The American posture is dominated by pragmatism—meaning that our biggest question for whether or not we should learn something is, “Does it work?” We need ideas to do something for us to think they are at all worthy of our attention. A concept on its own does not do it for us.

We often treat the Christian faith in similar fashion, having little patience with a doctrine that does not have an immediately obvious way of turning into action. We turn Christianity into merely a motivational tool or set of duties when we ignore our religious, teaching—and dare I say—theological heritage that has so greatly characterized the Christian faith across millennia.

Theology does always come home to roost in real life significance, though it may not be practical action, which can frustrate some. I have no idea how I can take any of Scripture’s teaching and tell you how it might help you build a rocking chair or how it might inform the mechanics of accounting. But it does shape our lives in the way we think about the world, our interaction with others, and how we conduct ourselves.

The irony is that sometimes a rich idea has the most practical mileage. People run out of steam when all they have is a to-do list. Eventually they fizzle out. We need motivation. We need foundation for our actions. We are not mere animals who act on instinct; people hardly just do what is in front of them. We process life and act out of values, concerns, joys, and reasons.

As we work through the Apostles’ Creed, we come to the line that Jesus Christ is “. . .His [meaning “the Father’s” from the Creed’s first section] only begotten Son, our Lord.” We have thought about how the true God is triune with the Father, Son, and Spirit eternally existing as the persons of the Godhead. When we come to think about Jesus Christ, God the Son, we also have to think about his incarnation, namely how he stepped into history by assuming a true human nature to his divine person, coming in our likeness to fulfill everything required for our salvation.

In this article, we are thinking about the Son’s incarnation. When we reflect on matters like the incarnation of God the Son, we have to know that we are beyond the limits of our minds to comprehend entirely. We are in the realm of learning what Scripture reveals and trusting the grammar that has been handed to us through the ages. Much of the purpose of this series is to introduce or firm up our understanding of how Christians talk about these highest realities.

So, we are going to think about how Jesus Christ is both truly God and truly man. We are going to consider how God the Son is eternally begotten of the Father yet assumed our nature to become our Lord in a new sense, in addition to his natural Lordship over us according to his deity. Our main point is that Christ’s incarnation shows God’s love and teaches us humility.

Natures

When I was in seminary, I would attend presbytery meetings, best I could, especially to watch the theological exams as a help in my own preparation to take my exams. I remember one candidate, who had already been a pastor for some time in another non-Reformed denomination, was asked the question, “How many natures does Christ have?” He replied, “You know, that’s a good question, I’ve never thought about that.” Oftentimes during presbytery, guys will be working on things as they participate. In this case, every laptop closed, every head raised, and every attention got laser focused on this fellow.

Why would this answer prompt such devoted attention? The reason is that Christianity has long summarized the Bible’s teaching about who Jesus is by saying that Christ is God’s true Son who assumed human nature in his incarnation. Our creeds and confessions are plain on this issue and at the very least ministers need to be aware of this basic Christian teaching. Jesus Christ is one divine person who has a divine nature as God’s only begotten Son and assumed a true human nature in order to redeem us. So, he is one person, having two natures.

Far from speculative, we see this point in Philippians 2. In verses 6–8, Paul explained what it was like for the eternal Son of God to take a human nature. Paul tells us that Christ as we know him in the incarnation has two “forms.” In verse 6, Christ was “in the form of God,” which entailed “equality with God.” In light of our doctrine of the Trinity, we know that this equality is that the person of the Son is equally God with Father and Spirit. So, the Son’s first “form” is divine. Namely, the person of the Son has always and eternally had a divine nature.

The language that we have used for this side of our point is that, according to his deity, Christ is God’s only begotten Son, which comes from John 1:14. We mean that the Son has eternally—meaning without a time of beginning—come forth from the Father. This relationship is called eternal generation, that the person of the Son has always and eternally come forth from the Father’s person within the divine essence. This divine person, having an eternal and natural relationship to the Father and Spirit within the Godhead, then commonly shares in divine nature with Father and Spirit.

This eternal Son stepped into history for our redemption by becoming incarnate in human nature. In verse 7, we have a statement paralleling Christ’s identity as the eternal God, saying that Christ took on “the form of a servant.” Now, we do not have to wonder about what Paul meant by “form of a servant” because he told us. It meant “being born in the likeness of men.” It meant “being found in human form.” If Jesus was truly servant, having truly human form, he was also truly God.

Just as Jesus has a divine nature, he has a human nature. In the same way that he is everything that it means to be God, he took upon himself a true human nature, assuming everything and anything required of being truly human. He took on a human soul and human mind, coming with human emotions and human limitations according to his human nature. He ate food and slept because, according to his humanity, he needed nourishment and energy. The Son’s incarnation requires the doctrine of Christ’s two natures.

Nurture

The practical lesson from Christ’s two natures is that we learn humility. It is profoundly striking that some of Paul’s deepest reflections on Christ’s two natures are set within an ethical exhortation. In other words, real practicalities of the Christian life are grounded in the deepest theology. Look at verses 1–5:

So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus. (emphasis added)

The mind we are to have in Christ is the mind of others-centered humility.

We so easily feel entitled, even—maybe especially—in the church, whether that be with the church as such or with our brothers and sisters in the church. We think our preferences, our methods, our décor, our songs, our tunes, our demeanor ought to be center stage. Even if we get ongoing attention and care, we can get bent out of shape even the first time that things do not pan out how we wanted or when someone does not predict what we wanted them to do and respond in kind. We can easily impose our ill feelings on church members around us because life has not gone how we wanted and they ought just to know it and know how to rush in to save the day. We get wrapped in ourselves, happy to receive grace, and forgetting to give grace.

God the Son charted a different course. Instead of insisting on his rights that he has always had as equal with God, he made himself nothing by taking servant’s form as an act of obedience, even unto death. Although Christ owed no sort of submission or obedience to anyone after the form of God, he willingly accepted a mission to benefit others. His equality with the Father did not prevent him from becoming obedient to the Father. So, Jesus, though equally God, accepted the mission to take servant’s form and become obedient even unto death on the cross.

The gospel lays the axe to the root of our entitlement and then salts and burns whatever remains. God the Son above all had true entitlement but laid it down to give grace to others. The beauty is that if all of us focused on others rather than ourselves, we would not have to worry about our own needs because someone else would always be caring for them. The logic of the gospel is nurture for humility.

Nourish

Not only does the gospel nurture humility; it also nourishes humility. Christ’s incarnation not only gives implied instruction for how to live the Christian life; Christ enables the Christian life. The gospel logic of humility grows from how Jesus Christ came to save his people from our sins.

From eternity, God the Son has been eternally begotten of the Father, and he alone is God’s natural Son, his only begotten Son in the Godhead. According to his deity, he is as much the Lord over us as the Father. He has natural right to be our Lord as God the Son. The Heidelberg Catechism 33 asks, “Why is Christ called the only begotten Son of God, since we are also the children of God?” answering, “Because Christ alone is the eternal and natural Son of God; but we are children adopted of God, by grace, for His sake.” The incarnation is the gospel message, that God the Son became man and, as the Nicene Creed says, “for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven.” As man, Jesus endured the humiliation of death even the cursed cross, which brought about his exaltation and our salvation.

In Philippians 2:10–11, Paul quoted Isaiah 45:23, 25 where God said, “By myself I have sworn; from my mouth has gone out in righteousness a word that shall not return: ‘To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance. . . . In the Lord all the offspring of Israel shall be justified and shall glory.’” God swore an oath that every knee would bow to him and every tongue confess he is Lord. Now that the Father has exalted Christ above every name, people are bowing to God because Christ is God. Isaiah 45:25 says that the people of God will give glory to God because they have been justified by God, declared righteous by him and put in a right relationship with him. This is of course exactly what Jesus did for us. Because of Christ’s obedience unto death, he received the two benefits of exaltation and a justified people.

So, Jesus is naturally the Lord as God, but he obtained a new aspect of lordship through his exaltation in his incarnate human nature, namely by overcoming death and saving us. He reigns as God and he reigns as mediator. Heidelberg Catechism 34 responds to the question of why we call him our Lord, explaining, “Because He has redeemed us, both soul and body, from all our sins, not with gold or silver, but with His precious blood, and hath delivered us from all the power of the devil; and thus has made us His own property.”

Jesus Christ is our Lord by nature because he made us. In that role, he would need to consign us to everlasting condemnation because of our sin. Christ is our Lord by redemption because we were bought with a price, namely his life and death in our nature. So, the risen Christ is our Lord because we belong to him by creation and by salvation. We can grow in our humility to be others-centered because Christ forgot himself for our sake and works the power of resurrection life in those who belong to him so that we become more like him.

The beauty of the gospel is that for those who are prideful, those who love this world and its false glory, for us, God the Son assumed a human nature so that he could live and die in our place. The gospel is that, despite your failures to be like Christ, he gave himself for you. It may seem overwhelming to think about how much we are asked to love others and be concerned with them more than ourselves. But Christ died not only to cover the penalty of your sin, but also to crush the power of your sin. He gave you his Spirit to enable you to grow in godliness. His Spirit will not let sin or selfishness reign as master of your heart. We worship God because he justifies the ungodly and we worship Christ because he embodies humility unto our salvation.

©Harrison Perkins. All Rights Reserved.

You can find the whole series here.

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Post authored by:

• Harrison Perkins

  

  Harrison Perkins (PhD, Queen’s University Belfast; MDiv, Westminster Seminary California) is pastor of Oakland Hills Community Church (OPC), a member of the of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, a Senior Research Fellow at the Craig Center for the Study of the Westminster Standards, associate online instructor in church history at Westminster Theological Seminary, a visiting lecturer in systematic theology at Edinburgh Theological Seminary, and author of Reformed Covenant Theology: A Systematic Introduction.

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