apologies

Apologies for continued intermission.  Very busy at moment.  Normal service will assume as soon as possible.  Possibly a few weeks. 

an apology

For those who regularly drop into this blog let me apologise for a recent drop in productivity.  A number of commitments have prevented me posting recently.  I do hope to post in a few days though it is likely that over the summer months the posts will be less regular.  Thanks for continuing to drop in and read.  I do appreciate it.

uk coalition for marriage

‘Yesterday saw the launch of the Coalition for Marriage and its national marriage petition (sign here). Here is the text of the launch speech given by Colin Hart, Campaign Director for the Coalition. I would like to announce the launch of the Coalition for Marriage. The Coalition has one, very simple aim: To support the current definition of marriage and to oppose all plans to redefine it. The law currently defines marriage as “the voluntary union for life, of one man and one woman, to the…’

The above is cited from the Coalition for Marriage website.  You may find the speech in full here.   If you are a UK citizen you may wish to consider signing the petition.

fighting the good fight!

news flash about icon bashing

For those who know Nicky Mackison he has opened a new blog called ‘IcoNick-last’.  Nicky has an incisive mind and seeks to be biblical in his thinking.  The result is he is good at exposing some of our sacred cows as wanting.  I am not talking about the truths of the gospel to which he is committed but those accretions to the gospel and faith that we begin to treat as part of the faith.  Nicky is good at challenging these and making us think.  If you want to be challenged then visit IcoNick-last.  It can be found here.

It would be wrong however, to give the impression that all will simply be negative.  Nicky is good at exploring live issues in evangelicalism and providing a biblical perspective.  Enjoy.

homosexuality, divorce and remarriage, evangelical hypocrisy

Have you noticed how hot and bothered (righteously indignant) we conservative evangelicals get about the acceptance of homosexuality by society and yet how apparently indifferent we are to divorce and remarriage in the church?   We are appalled at the acceptance of homosexuality by the world and indeed by the wider church and yet divorce and remarriage in conservative evangelical circles today scarcely raises a concerned eyebrow.

There is a basic inconsistency here.  There is deep hypocrisy.

The God who condemns homosexual relationships equally is opposed to divorce and remarriage.  He is the God who says:

Mal 2:16 (RSV)
“For I hate divorce, says the LORD the God of Israel… So take heed to yourselves and do not be faithless.”

Now, I know that there is room for some debate and difference of opinion on who (if any) God permits to divorce and remarry.   Personally, I think he allows (as a last resort) divorce on very narrow grounds and it is a moot point whether he allows remarriage at all.  Be that as it may, my object in this post is not to debate which position is biblically cogent but to focus – somewhat aghast – on our increasingly default attitude.   We evangelicals seem more-and-more to have an outlook on divorce and remarriage that differs little from the world; divorce is regrettable but ‘that’s life’ and remarriage is taken for-granted.  In any case, it is a private matter and nothing to do with anyone else.

We fail to take seriously Christ’s plain teaching that divorce is far from God’s ideal and in fact remarriage in most cases is a form of adultery.

Matt 19:3-9 (ESV)
And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”

By whatever criteria we apply, divorce and remarriage is a cause for serious concern and reflection.  Apart from anything else we may be making ourselves adulterers.

Now don’t get me wrong,  I am sure few if any believers divorce without a great deal of heartache and soul-searching.  Over the last thirty years, I have known a good number of Christian couples who have divorced and none did so lightly.  Divorce for all was traumatic.  It rocked all involved to the roots of their being.  Those divorces I have witnessed close-up have been truly tragic and destructive events.  No-one emerged unscathed.  I feel deeply for those who experience divorce and pray that God will preserve Christian marriages and his people from the devastation that is divorce.  I hope my concerns are not without compassion to those caught up in a divorce, especially those who find themselves there through no fault of their own.

Again, I am not so much thinking of the divorcing couples themselves as the culture in our churches  that sanctions it (and remarriage).  For one thing, the assumption is that divorced people are naturally free to remarry.  In fact, any suggestion that divorced folks should remain single thereafter is likely to shock.  At one time,  the very idea of remarriage would have occasioned outrage, now outrage is likely to flow from any querying of the legitimacy of remarriage.  The person ‘out in the cold’ is not the one who remarries but the one who remonstrates.  The climate is utterly different.

Not so long ago, remarriage (by Christians) on what were considered biblically acceptable grounds were quiet affairs.  Those remarrying realized, at best, remarriage implied previous failure and remarriage was on sufferance (divine forbearance) rather than a cause for celebration.  Now remarriage is celebrated as enthusiastically as an initial marriage.  There seems little sensibility to its irregularity and incongruity.

Few seem to see the anomaly.  Fresh ’til death do us part’ vows – generally before God -  are taken, the very undertaking of which only serves to demonstrate the failure to honour such vows of commitment in a previous marriage.  Can Christians celebrate this contradiction?  Can they witness with equanimity new vows that make a mockery of old ones, join in the banter and celebrations  that follow, and blithely forget the trail of destruction and disobedience that has led to this point?  Of course, each must decide for himself whether to attend a remarriage that has little biblical sanction.  Various factors come into play in deciding.  However, when I hear Christians speaking with unreserved delight about dubious remarriages, I begin to wonder where the Lordship of Christ features in our thinking.   Would we be so unalloyed in our pleasure at a same-sex wedding?  Would we celebrate an adulterous affair entered (remembering Jesus stigmatizes many remarriages as legalized adultery)?

I am told that I am too hard.  Of course the divorced person must remarry.  Am I going to sentence him/her to a life of singleness?  Surely this does not reflect the love and acceptance of Christ.  I am always slightly bemused by this reasoning.  I think of countless men and women who have not found a Christian partner in life and rather than marry a non-Christian have remained unmarried.  Somehow for them this is just par for the course but the poor divorcee must have our full support in remarrying.  The logic doesn’t stack up.  There are worse things than going through life single.  I guess the marriage that led to divorce became such a thing.  In any case the believer does not live with happiness in this life his chief goal and need.  He lives for the life to come – for the coming Kingdom of God (in which there will be no marriage).  Thus we read:

Matt 19:10-12 (ESV)
The disciples said to him [Jesus], “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” But he said to them, “Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth [perhaps homosexuals] , and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.” 

For some, commitment to the Kingdom of God means they will remain unmarried and this certainly includes, homosexually inclined people who feel unable to enter a heterosexual marriage, those who do not find a Christian partner, and those who separate from their partner on unbiblical grounds and for whom remarriage (and probably divorce) is expressly forbidden by Christ, their King.

We are far removed from this kind of thinking in many of our churches today.  So accepted is divorce and remarriage that it is possible to do/be both and to hold a position of leadership in a local church – another ‘norm’ expressly forbidden in Scripture.

1Tim 3:1-7 (ESV)
The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church? He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil.

Notice that what is an ‘ought’ for all Christians is a ‘must’ for spiritual leaders. Leaders (elders) must be ‘above reproach’.  Notice too what the first example of being ‘above reproach’ is; he must be ‘the husband of one wife’.  Paul’s point is that while people may be converted and become part of the church with ‘anomalous’ relationships (perhaps polygamous marriage or perhaps an unlawful remarriage) such believers should not hold office in the church.  The anomalous relationship (that could not be undone) debarred them from public leadership in the church because it was a poor witness to the world and poor example other believers.

Church leaders cannot simply bow to the wishes of the divorcee who wants to remarry.  They have an obligation to uphold by both example and command the dominical and apostolic teaching on divorce and remarriage.  A little leaven, leavens the whole.  It is simply nonsense to say that those whose marriages are stable should not judge.  They must judge.  If we are only to judge in situations we have personally experienced, then few will judge.  If only homosexual people can criticise homosexual practice then we are on a hiding to nothing.  Imagine a court where the judge must have committed the acts he is called to judge before being qualified to judge.  The suggestion is farcical.  The biblical premise for being competent to judge is spirituality not similar failure (1 Cor 2, 6).

Churches need to regain biblical standards (and backbone) on divorce and remarriage.  If how we deal with divorce and remarriage today in many conservative evangelical churches had been how it was dealt with in the first 1500 years of church history the low level of divorce and remarriage in Christendom for centuries would never have happened.

Why are we so keen to institutionalize divorce and remarriage?  Why do we accept such a trojan horse? Not only is it generally condemned in Scripture but society itself recognises its problems.  The percentage of breakdown in second marriages is considerably higher than in  firsts (almost double):  the baggage the new marriage brings puts a considerable strain on it from the word go;  children may accept a divorce but rarely accept and  settle well to a remarriage; and if you have broken vows a first time its easier to do so the second time.  If the increasing incidence of divorce and remarriage in society is reeking havoc there what will a similar pattern mean for the church?

And it is a mistake to confuse this with the embrace and acceptance of the gospel.  The gospel invites sinners but it does not promote sin.  The church is the community of the forgiven but not of the flagrantly and wilfully disobedient.  The forgiven are called to forsake sin and follow holiness without which no man will see the Lord.

Am I being hard?  Perhaps.  But sometimes the Bible is hard.  Love can be hard.  The way of the cross is hard – it makes no provision for ‘the flesh’.  The better question is – am I being biblical?  And, am I being truthful and faithful?  Conservative evangelicals simply cannot hold with integrity a firm line on what the Bible teaches on homosexuality while driving a truck through its teaching on divorce and remarriage.  It’s easy to be principled about issues we rarely face: it is much harder to be principled about issues that sit on our lap.  Yet it is precisely here that our faithfulness to Christ is tested and found out.

asking questions and questioning

Sorry I have been unable to post much recently.  I want to continue  reflecting on issues that arise from the Bell book ‘Love Wins’ for a few further posts.  One issue is Bell’s technique (similar to that of Brian McLaren) in writing.  His frequent style is to ask questions.  Superficially this seems reasonable, however, the questions are intended not to inquire but to lead.  An excellent post on this technique of Bell’s by Nate Archer is well worth reading.  In fact he has another couple of good posts on ‘Love Wins’ well worth reading.

Archer writes,

Questions are great.  Questions are wonderful, especially when they are being asked in the sense of faith seeking understanding.  Unfortunately, questions can also be asked in another way.  Sometimes questions are nothing more than rhetorical devices being used to make a point, and that is what Bell is doing here. 

Some people ask questions in the sense of faith seeking understanding.  Other people ask questions in the sense of doubt seeking influence. 

There is a difference between asking questions and questioning.  More precisely, there is a difference between asking questions about what God has told us and questioning what God has told us.  What is annoying is the sly and ingenuous way that some people shift between these two meanings.  They want to retain the nobility of asking questions, but slip in the subversiveness of questioning that which they disagree.

Read the whole post.  In fact, explore the website, Nate has some fine posts.

leap of faith or leap of folly

Job 30:22 (ESV) You lift me up on the wind; you make me ride on it, and you toss me about in the roar of the storm.

An old friend who thinks he is still young…

freedom of speech

‘If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they don’t want to hear’.”

George Orwell

romans, and the righteousness of god (2)

Rom 1:16-17 (ESV)
I am not ashamed of the gospel… for in it the righteousness of God is revealed…

A world that is right is what is needed.  Creation groans eager to birth a world right in every way,  a new world suffused with righteousness where righteousness is the plumb-line (Isa 28:17),  flows like the waves of the sea (Isa 48:18), ​​​​​​​and like an ever-flowing stream (Amos 5:24).   The yearning of the righteous is for a creation where the clouds rain down righteousness (Isa 45:8) and righteousness sprouts from the ground like a fruit (Isa 45:8), and where all the people are oaks of righteousness before the Lord (Isa 61:3).

But…  the reality is far from this.

Unrighteousness is the reigning paradigm.  Creation’s steward has despoiled it with unrighteousness and its fruits.  This anatomy of human unrighteousness Paul lays bare in Roms 1:18-3:20: absurd idolatry (1:18-22); unnatural sexuality (1:24-27); brutish behaviour (1: 28-31); permissive morality (1:32); and, perhaps worst of all, moral and religious hypocrisy, epitomised most clearly in the Jewish nation, God’s chosen people (2;1-29).

The Jewish nation believed themselves a cut above all other nations, and they were.  They were God’s chosen people.  They alone had been given God’s Law.  They were God’s chosen mouthpiece to the nations (2:17-20).  Yet Paul is unambiguous – they too have failed and failed abysmally (2:21,22).  The Law was of little value if they did not keep it; the unrighteousness of the supposedly righteous, is the greatest unrighteousness of all (2:23).

The conclusion is as inevitable as it is chilling; if  the most privileged nation on earth (Israel) was pervasively and incorrigibly unrighteous what hope had any other – every mouth is stopped and the whole world is guilty before God (3:20). Because of wilful unrighteousness, the wrath of God is announced from heaven and is inevitably coming (1:18, 2:5-11).  What humanity need fear is not its destructive self, nor even on-going tsunamis, earthquakes and famines awful though they may be, but the final, dreadful, terrifying cataclysmic judgement of a God whose patience has finally ended and who is determined to purge his creation of its moral filth, consigning the unrighteous to Gehenna, the eternal burnings.  Such righteous judgement is the only righteous way for a righteous God to act.

Or is it?  Is a vision of a righteous universe where all the people are ‘oaks of righteousness’ and ‘justice flows like rivers and righteousness like an ever-ending stream’ no more than a prophetic pipe dream?  Is it merely a Seer’s romantic fancy? Is God’s righteousness something we must inevitably fear for it means we must perish?  Thankfully, it is not.

The glory of the gospel is its declaration that God has found a way to be merciful in righteousness, a way to righteously declare the unrighteous, righteous,  a way to establish righteousness by saving not destroying.

The  previous post noted four points about this gospel righteousness implicit in Roms 1:17.  It is… eschatological righteousness … God’s righteousness… saving righteousness… and righteousness received by faith.  In Roms 3;21-26 Paul expands all four aspects.  In five key verses of compressed theology Paul explains the central elements of the saving righteousness of God.  Any attempt to understand what the Bible means by ‘righteousness of God’ must grapple with this text.  I shall comment on a number of its expressions hoping to unpack some of its meaning.

Rom 3:21-26 (ESV)
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it- the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

But now…

Paul’s ‘But now‘ signals a contrast.  The contrast is not simply a change in his exposition but more particularly a change in eras -  a change in God’s working in history.  The previous era of Law which condemned by exposing human unrighteousness  has given way to a new era of gospel which saves by exhibiting God’s righteousness.  The eschatological age of salvation-righteousness predicted by the OT prophets has now arrived.  As J R W Stott writes,

The ‘Now seems to have a threefold reference – logical (the developing argument), chronological (the present time), and eschatological (the new age has arrived).

Israel believed that its salvation and that of the world lay in the Law of God (2:17-20); in law-keeping lay righteousness and life.  It was a profound mistake.  The Law, even before it had properly embedded, was exposed as inadequate to establish righteousness.  Even as the tablets of the covenant were being given by God to Moses on Sinai, they were being broken on the plains below as the people worshipped an idolatrous golden calf (Ex 32).  This incident portended the future.  The Law would not keep the people from being just as depraved as the surrounding nations who had no such Law.  It was clear that the Law could not deliver righteousness or deliver from wrath, all it could do was expose sin.  As Paul writes,

Rom 3:19-20 (ESV)
Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

If righteousness (and so life) was to be established then it would need to be from another source than humanity.  And so the prophetic voice, informed by the Lord, announced a righteousness sourced not in man but in God (3:21).  It anticipated a time when God himself would act in salvation and righteousness and establish both.  It spoke of the ‘good news’ of God’s coming saving righteousness, this saving righteousness Paul says has now arrived, or ‘been manifested‘.  (Of course, God’s saving righteousness always existed.  From Adam sinners were always justified by God’s righteousness received by faith, but now this righteousness is ‘revealed’, that is, the death of Christ has accomplished and exhibited it.  The gospel, once anticipated, has now been realised and fully revealed.)

righteousness of God apart from law (without law)…

We should reflect deeply on this expression.

• Paul does not say the Law is one example of God’s righteousness and the Gospel is another.  For Paul, the Law never reveals God’s righteousness, what it reveals (if kept) is man’s righteousness.  It is only and always the gospel that reveals ‘righteousness of God’.  We create a non-Pauline paradigm and so confusion when we speak of the Law as revealing God’s righteousness.  I repeat, for Paul, only the gospel does this.

• Paul does not say, ‘In the gospel righteousness is established not by you keeping the Law but by Jesus keeping the Law in your place and on your behalf’.  If this is what gospel righteousness is then here would have been the ideal and obvious place for Paul to have said so.  But he doesn’t.  Instead he insists on the opposite.  He states unequivocally, that the ‘righteousness of God’ has nothing to do with law-keeping.  Indeed, it has nothing to do with the Law.   It is righteousness ‘apart from law’ or ‘without law’, that is, it is righteousness different in premise and principle, and in fact belonging to a different period of redemptive history altogether.   This is a critical point to grasp for failure to appreciate this contributes to mistaken ideas in justification that plague much Evangelical thinking, particularly Reformed Evangelical thinking.  Gospel righteousness is not simply law-righteousness gained for me by another (IAO). It is not merely law-righteousness by another route, by the back door.   It is righteousness of a different kind, of a different epoch, and of a different source altogether.  This is precisely why Paul emphatically refers to this righteousness as... ‘righteousness of God apart from law’
  

• The old era of Law put the emphasis on human responsibility; it looked for righteousness in man.  The righteousness of Law was predicated on ‘do this and live’.  It promised life for righteous living.  Yet, though this was its promise it was not its intent.  God did not give the Law hoping to establish righteousness through fallen human beings but to prove conclusively the futility of such a route to righteousness; he gave it to expose sin (3:20).  Only when all human attempts at righteousness have been exposed as the abysmal and abject failure they are, establishing beyond doubt humanity’s incorrigible unrighteousness and moral bankruptcy (Roms 3:9-20), does God reveal the glory and grace of his own saving righteousness.  Only when it is  established in history that humanity cannot be the architect of its own salvation will God’s salvation-righteousness be revealed.  God will have it crystal clear that if there is to be a saving righteousness then it will be and must be his and not man’s, and that the only ‘righteousness’ celebrated and boasted eternally will be God’s; boasting and glorying in any other is anathema (2:23, 3:27, 4:1,2; 1 Cor 1:28-30).  The gospel reveals God’s righteousness and in it he is glorified and no other.

Of course humanity refuses to learn the lesson of Israel and the Law.  It still seeks to establish its own righteousness.  But it does so against the damning evidence of history.  If Israel failed under Law all have failed (3:20).  Humanity post-cross is pronounced ‘dead’ in trespasses and sins (Eph 2:1)  There is no hope in human righteousness; hope of averting God’s wrath (1:18) lies only in the gospel, in ‘righteousness of God’.

I would add one further comment here.  We should not confuse ‘God’s righteousness‘ and ‘Christ’s righteousness’.  When Romans speaks of ‘God’s righteousness‘ it means just that, ‘God’s‘ righteousness.  It does not mean the righteousness of Christ.  God’s saving righteousness of course intimately involves Christ as the text we are considering shows but we confuse Paul’s thought if we conflate Christ’s righteousness and God’s righteousness.  They are distinct and should be kept distinct.  That Paul means ‘God’s‘ righteousness is emphatic in the text.  Three times in five verses we read of  ‘God’s righteousness‘  (3: 21,22, 25. Cf. 1:17, 10:3; Phil 3:9; 2 Cor 5:21) and once of  ‘his righteousness’ , meaning God’s (3:26).

The text could hardly be more emphatic; in the gospel the eschatological age of salvation has dawned.  It is an age where God’s righteousness is the focus and no other (Cf 3:27).  When we have established that Paul’s focus is God’s righteousness, not man’s, not even Christ’s, we have established something profoundly important and we are thinking across the synapses of the gospel.

witnessed by the Law and prophets

I have already alluded to this expression above.  If there is discontinuity between the Law and the gospel (both different epochs based on different sources of righteousness) then there is also continuity.  The continuity lies in the predictive element of both the Law and the prophets (often a term that covers the whole of the OT).

How did the Law predict the gospel?  Principally and specifically, the gospel is predicted in the sacrificial system of the Law.   Thus the following verses speak of redemption, sacrifice and the mercy-seat as the means by which God’s righteousness is revealed and administered (22-25).  The prophets, as we have already seen, regularly anticipated the Age of Salvation when the righteousness of the Lord would be revealed (  E.g. Isa 46:13; 51:5,6,8).

And so, in 3:21 Paul begins to put in context the ‘righteousness of God‘.  In the verses which follow he unpacks the meaning of the expression.  We shall consider these verses in a further blog.  For now let me re-assert we have understood nothing of the rationale of the gospel if we have not grasped this fundamental truth – the gospel is nothing if it is not ‘righteousness of God’.

in the likeness of sinful flesh… (3)

The argument of previous posts (here and here) is that Christ in his person and mission was invincible.  However, we understand the vulnerability of Christ in incarnation we must not construe it as moral vulnerability or missional vulnerability.  Jesus was never going to fail.  He was God’s servant who would not falter or be discouraged (Isa 42).

So what of his temptation?  Was it real?  Surely temptation is only real if there is the possibility of failure?  Surely he is even more worthy of our worship if he was morally vulnerable?  Surely, only by being morally vulnerable could he properly identify with us and be sympathetic?

We will consider shortly these pressing questions but once again the main point to stress is that our understanding of Christ must be informed by Scripture.  We must allow Scripture, and only Scripture,  to shape our theology of the person of Christ.  Where Scripture goes we follow and where it stops so must we.  The Son in his being is a mystery apart from what is revealed.  Only the Father knows the Son and only what he has revealed can be known (Matt 11:27).

What do we find when we read the temptation narrative?  Well, we find that although it is narrative, its theological grain is exactly the same as we have elicited from Scripture thus far – Jesus was the Son who would not fail.

Luke 4:1-13 (ESV)
And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, he was hungry. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’” And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​“‘You shall worship the Lord your God, ​​​​​​​and him only shall you serve.’” ​​​ And he took him to Jerusalem and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​“‘He will command his angels concerning you, ​​​​​​​to guard you,’ ​​​ and ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​“‘On their hands they will bear you up, ​​​​​​​lest you strike your foot against a stone.’” ​​​ And Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.

The temptation narrative in all three gospels is immediately preceded by Jesus’ baptism.  In his baptism he receives the Father’s imprimatur, his formal seal of eschatological (age of salvation) sonship (Cf Jn 6:27).  God publicly declares Christ as his ‘Son… in whom is all his delight‘ and seals his declaration with  the empowering Holy Spirit (Matt 2:16); the Spirit is always the seal of eschatological sonship (Roms 8; Gals 4:6; Ephs 1 ).

A few points should be noted.

• the prelude… Jesus baptism

The declaration ‘You are my son in whom is all my delight‘ is a composite of two OT texts (Ps 2; Isa 42).  The first speaks of God’s eschatological Son (this is my son); it is a celebration of his invincibility.  The nations (evil) conspire against the Lord and his anointed King (son) but their attempts to defeat are futile and risible.  The Son will, we read,

Ps 2:8-9 (ESV)
…break them with a rod of iron ​​​​​​​and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”

The second text (in whom is all my delight) draws from the OT eschatological servant songs (Isa 42) which again celebrates invincibility.  God says of Jesus,

Isa 42:1-4 (ESV)
Behold my servant, whom I uphold, ​​​​​​​my chosen, in whom my soul delights; ​​​​​​​I have put my Spirit upon him; ​​​​​​​he will bring forth justice to the nations. ​​​ ​​​​​​​​He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice, ​​​​​​​or make it heard in the street; ​​​ ​​​​​​​​a bruised reed he will not break, ​​​​​​​and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; ​​​​​​​he will faithfully bring forth justice. ​​​ ​​​​​​​​He will not grow faint or be discouraged ​​​​​​​till he has established justice in the earth; ​​​​​​​and the coastlands wait for his law.

The servant will resolutely accomplish God’s purpose.  He will not grow faint or be discouraged.

Thus, both OT texts affirm assured victory.  In the former, he is enabled by the Lord, and in the latter, by the Lord and his Spirit.  And so, as we approach the temptation that immediately follows, narratively we are not anticipating failure but expecting success.  Jesus, it has already been signalled, is the invincible Servant-King through whom God’s purposes are assured.

• the event… Jesus’ temptation

Luke takes care to tell us that ‘Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit‘ is ‘led by the Spirit’ into the wilderness.  Here as ‘Son’ he will be tested.

The intended background to Jesus’ temptation is the previous testing of both Israel and Adam.  Both were God’s ‘son’.  Israel’s sonship led to her being brought into the wilderness (a place of testing, see here).  Jesus’ forty days parallel’s Israel’s forty years.  Significantly too all Jesus’ answers come from Deuteronomy and the period of Israel’s testing.  In Luke (whose target audience is not merely Jewish but international), the temptation is linked also with Adam.  Luke signals this by informing us immediately before the temptation that Adam was ‘the son of God’ (Lk 3:38).

Both Adam and Israel were ‘sons’ tested by God.  Adam was tested as sinless humanity in an idyllic setting and Israel as sinful humanity in the wilderness yet cared for there by God (Isa 5).  Both singularly failed.  The message was clear, humanity, by its own resources,  unfallen or fallen, could not resist sin and could not bring glory to God.   God could say of neither Adam nor Israel, ‘this is my son with whom I am well pleased‘.

Jesus was different.  He was not tested in the idyll of a garden.  Nor was tested in a wilderness where every need was being met and he was secure in the company of others.  He was tested in a wilderness where he was alone, ate and drank nothing for forty days, and was surrounded by wild beasts.  Yet he triumphed and his triumph is never in doubt.  Immediately the invidious suggestion comes from Satan, he responds with a rebuff from Scripture.  The narrative has no trace of prevarication or indecision.  There is not the slightest hint that he dallies with the temptation.  In each case his response is as immediate as it is unequivocal; it is written… it is written… it is written.

We must allow the narrative to drive our theology.  Jesus is the Son who will not fail and the reason is he  is a ‘Son’ of a different order.  Luke has made it clear this Son is of a different order; he is anointed with the Spirit of God and thus his conquest is sure (not to mention the other aspects of his invincibility we have considered in earlier posts).  The point narratively of the testing  is not to hold the reader on tenterhooks wondering if he may fail but to demonstrate Christ’s moral strength.  Satan cannot defeat him.  The temptation is to prove the invincibility of Christ not to probe for possible weaknesses in his armour. Satan is the strong man but Christ is the stronger man who overcomes him.  It is not a contest of equals.   The narrative ends with Satan, for a time at least, obliged to give up the fight; Jesus’ might is established.

• and more temptation… a man of sorrows

Of course this was not the end of Satan’s attacks.  Jesus anticipates a concentrated attack at the cross.  It is an ‘hour’ he contemplates with great anguish of soul.  He longs that it need not be (let this cup pass… )  but if no other way is possible then so be it (nevertheless not my will…  the cup that my father has given me to drink shall I not drink it).  Anguish of soul and longing for ‘another way’ is completely understandable (especially as it involves the Holy One being made sin and the  One who lived ‘in the bosom of the father’ being forsaken) and is not to be confused with indecision, cowardice, or a fear of failure.  Anticipating the cross just hours away, he says to his disciples

John 14:30 (Darby)
I will no longer speak much with you, for the ruler of the world comes, and in me he has nothing

or,

John 14:30 (RSV)
I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no power over me

Satan held the world in his grip but Jesus’ knew Satan had no traction on him.  Certain that Satan’s attack and that of the hostile nations (Ps 2) was imminent ( it is your hour and the power of darkness, Lk 22:51) he is nonetheless completely confident of victory.  Indeed, if his faith is firm, how could he be otherwise?  Even on the cross, his soul may be poured out like water, his bones may stick out, and his heart melt like wax but his faith will remain strong; God will, he is sure, deliver him from the horns of the wild oxen (Ps 22:21).  Catch the confidence in his voice some time before the cross.

John 8:28-30 (ESV)
So Jesus said to them, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me. And he who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him.” As he was saying these things, many believed in him.

Jesus fully expects in death as in life to do only what the Father has authorised and commanded.  The Father will be with him as always and he (the Son) will, on the cross, as ever before, do only what pleases the Father, however demanding it may be.

And it is demanding.  Jesus is even weaker physically on the cross than in the wilderness and Satan’s wrath is roused to the utmost.  He sends blasts of temptation that in many ways echo those of the wilderness, attacking his claim to be the Son of  God and calling for proof (Matt 27:32-44; Lk 23:32-44).  This time Jesus remains silent… only to ultimately cry with a loud voice, ‘It is finished’.  The narrative is instructing us again.  It was a cry of strength and victory in the midst of extreme weakness.  He then bows his head and dismisses his Spirit; the obedient Son was not conquered by death, he relinquished his life.  Even his death is in his own hands; he controls his destiny.

As I say, once again the narrative has driven the theology.  There is not a hint in Pilate’s Judgement Hall, in Herod’s Palace, before the Sanhedrin, on the Via Dolorosa, or at Golgotha, that Jesus is about to apostasise.  He has set his face as a flint.  He will not be rebellious or turn away.  He will give his back to those who strike, and his cheeks to those who pull out the beard; he will not hide his face from disgrace and spitting. And will do so in the full confidence of faith that the Lord helps him (Isa 50).  He will not, even on the brink of death, falter or be discouraged.  

In weakness and defeat

He won the meed and crown

Trod all his foes beneath his feet

By being trodden down

Such then is the biblical account of the trials of Jesus.  The paradox of the incarnation and of the Christ  is invincibility in vulnerability.

But…

• Surely a test or trial implies the possibility of failure?

Why?  A test or trial is not to see if I fail but to demonstrate that I am up to the job.    The test shows proficiency to the level tested.  Some who sit a test have no possibility of failure so far are their skills above the level being tested.  In Christ, the Spirit who drove Jesus into the wilderness (Mk 1:12) was more than able to sustain him. The trial merely tests the ability of the person; it has no knowledge of what that ability is.  When God calls upon his people in the OT to test him is failure a possibility (Isa 7:10; Mal 3:10)?

• Surely we admire Jesus more if he is vulnerable?

It depends what we mean by vulnerability.  Vulnerability is different from moral susceptibility.  Christ was vulnerable to suffering but not to sin.  He knew human weakness without being morally susceptible.  What makes an admirable hero is not the possibility that he may fail (which film hero do we really expect to fail) but that succeeding costs him dearly. Success cost Jesus the deepest psychological, emotional and physical trauma – unto death.  Suffering not susceptibility makes a true hero.

In films we do not expect our heroes to fail but we expect them to be vulnerable.  That is why Superman as a hero is hard to identify with or be sympathetic to – he is mainly immune to suffering (physically at least).  Other superheroes like Batman will not fail but will suffer physically and in every other way in the process of succeeding.  Jesus, we read, ‘suffered being tempted’ (Hebs 2:18).  The cost of choosing God’s way, the narrow and hard way, made him ‘a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief’.  It led to disfigurement that made him unrecognisable as human.  He was brutalised and bruised, yet without sin.  An iron will did not mean an iron body.  Yet such was his determined purpose that he endured the cross and despised the shame (Hebs 12).  For all of this we admire him.

At every stage accepting the Father’s will involved accepting hardship, rejection, misunderstanding, hostility, betrayal and abandonment by those he loved and chose, and eventually forsakenness by God himself. as he was ‘made sin’.   The cumulative effect of this must have been utterly crushing.  Naturally his body would cry out against hunger and just as naturally he would be deeply troubled by rejection, hatred, hostility etc. None of these he relished. All of these he would gladly have foregone.  His spiritual instincts like ours were ‘lead me not into trial and deliver me from evil’, or in the words of the garden, ‘if possible let this cup pass from me ‘  but alongside this is the resolutely indomitable ‘not my will but yours be done‘.

The ability to fail but not doing so is not the heroic; the heroic is knowingly undertaking a task that will cost everything but undertaking it anyway. The heroic is knowing yet dismissing and scorning every cost (the shame, the suffering, the crying out of frayed nerves, emotional exhaustion, the deep hurt of unrequited love, the engulfing screams of torn flesh and muscle, the blackness of a soul abandoned) because of the joy that lay ahead (Hebs 12).

• Surely if he is invincible then he had no need to trust.

Invincibility we are told obviates the need for faith.  But not so.  Jesus’ invincibility has faith as its core.  He is invincible precisely because he is invincible in faith.  His faith is tested and tested to the extreme.  At times he finds himself disoriented and without comprehension (read Ps 22) but his faith never wavers.  His faith is mocked (he trusted in God let him deliver him… ) but it remains resolute.  There is never the slightest suggestion in the gospel narratives that it may (or almost did) weaken or collapse.

Indeed it was this unyielding faith that led him to experience faith at levels beyond any other.  When our faith is tested most of us cave as soon as the first glimmer of real cost or suffering  appears on the horizon.  Not so Jesus.  Faith set his face resolutely to go to Jerusalem knowing full well the cost of that journey (Isa 50:7; Lk 9:51; Matt 20:18).  Faith that worked itself out in love for the Father constrained him  ( Jn 14:31; Gals 5:6).  He will not ‘shrink back’ (Hebs 10:38, 39).  We may in suffering become bruised reeds and smoking flaxes (images of extreme fragility, ready to break) but he will not be a bruised read or smoking flax (falter or be discouraged), rather, he will sustain the weary and give them strength (Isa 42:4; Matt 11:28).  And his faith will stand firm for it depends upon the Spirit and is constantly refreshed and sustained by the Spirit (Isa 11:2, 42: 1,2; Ps 110:7).  Faith, though invincibly strong, may be severely tried in suffering (read the Psalms 22, 69 etc).

• Surely to be truly human he must be able to sin?

Why?   Why is moral vulnerability necessary for true humanity?   We will, none of us, be morally vulnerable, in the consummated Kingdom but we will be human.   Christ is ‘not able to sin’ in heaven today and if he were our salvation would be eternally uncertain.  New creation humanity does not require ontological peccability.  The confusion here is between humanity as such and the ‘state’ of humanity.  Adam before and after the fall was human but at each point was in a different state.  Humanity in Christ (a new nature, a divine one,  sustained by the Spirit) is different in state from unfallen or fallen humanity but it is still humanity.  Likewise glorified humanity will be different in state from new creation humanity in weakness but it will no less be humanity.

• Surely Jesus must be able to sin and feel its draw to truly identify with us and sympathise?
  

This argument falls down at the first hurdle.  If Jesus is to truly identify with us in the way the question wishes he must not merely be able to sin but must have actually sinned.  After all, to really empathize with us he must know what it is to have sinned.  How else could he know the shame of sin and the disintegration of moral failure?  Yet  thankfully no evangelical is audacious enough to go as far as this (thus far).  Irving and Barth (not an evangelical) may have Christ with a fallen nature but even they insist he did not sin (a contradiction).   And so there already is discontinuity from the word go.

In any case, we should be aware that Jesus, although tempted in every way that we as human’s are tempted, did not experience every human temptation.  He did not know for example the trials of old age.  He did not know the trials of being married.  Was he ever ill?  We are not told.  What we are told is that when he came into contact with the sick their illness did not pass to him (in the sense of him becoming ill) but his healing virtue passed to them.  He ‘bore our infirmities and carried our diseases’ not by experienceing them but by healing them (Matt 8:17).  Let what we know inform what we are not told.

We are told by some who claim to know that he must have been tempted sexually.  How this is known, I don’t know.  Of course, we are tempted sexually, but then, we are fallen.  Yet, even we, fallen people though we are, are not tempted in every way sexually.  For example, not everyone is tempted to homosexual sin.  Few are tempted to paedophilia or bestiality.  There are sexual sins that we are only likely to be tempted by if we are well-travelled down a road of sexual promiscuity or because of some background experience or disposition.

What is more, as we grow as Christians, we find that some temptations that once would have been really powerful become less so. Growth in holiness lessens the grip and temptation of sin at least in certain areas. If this is so with us, then we can grasp that Christ, who had no fallen nature pulling him down and was holy in every part of his being, AT THE VERY LEAST was unlikely to be tempted by gross sin. There is normally a sliding scale in degenerate temptations. When we yield as it were to one level of sin we are then tempted by the next level down and so on.

And so it is no surprise that Satan’s recorded attacks on Christ in the wilderness (and elsewhere) were not by temptation to gross sins, nor, it would appear, even sexual sins. His temptations were largely temptations to doubt his identity as ‘the Son of God’ and to feel the need to assert it and prove it. Satan attacks him at what he deems to be the area of Jesus’ vulnerability, namely, his identity and mission.  Indeed, the one trial that Jesus’ is most reluctant to undertake and asks the Father if there is another way is that of the cross.  Why?  Because there the Holy One would be made sin.  There he would know separation from his God.  From this his holy soul rightly and properly shrank.  His temptation was not to turn away from God’s will to pursue un-holiness but to maintain the fellowship of holiness.  Again, and I cannot say this often enough, we need to allow our theology of Jesus’ temptation to be framed by what Scripture reveals and not by (potentially irreverent) speculations based on our notion of what it means to be human.

Furthermore…

The question (surely Jesus must be able to sin to truly identify with us and sympathize) is predicated on wrong ideas about Christ’s priesthood.   Christ sympathises (enters into and supports us) in our sufferings and our steadfastness but not our sin.  This is a big topic and I intend to explore it, God willing, in a post that reflects specifically on Christ’s priesthood, however, for the moment I wish simply to note that neither Christ, nor our heavenly Father, has any sympathy with our sin.  In his life on earth, Christ neither taught sympathy with sin nor exhibited sympathy with sin, why should we think he is any different now? He clearly taught,

Matt 5:29-30 (ESV)
If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

When Peter tried to persuade him away from the cross his response was as sharp as it was forthright

Matt 16:21-23 (ESV)
From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

There is no sympathy here.  Sin requires radical surgery.  It requires ruthless treatment.  What is needed for sin is not a sympathetic priest but a sharp two-edged sword (Cf. Hebs 4).  Christ’s sympathy (support and encouragement) is for the Christian as he struggles to live by faith and resist sin.  He restores the fallen and sustains the fighter but has no truck with yielding, he never sides with capitulation.  He never excuses sin or supports it.  The very idea is ridiculous.

Christ’s High Priestly strength is that he has faced our trials and knows how to overcome them.  It is this ‘knowledge’ that I want a High Priest to have. I don’t want a Priest who sympathises with my moral failure. I don’t need a priest who knows how to fail, I need a priest who knows how not to fail. I want a priest who has faced trials and resisted to the point of shedding his blood; a priest who has won every battle (Hebs 12).  Such a priest (personal trainer!) can aid me in my fight of faith for at every stage he has been there and knows my needs. And so my priest is not  Adam who was of the earth and earthy (frail) but the second man who is the Lord from heaven… Christ is the head of a new humanity (1 Cor 15:45-49).

In conclusion…

I neither need nor want a morally weak champion. I want and need one who is invincibly strong. One on whom I can depend whatever happens. One who can say to me, ‘follow me… believe in me… trust in me…’ , and I can with utter confidence do so. I want one who when he says to his Father,

Heb 10:5-7 (ESV)
Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​“Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, ​​​​​​​but a body have you prepared for me; ​​​ ​​​​​​​​in burnt offerings and sin offerings ​​​​​​​you have taken no pleasure. ​​​ ​​​​​​​​Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, ​​​​​​​as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’”

I can be utterly sure will do as he promises, for his word is his bond and what he promises he is able to fulfil. I want One, who though crushed, will never waver in his determination to fulfil his commission. I want the Christ of Scripture not theological speculation.  For this Christ  I can trust,  love, worship, and adore.

(For further reflections on our Lord’s temptation see here.)

in the likeness of sinful flesh… (2)

Matt 11:27 (ESV)
All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father…

‘The problem with much modern theologizing about the humanity of Christ is that it is all too human, too fallen.’

So began and ended my last post reflecting on the person of Christ, particularly his humanity.  The biblical text makes plain we are completely closed to revelation if we are to have any appropriate understanding at all of the Son.   The final comment charges much theologizing about the person of Christ with ignoring this reality and canvassing views arising more from speculation and unfounded presuppositions than revealed truth.  When considering the imponderables of the person of Christ,  here above anywhere else, we must avoid ‘going beyond what is written’ (1 Cor 4:6).

Two common views – that Christ’s humanity was fallen like ours (a heinous view) or unfallen like Adam’s (only marginally more acceptable) – dominate Christological reflection; both views are inadequate to describe the humanity of Christ.  In a moment, we shall consider the biblical revelation but let me state the core point of what is, I have no doubt,  the biblical position; Christ’s humanity was not innocent (like Adam’s)  nor sinful (like ours), but holy.  Continuity with Adam is affirmed by Jesus being ‘the seed of the woman’.  He is Mary’s son.  Discontinuity is signalled by a virgin birth which carries with it the revelation,

Luke 1:35 (ESV)
And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy-the Son of God.

Christ’s humanity, in state (not in essence), is, I repeat, not like Adam’s, innocent (an absence of sin), nor like ours, corrupt (an attraction to sin), but holy (an abhorrence of sin).  He loved righteousness and hated lawlessness.  His was not Adam, a man of earth, child-like and without a knowledge of good and evil, but Christ, the man of heaven (1 Cor 15) , the  Spirit-filled Holy One  of God (Jn 6:69) ; holiness implies a knowledge of good and evil with an invincible preference for good and an inexhaustible hostility to evil.  Christ, in a word, is humanity in a new state, a state we call new creation.

Let’s look at some of the evidence for invincibility.

• The OT foretells a servant of God who would not fail.

Isa 42:1-7 (ESV)
Behold my servant, whom I uphold, ​​​​​​​my chosen, in whom my soul delights; ​​​​​​​I have put my Spirit upon him; ​​​​​​​he will bring forth justice to the nations. ​​​ ​​​​​​​​He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice, ​​​​​​​or make it heard in the street; ​​​ ​​​​​​​​a bruised reed he will not break, ​​​​​​​and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; ​​​​​​​he will faithfully bring forth justice. ​​​ ​​​​​​​​He will not grow faint or be discouraged ​​​​​​​till he has established justice in the earth; ​​​​​​​and the coastlands wait for his law. ​​​ ​​​​​​​​Thus says God, the Lord, ​​​​​​​who created the heavens and stretched them out, ​​​​​​​who spread out the earth and what comes from it, ​​​​​​​who gives breath to the people on it ​​​​​​​and spirit to those who walk in it: ​​​ ​​​​​​​​“I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness; ​​​​​​​I will take you by the hand and keep you; ​​​​​​​I will give you as a covenant for the people, ​​​​​​​a light for the nations, ​​​ ​​​​​​​​to open the eyes that are blind, ​​​​​​​to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, ​​​​​​​from the prison those who sit in darkness.

I have already commented on this text and others and how they relate to an invincible Christ in a previous post.  The points here are very similar.

Isaiah speaks of a servant of the Lord who will ‘neither falter (grow faint) nor be discouraged‘.  He is a servant in whom the success of God’s plans is certain.  The will of the Lord will prosper in his hands (Isa 53:10).  These are just a couple out of many OT texts that anticipate a coming ruler, God’s Warrior-King, who will conquer and destroy all God’s enemies and reign in righteousness and justice (Isa 11:1-9).

There are a number of reasons for the invincibility of this ruler.

• God providentially works on his behalf to protect and enable him.

To him, God says in Isa 42 ‘I will take you by the hand and keep you’.  In the NT, we see this ‘keeping’ right at the beginning of his life when Joseph is warned in a dream to take the child to Egypt; Jesus is providentially preserved from death at Herod’s hand.   It is simply pointless to ask speculative questions like ‘would Christ have died had a tower fallen on him’ or ‘could he have caught a fatal disease’ for the simple fact is God ensured his humanity never faced these situations.  Angels themselves are sent to minister to him when needed (Matt 4:11; Lk 22:43).

Every step of his life and circumstance from cradle to cross was ordered by God.  Pilate will not crucify him without God-given authority (Jn 19:10).  If he is taken by wicked men and crucified it is only because this is the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God (Acts 2).  The people’s of the earth plot in vain against the Lord and his anointed (Ps 2).  The Lord will sovereignly protect the woman’s child (Rev 12: 4,5).

Ps 91:7-16 (ESV)
A thousand may fall at your side, ​​​​​​​ten thousand at your right hand, ​​​​​​​but it will not come near you. ​​​ ​​​​​​​​You will only look with your eyes ​​​​​​​and see the recompense of the wicked. ​​​ ​​​​​​​​Because you have made the Lord your dwelling place- ​​​​​​​the Most High, who is my refuge- ​​​ ​​​​​​​​no evil shall be allowed to befall you, ​​​​​​​no plague come near your tent. ​​​ ​​​​​​​​For he will command his angels concerning you ​​​​​​​to guard you in all your ways. ​​​ ​​​​​​​​On their hands they will bear you up, ​​​​​​​lest you strike your foot against a stone. ​​​ ​​​​​​​​You will tread on the lion and the adder; ​​​​​​​the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot. ​​​ ​​​​​​​​“Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him; ​​​​​​​I will protect him, because he knows my name. ​​​ ​​​​​​​​When he calls to me, I will answer him; ​​​​​​​I will be with him in trouble; ​​​​​​​I will rescue him and honor him.

But, of course, God’s ‘keeping’  must go much further merely providences, for if the servant is to conquer, he must conquer sin.  He cannot ever submit to sin for such submission is abject failure.  At the very least, if the servant is not to fail, God must keep his servant from sin.  He must keep his feet from any possibility of slipping.    In this way, even if no other, invincibility is assured.

However, invincibility is assured in other ways too.

• He is sustained by the Spirit of God.

It is impossible to read OT or NT and fail to see that Christ is One who lives in and is anointed by the Spirit beyond all others.  He is born by the Spirit (Matt 1:20), led by the Spirit (Matt 4:1), does miracles by the Spirit (Matt 12:31) and so on.  The Spirit of the Lord rests upon him (Isa 11:1,2; Cf. Jn 1:33).  He is given the Spirit without measure (Jn 3:34).  To live and walk in the Spirit is to live and walk in invincible moral power and spiritual authority.  Those that walk in the Spirit always fulfil the just requirement of the Law (Roms 8:4).  Indeed he not only lives by the Spirit, so closely related is he too the Spirit of God  he gives the Spirit to his followers; he baptizes in the Spirit (Matt 3:11).  Indeed he sees the Holy Spirit as functionally his equivalent in the life of God’s people (Jn 14:16).   The biblical witness of the person of Christ in Scripture is of a life indivisibly united to the Holy Spirit lived constantly through the Spirit’s power and guidance.  Life in the Spirit is one of invincible power, holiness and wisdom..

• He is a divine person

The biblical record regularly distinguishes between Christ in humiliation and exaltation.  However, the deity and humanity of Christ, while distinct, are viewed indivisibly.  It is invidious to say ‘here we have Jesus in deity… and here we have him in humanity).   The truth is his deity and humanity always work together in perfect unity; they are never in conflict.  When we look at an aspect of his humanity (his physical sufferings, for example) we must remember we are looking at a feature of one who is fully God.  When we look at a strong marker of his deity (his ability to forgive sins, for example) we must remember it is found in a person who is truly man.

John’s gospel, which stresses his deity, is careful to maintain the unity of his being.  His distinctively human title Son of Man (that most adopted by Christ) is used by John to describe his divine origins.  Thus when Jesus the Son from heaven is revealing ‘heavenly’ things (as opposed to earthly) and thus revealing his own ‘heavenly’ origin and divine identity, he is careful to call himself by his essentially human title ‘Son of Man’.

John 3:13 (ESV)
No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.

and again

John 6:62 (ESV)
Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?

Christ is the Word made flesh.  He is God’s omnipotent Word, the Word that will not return to him void (empty and ineffective)  but will accomplish what he has sent it to accomplish.  This Word  is life and light.  He is light, the true light who was coming into the world (Jn 1).  The light who would shine in the darkness and would not be overcome by it (Jn 1:5).  The light must conquer the darkness.  He was the human tabernacle that contained the glory of God.  Likewise, he was the temple, the dwelling place of God.  In the OT, tabernacle and temple both had to be purified by blood.  The Church in the NT, which is also the temple of God, can only be God’s temple on the basis of blood.  Not so Christ.  He needs no blood shed to be God’s dwelling place.  He is utterly and absolutely holy, a temple in which the fullness of the Godhead was pleased to dwell.  Such is the glory of his person that angels are constantly serving him in his needs (ascending and descending on the Son of Man (Jn 1:51).  Notice they serve him as ‘Son of man’.

Images of  word, light, tabernacle, or temple all stress the utter and invincible holiness of Christ.  It is not that he simply speaks God’s Word, he is the Word.  He does not simply have life, he is life.  He is not a light-bearer but the light itself.  He is all of these in character and essence.  He cannot be other.  He cannot be darkness.  He is light and in him is no darkness at all.  He may enter the darkness but he remains the light.  He may submit to death but he is always the life.  He may be made sin but he is ever the Holy One who cannot see corruption (Acts 2:27).    He is what he is in all his being, intrinsically and absolutely.  We lose sight of the glory of Christ if we fail to see the indomitability of his being.

Christ is the stronger man who will bind the strong man (Matt 12:29).  He is the seed of the woman who will crush the head of the serpent (Gen 3;15).  He is the lamb of God who is also the lion of the tribe of Judah (Gen 49).  He has complete power over his destiny.  He knows when his time has come and when it has not come (Jn 7: 6,8).  Although he lived in a world ruled by sin, Satan and death they had no rights over him.  Those who sin, Jesus says, are slaves of sin.  Yet he is confident enough to assert that he is without sin  (Jn 8:46).  Sin had found no footing in him.  The devil has no hold (not merely no accusation he can bring but no traction for tempting ) over him (Jn 14:30).  He has the authority to lay down his life and take it up again (Jn 10:17,18).     Failure for him is never contemplated, least of all by himself.  He will build his church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it (Matt 16:18). When they come to take him in the garden they all fall back.  Again, he is the Holy One of God (Mk 1:24).

The idea that the divine Son was united to a corrupt human nature is as barmy as it is blasphemous.  What fellowship has light with darkness, righteousness with lawlessness, the temple of God with idols (2 Cor 6).  Can a house divided against itself stand (Lk 11:17)?  The idea that he was morally vulnerable, or vulnerable to failure of any kind is completely foreign to the Christ who is revealed; the son who can do nothing by himself but only the things he sees his father doing (Jn 5:19).

Let me say again that a proper biblical Christology of Christ’s humanity never forgets Christ’s deity. The ruler of Bethlehem is one whose goings forth have been from everlasting (Mic 5:2).  The virgin’s son is Immanuel, ‘God with us’ (Matt 1).  He is conceived of the Spirit, overshadowed by the power of the highest, and the child born shall be called holy – the Son of God.  He is the Word made flesh (Jn 1).  Hebrews presents his deity (Ch 1) before his humanity (Ch2).  Right thinking about Christ’s deity prevents wrong thinking about his humanity.

• He has humanity that is new creation

Sovereign protection and arranging, Spirit empowering, and personal Sonship (deity) all affirm and guarantee an invincible Christ.  Yet the Biblical revelation goes further.  Christ has an impeccable human nature.  He is not morally vulnerable.  He cannot sin.  That is what it means to be ‘born of God’ (1 Jn 3:9).   We Christians are ‘born of God’.  That is, we have God’s ‘seed’ implanted (1 Jn 3:9),  a life and nature that comes from God and belongs to God.   We are made ‘partakers of the divine nature’ and so have escaped the corruption that is in the world because of evil desires (2 Pet 1:4).  We have ‘put on the new man, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness (Eph 4:24) and are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that God has prepared beforehand (Eph 2:10).  In addition we have been baptized in the Spirit, the Spirit of Christ who empowers our new nature and life (Roms 8:9,10).  This is what it means to be ‘new creation’ (2 Cor 5;17).

What is this new life we have received?  It is the life of Christ.  We have ‘put on’ Christ.  Our new humanity is simply what it means to partake of Christ.  The new life is simply growing up in the knowledge of him. (Eph 4).  It is a life we can only share because he has died and risen yet nevertheless it is his.  The life we have is that life displayed in Christ in incarnation.  We are ‘light in the Lord, children of light (Eph 5:8) and ‘letters of Christ read by all men’.  Our ‘light’ and ‘words’ are derived from Christ.  We live, yet not us, but Christ lives in us (Gal 2:20).

Of course, we Christians sin and fail, but it is not the new nature or new life or new man that sins and fails.  It is the power of indwelling sin (the flesh within) in our still fallen condition that sins which indeed, if fed, will do nothing but sin (Roms 7).  But which of us would dream of saying that when we sin it is or may be Christ dwelling within us that sins?  Who among us would dare to say that our new nature can fail?  It is not that which is ‘born of God’ that sins (1 Jn 3:9).  That which is ‘born of God’ loves (1 Jn 4:7) and overcomes the world by faith (1 Jn 5:14), Equally it is not the Holy Spirit within who sins and fails.  It is our remaining fallen flesh that incites sin for in  fallen flesh there dwells no good thing (Roms 7).  The Spirit wars against the flesh (Gals 5).  In the full realization of new creation our bodies too will be renewed, fallen flesh will be gone and then we will never sin again.  Indeed we will be unable to sin for that is the nature of the new life from God.  This is why heaven is so sure.

We need only take this back to Christ who was ‘born of God’ to grasp the invincible holiness of his humanity.  He was created ‘born of God’.  He is the One, ‘born of God’, who keeps his own who are ‘born of God from the evil one (1 Jn 5:18).  The life that was planted in us at conversion is his life.  The nature we receive by spiritual new birth is his.   The light that shines in us is sourced in him.  If the fulness of deity dwells in Christ then the fulness of the incarnate Christ in resurrection dwells in us (Jn 1:16; Col 2:9).

The biblical profile is inescapable.  Christ is invincible in his person and any attempt to make him less than such is not engaging with the biblical composite.

I hope in the next blog to consider more directly the issue of temptation.