Scripture teaches that
Jesus is unique in many ways! This
includes His very nature – for he is not JUST a human being (what we obviously
can see) but He is also God!
He is a real “flesh and
blood” human being, the son of Mary, a Hebrew descendent of Abraham, a Jew of
the line of Judah and David (Galatians 4:4, John 19:34, 1 Timothy 2:5). But He is also the “incarnate” Second Person
of the Trinity (John 20:28, 1 John 5:20).
At His conception, the Second Person “became flesh” (incarnate) in the
person of Jesus – so that He is altogether BOTH God and Man (the Two Natures of
Christ). Fully both.
These natures are united
and inseparable but not blended into one.
The “interplay” of these two natures (called “The Communication of
Attributes”) is difficult stuff beyond the scope of our study here – but it’s
enough to say that sometimes we see Jesus primarily in one nature or the other,
but we must never forget He was/is always and fully both since His conception.
And what applies to His divine nature also applies to His human nature. This can be pretty “heavy” stuff – we’ll
need to wait for Christianity 201 (or maybe 301!) for that.
Embracing that Jesus is
BOTH fully man and fully God of course embraces that two realities can be fully
true at the same time. Obviously,
there’s a mystery there! Obviously,
where God is present, the rules of physics will not suffice. There is always a human temptation to make
things logical, to “connect the dots,” to explain things in terms of human
stuff like science and philosophy. It’s
a temptation to resist…
Without sin
Because Jesus is ALSO God
and God is without sin, one of the “functions” of the communication of
attributes is that Jesus is completely without sin – He IS morally perfect and
DOES fulfill the Law – He is the only human example of that. This sinlessness of Jesus is an important
teaching of the New Testament (Hebrews 4:15, John 8:46, John 8:29, John 17:19, John 18:38, Matthew 27:19,
Luke 23:41, Matthew 27:4, 2 Corinthians 5:21, etc.). We’ll later see why this is so important.
By His two natures, Jesus
has all the attributes of God and all the attributes of man – except for
sin.
The Messiah/Savior!
But the important thing is
that He is our Savior! We’ll talk more
about that in the next Chapter, but Christianity is centered in the affirmation
that Jesus IS the Savior!
“You will give him the
name Jesus for he will save the people from their sins” (Matthew
1:21). “Jesus is the Savior of the world”
(John 4:42). “Salvation is found in no
one else, for there is no other name under heaven by which we are saved” (Acts
4:12). “For God so loved the world that
He gave His only Son Jesus, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but
has everlasting life” (John 3:16). “I am
the way and the truth and the life, no one comes unto the Father except by
me.” It’s understandable that we spend
FAR less time and effort on metaphysical stuff about Jesus and far more time
celebrating what He did and does! He is
the Savior!
A Word about Mary…
As is often the case,
Lutherans hold a “middle ground” here.
The Bible actually says
very little about the mother of Jesus, but we are told that all generations
will call her “blessed” and we read about Her profound example of faith
and obedience. And, of course, Jesus
loved Mary – and so it’s appropriate for us to do the same. For these reasons,
Lutherans hold Mary in high esteem – more so than is common in
Protestantism. Lutherans historically
have referred to Her as “Our Lady” and “the Mother of God” (remembering that
Jesus is also God).
On the other hand, there
are a number of dogmas in the Roman Catholic Church that we do not embrace as
such. These include the Perpetual
Virginity of Mary (that Mary remained a virgin all her life, proclaimed in 681
AD), the Immaculate Conception of Mary (that she was conceived without original
sin, 1870), the Assumption of Mary (that she was bodily received into heaven
upon her death, 1950), the Mediatrix of All Graces (that she also is the
mediator between God and man, 1904), and a few others. We find no biblical confirmation for any of
these ideas, the tradition is late and biblically unfounded, and indeed some of
them seem to Lutherans biblically problematic and perhaps largely irrelevant. Mind you, we don’t declare these ideas to be
wrong, but we don’t affirm them as dogmas either.
It should be noted that
Luther (and most of the early Lutheran “fathers”) embraced many of these
teachings we now associate with Catholicism (a point Catholics often bring
up). Luther was Catholic for about half
his life and he lived in a world VERY focused on Mary – and his spirituality
reveals this. Especially early on,
Luther reveals a very passionate Marian devotion (that lessened with time). But they were embraced as “pious opinions” not dogmas. Pious opinions are views about which
Scripture is silent (neither affirming or denying) but have strong historic and
ecumenical embrace; these we are permitted
but not required to embrace. Like Luther, some Lutherans today embrace
some of these things – but as pious opinion.
Footnotes, questions and
discussions…
1. The
Two Natures of Christ was another of the huge early debates (the Trinity being
the other biggie). This was a similar
issue: sometimes Jesus is presented as
fully human, other times as fully God.
WHICH is true was a hot debate!
Some argued that He is fully God but only LOOKED like a human being
(rather like a ghost), others that he was fully human but simply represented
God on earth (a kind of divine Apostle).
Early Christians prayed, studied Scripture, debated and prayed. Lots of philosophical theories were
presented. In the end, the embrace was
simply that BOTH are equally true, and physics or philosophy just can’t explain
it. Scripture is to be taken at face
value – even if we don’t understand it.
He is BOTH – inseparately. His
two natures BOTH exist (not some blending of the two, as if put into a mixer).
We accept this – and just stop where Scripture does, leaving our questions as
our questions. This was finally affirmed at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD
(although this consensus was much older than that). What wisdom do you see in this approach to
this question?
2. This
session is about JESUS – the centerpiece of Christianity, and yet it’s probably
the shortest session in our study! The
reason is simple: Christianity is not so
focused on the essence or nature of Jesus as on the work of Jesus – what Jesus
did! For us! We’ll study that – at length – in the next
chapter!
3. Some
Protestants and Catholics like to argue about Mary. Lutherans find ourselves a bit on the
sidelines. We see Mary as a Christian of
amazing faith and obedience – to be esteemed, and obviously she’s
important as the Mother of Our Lord!! On
the other hand, we simply don’t want to dogmatically proclaim things not known to
be true (and perhaps rather irrelevant anyway) or to suggest anything that
detracts from Jesus as THE Savior. We
share some of the Catholic admiration and spirituality, but share the
Protestant concern and emphasis on this point.
But we don’t like the fight over
Mary! In what ways to you think Mary
could help and/or harm our
faith and discipleship?
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