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VII

THE INCARNATION

Words, in the usage of Holy Scripture, are more than so many vocal noises. They belong to the person who utters them and are part of him. They are imbued with a certain power and reality, as though bearing part of the very personality of the speaker. When “the word of the Lord” came to the Old Testament prophets, it meant that divine authority including something of God’s vital energy reposed in it. Thus in our Lord’s parable of the Sower, “the seed is the word of God,”¹ possessed of a living spark which grows on its own power. Said our Lord,” The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life”;² “now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you”;³ and He warns us that “every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.”⁴

Upon this background the prologue of St. John’s Gospel was written: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”⁵ Briefly, that tells the story of the Incarnation. Jesus Christ has been God since the beginning of all things. At a certain point in human history He assumed human nature and for a brief time lived as Man among men. He was not a man who was in some mysterious way endued with divine properties. He was God who for a short time and for a special purpose took upon himself human properties. The Christian Gospel is not something which originates with man and reaches up to God. It is something which comes from God and descends upon men. If Christ were no more than a divinely inspired man, He would be only a beautiful example of what God can do with one responsive life. We would look and wonder and be helpless. But the Incarnation tells us that God became Man, that He injected a new spiritual power into human nature in which we may share by union with Christ. He is Representative Man. Through that One Man God does something for all men. As St. Paul puts it, “Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men.”⁶

Always men and women have been in search of personal contact with God. But how could it ever be accomplished? Man is a small speck in creation. God is the supreme power over an enormous universe. The gulf is too great. How could a man see God and live? In electricity, if you connect up a small machine with a huge dynamo, the excessive electrical energy will blow out the little machine and reduce it to ruin. Therefore a means has been devised by which the power may be stepped down through a transformer and be adjusted to the capacity of the feeble machine so that it will help rather than destroy. In some such way we might say that Christ is a transformer of God’s divine life, adjusting it to our human capacity of reception. I know the objections to such an analogy but at least it is suggestive.

The Incarnation is the central fact of the Christian faith. Without it Christianity falls to the ground. That is why Christians have proclaimed it, defended it, fought and died for it since the very beginning of Christian history. In the days of the Roman empire the pagans had no particular objection to adding another god to their Pantheon, and the Christians might have escaped persecution and martyrdom if they had been willing to accept such a broad-minded invitation. But they steadfastly refused. To them Christ was God as no other could possibly be called divine. They rejected all compromises and took the consequences. After the pagan persecution was lifted, crowds of pagans flooded into the Christian fold, and it was not long before questionable teaching about the person of Christ began to appear. On this point the Church took an unequivocal position, realizing that a reduced Christ meant the eventual dissolution of the whole Christian Gospel. In four great Councils the Church declared itself on four denials of the truth of the Incarnation. The first was a denial that Christ was truly God. The second denied that He was truly human. The third attempted to divide His single personality. The fourth confused His human and divine natures. The Church’s doctrine was summed up at the Council of Chalcedon in the year A.D. 451 by declaring that:

Christ is truly God;

He is perfectly Man;

He is one Person;

He has two natures.

In theological language Christ is one divine Person possessed of both divine and human natures, “truly, perfectly, indissolubly, and without confusion.” Many deviations from this historic teaching have occurred since those early days, but they all fall under one or another of these heads. In other words, the Church covered the ground fifteen centuries ago and settled its convictions permanently. On that footing it has weathered the storms of the ages and still moves forward with undiluted faith in the Divine Saviour.

To some impatient souls all this may seem quite theoretical and highly speculative. What’s the good of all these fine distinctions anyhow? So long as we live wholesome Christian lives, what does it matter whether or not we have any consistent doctrine of the Incarnation? The point is that faith and practice go together, and a wholesome Christian life is the fruit of a sound Christian faith. Oh, yes, I know you will occasionally find a person living a very good life who has never bothered his head about any kind of faith at all. But where did he get his standard of good living? How did he come by his Christian ideals? He has borrowed them from the Church which has preserved and proclaimed them through the loyalty of those who really did concern themselves with the underlying faith. Break down the support of sound doctrine and Christ becomes a patch-work figure meaning a thousand different things to a thousand different people, with the authenticity of His Gospel dissolved and the moral principles of the Christian life thinned into sentimental vaporings. Why should you exert yourself to live like a Christian? Is it because you like the flavor of it? Or because you consider it conventionally correct? Or because you think it is the best working policy? Slippery reasons, all of them. Why should you try to live like a Christian? Because Christ said so with divine authority. There is a reason that will really stand up. What you do not believe is a matter of no great moment. What you do believe is of supreme importance. It supplies a substantial background for your daily living. When a man says, “I don’t believe in Christ but I try to live a good life,” I reply, “That’s worse for you than it is for Christ and puts a question mark against all of your good living.” But if a man says, “I do indeed believe in Christ and try to live His way,” I reply, “That’s fine for both of you and gives some reality to your good living.” The doctrine of the Incarnation is more than a speculative theory. What we think of Christ is truly important.

THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST

For practical purposes we may approach the question of the deity of our Lord from four angles:

I. His own human life. It clamors for explanation because of its superlative difference from any other life that has ever been lived. “The character of Jesus forbids His possible classification with men.” His sinlessness, His loyalty, His compassion, His assurance, His insight into human nature, His grasp of eternal values—they are beyond natural imagination. His matchless teaching and His complete exemplification of that teaching are without any parallel. In all the record of human history this one Life stands unique. It calls for an explanation different from that of any other life.

2. What He thought of Himself. On His own authority He set aside requirements of the Law which to the Jews were of divine origin and supplanted them with His own commandments. He accepted worship and adoration from His followers such as belong only to God. In clear, bold statements He identified Himself with the Heavenly Father—“I and my Father are one,”⁷ “no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.”⁸ When He asked the Apostles who they considered Him to be, St. Peter made his famous declaration, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God”—for which our Lord blessed St. Peter and assured him that the Heavenly Father had taught him to say it.⁹ To a blind man whom he had healed our Lord asked, “Dost thou believe on the Son of God?” The man replied, “Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on Him?” “And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen Him, and it is He that talketh with thee.”¹⁰ At the time of His trial the High Priest placed Him under solemn oath and demanded, “Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” To which our Saviour replied categorically, “I am; and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.”¹¹

There was no doubt as to what He meant, for His accusers immediately carried Him off to Pilate and charged Him with blasphemy, just as on an earlier occasion His enemies had sought to destroy Him for “making Himself equal with God.”¹² The records are full of it. There can be only one of three answers—either He was a fraud, or He was deluded, or He spoke the truth. No one can study the accounts of His life and harbor for a moment the idea that He would deliberately engage in deceit. Neither can anyone consider His clear thinking, His soundness of judgment, and the wholesome sanity of His teaching and, in the face of these, reach a conclusion that He was a victim of hallucinations. The alternative is to believe that He must have been speaking the truth.

3. What others thought of Him.