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April 17, 2005
Jesus: How much God? How much Man?
Jesus: How much God? How much Man?
(For us and for our salvation he . . . became truly human.)
Daniel 7: 9-10 / Revelation 1: 9-18
April 17th, 2005
These are really remarkable times. I’m tempted to keep each copy of Newsweek because in ten years I’ll wish I had done so. “These are the best of times and the worst of times.” A Scottish novelist wrote those words in the 19th century about an earlier time.
Has there been any period in the story of humanity when it was otherwise, the worst and the best of times? Augustine of Hippo thought the end of the world was at hand as the Barbarians crushed the last breaths of life out of the Roman Empire in the early fifth century. In the thirteenth century Thomas (Aquinas) was writing his masterpiece about God while “Tarter hordes” were galloping on their ponies through Europe’s heartland slaughtering every man, woman, and child. My mother will ask me when we talk on Saturday mornings in this twenty-first century, “What is the world coming to? Surely the Lord will come soon.”
Well, it was into such a world that the Lord was born. He was this one “whose raiment was white as snow,” who was served by thousands, of whom Daniel wrote in pre-recognition of days to come. In the days this Son of Man was born things were pretty raw too. Crucifixion was as common then as jail terms are today. Seventy-three years before Jesus was born, a slave named Spartacus led an unsuccessful revolt of slaves against Rome. He was defeated. The Romans lined the Apian Way leading into Rome with six thousand of Spartacus’ followers, nailed to crosses to remind anyone who needed reminding not to meddle with Rome. On crosses these wretched men ended their lives in agony without mercy.
It was at such a time, into such a world that God did something most wonderful. He became part of human existence. He became a man. Why? “For us and for our salvation.”
The Nicene Creed was composed about three hundred years later. Then the triumph of the cross of Jesus Christ finally seemed to give promise of a Kingdom of God on earth. The emperor was a Christian. He put an end to crucifixions and other legal torture. His mother, Helena, who loved Jesus and was largely responsible for her son’s becoming a Christian, searched everywhere to find every last splinter of the old rugged cross on which Prince of glory died. It was said she found enough splinters of the true cross to build Noah’s Ark. She had churches built in many places throughout the empire where people could worship Jesus.
But in one of the oldest churches in Christendom a tempest started to blow. An elder with a strong personality in Alexandria, Egypt was teaching that Jesus was only a great man. The elder’s name was Arius. He didn’t listen to his teachers. He told them, “Listen to me.” His attitude turned his speculation into a great problem that divided Christendom.
Though the Gospel of John said of Jesus that “He was in the beginning with God and was God,” Arius said this could not be because, after all, wasn’t Jesus born as everyone is born?
He may have read what we just read of the exalted Jesus of whom John wrote in the first chapter of Revelation. Jesus, as John saw Him in this vision, looked far different from the Jesus who walked the dusty roads of Palestine. Arius was annoyed by those who had so played up this image of Jesus Christ that they forgot He was a real man, Things had gotten out of hand in thinking about Jesus after He left them.
Some influential and pious Christians, desiring to honor Jesus, taught that Jesus had only the God nature, and no human nature. Others said He only seemed to be a man. Some thought that the very idea of God going through the birth process was a horrid and evil idea.
As often happens, one mistake bred another mistake that tried to fix the first one. Arius emphasized that Jesus was just a human being. He argued that to say Jesus was divine was only an honor ascribed to Him, a bit like saying Pope John Paul II is a saint. But this understanding of Jesus rejected everything that the Bible teaches about Jesus’ God-ness. “Before Him every knee will bow, in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” “Lord” was the name of God. What God is Jesus is, the New Testament makes so clear.
So the thoughtful and wise pastors and bishops who met at the Council of Nicea hammered out words to make sure we understand that Jesus was really God. He was “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, being of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made.” It very nearly seems they tried too hard to make the idea clear, but it was a truth that could not be too clear. It is half the heart of the Gospel.
The other half of the Gospel is that Jesus Christ was really man too. He did not just seem to be a man. He was really and truly and fully a man. Human nature and the Divine nature were both in Jesus, not all mixed together like some Divine-human dish of scrambled eggs, but distinct in His humanity and in His Deity. Does that sound pretty impossible to you? Well, maybe paradoxical, but not impossible.
Actually, it was just one word in the Greek language in which this creed was written. The Son of God was enanthropesanta. That sounds like Greek to you, but it sounded to them like English does to you and me. Some know the phrase from the English word formed from the Latin translation, incarnatus est, which means, “He was in flesh.” Our word “Incarnation” comes from this simple, stark statement. The Latin is more stark than the Greek. He became flesh sounds more radical than “having been made human.”
(I feel self-conscious to use Greek, Latin, or Hebrew words as though I’m showing off. But remember that over the centuries the Gospel was taught in many languages. Once Greek and Latin were as ordinary as English. It was in these languages that people first heard these great truths. And we do well to remember as clearly as we can how they understood the great truths, and then passed them on to us.)
This is a remarkable truth. God became a human being. David asked in the 8th Psalm, long before Jesus was born, “What is man that thou art mindful of him or the son of man that thou visitest him?” It is a good question. David asked this question, it might be, because he saw the dark side of human nature, and not just the wonder that human beings are created in the image of God.
He knew his own heart. At one time he could write rhapsodic psalms praising God, and at another time he drooled with raw lust, leering at the body of his neighbor’s wife—to the point that he had her husband killed to claim her for himself. Maybe this was in his mind when he asked, “What is man that thou art mindful of him?”
But humanity is pretty grand too. What you and I know of humanity is a flawed creature. We see the double-mindedness of our own hearts that contributes to our suspicion of other people. People who have the capacity for amazing acts of self-sacrifice may live driven by greed, never being happy with what they have because they suppress their God-like nature to share. People who have the capacity to love suppress their love because they are fearful. People who yearn for acceptance judge others for the silliest things. People who are equipped in body, mind, and spirit for the greatest happiness, cling to ways guaranteed to make them unhappy. They major on what is minor and treat as least important things of the heart.
I flick the channels on the television when my coffee is brewing in the early morning and I see program after program about how to get in shape, how to eat right, how to have a great sex life, how to get rich. And all the while the people who watch the programs live so as to make sure they stay overweight, use their money badly, and are loveless towards their spouses. These programs flaunt their misery before miserable people who can’t sleep.
It was because of what we can be that the Son of God actually became a human being. “It was for us and for our salvation.” Salvation is not just being rescued from eternal hell. Salvation is being healed to the very core. We are made in the image and likeness of God, and He is not willing to consign what is made in His image to the trash-bin of this life or of eternity. God became a human being so we could be lifted to claim the fullness of what God intended in creating us in His image. He took our image to restore this image.
If only all who claim to be “born again” were as saved as God intended! Turn your thoughts inward and see what Jesus came to remake! See inside where a gracious heart lurks, longing to infect your mind. Look inside at that generous person who longs to act. Look at yourself as you are disappointed with yourself and have turned that disappointment against other people. Look at your fears, at the dreams you are gradually thinking cannot ever be realized. Accept that Jesus came to dissolve those fears and help you to aspire to and fulfill your best self.
There are aspects of God reflected in every part of creation. The beauty of God is reflected in flowers. How intricate is the beauty of the lilies and phlox and roses that surround the homes in which we live. How lavish is the beauty of a magnolia tree in the full bloom of spring. How fragrant are the gardenia and lemon blossoms. The elegance of the dolphins as they swim through the oceans reflects the power, symmetry and elegance of their Creator. Think of the soaring eagle, strong and beautiful. We could go on and on describing the majesty of the tiger “burning bright in the forests of the night” whose fearful symmetry proclaims God’s handiwork.
But nothing in all creation compares with a human being. God became a human being to show what a human being is as God intended. For some reason people hated that beauty when they saw it in Jesus. They couldn’t stand Jesus. He was too good, too kind, too noble, too forgiving. So they killed Him. We say we love Jesus. People just like we are sometimes despised what they saw Him.
We are so confused. We don’t know whether to desire beauty or ugliness. We are torn between admiring decency and being drawn by the culture we live in to what is indecent. The privacy and opportunity we have lures us to do in secret what we would claim to despise. I see the young people on campus wearing T-shirts that read on the back, “Go Ugly Early,” and know it has to do with a popular spot for hanging out. But I muse on the idea that such a term could be so intriguing for them. Why not, “Come Beautiful Early and Late?” Every co-ed that has on her back “Go Ugly Early” wants to be thought beautiful.
How grand a thing it is to be a human being, but we miss seeing it. God doesn’t, and that’s why He sent His Son as a complete human being. We cannot comprehend that God could ever stoop to taking on our botched humanity. But I remember that we represent God’s finest creative impulse. We are the capstone of creation. And it matters to God what happens to the finest exhibit of His creative impulse—the part onto which He stamped His image and likeness.
This is why God became a human being. Jesus was completely human first, to bear the consequences in His body of what we have done in distorting the Divine image in us, and then, second, to lead the way to our reclaiming all the wonder of being created in the image of God. That’s why we sing, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus.”
Ponder this. Thing on this as you think of yourself. You are a promise, a possibility, as our children have sung in days past. Think on this as you think of others—if you are more impressed with their flaws than of the wonder that they are created in God’s image.
I remember that C.S. Lewis wrote of what he thought when he looked at people—candidates for divination. One day I will look at you and remember what I knew of you in this life. I will be amazed. “So that was what God had in mind when He created you,” I will think. Why then did I not treat you with greater regard? We will wonder, “Why didn’t our life together blossom with all our possibilities for God-likeness?” It still can.
I pray God will, by His Holy Spirit, remind us as we look at Jesus, the author of our faith, what it is that He created us to be. And then I pray we may press on to enjoy to the fullest, in the way of Jesus, this life for which the Son of God was born a baby, suffered death, and rose again.
Let us pray: O Lord God, we cannot comprehend the mechanics of how you sent us Your Son to become a man for us, to become even sin for us, that we could truly live. But we thank You that You did. Help us to accept this favor with a trusting heart. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson, Pastor
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at April 17, 2005 09:30 AM