Chapter 6

"THE CHRIST, THE SON OF THE LIVING GOD" ⁽²⁾

The Messiah as a representative man

This section will examine the Bible teaching about the nature possessed by Jesus at his first coming. Whilst in trinitarian teaching much emphasis is given to Jesus as the Son of God, the many references to him as the Son of Man are largely overlooked. Yet the term was the one almost invariably used by Jesus to denote himself, occurring nearly 100 times in the synoptic gospels. It is only in John's record that the alternative term Son of God is sometimes used by Jesus. The title 'Son of Man' should therefore merit our careful attention as a vital component of our understanding of the Messiah's work.

Jesus was unique in that he had a human mother but no human father. Luke tells us that Jesus was conceived by the direct action of the Holy Spirit on Mary (1:35). Thus God was his father. The implications of the divine sonship of Jesus will be considered in the next section, whilst the significance of his parentage on the human side will be considered now.

"BORN OF A WOMAN"

There is great Biblical emphasis on the fact that the Messiah was to be born to a human parent. Paul introduces Jesus in the opening of his letter to the Romans as having been "descended from David according to the flesh" (Romans 1:3), and elsewhere states that "when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman ..." (Galatians 4:4). This human parentage is implicit in all the Old Testament descriptions of the Messiah's work. Way back in Eden, after the fall of man and the introduction of sin and death into the world, God made a promise to the effect that Eve should have a descendant who would fatally wound sin's power to destroy mankind. Speaking to the serpent God said "her seed (i.e. the woman's seed, the Messiah) ... shall bruise your head" (Genesis 3.15). Similarly, as shown on pp.151-152, the Messiah was promised to be a direct descendant of Abraham and David.

"A PROPHET LIKE TO MOSES"

Further indications of the human parentage of the Messiah are contained in God's promise to His people at Mount Sinai. The context of this passage rules out any trinitarian interpretation. After the young nation of Israel had stood trembling at the foot of Mount Sinai at the awesome voice of God proclaiming the ten commandments, they said to Moses "Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God ... lest I die". To which God replied with a promise that ever since has been taken as referring to the coming Messiah:

"They have rightly said all that they have spoken. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brethren: and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him" (Deuteronomy 18:17-18).

This revealing passage stresses the humanity of the Messiah. He was to be 'like' Moses, and be 'raised up from among their (Jewish) brethren'. Notice he was not to be God Himself, for this is what Israel had said they were unable to face, but a man like Moses who would be the agent through whom God's words would be conveyed, thus obviating the necessity for another open manifestation of divine power and presence as at Sinai. Jesus fulfilled this role of divine spokesman when he became the "Word made flesh". His comments to the Jews of his day could be a direct allusion to this same Deuteronomy passage when Israel recoiled from hearing God's direct voice:

"And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness to me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen; and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe him whom he has sent" (John 5:37-38).

He also said that he was speaking God's words, just as Israel had requested:

"The word which you hear is not mine, but the Father's who sent me" (John 14:24).

It is important to note in the quotation from Deuteronomy that this future prophet who was to be an agent for God was also to be instructed by God what he should speak to the people" he shall speak to them all that I command him" and in the passages above Jesus confirms that this was indeed what he did. This hardly tallies with a Trinity in which "none is afore, or after other: none is greater or less than other". ⁽³⁾

Being told what to say clearly implies a degree of subordination.

THE PHYSICAL NATURE POSSESSED BY JESUS

Turning to the New Testament the same stress is placed on Christ's human parentage, but now with added emphasis upon the physical nature of Jesus. It was identical to his fellow men, enabling him to "taste death for every one" (Hebrews 2:9). Nowhere is this more clearly stated than in the letter to the Hebrews. The inspired writer is at great pains to stress the fact that Jesus possessed a physical nature identical with those he came to redeem. This was the only basis on which his sacrificial death could be effective:

"For it was fitting that he ... in bringing many sons to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through suffering. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified have all one origin". That is why he is not ashamed to call them brethren (Hebrews 2:10-11).

This shared origin between the redeemer and the redeemed does not just refer to the fact that Jesus was born of a human mother, but that through her Jesus inherited a physical make-up exactly the same as ours. This is stressed as the Hebrews passage proceeds. After quoting Isaiah to show that the Messiah would be given adopted 'children', i.e. the redeemed, we read:

"Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same nature, that through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil" (Hebrews 2:14).

It is important to note the repeated emphasis in this verse. The writer could have made his point by merely saying "he partook of the same nature", but this would not have been strong enough to stress this vital aspect. The inclusion of both 'himself' and 'likewise' adds weight to the otherwise bald statement. Incidentally, in the original the Greek word for 'also' is included, thus giving triple emphasis: "He also himself likewise partook of the same nature". It would be difficult to use plainer words to express the complete identity of the physical natures of Jesus and the common stock of humanity.

A verse or two later the writer reverts to this theme, adding one of the reasons why the Saviour had to partake of human nature:

"Therefore he had to be made like his brethren in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make expiation for the sins of the people" (Hebrews 2:17).

One reason for Jesus sharing our physical nature was for him to be a completely representative man. This will be discussed later in the section headed 'The Lamb of God', but for the present the point of the allusion is that Jesus knows exactly what it is like to be human. In fact his sharing our nature is an essential aspect of his office of Saviour:

"For because he himself has suffered and been tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted" (Hebrews 2:18).

"For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning" (Hebrews 4:15).

Notice again the unambiguous language. Jesus shared 'in every respect' the temptations common to mankind. Specific examples for Jesus were the wilderness temptations (Matthew 4:1-11), and the natural desire to shrink from the ordeal of the cross (Matthew 26:37-44), but in addition to these specific occasions, Jesus received throughout his life the same enticements to sin as ourselves. This was the inevitable effect of sharing man's physical nature. The difference between him and us lies not in the physical make-up but in the response. ⁽⁴⁾ He never gave way to temptation and remained sinless throughout his life (see also 2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 Peter 2:22; 1 John 3:5).

All this is consistent with Jesus the Messiah being one of our race, but if he was God clothed in human flesh many contradictions occur. For example James emphatically states that "God cannot be tempted with evil" (James 1:14). If Jesus was God, and thus not vulnerable to temptation, one of the essential aspects of the Redeemer's work would be absent: he could not be a sympathetic and effective mediator. Scripture also teaches that the life of Jesus was a gradual development in character understandable if he shared our nature, but something impossible to reconcile with the idea that he was pre-existent God. He "increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favour with God and man" (Luke 2:52). So at his baptism the voice from heaven could proclaim "Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased" (Luke 3:22). The writer to the Hebrews comments that "although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered", as a result of which he was then "made perfect" (Hebrews 5:8-9). Clearly a pre-existent all-wise God does not need to increase in wisdom, or to learn to be obedient, nor to obtain the approval of his co-equal God, and certainly does not need to be made perfect at the end of his mortal life.

JESUS IN GETHSEMANE

The context of the Hebrews passage quoted above reveals another facet of the earthly life of the Son of Man:

"In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death" (Hebrews 5:7).

The reference is obviously to Christ's distress in the Garden of Gethsemane when "being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down upon the ground" (Luke 22:44). It is impossible for us to probe the extremity of feeling and tension in the mind of the Saviour as he fought and won the battle against his natural feelings. With the dread of the next few hours haunting him he besought his Father to find some other way of human redemption, if that were possible. Could a pre-existent God, who "knows the end from the beginning" (Isaiah 46:10) have ever had such a battle or ever made such a request? Clearly we have here a man, not a God. We have a man whose emotions were bounded by his present life, without any antecedent knowledge or experiences to come to his aid. Here was one who needed help to weather the crisis that had come upon him. It is inconceivable that if Jesus was God from the beginning, and had therefore devised the scheme of human redemption, he could ask for deliverence from the death he knew was essential.

Help came in the person of an angel. Luke records "there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him" (22:43). The angels are God's messengers, who "hearken to the voice of his word" (Psalm 103:20), and are clearly of subordinate status to God. Yet here one of their number was able to impart understanding and comfort to one who, if the trinitarian view is correct, was greater and wiser than any angel.

ERRORS PREDICTED BY THE APOSTLES

Failure to recognise the true import of this basic fact that Jesus was the Son of Man and thus identical in physical nature to all other men and woman, has led to a lot of what can only be described as playing with words in an attempt to reconcile Scripture with the doctrine of the Trinity. One writer says that while Jesus was "truly Man in every sense, He should not be subject to the sinful inheritance which had corrupted the whole of mankind" , and "He differed from us in ... his freedom from sin, either inherited or acquired. ⁽⁵⁾

This difference, he says, was because Jesus' nature was the same as Adam's before the Fall. ⁽⁶⁾

Yet Scripture says that redemption demands that Jesus was made like us in every respect, and this must include our present sin-prone nature.

The teaching that the Messiah was of a different physical nature to the rest of mankind was one of the earliest heresies that the infant church had to combat. Towards the end of the first century the Apostle John had strong words to say about those who denied that Jesus had come in "the flesh", that is, with normal human nature:

"Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of antichrist, of which you heard that it was coming, and now it is in the world already" (1 John 4:1-3).

Reference to any analytical concordance will show that the word translated 'flesh' ⁽⁷⁾

as well as describing the actual body extends to mean 'human nature'. In this way Paul equates 'flesh' with 'sinful passions', saying that nothing good dwells in the 'flesh', and also that Jesus was in the 'likeness of sinful flesh' (Romans 7:5,18; 8:3). So to believe that Jesus 'came in the flesh' is to say that he shared human nature. In his second epistle John is even more critical of this false doctrine concerning Jesus, and gives stern warnings on how its adherents should be treated:

"For many deceivers have gone out into the world, men who will not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh; such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist. Look to yourselves, that you may not lose what you have worked for, but may win a full reward. Any one who goes ahead and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God; he who abides in the doctrine of Christ has both the Father and the Son. If any one comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into the house or give him any greeting; for he who greets him shares his wicked work" (2 John 7-11).

This is a solemn warning. Already there were some who were 'going ahead' by introducing, among other things, different ideas about the nature of Jesus compared with what the apostles had taught. The Apostle John described this a 'wicked work', and was emphatic that such ideas rendered access to Christ and God impossible. In this he is echoing the words of his Master which state that a knowledge of God and Christ is essential for salvation: "This is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom that hast sent" (John 17:3).

"THE MAN CHRIST JESUS"

In keeping with the original views about Jesus, the early Christians regularly described him as a man, and it is inconceivable that they would have used this term if all the time they believed that he was God. In employing this term they were following the usage of the Master himself. There are many examples of this. John records that in some sense (to be considered later p.230ff) Jesus refers to himself as coming down from heaven. But it is the Son of man who thus descends. So in whatever sense Jesus existed before he was born, it was as a man, not as part of the triune godhead. Here are the actual references:

"No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man" (John 3:13).

"What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending where he was before?" (John 6:62).

When he wanted to obtain from his disciples the confession of his Messiahship he used the same term:

"Who do men say that the Son of Man is? Simon Peter replied, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16:13,16)

This same designation describes the attributes and activities of Jesus in his capacity of God's representative on earth. It is the Son of Man that "has authority on earth to forgive sins" (Luke 5.24). On the day of Pentecost Peter identified the Messiah with 'Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God' (Acts 2:22). It was by this same Man that the resurrection of the dead has been made possible (1 Corinthians 15:21). But more than this. Even the glorified Jesus, both in his mediatorial work now in heaven and in his future glory and exaltation, is still described as the Son of Man. It is the Son of Man that was to 'sit at the right hand of Power' (Mark 14:62), and that was seen by Stephen as 'standing at the right hand of God' (Acts 7:56). Meanwhile it is 'the man Christ Jesus' who is described as the mediator between God and men (1 Timothy 2:5), The Son of Man is to return to earth 'with his angels in the glory of his Father' (Matthew 16:27, 25:31). The same event is to be heralded by the 'sign of the Son of Man in heaven', after which men will 'see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory' (Matthew 24:30). It is the Man Jesus who is to be the future judge, both of the believers (John 5:27) and of the whole world (Acts 17:31).

The Old Testament uses similar phraseology. In an undoubted reference to the future role of Christ, Daniel clearly distinguishes between God the 'Ancient of Days', and the future Messianic world ruler, the 'Son of Man':

"And behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed" (Daniel 7:13-14).

Who would gain the idea here of co-equal members of a trinity? The terms used to describe each, and the obvious dependence of the Son of Man on the Ancient of Days for his 'dominion and glory' render such interpretation untenable.

There is no question therefore that the early Christians viewed even the resurrected and glorified Jesus as a Man. If it is as God that Jesus mediates for us, or it is as God that he returns in glory to rule the world, then the passages cited above would have been a most suitable place to say so. But the term is always man, not God, suggesting that they knew nothing of trinitarian dogmas.

The significance of this combined testimony must not be overlooked. Far from regarding Jesus as God, the early Christians saw him firstly as a man. A very special man, truly, but with no claim for him to be a member of an eternal trinity. And it is important to note that this still applied after Christ's glorification and ascension to heaven. Even then he was "the Man Christ Jesus".

JESUS NOT MERELY A MAN

But it must be stressed that although Jesus shared the physical nature of mankind with all its proneness to temptation, he was not mere man. By his unique birth he was specially created by God and combined in one person Son of Man and Son of God. As Roberts expressively puts it: "To say that Christ was a man partaking of our sinful nature does not mean that he was the same sort of man as other men. His parentage and education were both divine; and as it was said, "Never man spake like this man", so it has to be said that never man thought as this man, or loved as this man, or felt as this man. He was a special man altogether, though as to nature the same; just as a special vase, got up and gilt for a royal table, is a different article from a common mug, though made, it may be, of the same china clay". ⁽⁸⁾

There is a danger that in considering the person of the Messiah under several headings, as in this present study, that we regard each aspect as complete in itself. The true picture of Jesus in all its unique beauty and magnificence is only obtained when all the aspects are combined, and the reader is asked to bear this in mind on proceeding to the consideration of Jesus as the Son of God. At the same time we ask forbearance of the repetition which inevitably must occur when topics and ideas overlap our artificially created Section boundaries.

Section 3: Jesus the Son of God

REFERENCES

2. Matthew 16:16

3. The Athanasian Creed

4. And especially, of course, in the fact that he was the unique Son of God. This fact must never be lost sight of, even while we consider his humanity.

5. Hammond: "In Understanding be Men", p98,99

6. "All that was characteristic of unfallen man was found in him.", p.98

7. Greek sarx. Of this Allman in his Vocabulary of the Bible says "In Greek thought the concept of flesh denotes simply a substance, the bodily substance of man; but in the N.T. .. this physical meaning is almost always transcended. N.T. writers use the term 'flesh' to signify the natural man as a whole, with all the characteristics of his weak, impotent, fallen state".

8. Roberts, R. "The Blood of Christ", p28