chapter one: Introduction to the Person and Work of Christ

Chapter One

Introduction to the Person and Work of Christ

The Meaning and Significance of Christ

Two fundamental truths were incarnate in the Person of Christ: the truth of God and the truth of man.

Without Christ, the truth of God would remain foreign to man’s mind and distant from his emotions. God would be an entity utterly removed from man’s experience; the only grounds for extolling Him would be His stark “otherness,” His sheer separation from our meager, sinful state.

Without Christ, the truth of man would likewise be obscured. For man would see himself only as a creation of dust, who, by forgetting the eternal status of his soul, would fail to realize his everlasting destiny. Sin would dispossess him of his greatest attribute—spiritual freedom; and death would one day dispossess him altogether of existence. His single purpose in life consequently would be to eat, procreate, then die; and spiritual things would serve no real purpose in his vision of life.

Alternatively, if man were to realize the lofty status of his being, yet without Christ, then he would become a god without a God;

he would locate the purpose and destiny of life within himself. He would forget his lowly creatureliness, he would forget his sinfulness, and he would be ignorant of his servitude to the biological impulses that control him and drive him on to death and decay.

So, in order for us to comprehend the greatness of the mystery that is Christ—who is the perfect union between divine truth and human truth—we must begin by asking the question: What is the purpose of man’s life? Or, toward what final point is humanity moving?

And we must repudiate from the outset the notion that the purpose of man’s existence can be explained simply on materialistic grounds; for it would follow that he really differs in nothing from the animals. But we know deep in our hearts that man has been made lord over the visible creation, that he has been given authority over it, and that he is appointed its steward. Man is motivated by something more than just survival and self-preservation. He seeks for higher truth; he searches for transcendent meaning in the world.

And so man must find his final purpose in something (or someone) infinitely greater than himself—something for which he was created, in which his purpose is fulfilled, and through which his life is made complete and his happiness is realized.

Our Ultimate Good Realized in Christ

god created Man in his own image, so that his being could be a reflection of and witness to God’s being. Man’s life and work and intelligence were to become a doxology to God’s honor. Once man understands this role and accepts it, he becomes reconciled to God— and reconciled to himself. He finally rests in the knowledge that he is fulfilling the purpose of his life: to bear grateful witness to God by his words and works. And so man successfully concludes the “experiment” of his life with the firmly evidenced truth that he finds total

happiness in converting his life into a perpetual doxology to God’s glory. There is, therefore, an irrevocable link between God and man.

Now this link was obscured by the blurring effects of man’s ignorance. But one day, in the deep workings of history, it was suddenly manifested and made clear again by the light of humanity’s great representative, Jesus Christ. A new era in history was begun in which man recognized and understood his intimate relationship to God, because it was revealed in Christ. Man realized furthermore that it was by the light of that relationship, and by its light alone, that he could see the reason for his existence and could find the secret to his happiness.

So through Christ’s life, God appears to us as divine truth in visible form. Perfect truth, sacrificial love, and spotless holiness are all offered to man in Christ. In the life of Christ, human nature also appears in its completest form. Christ’s sincere humility and total obedience transfigure humanity; humanity is lifted out of the ashes and raised heavenward in order to find its place in God. In other words, through Christ, humanity’s ideal relationship to God is achieved. We behold in Christ the highest glory of God and of man: God’s glory is seen in His astonishing descent to take the form of a man, and man’s glory is seen in his astonishing ascent to fulfill and perfect the image of God.

Christ is, therefore, the apex of the human pyramid. The key to the mystery of our creation is found in Him. He is the archetypal human being, and He is humanity’s resurrection. Accordingly, Christ styles Himself our alpha and omega, our beginning and end—that is, the power that completes our life in God. He is our first and last— that is to say, the absolute perfection of everything we need, outside of whom there is to be found no other satisfaction: “for whom are all things and by whom are all things” (Heb. 2:10).Therefore, without an intimate knowledge of the Person of Jesus Christ, our knowledge of God remains meager, insubstantial, and joyless.

Christ Reveals the Holy Trinity

christ did not coMe to bring us a philosophy from God. He did not provide us with mere proverbs or good advice. He came to reveal God the Father. Through Christ, the Person of the Father becomes visible, tangible, and comprehensible. He reveals the Father’s love toward the weak—not just by words, but in the act of surrendering Himself to death. He reveals the Father’s mercy toward the sinful—not by words, but by the shedding of His blood. Christ is thus truly the “Word of God” to us—not just a written word, but the personified expression of God’s love, mercy, and forgiveness.

Again, Christ is not a messenger from God, but He is the message itself. He is God’s “Word” appearing with a body and a personality, in the form of a man. And He is not a message that begins and ends; He is not an isolated act of love or mercy that is once rendered and afterward is past. Rather, He is perpetual love, eternal and never-ending mercy. He is resurrection. He is salvation. He is our reconciliation to God.

So we now call God “Father” because Jesus has revealed Him so; and Jesus has shown us also that He is “Son” through the divine works He performed—works that no man before had ever done. And the one unified nature of the Father and Son is impossible to divide: “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” The Son’s Incarnation was the preliminary to the Father’s revelation. Every man on earth has the essence of fatherhood and sonship latent within his human nature; every man is potentially a father and a son at the same time. But marriage and procreation are the prerequisites for these familial natures to arise. God’s familial nature, however, needed no procreative event in time to come about, for it existed from eternity past. God’s fatherhood is the source of all fatherhood on earth, and His sonship is the foundation of all sonship. The divinity and equality of the divine essence is a mystery.

Now, the intimate bond or relation between Father and Son in the Godhead is itself a form of life; it is a living power, a vital force that proceeds from the Father and rests in the Son. In the human race, when a father begets, his life or spirit is transmitted to the son. This transferal is invisible, and yet it is a living reality nonetheless. The passing on of the father’s spirit to the son is precisely what creates the father’s fatherhood and the son’s sonship. Similarly, in the Godhead, the life that eternally proceeds from the Father to the Son is the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is the “life” of God, yet is neither the Father nor the Son. He is not a contingent or bounded attribute of God, but is a free, distinct, and active agent. And as all fatherhood springs from the Father, and as all sonship springs from the Son, so does all spirit and life in the world ultimately spring from the Holy Spirit.

How Are We to Understand Christ?

we Must first of all distinguish between the two widely disparate methods of acquiring knowledge: scientific versus spiritual. Scientific or intellectual knowledge concerns itself strictly with the physical world, and it is best pursued on the principles of skepticism and doubt. Its veracity is typically gauged by comparing new theories with previously established facts.

Spiritual truth, on the other hand, can never find its way into the heart and mind of man except by man’s humble readiness to receive it. This means that man’s conscience must be prepared in advance to open itself up to divine knowledge without haggling or argumentation. That is, if ever divine truth begins to shine in a person’s mind and to knock at the door of his heart, it must not find the door closed by doubt or the path blocked by obstinacy, so that the person may rejoice in the light revealed.

Christian truth is unique in that it does not rest on foundations

that require an advanced intelligence or a clever shrewdness to understand. It rests on the living Person of Jesus Christ, who Himself possesses the ability to deposit the truth regarding Himself into the willing heart: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me” (Rev. 3:20).

The primary key to all Christian theology is, therefore, a deep faith in Jesus Christ residing in the heart. Christ is in such a case the expositor of His own theology: “He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself” (Luke 24:27). Thus, all the theological studies a person may undertake will lie under the dark shadow of human understanding unless Christ is found present in the heart to illuminate it. Darkness then is traded for light, without the slightest need for mental toil or stress: “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life” (John 8:12).

So the Son of God appeared to us in human flesh: He was thus introduced to our race after being concealed in the ineffable being of God. And His descent into human time was not sudden or unannounced, but was foretold thousands of years prior in the form of prophecy. The coming Messiah was, in the prophets’ minds, the Alpha and Omega of their entire message. On the day of Christ’s birth, the regular events of human history began to be penetrated by eternal events: the Incarnation, the redemption on the Cross, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the sitting at the Father’s right hand. The life of Christ, therefore, is not merely a series of miracles in which I am “required” to believe. They are events rather that directly involve me: this is the story of my life as a new creation.