A (0:03)

Hello, I'm Kevin DeYoung, pastor at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, and you are listening to Doctrine Matters. We want this podcast to equip Christians with a better understanding of the rich theology that undergirds our faith. And hopefully along the way, we'll be looking at some that have even been misunderstood or maybe threatened in the church's history. We'll point out the biblical evidence, the arguments, and work together to reshape our thinking, be transformed by the renewal of our minds with scripture and reason as we think theologically together. Because, as the title of the podcast tells you, Doctrine Matters.

B (0:45)

Continuing with Christology this week, we want to look at the deity of Christ and the humanity of Christ. The New Testament leaves no doubt about both. Let's start with the deity of Christ. This has often been, at least in more recent years, I should say the more controversial of the two when we talk about the two natures of Christ. But as we'll see, in the early church there were just as many heresies surrounding the full humanity of Christ. It was difficult for many people to understand that Christ was fully God, not God the second, not a lesser kind of God, not a created God, but God of the same God stuff as the Father. And at the same time he came and he assumed a true real human nature. Many passages teach the pre existence of Christ. That's one of the places we can start in talking about his divinity, Melchizedek, if you know that character from the Book of Genesis and then he's talked about in Hebrews. Melchizedek resembled the Son of God, suggesting that the Son of God predated the ancient king of Salem. So when Hebrews makes that point and that king of Salem appears out of Nowhere in Genesis 14, then that suggests the Son of God is even before that. Melchizedek Christ was foreknown before the foundation of the world. Christ existed before he took on human flesh and was born. He was manifested in the flesh. That's the language he came in the last times for our sake. Christ Jesus must be eternal, since we were given grace in him before the ages began. Second Timothy 1:9. We can also see how Christ possesses the attributes of God, the communicable attributes. He's filled with love and grace and truth and righteousness and holiness and authority. He's the image of God and also possessing the incommunicable attributes of God, he's eternal. We see this in a number of different places and immutable the Alpha and the Omega. Christ exercises omnipresence where two or three are gathered, there he is in the midst of them. He exercises omnipotence. Even the wind and the waves obey Him. He upholds all things by the word of his power. All authority in heaven and earth has been given to him. And he exercises omniscience. He can perceive the hearts of men. He knows what men are like. John 1. He knows what is in a man. John 2 He knows from the beginning who would not believe and who would betray Him. Yes, it's in his humanity. According to his humanity, Jesus will say on occasion there are certain things he doesn't know. He had to learn his Alphabet like any other Jewish boy. And he says, in his earthly incarnation, he does not know the time of the end of the age. And yet we see so many times, that's according to his human nature. Yet we see that he exercised so for a time. The full display of that omniscience is veiled. And yet, clearly in the Gospels he shows himself to know things beyond what ordinary human beings can know. He has divine foreknowledge of events that will happen in his life. And we see in the New Testament that He demonstrates divine rule and authority, exercises dominion over all things, including human and angelic authorities. He sits on God's throne, at the right hand of the majesty on high. He shares universal lordship with Yahweh over every rule, power and dominion. He's also said to participate in the works of God. So creation. All things were made by Him. By him the worlds were made, and then providence. He upholds all things by the word of his power. In him all things consist. His Father works, and so does He. So Christ participates in the works of God in creation, in providence, in judgment. The Son of Man will come with his angels to repay each person for what he has done. He will separate sheep from goats. The Father has given all judgment to the Son. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father. And finally, and this should be obvious, but it's so obvious we can miss it. Christ often receives worship, and elsewhere men reject being worshiped. Or so I'm thinking of. Paul says, no, no, don't worship us. Or they die like Herod for receiving worship. Or it is considered the height of idolatry to worship created things. But not so with Christ Jesus. After he calmed the storm, those in the boat worshiped him. Matthew 14:33 on Palm Sunday, the crowds cry out hosanna to the Son of David. Out of infants you have prepared praise at his resurrection. The women took hold of his feet and worshiped him. Matthew 28:9. Later, the disciples did as well. Matthew 28:17. So Jesus Christ is not just another man. He is God in the flesh, exercising power and showing himself to possess divine attributes that only God possesses and receiving worship that only God deserves and can rightly receive. Then we want to think about his humanity, because the New Testament also leaves no doubt that Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the Christ, was and is fully human. He possesses two natures. And next week we'll talk about how those natures exist in one person. That's the hypostatic union. But here just establishing one nature divine, one nature human. So we are right to call him God and right to call him a man. The humanity of Christ can be seen, we might say, in his outer life and in his inner life. In his outer life he had a body. He grew, he developed. He looked like other members of his family. You didn't see him and think that this is obviously a superhero just by looking at him. He was a regular looking Jewish man. He was subject to his parents. He grew and increased in wisdom and stature. He aged according to normal human years. He was born of a woman. He was made like other human beings in every respect, except for sin. As the last Adam, Jesus Christ was as much man as the first Adam. That's his outer life. We can also think about his inner life. Jesus knew what it was to be genuinely distressed or angry. Not sinfully, but angry or annoyed, surprised, disappointed. There are texts for all of these. He suffered hunger and thirst. Think of his temptation in the wilderness. And he experienced fatigue. Jesus was tempted, he cried. When his friend Lazarus was dead, he bled and he died. In short, Jesus Christ was a real human being. He had a real human mind, a real human body, real human emotion. He's called the seed of the woman, the seed of Abraham, the son of David, the seed of the virgin, the fruit of her womb. Think about then, with this humanity and deity. Why did the divine Son of God become man? That's the question, famously, that Anselm, the medieval theologian, asked in his book Cur Deus Homo, why a God man? Or sometimes translated, why did God become man? And there are many right ways to answer that question. But perhaps the best explanation comes from Hebrews 2. We see in Hebrews 2, 5, 18, and maybe later you look those up, Hebrews 2, 5, 18,. We see at least three reasons that God became man. One, Jesus was made for a little while lower than the angels, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. Two, he was made to share in our flesh and blood, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil is. And three, Christ had to be made like his human brothers in every respect, so he might become a merciful and faithful high priest to make propitiation for the sins of the people, to turn away the wrath of God. In other words, if you want to summarize it, God became man, so that as God, man, one, he could conquer death, two, he could defeat the devil, and three, he could atone for our sins. You can remember that. Conquer death, defeat the devil, atone for our sins. Centuries before Anselm the Church, Father Athanasius, the great hero of Nicene Orthodoxy, answered the same question in his book on the Incarnation and on the Incarnation. There are English translations of both Anselm's work and Athanasius work. Athanasius work here is quite a bit shorter and actually easier to read, even though it's centuries earlier. It's a little less philosophical. And this is a great way to think about the Incarnation. Athanasius is using the analogy of a king, and he says, the king has come into our country and dwelt in one body, with the result that the designs of the enemy against mankind have been foiled, and the corruption of death which formerly held them in its power has simply ceased to be. For the human race would have perished utterly had not the Lord and Savior of all, the Son of God, come among us to put an end to death on the Incarnation. The Incarnation. That word refers to the embodiment of God in human form. You may know from certain foods carne, meaning meat. And if you know Spanish, you know some of the delicious meals that have carne. But of course, these are just Latin derivatives. Incarnation is the the enfleshment of the Son of God. The doctrine of the Incarnation affirms that the divine Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity, assumed a human nature and came to earth as the God man, Jesus Christ. You think about the language of the appearing of our Savior, Jesus Christ, or Christ emptying himself, taking the form of a servant, or coming into the world with a body prepared for him, or as the manifestation of God in the flesh. First Timothy 3, 16. It is important to underscore that only the Son of God could have become incarnate. The Father could not become incarnate, for he is first in order and cannot be sent. He cannot act as a mediator to the Son or the Spirit. The Father could not take on human flesh and be born of a Virgin, you say, well, why can't. Couldn't God do anything? But in the divine economy, a father cannot be sent, a father cannot be born. That is the work and the identity of a Son. It would undermine his divine fatherhood if he were to become an earthly son. Likewise, the Spirit could not be sent to be born as a man without becoming, as it were, a second son. Whomever is born then is a son. So we should stress too that the Godhead did not become incarnate. It's not that the divine essence. But we're talking about the Person, the second Person of the Trinity, the Son. Aquinas puts it well, it is more proper to say that a divine person assumed a human nature than to say that the divine nature assumed a human nature. So Christ is human nature, divine nature. But we don't want to say the divine nature took on a human nature. We're not talking about some merely in essence. We're talking about a person. And it's critical we understand what did and did not happen in the Incarnation. It was not a transubstantiation, a transmutation or a conversion. Rather, the Incarnation was an assumption, the divine nature. Let's put this in some other language. Those are all big Latinate words. What we mean is the divine nature did not undergo any essential change. So it was not transmuted, transformed. Now the divine nature has become something else. No, the Incarnation was a personal act whereby the Person of the Son became incarnate. This is better than saying the divine nature assumed human flesh in becoming man. The second Person of the Trinity. This is absolutely key, did not cease to be God. And here's one of the great theological lines, and I know I'm not the first person to say it this way. He became what he was, not the Son. The Son became what he was not without ceasing to be what he was. That's what we meant by assuming a human nature rather than a transmutation or a conversion, that now you've changed into something else. That's not what we mean. He did not cease to be divine. He assumed a human nature rather than being transformed. To put things inelegantly, we. We might say the divine nature rather than the human nature is the base nature. That is to say, a human person did not become divine. A divine person assumed a human nature. So Christ is humanized deity, not deified humanity. It's not a person that was out there. Oh, here's a Jewish guy named Jesus, let's bam, let's give him some divine nature. And now this Jesus is divine. No, we start with the second Person of the Trinity, the divine Son of God. The Divinity, if we can put this again inelegantly, is the dominant nature. I don't mean more important nature. They both come together in the hypostatic union. But we mean what begins in this divine nature, of course, has no beginning. The Son of God has no beginning. All of this is meant to safeguard and explain. John 1:14 the word became flesh and dwelt among us. The Son of God did not begin at the Incarnation, but the incarnate personality of Jesus Christ did. There was no God man until the moment of the Incarnation. The second Person of the Trinity descended as Logos. Word descended as Logos, and when he returned to heaven, he ascended as theanthropos the God Man You've been listening to.