The Fundamentals – Christ

This is a follow-up to prior posts on the topic of "The Fundamentals". Earlier entries in the series can be found here (The Fundamentals) and here (The Fundamentals - The Meaning of "God ").

Under this heading I am going to include the following as essential to understanding Who Christ is:

His Eternal Godhood
His Incarnation through virgin birth
His perfect human life
His voluntary bodily death
His resurrection and acsension

The denial of any of these fundamentals betrays an understanding that cannot connect “personal” salvation to the objective facts and necessary historical events that define that salvation in the first place. In other words, a truly saved person will recognize the need for, and accept the teaching of, these truths. They will echo, expand, fulfill, overflow and complete the understanding of salvation that they have already received.

Again, I am compelled to emphasize that it is not ignorance of these doctrines that I am concerned with, so much as the outright denial of them. Even though growing Christians may not all grasp the complete picture at once, they cannot in all sincerity willfully deny any of these things.

Christ’s Eternal Godhood

Miguel Servetus, a heretic of Reformation times (sometimes lumped in with the Anabaptists) denied this truth and actually burned to death at the stake with the cry on his lips, “Jesus, Son of Eternal God, have mercy on me!” Seems alright at first glance, doesn’t it? You might think the poor man was wrongly persecuted for his slightly different understanding. But his own words show that, even at the very threshold of eternity, he stubborny refused to call Jesus Christ “Eternal Son of God” rather than “Son of Eternal God”. You see, his whole adult life had been spent in propagating the heresy that the Trinity was a false doctrine and that Jesus was just a man, to whom God joined Himself. By this he denied both original sin and the Eternal Godhood of Christ.

I’m not advocating that we still burn people at the stake. I’m not even condoning what happened to Servetus or exonerating John Calvin for his role in the whole affair. I leave that to better minds than mine. What I am saying is that Servetus was guilty of a damning heresy that showed in his conscious and informed denial of Christ’s Eternal Godhood. He betrayed his unsaved condition through the expression of his unbelief.

That Christ the Son eternally preexisted as God, in the bosom of the Father, and came from heaven for the express purpose of saving His people from their sins is fully supported in both Testaments with such an amazing weight of scripture that the denial of it actually takes a willful effort. Along with the virgin birth (of which more presently) this supports the fact that it was God who came to save man, and not man who reached up to God. Therefore, for any person – especially a leader in the church – to deny this truth is heresy worthy of disfellowshiping.

His Incarnation and Virgin Birth

By “virgin birth” it is not intended to speak to the undoubted chastity of Mary so much as to the undeniable fact that Jesus Christ had no genetic human father. God was His Father in both senses of the word; that is, He was the Eternal Son from heaven come as a human being, the Father of whom was not a descendant of Adam, but God Himself by the agency of the Holy Spirit.

If Christ was born of entirely natural human parents then He was a son of Adam and subject to the corruptions of Adam’s nature. That being the case, He was incapable of saving anyone because He would have been a lost sinner from His conception and birth. He would have inherited original sin. As a sacrifice He could not have been “a lamb without spot or blemish”.

It is not vital that Mary be a virgin except insofar as that fact testifies to the impossibility of any other explanation for the conception of Jesus than that of the intervention of God Himself. So when I speak of the “virgin birth” I actually speak of the principle of the Fatherhood of God in the unique sense of Christ’s case. The fundamental is not the virginity of His mother but the fatherhood of God Almighty. Let’s not go down the wrong sort of Roman road.

This fundamental leads us to the fundamental of Christ’s truly human nature. Not only was He very God of very God come from eternity with the Father, one substance with Him – but He was also completely human in every sense of the word, lacking only a corrupt and sinful Adamic nature. We can meditate and speculate all we like, but we can’t truly comprehend what it means for Christ to be all God and all man at the same time. This isn’t the place for such devotional thoughts. Suffice it to say that in Christ there is an essential and (now) eternal union between God and man. In Christ, God took manhood upon Himself. There are two natures present in Him since the incarnation and forevermore – utter Godhood and utter manhood.

It would seem to be a fair comment to say that since we cannot understand fully, nor explain properly, the nature of the hypostatic union (try reading Athanasius on the topic) it would be wrong to declare belief in the virgin birth to be a fundamental of the faith. I disagree. Exhaustive understanding is not the measure. The Word of God is. And that Word portrays Jesus as both God and man with God as Father and Mary as mother.

So, to deny the teaching of God taking humanity upon Himself in Christ is to deny many things implicitly, as follows:

If God’s Fatherhood is denied so is the perfection of Jesus Christ from the womb, making Him a man only, corrupt by nature.

If Mary’s motherhood is denied Christ cannot be seed of the woman and is not fully human.

If Christ did not come from heaven it denies the unbidden, gracious, sovereign act of God in sending Jesus Christ - making salvation at best a synergism and at worst an impossibility.

If Christ is not a man then He cannot be man’s substitute.

If Christ is only a man He is an insufficient substitute for the infinite offence of sin to God’s inifinte dignity.

There is probably much more. Again, ignorance of the fulness of these concepts is not the point. Denial of them is. Teachers and pastors, seminarians, theologists and the like who supposedly name the Name of Christ are expected to be aware of the full counsel of God. The more one knows the more one is acountable. To whom much is given – of them much will be demanded. And woe to any who put a stumbling block before any of Christ’s little ones.

I confidently maintain that to deny the Incarnation and/or the virgin birth (for the reasons explained here) is to be a heretic and worthy of disfellowshiping.

His Perfect Human Life

Which of us convicts Him of sin? Which of those He knew during His incarnation? Not the Pharisees. Not the people. Not Herod. Not Pilate. Not the Sanhedrin. He was betrayed and unjustly condemned as the facts attest. He was born a Jew under the Law and He lived under that Law perfectly by keeping the spirit of the Law perfectly. There is much more, but I will restrain myself to the matter at hand. His life was one of perfect obedience to God. “This is my Son the Beloved, in Whom I am well pleased.” That saying characterized the beginning of His public ministry, was echoed after a fashion on the Mount of Transfiguration and was underscored for eternity in unimaginable power at His resurrection.

If Jesus did not live a perfect life, pleasing to God in every way – meaning free from the least hint of spot or blemish in thought, word, deed or omission – then He could not have been the perfect human substitute, offering Himself in place of His people. Therefore, any person who denies the spotless, sinless life of Christ denies the faith and is worthy of disfellowshiping.

His Voluntary Bodily Death

Jesus not only died in the normal human sense of the word, but he gave up His life voluntarily. He was certainly crucified at the hands of wicked men, but they were men like Pilate who could have no power over Him were it not given them from above. As God, He granted men the power to crucify His Son as a man. Complicated? Not really. God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. He had the power to leave the cross at any time. He had the power not to die. He had the power to make it all disappear in a puff of smoke. But He chose not to. He came to do the will of God as a man, without ever ceasing to be God.

Since the whole universe is not only created but also upheld by the word of His power (remember omnipotence) it follows that nothing comes to pass but that He causes or permits it. No one took His life from Him, because He laid it down. If we had taken His life – and we are all guilty of wanting to, one way or another – then the substitution could not have taken place. If the life of Christ had been stolen away from His omnipotence it was no longer the sacrifice of a man, but his murder. Christ sacrficed himself and it was the sacrifice with which God was pleased and by which His wrath against those who believe in Christ is assuaged. But if it was murder as we would have wished it to be, then God would not only still be angry at us, but His rage would be multiplied beyond measure – and beyond repair.

It is the rejection of this sacrifice that most enrages God against unbelievers. Though they are already condemned unless they repent and believe the gospel, yet to hear that same gospel and to reject it is, in fact, tantamount to murdering Christ. It is to kick dirt in God’s face; to spurn the most precious gift He has. What an awesome responsibility it is, then, to preach the gospel knowing what this means to those who harden their own hearts. In the words of Whitefield from his sermon "Marks of a True Conversion":

It makes my heart bleed within me, it makes me sometimes most unwilling to preach, lest that word that I hope will do good, may increase the damnation of any, and perhaps of a great part of the auditory, through their own unbelief.

Therefore, to deny that Christ died in the body and that His death was a voluntary sacrifice is to deny both the substitutionary and the free nature of the gift, and is worthy of being expelled from the fellowship. Again note – denial, and not ignorance is the key.


His Resurrection and Ascension

If Christ had remained in the grave He could not be God, nor could His human life have been declared a perfect and acceptable offering. The fact that no body was ever produced by the authorities underscores the historical verification of the spiritual truth that He rose again from the dead. It was necessary for Him to be raised because it was at that point that though he was descended from David according to the flesh, He was declared (marked out in the view of men) to be Son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by His resurrection from the dead. (Romans 1:3-4)

God raised Christ in a glorious celebration of victory by declaring in His resurrection the redemption that He came to accomplish. It was a heavenly Amen that will resound throughout eternity and that already causes jubilation in heaven. God punctuated the finished work of His Son with the final declaration. The work is done, the victory won, the end assured and the church of God is redeemed; Satan is judged, his power sapped, his shame demonstrated; disease and suffering and death are defeated. Not to believe in the resurrection of Christ is to effectively deny all of these things. And to deny them is to deny the gospel and the Christ of the gospel.

One might ask why I have included the ascension here. Is belief in the ascension critical? Yes! If Christ didn’t ascend then where is he? There are those who even today cry, “Lo, he is here” and “Lo, He is over there” and lead many astray. There are those who claim to be Christ, or to be His second advent. But Christ left for a very good reason – that the church be built through faith in Him and through the power of the Holy Spirit. Not sight – simply faith. Faith is God’s ordained means by which the life of His Son is manifested in His people. (No I’m not a William Branham follower)

The wisdom in this is staggering. Faith - not seeing, but believing God - moves mountains. It is the way trust in God is grown. It glorifies God by believing Him despite the “evidence” and call of the world, the flesh and the devil. It puts to shame and to flight the the principalities and power and spirits of wickedness in high places. It is not the faith itself that does this, but faith is the means by which the glorious victory of Christ declared at the resurrection is outworked into God’s universe.

It would be rare indeed to find someone denying the ascension. Before they come to this they have likely denied other things essential to the faith. But to find a person claiming to be a Christian who also teaches that Christ is still around bodily, or that He never left would be to find someone living by sight and not faith – and thereby denying the faith.