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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 trained, 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. We continue this week with Christology, but we're shifting gears To Christology Part 2, you might say, from the person of Christ. We've been talking about his two natures and his humanity, his divinity, various aspects of the attributes of each, and now we are moving to the work of Christ. I want to first think about what theologians call the two states, and obviously we're not talking about North Carolina and South Carolina, two states like that, but rather the state of humiliation and the state of exaltation. Now, a state here, in this technical theological sense refers to Christ's position as determined by his relationship to the law. In one state, Christ lived under the law, facing all its demands, and in the other state, Christ lived free from the law, having vanquished its curse. So these two positions are called state of humiliation and state of exaltation. And typically, and this is what we'll walk through for a couple of weeks, there are said to be five stages in the state of humiliation, incarnation, suffering, death, burial, and descent into hell. And we can hear this once you have ears to hear it. In the Apostles Creed, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, died, buried, descended into hell. Similarly, so there's five there stages in the state of humiliation and four stages in the state of exaltation, resurrection, ascension, session, and return. Again, we hear this in the Apostles Creed. On the third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven, where he sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, from whence he shall come to judge the living and the dead. These two states, one in which Christ is brought low, one in which he is lifted up high, can be found in several passages. Hebrews 2, 7 tells us, using the words from Psalm 8, that Jesus was made a little lower than the angels, so made low humiliation, and was crowned with glory and honor. That's exaltation. Likewise, Psalm 118, the stone the builders rejected. That's humiliation has become the cornerstone. And then we see the same dynamic sufferings then glories in Luke 24:26 1 Peter 1, 10:11. The classic example, however, comes from Philippians 2. Most of us are familiar with it, that Christ emptied himself. He took the form of a servant. He became obedient unto death. All of that is humiliation. Therefore God has highly exalted him and given him the name above every name. So we have to remember both of those states. If we just talk about Christ in a state of glory, then we don't have an accurate view of what he accomplished. Nor do we have an accurate view of what our Christian life is to be like. And yet, if we only talk about Christ in the state of humiliation, then we don't know the end of the story. The purpose was not just to suffer, that he might sympathize with us, but that he might vanquish sin and death. And the devil. He was humiliated so that he might be exalted. We don't have time to look in detail at every stage in each of the states. But here, thinking about the state of humiliation, let's just think on these various aspects of the Apostles Creed. So his Incarnation and suffering. Now, on the one hand, we want to be careful, and some theologians wouldn't place the Incarnation as an element of his humiliation. We don't want to think that human nature itself is demeaning. Christ now lives and reigns forever. The Incarnation is perpetual. He is fully God and fully man. So we are going to live forever as human beings, resurrected bodies. So we don't want to think that to be a human is in itself some kind of curse or some sort of demotion. And yet for Christ, the Incarnation did mean setting aside setting aside his glory. For a time. It was not simply the assumption of a human nature. To take on human flesh meant for the Son of God that he would be born into poverty, that His Deity would be partially veiled. It meant that Christ would be subjected to the weakness of fallen humanity. Not the sin, but the weakness. He would have a life of grief. He would have some limitations according to his human nature. It entailed being born in the likeness of sinful flesh, born under the law. All of these things, then, are an aspect of his humiliation in the Incarnation itself. And then we think about his suffering. That Christ's suffering was his whole life. We think of it in the end, Passion Week and the Cross. But his whole life was one. That he knew the temptations of the devil, that he was misunderstood, that he had an awareness as a young man that he would die in no ordinary way. Christ suffered in body and in soul. So in body, Christ was flogged, beaten, spat upon, crucified. In soul he was more than other men, deeply troubled, exceedingly sorrowful, and his suffering was unique in its intensity. No one felt the grief of moral evil. No one was as relentlessly and ruthlessly tempted. No one faced the wrath of God more than Christ did. No one ever suffered so excruciatingly as Christ. So his incarnation, his suffering at the end of his life in particular, we see that Christ suffered and was humiliated for our sakes. So his incarnation, his suffering, his death, and his burial wasn't just the physical pain of the cross, but it was the shame that he bore for our sakes. That's what the Gospels tend to focus on. In fact, if we just talk about the pain in a physical sense, what was surprising was how quickly Christ died. It was the abandonment that was so comprehensive. Judas betrayed him. His friends fell asleep in the hour of his deepest need. A young man. That strange story in Mark, a young man who runs naked into the darkness of night. Why is that story there? Because it shows that this young man may have been John Mark himself. Rather than having anything to do with Jesus, he would flee stark naked through the woods at night. That's how complete and utter his abandonment was. The Creed tells us that Christ died and was buried. And that may seem like an unnecessary tautology, but the burial should be seen as another aspect of his humiliation. Yes, it was a confirmation of his death. It was an indication that Christ had received what men in their sins deserve. Think about it. As a man under the curse. He had returned to the dust. The grave was the place of death, the place of corruption, the place where bodies go to decay. This was, in other words, no resting place fit for an immortal king of glory. It was another state of his humiliation that he died on the cross and then was buried. And then finally, and most difficultly, we talk about what the Apostles Creed says, his descent into hell. No phrase in the Apostles Creed has generated more controversy. Almost every time we recite it in Christ's Covenant Worship, someone will ask me about this phrase, descent into hell. It is true. It's not found in the earliest versions of the Creed. Seems to have been first used around 390, and then not again until the 7th century. Some early versions have buried but not descended. Others mention the descent but not the burial. The official Roman form, however, has both. And Christians have been confessing the doctrine for most of Church history. So we should not dismiss this lightly. And I don't think we should dismiss it. There are, however, a few different ways to understand the descent into hell. One way is to think of a local literal descent. I don't think this can be supported by Scripture. The lower regions in Ephesians 4, 9 are put opposite the Ascension language. So I think this descent and ascent is his coming down to earth, not Christ being put into some lower regions in the bowels and the hellish parts of the earth. We also have These texts in 1 Peter where Christ preached to the spirits in prison. And so there is a long tradition of the so called harrowing of hell, that Christ went and freed the souls in limbo in the underworld. But Peter's argument is that Christ preached through Noah to the disobedient who lived in his day, that is to the spirits who were alive then but are now in prison. And similarly in 1 Peter 4. I don't think that's about Christ descending into Hades. The dead to whom Christ preached is there were not dead when Christ preached to them. The purpose in Christ's preaching is that the hearers would not be judged. And there is no evidence in Scripture to support postmortem repentance. There's a lot in those two passages. 1 Peter 3. 1 Peter 4 so just giving you where I land, I think that this phrase, the descent into hell is you really can interpret. And there are two typical reformed ways to interpret it. One is it simply means another phrase to represent burial, that to be placed into the earth, dead, buried, descended to hell is saying the same thing. And the other explanation is that this refers to the hellish torments that Christ suffered on the cross. And this is how the Heidelberg Catechism understands it. This is Calvin's gloss. Now, I acknowledge that I think through many parts of the early church and the medieval church, they would have understood it in either a harrowing of hell or perhaps a literal descent. But I think this is a better way to understand the phrase descend into hell, the hellish torments, Ursinus, turreton, many others. For example, Calvin says, surely no more terrible abyss can be conceived than to feel yourself forsaken and estranged from God. And when you call upon him not to be heard. The Heidelberg Catechism explains descended into hell means to assure me in times of personal crisis and temptation, that Christ, my Lord, by suffering unspeakable anguish, pain and terror of soul, especially on the cross, but also earlier has delivered me from the anguish and torment of hell. That's why I happily confess that element of the Apostles Creed, not only because it has been a part of the Church catholic small circumstances for most of Church history, but because I find in it a reminder that Christ's humiliation included the torments of hell and the vanquishing of the devil, and to have suffered that in his state of humiliation is what allows and then leads him and us with him in his train to his glorious state of exaltation. Thanks again for joining us on Doctrine Matters. I'm your host Kevin DeYoung. Our hope and prayer is that this has been helpful to you as you look at Scripture and try to understand the best of our theological tradition as Christians. Please consider subscribing to Doctrine Matters and if this has been encouraging, consider passing it on to others. If you'd like to learn more about this week's doctrine can ask your pastor for good resources or check out my year long mini systematic theology book called Daily Doctrine. It's available in print or audio from Crossway.org the Doctrine Matters podcast is produced by Crossway. To learn more, visit Crossway.org.