1.
The Second Problem of the Doctrine of Reconciliation
In
the first part of the doctrine of reconciliation, we looked at the atonement
from the top down, at Jesus Christ the Lord as servant, at the God who humbled
himself to reconcile us with himself. We will now look at that same doctrine
from a second point of view, reflecting on the atonement from the bottom up, on
Jesus Christ the servant as Lord, on the person exalted and therefore
reconciled by God.
Special
note must be made that our discussion of justification and now sanctification
are based on Christology. We are grounding it in the being and action of Jesus
Christ in his humiliation as the Son of God and exaltation as the Son of Man.
It is in Christ that our movement from below to above is achieved. It is in the
mirror of his exaltation that we will see ourselves reflected as slothful and
miserable sinners and not just proud and fallen ones. It is also in him that we
learn of our sanctification for service to God and others, our edification as
his Church, and finally the Christian meaning of love.
2.
The Homecoming of the Son of Man
The
Word became flesh. If we emphasize the Word became flesh, we focus on
the Son of God going into the far country in solidarity with human
creatureliness and even sinfulness. If we emphasize the Word became
flesh, we focus on the Son of Man returning home to a rightly ordered
relationship with God, with others, and within himself. The one atonement in
Jesus Christ includes both the movement out and the movement home. Having first
emphasized that Jesus is fully God, we will now emphasize that Jesus Christ is
fully human.
The
Divine Election of Grace as the Basis of the Exaltation of Man in Christ
In
Jesus Christ, God confronts us with his eternal will. He confronts us with his
will as determined before creation but fulfilled in time. The true humanity of
Jesus Christ is the revelation in time of the goal of God’s will before all
time. From all eternity God in his Son freely chose in love to be for man and
freely chose man to be for him. From all eternity the Son of God chose
humiliation for himself and exaltation for the Son of Man so that even sinful man
could participate in God’s own eternal life. From all eternity the Son of God graciously
elected the Son of Man, and consequently the one whole Jesus Christ, and
therefore all human beings in union with Jesus Christ. All past, present, and
future actions of God in time relate directly or indirectly to this purpose.
The
Incarnation as the Historical Fulfillment of Man’s Exaltation
God
created, sustained, and ruled Heaven and Earth which existed on the basis of
him but in distinction from him. Then something utterly new happened. God
himself, without ceasing to be God, became a human creature. We may best
describe this free act of God’s love by saying that God took our human way of
being into unity with his own divine way of being. In this God showed his
radical mercy toward us: he willed not only to be Lord of the covenant but also
to be faithful partner of the covenant despite our faithlessness. We will now
reflect on the existence of Jesus Christ from four separate viewpoints.
First,
in Jesus Christ, God the Son became man.
This
is an act of God’s grace and therefore wholly unmerited by us. When the Word
became flesh in Jesus Christ, he exalted our human way of being by taking it,
in all its limitation and even corruption, into unity with his own divine way
of being.
Second,
in Jesus Christ, the existence of God the Son became the existence of a human
being.
In
Jesus Christ, we do not have God the Son existing side by side with Jesus the
man. In Jesus Christ we do not have God the Son existing as part of Jesus the
man; for example, as the spirit or mind or soul of Jesus. No, in Jesus Christ
we have the existence of only God the Son. But we have God the Son in his full
divinity existing as a human being.
Third,
in Jesus Christ, divinity and humanity were united.
Divinity
is the nature which Jesus Christ shares as the Son of God with the Father and
the Holy Spirit. Humanity is the nature which Jesus Christ shares as the Son of
Man with all human beings. In Jesus Christ we have the existence of the Son of
God as a human being and therefore the uniting of two natures which otherwise
by definition cannot be united. This is a confession we can only make in the
obedience of faith. We make it only because Jesus Christ confronts us as who he
is. In doing so, he frees our reason from other norms which would otherwise
prohibit this confession.
God
the Son, while maintaining his divinity, assumed humanity and in doing so
united both in the man Jesus of Nazareth. In Jesus Christ, then, the Son of God
participates in human nature. And in Jesus Christ the Son of Man participates
in divine nature. There is, then, a reciprocal participation initiated by the
Son of God in gracious humility and shared by the Son of Man in grateful exaltation.
In
the one Jesus Christ the two natures of divinity and humanity are united but
not by becoming identical or mixed. We therefore must not confuse them. If we
do, this would mean that God had lost his divinity and changed himself into a
human being, or that man had lost its humanity and become divine, or that Jesus
Christ was half-divine and half-human, a demi-god or superman. But none of
these three options conforms with the New Testament witness to Jesus Christ.
With the New Testament we rightly affirm that Jesus Christ was begotten of the
Father before all time yet also born of the Virgin Mary during the reign of
Caesar Augustus. We rightly affirm that the union and mutual participation of
divine and human nature takes place in Jesus Christ without mixture. This is
the mystery of the Incarnation.
Taking
care not to confuse the two natures, we must also be careful not to separate
them. The two, though distinct, remain united. There is no element of God the
Son’s divinity which shies from participation in human nature, and there is no
element of humanity which is excluded from participating in God the Son’s
divine nature.
Fourth,
and in conclusion, Jesus Christ is wholly divine and wholly human without
separation or confusion.
Divinity
is proper to God the Son, while humanity is something he adopts and assumes. So
his divinity participates in his humanity, and his humanity does participate in
his divinity, but not in the same way. His divinity adopted his humanity while
his humanity was adopted by his divinity. This means the determination by his
divinity of his humanity is irreversible. This is the first differentiation we
must note.
A
second differentiation follows from this. In this unity of divinity and
humanity, humanity did not become divinity. Jesus Christ as Son of God took
humanity to himself and gave it existence and in so doing became Son of Man.
However, there was no Son of Man taking divinity to himself. In his humiliation
the Son of God became human, but in his exaltation the Son of Man did not
become divine. The Son of God wholly gives, the Son of Man wholly receives, and
in receiving the Son of Man is not divinized or deified but is set in perfect
relationship with God. In the unity of the divine and the human, in the twofold
determination by the divine of the human and of the human by the divine, the
divine always rules and reveals and the human always serves and witnesses.
Again,
from a slightly different viewpoint, the first differentiation, the
determination by the Son of God and of the Son of Man, means that everything
God is as God he is not only for himself but for man as well. It means the
fullness of deity dwells bodily in Jesus Christ (Colossians 2:9). Deity without
diminishment takes concrete form in Jesus Christ. In this way the form of the
divinity of the Son of God is determined freely in love in its assumption of
humanity in Jesus Christ.
Again
the second determination, that of the human by the divine, is based
irreversibly on this first one. God became man, and because he did so, this man
Jesus Christ is God. This does not mean that the humanity of this man is
deified but that it is determined in its own way by the divinity which took form
in it. It is humanity determined wholly by God’s grace. As such it is humanity
determined as thankfulness and therefore sinless humanity. When the Son of God
assumed our corrupted nature, he took upon himself our sin and guilt but added
no corruption of his own. In this way he contradicted our self-contradiction.
Tempted as we are, Jesus Christ never abandoned his thankfulness to God and
therefore never sinned. In Jesus Christ evil finally failed as the improper
determination of our human nature. This actual freedom from the power of sin is
the exaltation of our humanity in Christ. So our exaltation in Jesus Christ is
still hidden, is yet to be revealed, but already is definitely real.
The
Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Christ as the Revelation of Man’s
Exaltation
Jesus
Christ revealed himself as humble Lord and exalted Servant, reconciling man
with God, during his life and in his death. However, his humiliation as Son of
God and exaltation as Son of Man were not completed until he died on the cross.
Only with his work completely finished could the supreme humiliation and
exaltation of that work be fully revealed through his resurrection and
ascension. His being raised from the dead and exalted to God’s right hand are
the event of revelation upon which is based the knowledge of all people—past,
present, and future—that Jesus Christ is the Word made flesh for God’s glory
and our salvation.
3.
Jesus Christ the Royal Man
We
rightly speak of the “kingly office” of Jesus Christ because he proclaimed,
started, and even was the Kingdom of God. Both Testaments refer to God as Lord.
The New Testament makes clear that Jesus Christ is this Lord.
The
Gospel Witness to the Distinctiveness of Jesus Christ as the Royal Man
As
the one truly royal person, the proclaimer and presence of the Kingdom of God
on Earth, Jesus Christ was distinctive. To begin with, Jesus Christ had a
certain presence. He astonished all whom he encountered. Second, the
astonishing presence of Jesus Christ always demanded decision. His presence
demanded the new dedication of one’s life to him or one’s radical separation
from him. Either way he was present as the Judge revealing what really did lurk
in the heart of each. Third, Jesus Christ made so unique an impression as to be
unforgettable. This is because, when he stood among others, he did so as their
Lord. Whether he chose to speak or to keep quiet, he did so as the one in
supreme command. Finally, the Gospels were written as testimonies to Jesus
Christ who remains present in all his distinctiveness. He is still the one in
supreme command who even now graciously frees us through the biblical witnesses
to thankfully obey him like those witnesses.
Jesus
Christ the Royal Man as the Image of God
Jesus
Christ was and remains the image of God (Colossians 1:15). So, like God, Jesus
Christ was despised by the world. For this reason the Son of Man bore witness
to the humiliation of the Son of God in all its gory detail. Second, consistent
with this, Jesus Christ ignored the powerful. God is a loser in the eyes of the
world, so Jesus identified himself with others likewise considered losers.
Third,
as the image of God with this being and attitude, Jesus Christ was
conspicuously radical in relation to society and culture. In his royal freedom
Jesus Christ simply bothered everybody all the time. Like God he accorded
society and culture only provisional significance. He provisionally accepted
the Temple, family, the Law, and other political, economic, and religious
authorities and relationships. Yet he also manifested his ultimate superiority
to, and royal freedom from, these arrangements. He declared himself greater
than the Temple (Matthew 12:6), declared loyalty to him more important than
loyalty to family, freely healed on the Sabbath, etc. In this way, we do not
know Jesus Christ as Lord if we do not acknowledge his absolute freedom from
and opposition to our world of sin.
Finally,
as God’s image, Jesus reflects God’s Yes to man despite our No to God. Jesus
Christ is the royal man because in him alone God confronts us and saves us with
his purifying mercy. He alone brings self-giving salvation and saving mercy to
all us sinners in our misery. He does this because he sees we are sheep without
a shepherd (Matthew 9:36). He steps into the breach as the good shepherd (Psalm
23) who gives his life for his sheep (John 10:11). We are blessed, then, when
and because Jesus determines and pronounces us so. The poor are blessed, not
because poverty is virtuous, and despite the misery of poverty, because it is
the poor to whom Jesus preaches the Gospel (Matthew 11:5). The suffering of
persecution is not pleasant, but Jesus summons the persecuted to exceeding
gladness because they have been blessed with the freedom to live as witnesses
to him. We are truly blessed in life and in death because the irreversible
salvation and life and joy of God’s Kingdom have come to us in Jesus Christ.
The
Life of Jesus Christ
The
distinctiveness of Jesus Christ and his likeness to God became real in his
life. By looking at the history of his life as attested in the Gospels, we may
witness more clearly to the actuality of both his distinctiveness and his
divine likeness in our own lives.
To
begin with, the distinctiveness and divine likeness of Jesus Christ were
characterized primarily by his very concrete yet always comprehensive Word.
Jesus Christ spoke with human words. Yet his words revealed their power as the
Word of God by establishing the canonical Gospels to the exclusion of all
others as our normative witnesses to him. His Word revealed its power by
gathering and strengthening the New Testament community as his own. And in
hearing his Word of reconciliation, that community knew it had to and did go
and proclaim that good news of Jesus Christ to the world. For he spoke, and
it came to be;/ he commanded, and it stood firm (Psalm 33:9, English
Standard Version, here and following).
The
second impressive aspect of the life of Jesus Christ was his activity. The
concrete speaking of Jesus Christ was the primary aspect of his life. Yet we must
not separate his Word from his activity. His Word was always active and he was
always active in his Word. The miraculous Word he proclaimed came to pass and
the miracles he did served as signs of all he was and proclaimed. While we
might compare the miracles of Jesus with the wonders performed by others, the
Gospels do not do so. According to the Word of Jesus Christ attested in the
Gospels, the absolutely new and miraculous event taking place with his presence
and through his Word and in his acts is the Kingdom of God. What is utterly
distinctive about his acts is that they alone manifest the powers of the age
to come (Hebrews 6:5).
The
miracles of Jesus Christ all reveal the unlimited power, the freedom, of God
alone. In all the miracles of Jesus Christ, and in his alone, the light of
God’s kingdom shined in our world of darkness. This light is what distinguishes
the kingdom of God and its miracles from all else. In the miracles of Jesus
Christ, and in his alone, the light of God’s kingdom shined on people who were
suffering. Second, this light shined almost exclusively on people suffering
physically in the shadow of death. It was not the righteous to whom Jesus
turned but those who suffered even as sinners. Third, the miracles of Jesus
revealed God’s power, his unlimited freedom, to be the faithful covenantal
partner with people who had specifically forsaken him. Fourth, the miracles of
Jesus revealed a God who is for us and therefore opposed to the nothingness
that seeks to destroy us and the sin that opens the door to it. In the miracles
of Jesus, God demonstrates the triumphant power of his omnipotent mercy over the
apparently supreme power of death. Finally, in the miracles of Jesus, and in
his alone, we see the light of God’s grace. He does not help people because
they are good but because they hurt and it is his good pleasure to help them.
A
relationship exists between the miracles of Jesus and the faith of those for
whom he acted in this way. Faith the size of a mustard seed (Luke 17:6) is
faith which, though obviously not of heroic quality, is nonetheless of a
certain quality. With this faith, the disciples themselves later proclaim the
presence of God’s kingdom not only with miraculous words but with miraculous
acts as well. This is the faith which two blind men who, when asked, “Do you
believe that I am able to do this?” by Jesus replied, “Yes, Lord”
(Matthew 9:28). It is a faith so lacking in outward appearance that Jesus made
a definite demand for its affirmation. Yet it is also a faith to which a
miracle may be brought in response. The two blind men in their misery cried out
to Jesus as the Son of David, and therefore as the King of Israel, for mercy.
Their faith was their belief that Jesus, and in him the God of Israel, had come
to them and had done so with the omnipotent mercy necessary to overcome their
otherwise inescapable misery.
So
the faith of these sufferers, sufficient to move mountains, great enough to do
the otherwise impossible, is their knowledge of and trust in the gracious Lord
of Israel who first revealed himself as the one who had come to deliver his
people from all their affliction and so also could save them from their
blindness. Objectively these two blind men belonged to Jesus Christ before
subjectively responding to him in faith. This precedence of the objective
lordship of Christ to the subjective response of faith is made even clearer in
the healing of the blind man described in John 9. There the healing precedes
the confession of faith it irresistibly calls forth. First Jesus Christ as Lord
turns to us before we can and do turn in faith to him.
So
miracle leads to faith. Jesus says, “If I am not doing the works of my
Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not
believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father
is in me and I am in the Father” (John 10:37-38). The powerfully merciful
acts of Jesus were his powerful call to faith in God’s grace. Jesus did not do
them to prove he was the Son of God. He did them because he was the Son of God
graciously responding to the misery of man.
And
faith leads to miracle. “Your faith has saved you; go in peace” (Luke
7:50) says Jesus to a woman who has just bathed his feet with her tears and
dried them with her hair (Luke 7:36f.) Her faith is her knowledge of, trust in,
and obedience to Jesus as Savior of the world and so her Savior too. So faith
has its origin in Jesus, is obedient to Jesus, and leads to Jesus. Faith is our
work, our active response, to this one source, center, and goal. By faith we
participate in the salvation that is ours in Christ and summon others to
acknowledge that Jesus Christ is their living Lord and Savior as well.
“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that
I do; and greater works than these will he do…” (John 14:12). In doing so
we move from Jesus, with Jesus, to Jesus, and proclaim the good news to others
that they too may do the same by the power of the Holy Spirit.
In
summary, Jesus Christ has set us free from the power of death for obedience to
God as his partners. In faith we participate in that freedom as God’s partners.
Faith is the human counterpart to divine grace.
The
Cross in the Life of Christ
Our
reflections on the New Testament witness to Jesus Christ as the royal man would
be fatally flawed if we did not now reflect on his coronation at the cross. His
crucifixion by man and abandonment by God form the glorious climax of his life.
This secret of his life, while revealed in his resurrection, nonetheless
characterized his whole life. First, Jesus was ready throughout his life to
embrace the cross he knew awaited him in Jerusalem at the end of his life. His
acceptance of John’s baptism, in solidarity with sinners, was his first step on
this path. As the Son of Man he came not to be served but to serve (Mark
10:45). At the Last Supper he offered the disciples his own body and blood. He
even knowingly gave Judas a part of his work. Second, God ordained and Jesus
affirmed being delivered up to death by Israel. Jesus Christ came proclaiming,
doing, and being the Kingdom of God. Representing the world, Israel either had
to abandon its claim as that kingdom to Jesus or crucify him. Third, the cross
of Jesus Christ also characterizes our lives as his disciples. But it need not
do so as a menacing presence if we remember that it is the sign of our
reconciliation with God accomplished by Jesus Christ.
4.
The Direction of the Son
The
direction of the Son is the meaning or even the power of his existence for us.
Jesus Christ is Lord. His power as Lord is not a potential power waiting for us
to make it real. It is an effective power established once and for all in his
resurrection and already flowing from him to us.
By
sinning we contradicted our own good nature as created by God. But the powerful
lordship and lordly power of Jesus Christ have proven to be even stronger,
setting us in freedom for God in contradiction to ourselves as sinners seeking
autonomy from God. Because he is already with us and for us, the old is gone
and the new has come. Jesus Christ has set us free. Now we may live freely. But
will we do it?
In
our consideration of this question, we must not shift our focus away from Jesus
Christ to ourselves. While it is a question of our actual freedom, that freedom
comes from, conforms with, and leads to Jesus Christ our Lord. In living free
we reflect his freedom. This is because, as Son of God and Son of Man, Jesus
Christ is our representative. As such he is our justification. In him we stand
righteous before God. But as our representative Jesus Christ is also our
sanctification (1 Corinthians 1:30). In him we also stand holy before God as
those turned toward God. Objectively all people are in Christ. Subjectively,
Christians realize that they are members of his body while non-Christians
provisionally remain outside of it.
To
reflect the freedom of Jesus Christ in our own lives, to participate in the
freedom that comes from, conforms with, and points to Jesus Christ through his
lordly power, we need to understand how the cross of Jesus Christ was the goal
of his life and the beginning of ours. To begin with, the death of Jesus Christ
was his goal and our beginning because God is love. Love is unconditional
self-giving. At the cross, Jesus Christ as both Son of God and Son of Man
wholly gave himself for our sake. The cross was the goal of his life and the
start of ours, second, because his free obedience to the Father to the bitter
end liberated us from sin and death. Third, the lordship and kingdom of Jesus
Christ were not thwarted by death but fully realized because fully maintained
through death. The resurrection revealed that even death itself had no power
over Jesus Christ because his life was the mighty act of God’s omnipotent
mercy.
The
resurrection was the revelation with power of the exaltation of Jesus Christ,
and of ours in him, that took place at the cross. It was the revelation with
power of Christ’s lordship, of Christ’s freedom in relation even to death, and
of our freedom in him through this power. And as the power of the resurrection
of Jesus Christ, this power differs absolutely from all else we call power.
This power is the power of faith, love, and hope; of truth, freedom, and joy.
Most comprehensively it is the power of eternal life. The power of the
resurrection of Jesus Christ plants the good seed of indestructible fellowship
with God in our lives even now. This power, then, is the power of the Holy
Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who enables us to see ourselves in Christ, to
witness to others of Christ, and to enable them to see themselves in Christ
through our witness. For these reasons the Church and Christians cannot trust
and commit themselves too much to the Spirit, but only suffer by hiding from it
behind institutions and personalities.
This
Spirit is holy. He is holy, first, because he is the Spirit of Jesus Christ himself
(Philippians 1:19). Jesus Christ faced death by the power of the Holy Spirit
and by this same power was revealed as victor over death by being raised from
death forever. Second, the Spirit is holy because Jesus Christ is the only one
who can and does send this Spirit to us so that we too may reflect his
humiliation and exaltation and so live in a way that corresponds to his own
life. Third, the Spirit is holy because he bears witness to Jesus Christ as
Lord and leads the Church and Christians to do the same. Finally, the Spirit is
holy because the people in whom he works know Jesus Christ as their Lord and
live by this determination. Those who know Jesus Christ in this way and so are
Christians are divided not ultimately but provisionally from non-Christians who
do not.
We
know Jesus Christ as Lord, and live by this determination, because he exercises
his powerful lordship and lordly power in our lives by giving us direction. To
receive his Spirit is to receive this direction. To be a Christian is to have
one’s daily existence determined by this direction and we cease being
Christians the day and any day our direction is determined by anything else.
The
direction given to us by Jesus Christ our Lord is first of all indicative. The
Holy Spirit does not negotiate with us, promising us various benefits which we
may take or leave. The Holy Spirit places us in the very definite freedom which
is ours only in Christ and from there indicates to us the one direction in
which we may continue to advance in freedom. Yet even as Christians we
constantly contradict our turning toward God as it has occurred in Christ. For
this reason the Holy Spirit, as the Spirit of truth, both corrects and
instructs us according to the law of grace, of freedom, of our existence as truly
human beings.
This
direction is also critical. In Jesus Christ we have been set free to be free.
From Jesus Christ as our point of departure, the Holy Spirit indicates always
the one particular possibility of thinking, speaking, and doing that for us at
that moment would mean freedom. Of course, in a complete lack of freedom, we
may choose from among the many enticing forms of nothingness destroyed by Jesus
Christ. So the Holy Spirit continues his work in us. He separates in us the new
creation we are called and enabled to be from the old creation already set
aside by Jesus Christ which nonetheless continues to move within us. In this
work the Holy Spirit nags us relentlessly. With every hour he affirms the new
and negates the old. We have been justified and sanctified in Christ. The Holy
Spirit presses us to act like it.
Finally,
the direction given to us by our Lord is instructive. The Holy Spirit is our
lordly Instructor and instructive Lord who reveals to us what God’s will for
us is here and now. He shows us in all detail the one direction in which we may
advance in freedom. We either concretely obey him or disobey him.
Copyright © 2019
by Steven Farsaci.
All rights
reserved. Fair use encouraged.