The Mystery of Christ's Human Nature

How can a person have a divine nature and a human nature at the same time in the way that we believe Jesus Christ did?

By R. C. Sproul

 

One of the great crises in evangelical Christianity today is a lack of understanding about the person of Christ. Almost every time I watch Christian television, I hear one the classical creeds of the Christian faith being denied blatantly, unknowingly, unwittingly. And of course, part of the of reason is that it is so difficult for us to understand how one person can have two natures. You are asking me the question "How?" I don't know how; I know that Jesus is one person with two natures. How can that be? Long before there was a human nature, there was a second person of the Trinity. Here the second person of the Trinity, very God of very God, God himself, was able to take upon himself a human nature. No human being could reverse the process and take upon himself a divine nature. I cannot add deity to my humanity. It's not as if Christ changed from deity into humanity. That's what I hear all the time. I hear that there was this great eternal God who suddenly stopped being God and became a man. That's not what the Bible teaches. The divine person took upon himself a human nature. We really can't understand the mystery of how this happened. But it is conceivable, certainly, that God, with his power, can add to himself a human nature and do it in such a way as to unite two natures in one person.

The most important council about this in the history of the church, whose decision has stood for centuries as the model of Christian orthodoxy and is embraced by Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Roman Catholics, Baptists--virtually every branch of Christendom--is the Council of Chalcedon. It was held in the year 451, in which the church confessed its belief about Jesus in this way: They said that we believe that Jesus is verus homus, verus Deus ~truly man, truly God. Then they went on to set boundaries  for how we're to think about the way in which these two natures relate to each other. They said that these two natures are in perfect unity, without mixture, division, confusion, or separation. When we think about the Incarnation, we don't want to get the two natures mixed up and think that Jesus had a deified human nature or a humanized divine nature. We can distinguish them, but we can't tear them apart because they exist in perfect unity. --From "Now That's A Good Question" by R.C. Sproul.

There is a mystery in Scripture regarding Christ’s human nature: 

In order to save fallen beings, Christ "had to be made like His brethren in all things" (Hebrews 2:17). Jesus appeared on earth "in the likeness of sinful flesh" (Romans 8:3). He was tempted by the devil (Matthew 4:1-11) and by what He suffered (Hebrews 2:18). "He was tempted in every way, just as we are" (Hebrews 4:15). Scripture also teaches that Christ is "holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners" (Hebrews 7:26).

How do we reconcile these seemingly incompatible statements? 

Christ Had Ascendful Human Nature

The Bible has very little to say about the human nature of Christ that makes the subject easy to understand. What are the most neglected insights on the human nature of Christ as derived from Scripture? Consider the following interpretation.

The devil took him into the holy city; and he stood him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, "If you are the Son of God throw yourself down; for it is written, 'He will give His angels charge concerning you; and on their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.' " Mt. 4:5,6.

Satan thought that by his temptations he could delude the world's Redeemer, to make one bold move in manifesting his divine power, to create a sensation, and to surprise all by the wonderful display of the power of his Father in preserving him from injury. He suggested that Christ should appear in his real character, and by this masterpiece of power, establish his right to the confidence and faith of the people, that he was indeed the Saviour of the world. If Christ had been deceived by Satan's temptations, and had exercised his miraculous power to relieve himself from difficulty, he would have broken the contract made with his Father, to be a probationer in behalf of the race.

It was a difficult task for the Prince of Life to carry out the plan which he had undertaken for the salvation of man, in clothing his divinity with humanity. He had received honor in the heavenly courts, and was familiar with absolute power. It was as difficult for him to keep the level of humanity as it is for men to rise above the low level of their depraved natures, and be partakers of the divine nature.

Christ was put to the closest test, requiring the strength of all his faculties to resist the inclination when in danger, to use his power to deliver himself from peril, and triumph over the power of the prince of darkness. Satan showed his knowledge of the weak points of the human heart, and put forth his utmost power to take advantage of the weakness of the humanity which Christ had assumed in order to overcome his temptations on man’s account. Second Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, April 1, 1875.

Christ's human nature was "in the likeness of sinful flesh" (Ro. 8:3). It was in every way like our sinful human nature. The equivalence may be illustrated with astronomy. Consider the ambiguous and humorous phrase: "Up is the direction away from the earth."

What I mean by this is that the two natures are essentially the same because one is the mirror image of the other. I consider this theory as the best first order approximation on the human nature of Christ.

I am suggesting that fallen human nature tends to pull human beings downward and has a descendful quality, whereas the nature that Jesus possessed and struggled with was to not manifest His divine nature.

 

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