; they failed. Jesus was able to obey God perfectly and had the right to rule over creation as a man – thus fulfilling God’s original purposes for man. He also is our pattern – our example in life. We are being conformed to his image every day in our sanctification. We look to Jesus as the “author and perfector of our faith.” (Heb 12:2) We are to become like him! Jesus is also the pattern for our redeemed bodies – as he was resurrected from the grave into a glorified body, so will we. He was tempted as we are – if he had not been fully man, he could not have known our temptations. Now that he has, he can sympathize with us! And as the eternal Son of God became flesh for us – he is now in heaven in that resurrected human body. He was taken up into heaven at his ascension – and is there exactly as appeared when he left. (5)
Jesus as God
Jesus’s deity is just as important. One of the most common questions is: Did he give up his divinity when he became human? The short answer is no. We say that in his incarnation, humanity was added to his divine person. He took on humanity. To be our perfect Redeemer.
In the hypostatic union, we understand that the two natures of Christ are distinct and inseparable. Jesus couldn’t “switch on” his human nature, and then later at his whim decide to “switch on” his divine nature. Both are real at the same time. The simple way to understand this is that his divine nature was “limited” when he was on earth – his limited his glory and privilege that comes with divinity. It’s what Paul wrote in Philippians 2: 6.7: “…who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited. Instead, he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity.” When Jesus came, he came in poverty and humility. In the form of a servant. That did not include glory and privilege. And “he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death…” He became obedient. Servants obey; Jesus obeyed God, even to the point of dying on a cross.
The question arises about God’s attributes. We know that the God-head – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit share in all the attributes such as omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, sovereignty, immortality, sustainer, etc. If Jesus was fully God, then wouldn’t he have had all those attributes on full display? How can we say Jesus was fully God if as a human he had to learn? What about the fact that God is omnipresent – yet was limited by space and time like us. He entered time! He was embodied. Yes, Jesus came in human flesh within the limits of space and time. At the same time, he was the agent of creation, he was the Theophany – the Word of God, the self-revelation of God (John 4:9 “Whoever has seen me, has seen my Father.”) He revealed God in his words and actions.
As Mary Wiley says, “He was holding the stars in place while learning, toddling, and all those things! Two natures – perfectly held.” (6)
Practically: In his divine nature, Jesus is omniscient. In his human nature, Jesus was limited in knowledge. In his divine nature, Jesus experiences no lack whatsoever. In his human nature, Jesus suffered pain, hunger and weariness. At the crucifixion, we understand that Jesus – the God-Man died, so he could be the acceptable sacrifice, and we also understand that God doesn’t die – if God died, we wouldn’t exist. After his ascension – we understand that his human nature is no longer with us here on earth. But in his divine nature he is with us always! Both are true. We need to hold these truths simultaneously and equally, not giving preference to one over the other. (7)
We also see in Scripture Jesus’s divine nature. He saw Nathaniel under the tree, he raised people from the dead, he commanded the waves and the wind and they obeyed him, he knew the thoughts of the Pharisees – and of his disciples. Omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience – all present. The divine and the human together.
If we get the incarnation wrong, we get everything wrong.
If Christ is not fully human, he can’t take our place.
If Christ is not fully God, then his taking our place is pointless. (8)
Next time we’ll look at the Work of Christ.
Grace and Peace.
Footnotes:
1. We Believe, Creeds, Catechisms, and Confessions of Faith, pp. 11
2. Knowing Christ – The Incarnation of Christ, Smiley, Caroline
3. Reformed Dogmatics, Bavinck, Herman, pp. 410
4. Systematic Theology; Grudem, Wayne. pp. 530
5. Systematic Theology; Grudem, Wayne. pp. 539-542
6. What We Believe – Theology 101, Session 6 “Jesus”, Wiley, Mary
7. Knowing Christ – Who is Christ in the Trinity, Wilkin, Jen
8. Knowing Christ – The Incarnation of Christ, Smiley, Caroline
Theology Musings 