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Hearts Homeward Bound #3: The Relentless Pursuit
The Nature of Christ and the Nature of Christianity
Presenter: Larry Kirkpatrick
Location: LeCenter Seventh-day Adventist Church, MN, USA
Delivery: 2011-03-19
Publication: GreatControversy.org 2011-03-28 22:36Z
Type: Sermon
URL: http://www.greatcontroversy.org/gco/ser/kirl-hhb3.php
How important is what the Bible teaches about the nature of Christ? Some think that when we engage in such a study we are veering off into small matters. Really, this question even has to do with the rise of the Roman Catholic, Pentecostal, and other churches. Is God far away from man, or has He come close—really close? Remember, in Exodus, Moses goes up on the mountaintop to be with God, but when Jesus comes He comes all the way down from heaven to become a man. When He has become a man, His followers go up on the Mount of Olives to hear His discourse. In Revelation 14:1 they are seen standing with Him on Mount Zion—on the mountain again. All through the years, across all the ages, God is in relentless pursuit. He wants to bring His children up.
The fundamental issue in the Great Controversy War is trust. Who is God? Can we trust Him? Does He want us on the mountain? Can we go up the mountain? Would He even come to us and climb the mountain by our side? This is no mere academic question; arguably, it is the most telling question about the nature of Christianity. God does not force, He pursues. He goes to extraordinary lengths to win us. He will heal His creation and He will do it without taking away free will from us.
The Mission of Jesus
There are two major birth and infancy passages about Jesus. Our understanding of them has a decided bearing on what we think the Bible can teach about the nature of Christ.
Matthew 1:21-28: God With Us
Here we look at the initial New Testament passage introducing Jesus and His mission. God tells what Messiah’s name will be: Jesus, salvation/deliverance, and that He is also Immanuel, God with us. His mission, His purpose, is to save His people from their sins. This is always God’s purpose when He goes up on a mountain—or down from one.
What is interesting, is that if you go back to Isaiah seven from whence Matthew quotes (Isaiah 7:14), in Isaiah’s day God was trying to increase the trust of His people in Him during a crisis. Syria, in alliance with the kingdom of Israel (the ten northern tribes), is approaching to lay seige to Judah and Jerusalem. Ahaz and his people are outnumbered, trapped. In human terms, there is little hope. But God gives a sign. The son that will be born to Isaiah will be called Immanuel, “God with us”. That is, God will encourage His people to trust in Him by being their Deliverer. Yet how much closer He comes when He not only causes a child to be born with the name Immanuel, but sends His own Son Jesus as Deliverer.
Sometimes we do not see the significance of the “deliverer” idea. We gravitate instead to the “savior” idea. We have this picture of God coming and giving us what amounts to an effortless magic carpet ride to heaven. Actually, the task of a deliverer is to remove oppression and enable you to do what you should do—not to save yourself, but to be an active, responsible, ever-refreshed Christian. Abraham had to leave his birth family. Noah had to build an ark. The delivered Hebrew slaves had to walk out of Egypt. Elijah had to build an altar and pray. Nehemiah had to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Jesus had to walk to Calvary.
But we get a magic carpet ride?
Jesus comes to save, that is, to deliver His people from their sins. This is the primal root of the New Testament. It is why we are New Testament Christians. Sin is to be ended. A Deliverer is needed. God comes down from the mountain to get us!
But how far down? Does He come just far enough to shout instructions down to us from a ledge? How far down does the ladder reach? How far up does the ladder go? Probably you have heard this statement before:
Christ is the ladder that Jacob saw, the base resting on the earth, and the topmost round reaching to the gate of heaven, to the very threshold of glory. If that ladder had failed by a single step of reaching the earth, we should have been lost. But Christ reaches us where we are. He took our nature and overcame, that we through taking His nature might overcome. Made ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh’ (Romans 8:3), He lived a sinless life. Now by His divinity He lays hold upon the throne of heaven, while by His humanity He reaches us. He bids us by faith in Him attain to the glory of the character of God. Therefore are we to be perfect, even as our ‘Father which is in heaven is perfect’ (The Desire of Ages, pp. 311, 312).
The base rests on the earth. The topmost round reaches to the gate of heaven. Jesus connects earth and heaven completely. Did you notice in Isaiah 7:14 that Isaiah’s boy Immanuel was given as a sign? But the ultimate Immanuel is so much more than a sign, “the express image of his person” (Hebrews 1:3), the “CHARACTEER of His substance” (Greek). The sign given through Isaiah was a representation of God as deliverer; the coming of the Messiah was the manifestation of the Deliverer Himself. It is the difference between sign and substance.
Many have been taught that Jesus is far away from them; He is Savior in some abstract legal sense. What is required of man is acknowledgement of his own inability, rather than actual transformation. Some Adventists have come to a similar understanding. These sometimes view an interest in the question of Jesus’ humanity as a throw-back position to earlier, less informed times in the church. They prefer to go with evangelical thinking. But there are a wide range of views among evangelicals, and things are not so simplified. It can give added perspective to hear what non-Adventist thinkers have to say about the incarnation and connected teachings.
The son of a human mother, even born without a human father, is still organically related to the whole human situation. . . (Reinhold Niebuhr, op. cit. in Harry Johnson, The Humanity of the Saviour, p. 43).
The New Testament supports the theory that Jesus was born into humanity and took full human nature from Mary, and the obvious deduction is that part of this heredity was ‘fallen human nature’ (Harry Johnson, Ibid., p. 44).
Such a doctrine [the immaculate conception of Mary] could not have occurred to the New Testament authors, for it contradicts the true humanity of Jesus and overthrows the good news of salvation: in fact, if Mary is found outside the ‘camp’ where humanity is held captive by the evil one, then the child she has miraculously conceived will Himself also be born outside this camp: and then neither He nor His work will have relevance for men (J.-J. von Allmen, op. cit. in Harry Johnson, Ibid., p. 44).
These are thinking with clarity. Mary is the connection; Jesus is as human as we are. He is connected to us. Deliverer and deliverees are EX ENOS PANDES “all of one” (Hebrews 2:11). Indeed, the same verse says that “both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified” (KJV) are united. A more correct rendering of Hebrews 2:11 from the Greek would translate EE AGEEAZOMENEE, that “both He who is making holy and those who are being made holy are all out of one.” Out of one what? One common humanity. The Contemporary English Version puts it, “Jesus and the people he makes holy all belong to the same family.”
The biblical language here is actually present passive indicative—continuous action received by the subject in present time. Jesus is presently acting to make us holy, we are presently receiving the action and being made holy.
The power we receive for obedience is entirely from outside of ourselves. However, the choices that we make to receive that power, while encouraged from outside of us, can only be our own choices made from within our person. Being made holy is therefore not strictly a passive operation; rather, it is full of a closenss, an intimacy, and can only be accomplished with our intentional participation. We gain no merit for our choices of course; we are not “saved” by our actions. Yet because this is a moral matter, God empowers that change only with our exercise of free will. He entices but He does not enforce. It remains for us to actually choose holiness.
Consider Matthew 1:21 further. His name is Jesus because He saves His people. Here is the same thought; At the outset of the New Testament, Jesus is identified with those He comes to deliver. If He is of one with us, then He may redeem us, but if He is not one of us, then, as von Allmen noted, Jesus is “born outside this camp: and then neither He nor His work will have relevance for men.”
He came to His own, truly His own. He did not stay outside our camp, but came all the way down to it. He is not God at a distnace from us, but God with us, as in God becoming one of us.
Luke 1:26-38: That Holy Thing
In Luke’s birth account, in the King James version, the almost-infant Jesus is described thus:
“that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the son of God” (Luke 1:35).
Some have understood this as somehow saying that Jesus’ humanity must be different than ours. Our goal in this half of the presentation is to endeavor to understand this question. Does this passage clarify Jesus’ great difference from us, or, does it clarify His great oneness with us?
Not every translation offers the text as “that holy thing.” For example,
(ESV) the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.
(CEV) So your child will be called the holy Son of God.
(NIV) So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.
(NASB) for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God.
(RSV) the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.
No other Bible writer uses the term “that holy thing.” Let’s find help for sound interpretation using “circles of context.”
Circles of Context
The phenomenon of context literally involves making sound judgments concerning which writings have the most significant bearing on other writings. When we are looking at a particular passage we especially seek to understand, we try to be wise in discerning what materials among the other writings available to us are the most directly useful. We hold to the principle of “Scripture interprets Scripture.” But which Scripture among all the Scripture interprets the Scripture we are working with?
Remember our definitions:
“Inspired” means in particular a writing or an utterance that has been divinely given and which is divinely protected, i.e. writings which we understand come with a guarantee that they will accomplish the divine purpose for which they have been given. An example of this is time prophecy. When God gives the 1260 day/year prophecy, He has a purpose. That prophecy foretells a particular development in history, delimited by beginning and ending time reference points. Writings such as everything in the 66 books of the Bible and the writings also of Ellen G. white are writings seventh-day Adventists consider to be inspired.
“Illumined” means writings or utterances which are influenced by the Holy Spirit but which are not endowed with the kind of protection or guarantee we anticipate in inspired writings. A sermon by a pastor, or the general conference president, or your favorite camp meeting speaker is (hopefully) given under this phenomenon of illumination. Bible commentaries and Bible studies, at their best, also fall into this category of illumined.
As mentioned, there is a third, very general, very loose sense of illumination, which comes from the fact that every ray of divine light that has ever reached our world has come from Christ. Every idea of truth originates in God, but not every idea of truth is packaged in inspired writings; some are loose, in the open so to speaak. Witness, for example, how so many non-christians today are teaching better health principles. But truth is truth no matter who embraces or presents it. Even a scholar in part deeply entrenched in error may sometimes present that which is true, and thus, helpful. But that which is the most crucial is to be found in the plain statements of Scripture.
In practical terms, we will focus on context and the Bible. The main question of context is relationship between one writing and another. Some writings are more distant from the human author whose inspired writings we consider, others are more closely related to the text one is exploring. The first step is to determine where your primary text begins and ends. You cannot study a very large section of scripture at one time, so you isolate the passage you will study. Then you consider sources beyond that primary source, in the circles of context.
If we examine Luke, we find that chapters one and two provide roughly a birth-to-adulthood sequence. Here is an outline:
1:1-4 Dedication
1:5-25 Birth of John the Baptist foretold
1:26-38 Birth of Jesus foretold
1:39-56 Mary’s visit with Elizabeth, the Magnificat
1:57-80 Birth of John, prophesy of Zechariah
2:1-7 Birth of Jesus
2:8-21 Angel praise and shepherds visit Jesus
2:22-40 Jesus‘ presentation at the Temple, Simeon and Anna
2:41-52 Jesus comes of age, teaching in the Temple
Then the Scripture we are looking at (Luke 1:35) falls within the section of Scripture where Jesus’ birth is foretold. That passage provides the primary context for that text (1:35), although secondarily, it is part of the larger birth of John and Jesus circle in chapters one and two. Our chief “circles of context” then, are:
- 1:35 Text
- 1:26-38 Primary passage
- Chapters 1-2 (next larger division of Luke)
- Luke
- Lucan corpus (Luke and Acts)
- Other gospel birth of John and Jesus narratives (Matthew chs. 1, 2, John 1:1-18)
- New Testament
- Tanakh plus New Testament (Bible)
- All inspired writings (OT, NT, EGW)
These are the primary materials. Beyond this will come other scholarly data, as found in Bible commentaries and writings of Judaism.
The statement that has ourt interest is, “that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the son of God” (Luke 1:35). Key ideas here are holiness, birth, the name of the child. Is there anywhere else where we find these elements, or some of them, in other circles of context?
Matthew asserts Jesus as King but tells us nothing about his presentation at the temple. Neither does John’s gospel. But Luke himself does tell us more. Jesus was circumcised eight days from His birth (2:21), and presented at the Temple after Mary’s 30 days of purification were concluded (Luke 2:22, 23, 39 cf. Leviticus 12) and sacrifice made (Luke 2:24). (The sacrifice was for the mother’s purification; the redemption was for the Son.)
More than this, Jesus was consecrated and redeemed. Luke 2:23 especially speaks of the practice of the redemption of the firstborn (Exodus 13:1, 11-16).
By using circles of context, we work through the passage almost as with a filter, and watch for Scripture. Passages like this point us very plainly to others.
In Exodus 13, the firstborn males were to be dedicated to God. It involved paying a redemption price for them. Notice what God says; all male firstborn shall be what? Sanctified, that is, set apart as holy (Exodus 13:1). This might surprise us, but this practice persists from the time of the Exodus, through the time of Christ and is still practiced in Judaism today. It is PIDYON HABEN—redemption of the son. You can read all about it on the internet.
It is important to understand the meaning of “holy” in Judaism. “Holy” means special, set aside from other things. If someone or something is holy to God, it is dedicated to Him, and may not be used for anything else. This is what is meant by “to sanctify.”
In PIDYON HABEN, the child is brought to the priest on a plate. The father presents the child. A blessing is given. The child is given to the priest (but only momentarily and only for the purpose of redemption). The priest asks whether he will give him the child or redeem it. He says that he will redeem him, and gives the priest five silver pieces. The priest blesses the child. The ceremony includes a dialogue back and forth between father and priest, with prayer and a concluding sip of wine. All this, because the firstborn Hebrew male is holy to the Lord.
We might not think of Jesus as being redeemed; rather, we think of Him as Redeemer. But He was indeed redeemed at the Temple according to the Torah. The redemption ceremony was a remembrance of God’s deliverance of Israel at the Exodus.
But there is a question that remains: Why is this the only instance of Jesus being referred to as “thing,” with the nueter gender of the verb for “begotten” (leading to the translation of “thing” rather than “person”)? There are some 99 New Testament references to this Greek word. Only twice is the word offered in nueter gender. But let’s see the other occurance. First John 5:4:
For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.
Here, as in Luke 1:35, a person is referred to with the neuter. It is translated as WHATsoever rather than WHOsoever. Also, in hundreds of other references, Jesus is referred to in the masculine gender.
And so, the reference in Luke 1:35 is not, in fact, unique in the New Testament. Impersonal neuters are not only used to refer to Jesus but also to any human person with damaged nature who chooses to be born of God.
Then this text is not a marker of Jesus’ distance from the rest of humanity, but of His closeness. He is identified as a firstborn human son of Israel. Rather than a proof of His being different from us, is the ultimate proof that He is one with us. Only a firstborn son who opens the womb as part of Israel is redeemed. Jesus became as human as we are.
conclusion
We have looked at two texts in the New Testament that address the nature of Christ—passages often overlooked or misunderstood. They do tell us something about Jesus and the humanity that He took—just not what some have expected. His humanity was as our humanity.
In Matthew 1:21 we considered the passage from which the the New Testament draws, Isaiah 7:14. There we considered the meaning of the phrase Immanuel, “God with us.” We also noticed that Jesus came to deliver His people from sin. In Luke 1:35 we find reference to Jesus as a “thing,” (although this translation is by no means universal). Reviewing the text carefully, working through by circles of context, we found that Luke gives information helping us understand his own meeting—he refers us back to the Tanakh (Old Testamant) and its teaching of PIDYON HEBEN, “Redemption of the [firstborn] son.” What’s more, the same Greek word for “begotten” used in Luke 1:35 to refer to Jesus as “that holy thing” is also used within the New Testament circle of context to refer to those who choose to be born of God (“whatsoever” is born of God. 1 John 5:4).
Actually, the two passages we studied point more to the close identification of Jesus’ humanity with our own, than the opposite—than making His humanity alien from our own. Jesus did not come on a vague mission, but a crystal-clear one: to save His people from their sin. His people. Saving us is His relentless pursuit.GCO
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