Well, ladies and gentlemen, we have reached our final
Christology class. The premise of this class has been Right Thinking about the
Most Important Person in History. Over the past few weeks, we’ve been harping
on that first point: Right thinking. Teaching is a deep pervasive concern in
the New Testament and in the early church and false teachers are some of the
church’s greatest enemies. This is why the first 5/600 years of the church’s
history were filled with controversies where the Church tried to truly
articulate the faith, whether it was talking about the person of Christ or what
followed from Him, the Trinity. But in the background, there was always the
assumption that this was a serious endeavor. It’s really important that we see
and worship Christ rightly. After all, salvation is at stake. This is why we
have emphasized the full manhood and full divinity of Christ. His full humanity
was absolutely necessary for him to be a proper substitute for us. This is what
we see in Hebrews, specifically chapter 2:9-10:
We see him who for a little
while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and
honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might
taste death for everyone. For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all
things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their
salvation perfect through suffering.
Down to verse 14-15, 17:
Since therefore
the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same
things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death,
that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were
subject to lifelong slavery.
Here we see the incarnational theology of the
author of Hebrews, which was articulated by Gregory of Nazianzen in this way:
What was not assumed was not healed. Meaning this: Christ took up flesh and
blood to redeem flesh and blood. If he did not truly take it up, it has not
truly been healed. This is why the humanity of Christ is so important. When he
took on our sin, he did so as one of us.
But of course, what is perhaps more
important is the way in which he was not one of us, namely the fact that he is
the Son of God and he never stopped being the Son of God. It is his divinity
that soaks the New Testament and it is his divinity that secures our salvation.
The human race never could have produced a savior. This is what the virgin
birth declares to us. In the Incarnation, God becomes flesh and thus Christ is
truly, in every sense, God with us. In the Son of God’s dying a human death, he
is able to take the fullness of the penalty of sin for all who would put their
faith in him and as a result of who He is, He is resurrected. It is the central
Christian claim: that Jesus Christ, the man born of Mary, is and has always
been the Second Person of the Trinity, the Word of God, the Son of God. These
are grand statements. But they are grand statements that have been proclaimed
in the church throughout its history and we must be willing to proclaim them
today.
In our past classes, we’ve
discussed a number of heresies. We began with Docetism and Psilanthropism,
which denied either the humanity or divinity of Christ. We then dealt with
Marcionism and its disjunction of Christ from the God of the Old Testament.
Then we moved into Arianism, which sought to separate the Son from the Father
and make Christ merely a created being, which would hurl us irredeemably into
idolatry. As a response to Arianism, the council of Nicaea happened, which was
really a Christological statement that Christ was, is, and always will be as
much God as God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. Then last week, we got into
some more intense Christological heresies: Nestorianism, where the idea is that
God conjoined himself to a man, Eutychianism where God basically absorbed a
man, and Apollinarianism where God basically possessed a man. The response to
these was the Council at Chalcedon. Here is the articulation of the full
manhood and divinity of Christ, in unity, such that there is only one subject
that we read in Scripture. Not a human Christ and a divine Christ, but one
Christ.
Now all of that can seem very
heady. It can seem very out there. This is why I’ve attempted to emphasize the
fact that the Church spent so much time hashing this stuff out because
salvation was at stake, specifically that there was a kind of Person Christ had
to be in order to save us from our plight. But there is a focus that I have
slightly neglected. And it is one that we shall take up today through a very
close look at a momentous episode in Christ’s life: the agony in the Garden of
Gethsemane. Some have asked questions about this and you will be pleased to
know that there was an entire council that was basically focused on this
dilemma.
First, what is at stake? Take a look at Mark 14:32-36.
It’s that last verse that started to freak people out. Jesus
says, “Not what I will, but what you will.” What does that mean? Is there a
divided will in God? Is our salvation based on a battle of wills within God?
The Church would say no and there was a man who suffered greatly to champion
this view. His name was Maximus the Confessor. Why was he called the Confessor?
Because this was the name that the church gave individuals who suffered for the
faith but not unto death, as the martyrs did. Maximus lost his tongue and his
right hand, defending the doctrine that I am about to tell you. Here goes.
The Fall really messed us up. It got to us at the level of
our will, meaning, quite simply, the things we want. As a result of the Fall,
our desires are divided. Vertically, our desires are divided between God and
other things, which become idols. As a result, it bleeds into all of our life.
Horizontally, we constantly have to deal with the division of caring for the
people around us (Who do I prioritize? My family? My friends? My coworkers?)
Our wills are even divided within ourselves as we make moral decisions. We’ve
got to deal with the constant confusion of choice. For Maximus, Christ also
came to save us from that. Confusion. And we see the perfect picture of that in
Christ. Specifically in that phrase, “Not what I will”. What does Christ will?
That the cup of his suffering be removed from him. What is that cup? Why is his
“soul sorrowful, even to death”? Why does Luke record Christ’s agony, as he
sweats great drops of blood? Because Jesus knows that he’s about to die. Not
only is he going to die, but he’s going to lose everything dear to him. The
Incarnation, from his birth to this point, has been the story of loss.
Philippians 2: Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not count
equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the
form of a servant.
The Incarnation begins with an emptying. The Son of God, in
a way, leaves the Father and partakes in flesh and blood.
2 Corinthians 8:9:
You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for
your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.
He not
only took on flesh, but he took on hungry, tired, poor, homeless flesh. And
that wasn’t all.
From Mark 14 on, you see the most harrowing descent in human
history. He knows that his friends are going to betray him. His closest buddies
who he has been ministering with for years will fall asleep when he needs them
to pray and they will run when he needs them to stay. He will be tried and he
will be crucified and he will die abandoned. This is the agony. This is the cup
that he wishes the Father to take from him. Origen, one of the really Early
Church Fathers interpreted this in a macho way, saying that when Jesus said
“Remove this cup from me”, he was saying, “Father, is this it? I could take
more”. The Scripture seems to explicitly undercut that. This is our Savior at
his lowest point. But the upshot is the next part. Not what I will, but what
you will. This is the doctrine of the two wills of Christ. That Christ has both
a human will and a divine will, but they are never in conflict or confusion. In
fact, in Christ, his human will is always perfectly submitted to his divine
will. This is how he both willed and worked our salvation. As God, he willed it
with the Father and the Holy Spirit. As man, he became, for the sake of that
salvation, obedient to his Father unto death, even death on a cross. He
accomplished this great feat for our sake.
He did this not only to show us one of the many things that
he saved us from, namely the confusion of our own wills, but also to show us
what He is shaping us into. The issue with Monothelitism (the teaching that
Christ only had one will) was that it meant that salvation depended on the
human will being overruled and essentially smashed by God. Maximus’ idea of
salvation, in fact the more biblical understanding of salvation, was that it is
a rebirth, a regeneration effected by the Holy Spirit. It is a reorientation of
our desires over the course of our lives so that they find their greatest joy
where they should: in God. It is a reorientation that will be fully completed
in the end, when our bodies, our entire selves, are fully and completely
redeemed and perfected. When not only will we not sin, but it won’t even be
possible for us to sin. This is the day that He is preparing us for. And when
we see Christ, we not only see our Savior but we see our Brother, in that when
that defeated enemy, Death, touches us, it does so to bring us over the threshold
into eternal blessedness that we will share with our God. When we will see His
face and His name will be on our foreheads. And night will be no more. We will
need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be our light, and we will
reign forever and ever.
So practically? Christology gives you the reason to
persevere. A deep love for the person of Christ reminds you of the depth of His
sacrifice and the nobility and the glory that he has prepared for you. It is
with this ever before us that I will end with these words of Paul in Romans
8:18-25, which are about you and I:
“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not
worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the
creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For
the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of
him who subjected it, in hope that the creation
itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom
of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole
creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And
not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the
Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the
redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were
saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But
if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”
Let our hope be rooted in the person of Christ. Not only what he has done, but who He is. Because it is into His image that we are being conformed.
Let us eagerly await our adoption.
