Isaiah 9:6-7: The Final King

In these days of Christian persecution around the world, and mounting in our own country, it is good to be reminded what God promised Isaiah: the coming of the final King who would rule the world with peace and righteousness. John Watts states:

Christian exegesis of the Old Testament is keenly aware of the elements which the New Testament understands to be fulfilled in Jesus. Foremost among these are the royal aspects of Messiah. Jesus is understood to be the Son of David, heir to divine promise of an everlasting and universal throne.

This understanding of Messiah is founded on 2 Sam 7:11b–16 and on the royal Psalms (including Pss 2, 45, and 110). These proclaim a very high view of the king and the kingdom, in which God is directly involved with both. Among the OT passages which present such a view, none ranks higher than Isaiah 9:5–6[6–7] or 11:1–5. The first lists throne names for the Davidic king of Zion (see below), while the second announces, or prays for, the spirit of the Lord to so fill him that he achieves the highest aims of the kingdom.

What the Old Testament, including Isaiah, can only record as promises and ideals that contrast starkly with human reality, the New Testament invites the Christian to see fulfilled in Jesus Christ, Son of David and Divine King of Heaven and Earth.[1]

Here is a proposed translation of Isaiah 9:6-7:

(1) For a child is born to us,[2]
(2) a Son is given to us;
(3) And the administration will be on His shoulder.
(4) And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Father of eternity, Prince of peace.
(5) Of the increase[3] of His government and peace there will be no end,
(6) Upon the throne of David and over his kingdom, to order it and establish it with judgment and justice from now and forever.
(7) The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this.

The larger context concerns world peace and government. Isaiah gives three reasons for joy in verses 4-6, each verse beginning with a “for.” The first reason for joy in v. 4 is that sin has been dealt with. In v. 5 the second reason is that the instruments of war have been destroyed. The third reason is in vv. 6-7, which brings us to the translation above, the coming King.

(1) “Child” is put first in Hebrew for emphasis. Notice that this refers to His humanity, and that He will be born, signifying the manner of His first coming. As Isaiah says earlier, He will be born of a virgin (Isa. 7:14). “The divine ruler will not merely be God, but although partaking of the divine attributes, will have the most human of all arrivals upon the earth, namely birth.”[4] Oswalt adds, “This is clearly an eschatological figure, the Messiah. The Targum explicitly identifies the person as the Messiah.”[5] The Targum was written before Christ came; after His birth, the Jews have reinterpreted this to mean the birth of Hezekiah.

(2) The “Son” is given, for as eternal deity He cannot be born. Notice the accuracy of the language. The Son cannot be born because He is eternal, thus He is given. The child is born, which refers to the humanity of the that He gained at the Virgin conception. We have here the prediction of the theanthropic Person, God and man in one person. As man, He is born, but as God He is given, signifying His previous existence. Indeed, He is without beginning (John 8:58)! Very early, Messiah was known as the God-man, not only from the many theophanies, but also from passages like this one (see Isa. 48:16 for the Trinity. Gen. 4:1 may possibly be rendered “I have begotten a manchild, even the LORD,” though most reject that translation).

(3) When world power was threatening to undo God’s people, God promised a child who would rule the world for His people. He would not only rule, but the very “administration” (many versions render it “government”) itself would rest on Him. The Hebrew word translated “administration” is not only the kingdom of God and grace but also nature and power (see Matt. 28:19, 20; Col. 1:15-19). He would rule it all; that is, the kingdom of God and the world at large. He would rule the kingdom of the world by sovereign might providentially, whether anyone liked it or not (Ps. 2:7-9), which would include not only nature but also the kingdoms of mankind.

(4) There are four names for Messiah in these verses, as supported by the Massoretic accentuation, not five as some translations have it.[6]

(a) “Wonderful Counselor” is a clear statement of His deity, for in Judges 13:18 the Angel of the LORD, using basically the same word, says His name is Wonderful. As you may recall, the Angel of the LORD is God Himself (Exodus 3:1-14). He is also “Counselor,” indicating that it requires wisdom to sit on David’s throne, and in Messiah “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom” (Col. 2:3). “So this counselor is a wonder because his counsel goes beyond the merely human.”[7] The Messiah therefore is a qualified statesman.

(b) He is called the “Mighty God” as a title of undisputed deity (see Isa. 10:21). The word for “God” is “El,” which in this singular form is used only of God Almighty in the Old Testament. “Whenever el gibbor [mighty God] occurs elsewhere in the Bible there is no doubt that the term refers to God (10:21; see also Deut. 10:17; Jer. 32:18). This king will have God’s true might about him, power so great that it can absorb all the evil which can be hurled at it until none is left to hurl (53:2-10; 59:15-20; 63:1-9).”[8] As Mighty God He is able to execute His plans, for He is our Hero of war.

(c) “Father of eternity” indicates one who is a Father to His people, for He is our guardian, a father in the sense of Ps. 103:13. “This person’s fatherhood is claimed to be forever.”[9] The United Pentecostals wrongly use this passage to say that Jesus is God the Father, thereby denying the most basic belief of Christianity, the Holy Trinity. But Jesus is a Father to His people—not a Father in relation to the Trinity.

(d) “Prince of peace” indicates the kind of ruler He will be. “To elevate the Davidic government to a government of eternal peace is the end to which He is born.”[10] (See also Zech. 9:9, 10; Micah 5:2-5a.) “It is appropriate that this title should come as the last of the series, for it is the climactic one (see. 32:17). What sort of king is this? He is a peaceful king, one who comes in peace and one who established peace, not by a brutal squashing of all defiance, but by means of a transparent vulnerability which makes defiance pointless. Somehow through him will come the reconciliation between God and man that will then make possible reconciliation between man and man (53:5; 57:19; 66:12; Luke 2:14; John 16:33; Rom. 5:1; Heb. 12:14).”[11]

(5) Peace and government are mentioned together, which is what the world is always seeking and not able to obtain apart from Him and His administration. We see that Messiah’s reign will be perpetual and progressive. When I was pre-mill, I tried very diligently to make the Hebrew word for “increase” not really mean that, but indeed it does. Jesus’ kingdom will increase until He delivers to the Father a conquered kingdom at the end of the world:

For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. 23 But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming. 24 Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. 25 For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. 26 The last enemy that will be destroyed is death. (1 Cor. 15:22-26).

As Keil and Delitzsch rightly observe of the idea for increase:

Ever extending dominion and endless peace will be brought in by the sublime and lofty King’s Son, when He sits upon the throne of David and rules over David’s kingdom.[12]

John Calvin is also very insightful in his commentary on Isaiah 9:7:

Now, this continuance, of which Isaiah now speaks, consists of two parts. It belongs both to time and to quality. Though the kingdom of Christ is in such a condition that it appears as if it were about to perish at every moment, yet God not only protects and defends it, but also extends its boundaries far and wide, and then preserves and carries it forward in uninterrupted progression to eternity. We ought firmly to believe this, that the frequency of those shocks by which the Church is shaken may not weaken our faith, when we learn that, amidst the mad outcry and violent attacks of enemies, the kingdom of Christ stands firm through the invincible power of God, so that, though the whole world should oppose and resist, it will remain through all ages. We must not judge of its stability from the present appearances of things, but from the promise, which assures us of its continuance and of its constant increase.

(6) Furthermore, His reign is to be over David’s throne and kingdom. Let us observe several things here:

(a) The reign is said by Isaiah to begin with the birth of the babe (“from that time forward,” which means from the time the child is born and the Son is given), which the New Testament confirms:

[An angel says to Mary:] “And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name JESUS. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end.” (Luke 1:31-33)

[Peter speaking:] “Men and brethren, let me speak freely to you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Therefore, being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his body, according to the flesh, He would raise up the Christ to sit on his throne, he, foreseeing this, spoke concerning the resurrection of the Christ, that His soul was not left in Hades, nor did His flesh see corruption. This Jesus God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses. Therefore being exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He poured out this which you now see and hear. For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he says himself: 'The LORD said to my Lord, ‘Sit at My right hand, till I make Your enemies Your footstool.’ Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.” (Acts 2:29-36)!

(b) A 1,000-year millennium is not forever, and the text says His rule is to be forever, beginning with His birth, having no end, and gaining in momentum over the years.

(c) “Administration” and “kingdom” are used synonymously, indicating that both began at His birth. We see the same thing in Daniel where God said that in the days of the Roman empire that He would establish a kingdom that would destroy all other kingdoms, would fill the whole earth, and would last forever.

You watched while a stone was cut out without hands, which struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed together, and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; the wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found. And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. (Daniel 2:34-35)

And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. Inasmuch as you saw that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold—the great God has made known to the king what will come to pass after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure. (Dan. 2:44-45).

The saints received it from the Ancient of Days (Dan. 7:9-14, 18, 22, 27). We know assuredly that Christ received the kingdom at His ascension and that it is now spreading over the whole earth (Acts 6:7; 14:22; 20:25; 28:23, 31). In fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant that he would be a blessing to all nations (Gen. 18:18; 22:18; 26:4; Gal. 3:8), the sovereign King of kings gave his apostles the great commission that the kingdom was now for the whole world:

And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen. (Matt. 28:18-20)

(d) This One will be the final King as seen in that His kingdom will never end, “from now and forever.”

(7) This indicates the certainty of what will be accomplished. “In itself this zeal . . . designates the deep love which God has for His people and . . . His profound desire to protect and guard them and their welfare. But even more the word signifies a determination jealously to protect the divine honor and to vindicate the divine purposes.”[13] There is no power and no person, not even Satan, who can stop the good purposes of this King! Christians are winners! Let us remember that the Lord of glory came to earth not only to save His people from their sins, but also to establish a kingdom that would be perpetual and progressive, “for He must reign until He has put all enemies under His feet” (1 Cor. 15:25).

Even so, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

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[1] John D.W. Watts, Word Biblical Commentary, Volume 24: Isaiah 1-33, (Dallas, Texas: Word Books, Publisher) 1998, CD ROM, on Isa. 9:6-7.
[2] In this section of Isaiah, the Hebrew is one verse behind the English.
[3] The Jewish commentators made much of the final mem that is not final but occurring up front in the word. It just seems to be a scribal error.
[4] John A. Oswalt, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament: The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 1-39, p. 245.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Only an arbitrary emendation can produce five names.
[7] Oswalt, Isaiah, p. 247.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Keil and Delitzsch, electronic.
[11] Oswalt, Isaiah, p. 248.
[12] K&D, electronic version on Isaiah 9:7.
[13] E. J. Young on Isaiah 9 in his commentary.

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The Greatest Love Possible (John 3:16)

The Very Rev. Dr. Curtis I. Crenshaw

INTRODUCTION

During this time of year when we prepare our hearts for the Advent of the King, it is appropriate to reflect upon John 3:16, where we learn about the love that was demonstrated to us in His first Advent.

God = The greatest Lover
So loved = The greatest degree
The world = The hardest to love
That He gave = The greatest act
His only Begotten Son = The greatest gift
That whoever = The greatest opportunity
Believes = The greatest simplicity
In Him = The greatest attraction
Should not perish = The greatest promise
But have = The greatest certainty
Everlasting life = The greatest possession

It seems every Christian has a favorite Bible verse. With John Wesley it was Zechariah 3:2: “Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?” David Livingston preferred the last words of Christ to His disciples, recorded in Matthew 28:20: “I am with you always, even to the end of the world.” John Newton, who wrote “Amazing Grace” and was a former slave trader, reveled in Romans 5:20: “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” Luther loved Romans 1:17: “The just shall live by faith.” I’m not in the league of these men, but mine is Romans 3:26: “That He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” But John 3:16 has to be the all time favorite verse of the Church down through the centuries. Its richness cannot be exhausted.

In the Greek text there are three clauses in the verse: (1) the main clause (God so loved the world); (2) the result clause (that He gave His only Son); and (3) the purpose clause (in order that whoever believes in Him may not perish but have everlasting life).

I. The Love of God

It was not necessary for God to send His Son, for He could have let us perish as He did the angels who fell with Satan. He did not owe us love. In the first portion of the verse, we will focus on three words. First, “so” is an adverb that indicates the manner of His love, not the intensity, though His love was infinitely intense. Second, “Loved” is not just an emotion but a doing, as the rest of the verse clearly states. Love is action. Third, “World” is here not a quantitative term that indicates how many He loved. Rather, it is a qualitative term, revealing the kind of people God loves: those who love darkness rather than light, as the next verses state. In other words, His love extends to sinful ones, like you and me (see vv 18-21). We don’t exalt God’s love by saying the infinite God loved a finite number of people. We exalt His love by acknowledging that the Most Holy Creator stoops to love His rebellious creatures. His love is exalted by the kind of person He loves, as seen in the following passages:

And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed (John 3:19-20).

But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:4-7).

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).

“For the object of His love is not the world in its first condition when He pronounced it “very good,” but the world ruined by sin and condemned for apostasy. . . . Yet without any change in His claims or character He loved us. And this love is not a mere relenting which might lead to a respite, or simple regret which might end in a sigh. There is no merit in loving what is lovely. There is nothing about man but his misery to attract the Divine attachment. Man’s sin is not his misfortune, but his fault. And the marvel is there is nothing God hates so much as sin, and yet no one He loved so much as the [elect] sinner.” (Biblical Illustrator)

Therefore, the grandest thought we can have is expressed in the words of the simple song many of us learned as children:

Jesus us loves me, this I know,
For the Bible tells me so.

Moreover, this love of God is infinite, for He is infinite. That means it will never end, that its depth cannot be plumbed, that nothing can stop it, that it conquers all:

. . . that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love,, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height —to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:17-19).

God’s infinite love is demonstrated in the account of the martyrs of Ecuador. In 1955, Nate Saint, Jim Elliot, and three other missionaries who had previously made inroads with the Huaorani tribe were massacred. Yet the murderous hearts of the Indians were transformed as Nate’s sister Rachel and Jim’s wife Elisabeth not only forgave them but went to live among them to share the Gospel. Love is the most powerful force there is.

God’s love is giving, continually giving to us all that we need. As a giving love, that in turn means it is unchangeable.

For I am the LORD, I do not change; therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob (Malachi 3:6).

The Old Testament book of Hosea presents God’s unchanging love for Israel. God commanded Hosea to marry a former prostitute to illustrate His love for Israel, and when she fell back into her sin, God commanded Hosea to go get her and clean her up again! God wants us to recognize that we are the undeserving prostitute upon whom He showers His love.

II. Result of His Love (He Gave)

There is virtually no mention of the love of God in the New Testament without the Cross being in the context. The Cross is the greatest demonstration of God’s love, and it provides the pattern for human love as well:

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her (Eph 5:25).

Further, observe that we are not the reason for God’s love. We cannot be, for we are too sinful. Not even Christ is the reason for God’s love, for Christ is the manifestation of God’s love, not that the Son won God’s love for us. It was because God loved us that He gave His only Son! The Father and the Son loved us! Indeed, the whole life of Christ is a manifestation of the love and mercy of God, for Christ never turned anyone away who asked for mercy.

When we consider that God gave His Son, we must not think that the Father made the Son do something He did not want to do. We are told, in fact, that He “for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2). He always delights to do the Father’s will, so He came willingly.

“His only Son” means not only that Jesus Christ was unique, the one and only, but also that He was the one who was begotten from all eternity so that we can say He was always the Son just as the Father was always the Father. “Only begotten” is one word in Greek, and does not mean begotten in the sense of beginning. Thus the Nicene Creed says that the Son was “begotten not made.” He is one of a kind, the only Son of the Father, and the best He had to give. The incarnation is the greatest mystery in the Bible because in it we find God Almighty in the Son adding to Himself humanity forever. As man He could not raise Himself from the dead, and as God He could not die. But as God-man, He died, shed His blood for us, and raised Himself from the dead.

Right after my daughter had her first child, a son, she said to me on the phone: “Daddy, for the first time I’m beginning to understand God’s love in giving us His Son. I’ve only had my son less than an hour, and I cannot imagine giving Him up for others, especially for those who might hate him.”

Once I was talking to a couple who were having trouble in their marriage, and the wife kept saying that her husband did not love her. He kept saying he did, and he listed all the things he had done for her: nice house, expensive cars, beautiful clothes, and so forth, to which she responded: “You’ve given me everything but yourself.” God gave Himself. That is the result, the manifestation of God’s love.

How do we know that God loves us? He gave Himself to us and for us in the person of His Son. It is not just all the marvels of creation, the food, shelter and so many things that demonstrate His love, but God gave HIMSELF!

We are also to reflect God’s love to others, even to those who hate us, who use us, yes, even to the spouse who wearies us with his/her sins, to the boss who takes advantage of us, and to the person in traffic who cuts us off.

III. Purpose of His Love (everyone who believes)

Believing seems so simple that the world rebels against it. One person stated to me that he could not conceive of a God who would allow someone to cause a lifetime of misery to others only to escape at the last minute by “just” believing in Jesus. My reply was that he underestimated the value of the gift, for no one gets away with anything: the Son took the punishment. And believing is not so simple as just saying the words “I believe in Jesus,” but it is a total commitment to Christ to love and serve Him to death.

But on the other hand, it is simple in one sense. He is there and available for His people:
It is said that some years ago a vessel sailing on the northern coast of the South American continent, was observed to make signals of distress. When hailed by another vessel, they reported themselves as “Dying for water!” “Dip it up then,” was the response, “you are in the mouth of the Amazon river.” There was fresh water all around them, they had nothing to do but to dip it up, and yet they were dying of thirst, because they thought themselves to be surrounded by the salt sea. How often are men ignorant of their mercies? How sad that they should perish for lack of knowledge! Jesus is near the seeker even when he is tossed upon oceans of doubt. The sinner has but to stoop down and drink and live. (Spurgeon)
But belief is also something that holds on to the mercy of God:

When a shipwrecked sailor, left to the mercy of the waves, has no help within reach or view but a spar or mast, how will he cling to it, how firmly he will clasp it — he will hold it as life itself. If a passing billow sweeps him from it, with all his might he will make for it again, and grasp it faster than ever. To part is to perish; and so he clings — and how anxiously! So the awakened sinner feels. The ocean of wrath surrounds him; its billows and its waves go over him. Hell yawns beneath to engulf him. The vessel is an utter wreck. All its floating timbers are very rottenness. Oh, how he strains his eye searching for a mast, a plank, a spar! His eye rests on the only hope, the only rock in the wide ocean of wrath, the Rock of Ages, the Lord Jesus. He makes for the Savior — he clasps Him. He cleaves to Him. Every terror of sin and of unworthiness that strives to loosen his hold only makes him grasp with more terrible and death-like tenacity, for he knows that to part company is to perish. (Biblical Illustrator).

There are two sides to the one coin: “may not perish but have eternal life.” There is the negative (not perish) and the positive (have life with God). This is the free gift!

Perishing is possible. We don’t like to think about hell, but the Lord Jesus talked more about hell than all the rest of the Bible combined. We could wish hell were not true, but we must not apologize for God’s truth. Every fiber of my being could wish it were not true, but every fiber of my being tells me it is true if God has righteousness — and He does have righteousness. We must be warned to “flee from the wrath to come,” as John the Baptist put it.

Jesus said:

And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life (Matthew 25:46).

Paul stated:

. . . when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Thessalonians 1:7-8).

The Apostle John proclaimed:

And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever; and they have no rest day or night, who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name (Revelation 14:11).

And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:15).

No one is annihilated, but they go on forever in full consciousness. What makes hell so awful is being in the immediate presence of the infinitely holy God devoid of all righteousness and without any grace at all. Yet we read:

“Do I have any pleasure at all that the wicked should die?” says the Lord GOD, “and not that he should turn from his ways and live?” (Ezekiel 18:23).

The final words of this verse, “but have eternal life,” may be the most comforting because they mean that we have it right now! That is the gift! Our life with God in heaven begins right now. John does not say one day we’ll have eternal life, but HAVE (present tense in Greek) the life now. And isn’t that what John’s epistle states: “HE WHO HAS THE SON HAS LIFE, but he who does not have the Son does not have life” (1 John 5:12).? Because we have life now is one reason I’ve said in the past that death for the Christian is a change of geography, but not much else. We go from enjoying eternal life now in a sinful state to enjoying it in a perfect state, which means we’ll be able to have the full enjoyment of God! Right now our sins hinder us from enjoying our relationship with God.

Conclusion

In John 3:16, we have a view into the heart of God: He delights in mercy, not in wrath. There are no second-class citizens of God’s kingdom, the Church, for we are all loved by God, and every one of us has been given the Son for our surety, our inheritance. Thus whatever the Son has, we have.

He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? (Rom 8:32).

What are our needs that Christ supplies? (1) We need to know about God, and Jesus is the perfect revelation of the Father (John 14:9). If you want to know what God is like, read about Jesus in the Gospels. (2) We need a savior from our sins, and Jesus is the perfect savior, not only taking our punishment in our place but also delivering us from sin’s power so as to enable us to overcome the enslaving power of sin. (3) We need to have victory over our greatest enemy, death. We don’t like to think about death, but we will all die. Christ also died, and His resurrection is our resurrection!

Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage (Heb 2:14-15).

Thank God for giving His Son for us and to us, God’s greatest gift, Himself. He who has the Son has life, and he who does not have the Son does not have God’s life. Amen.

Was Christ God While on Earth?

by The Very Rev. Dr. Curtis I. Crenshaw, Th. D.
© 6 November 2007

In the previous blog entry I spoke of a Christology from above, by which we meant that it was the Second Person of the Holy Trinity who was Incarnate, and that He remained God. Sometimes we don’t draw the obvious conclusion from who God is—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—to the Incarnation, that God the Son cannot change. Even those who consider themselves conservative today have forgotten the Church’s teaching that Chalcedon in 451 clearly stated about the Son not giving up His deity in the Incarnation:

In agreement with the holy fathers we all unanimously teach that we should confess that our Lord Jesus Christ is one and the same Son; the same perfect in Godhead and the same perfect in manhood, truly God and truly man, the same of a rational soul and body; consubstantial with the Father in Godhead and the same consubstantial with us in manhood; like us in all things except sin; begotten of the Father before all ages as regards his Godhead and in the last days the same, for us and for our salvation, begotten of the Virgin Mary the Theotokos as regards his manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten, made known in two natures without confusion [the two natures did not merge in some way to form a third nature], without change [each nature remained fully what it was before the joining], without division [the two natures did not constitute two persons], without separation [the two natures were in union with the Person]; the differences of the natures being by no means removed because of the union but the property of each nature being preserved and coalescing in one person (prosopon) and one hypostasis [another word for person], not parted or divided into two persons but one and the same Son, only-begotten, divine Word, the Lord Jesus Christ; as the prophets of old and Jesus Christ himself have taught us about him, and the creed of our fathers has handed down.[1]

Amidst this wonderful theology, one point the fathers were making is that in the Incarnation, the deity of the Son did not change in essence or in function. Incarnation was by addition, not by subtraction.

The Problem: Incarnation by Subtraction

I did my doctoral dissertation on the word-faith movement some years ago, and wrote a book on it entitled Man as God: The Word of Faith Movement (Available from Footstool Publications). Part of what makes their teaching so dangerous is that their view of Christ is contrary to the Church’s teaching over the centuries and, of course, contrary to the New Testament. They will say things such as Christ gave up His deity while on earth, or that He gave up the use of His deity. Either way, we do not have an Incarnation. The word-faith people especially want to emphasize that Christ only functioned as a man by the power of the Holy Spirit, for this means they can do all that Christ did. In other words, they destroy the uniqueness of the person of Christ by saying we have the same Holy Spirit and can do any miracle He did—if we have enough faith. Even one of their favorite passages to “prove” that the Son was not God (Phil 2:5ff), really says, as virtually all the fathers noted, that He was God on earth: “who, although existing in the form of God. . . .” As J. B. Lightfoot noted over 100 years ago, the word for “form” means “essence,” and the word for “existing” is not unlike the verb for “was” in John 1:1, denoting eternal existence.[2] The idea in this passage is that the Son, while continuing to exist in essence as God, added to Himself perfect humanity. Lightfoot was a tremendous patristic scholar, Greek scholar, and Anglican, whose works are so accurate and significant that scholars and Greek lexicons still quote him.

On another occasion, I was in a bookstore, and I saw a book written by a man with whom I attended seminary. I was glad to see him writing, so I purchased the book to be encouraged in the Gospel. To my horror, I read that Jesus did not function as God while on earth, that He was not omnipresent while on earth but His divinity was only in the “vicinity” of, but never far from, His humanity while on earth. I wrote the publisher, quoting John Walvoord against the author, stating that we did not so learn Christ at our seminary. Thus, the problem of the Incarnation is a pervasive one.

I’m not alone in seeing that the word-faith view of Christ is the main area of controversy. I know a man who graduated from Kenneth Hagin’s Rhema Bible College, read his way out of the movement, did a Ph. D. at Oxford in church history, and said that my work on this was especially important because their view of Christ was the main problem, which is what I addressed in the book. I’ve seen pastors come out of the movement once they realized the implications of it.

I’m not trying to be unkind. Perhaps these people mean well, but sincerity is not the issue; truth is the issue. The price to have the purity of the Gospel is eternal vigilance. We must constantly defend the old Gospel, not only from its enemies, but also from those who mean well but are misinformed. One’s faith is only as good as the object of his faith, and the object only as good as the propositions about that object. Here are a few reasons it is so important to maintain that Son was “the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb 13:8) and that on earth He not only was unchanged as God but also functioned as God.

Solution: Incarnation by Addition

(1) If Jesus was not God or only functioned as man, what would this do to the Holy Trinity? This would mean God would be reduced to two persons, the Father and the Holy Spirit. It is no better if someone says He was God but did not function that way, which is to give with one hand and take back with the other.

Furthermore, how does this reconcile with the Council of Ephesus in 431:

If anyone shall say that Jesus as man is only energized by the Word of God, and that the glory of the only-begotten is attributed to Him as something not properly His: let him be anathema.

If any man shall say that the one Lord Jesus Christ was glorified by the Holy Spirit, so that He used through Him a power not His own and from Him received power against unclean spirits and power to work miracles before men and shall not rather confess that it was His own Spirit through which He worked these divine signs; let him be anathema.[3]

At Ephesus it was rightly understood that if the Son did not function as God, we have no redemption, for that would mean we only had a finite man who died on the Cross, not one who was also God. In turn, that would mean His work was only finite, not infinite.

Moreover, other early fathers maintained the same view as Ephesus:

Origen asserts that the rule of faith[4] lays down that the Logos “being made man remained that which he was before”; and Augustine, echoing the voice of the older tradition, says, “Thus he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, not losing the form of God; the form of a servant was added, the form of God not subtracted.” Athanasius and Gregory of Nyssa, while admitting that the Word so far emptied himself as to appear not in his native majesty but in the humility of human nature, yet insist on his unaltered substantial greatness; and this remained the established view. Athanasius, in opposition to the Arians . . . fights for the unchangeableness of the Logos as the palladium[5] of orthodoxy; the Logos does not increase in wisdom (Luke 2:52), is not hungry or troubled even unto death (John 12:27), is not in ignorance of the day of judgment, does not suffer or die—all these things happen only to his “flesh,” to his human nature. And after Athanasius not only the Atniochian school but even Apollianaris and Cyril make similarly strong assertions of the unchangeableness of the Godhead of the Logos. . . . By a corresponding train of thought, the “exaltation” of Phil. 2:9 is always in patristic theology referred exclusively to the human nature of Christ. In all this there is no room for such a theory as that of Thomasius [Christ emptied Himself of His deity]; in fact, it is more than once expressly opposed [emphasis added]. . . . Cyril’s attitude is unmistakable; . . . a limitation of the Godhead in Christ is essentially unthinkable on account of his unity with the Father[6]

But at the time that the Father appointed,[7] the Son of the living God added a human nature to Himself, conceived in the Virgin’s womb by the Holy Spirit. The Second Person of the Holy Trinity had added to His undiminished divine Person a perfect human nature, taken from Mary. His humanity came from Mary, as the Last Adam had to be in the lineage of the first Adam, of the fallen human race, not a new race created outside of the existing one. As redeemer He had to be one with us, yet outside us without sin. He took from her what was human as mankind was originally created, but not as fallen. He was fully human, having a real body and a rational soul. He got hungry, needed to sleep, had human emotions of joy and anger, but He never sinned. He was fully human as if not God.

But He was also fully God as if not human. He was the second Person of the Trinity, God of God, light of light, very God of very God, the same in essence as the Father in every way, existing from all eternity. When the Virgin conceived by the Holy Spirit, humanity was joined to His Person, not that His Person came into existence, not that He gave up His deity or the use of it. Indeed, He was unchangeable[8] so that His deity did not change one iota at the holy conception. He added to His divine person perfect humanity, but nothing divine was subtracted.[9] If He had ceased in any way to be God, there would have been no Trinity and no God, for God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Giving up His deity would be incarnation by deicide. Or if Christ had ceased to be fully God, there would have been two “gods” left, the Father and the Spirit, which would mean the death of God. A savior who is not fully God is a bridge broken at the far end, and a savior who is not fully man is a bridge broken at the near end. He would not reach fully either to God or man.

The problem some have with Christ being both God and man is that they do not see how He could function fully as man if He were God. But that is part of the mystery of the Incarnation. If He could not function as both at the same time, we are left with some very difficult theology. This would seem to mean He was man on earth but not God, but would also this mean that He is God now but not man? So if there is no continuity with the Son as God before the Incarnation, what was that Person born of Mary? Who is He now? But if He is both God and man now, fully functioning that way, why could not He have been the same while on earth? No, the Church has always taught that from the conception onward, Christ is both God and man, fully functioning that way forever. Even today, as our High Priest, He is fully man to identify with us and fully God to identify with the Father. Such had to be the case to be the Mediator, which by definition means an identity with us and with God but in one person so the two could come together.

(2) If Christ gave up His deity, there would be no redemption since God must accomplish it. If redemption could have been done only by a human who was not God, why did God send His Son? All we would need then would be Jeremiah filled with the Holy Spirit to come back and die on the cross for our sins.

(3) No, redemption must be done by one person who was both God and man, fully functioning in both natures. He had to be a man to redeem man from his sin and death, to be identified with the human race that lost relationship with God. As God He could not die, but as man He could. He had to be God to satisfy infinite holiness, to take an infinite penalty, an infinite curse. What He did in His atonement was absolutely dependent on who He was, the two aspects being inseparable. Adam sinned and died. Jesus must be one with the seed of Adam so that He could die.[10] Adam owed God perfect obedience. Jesus obeyed God perfectly for us.[11] Adam came under the penalty of sin, which was divine judgment. Jesus took our punishment.[12]

He had to be one Person so that what one nature did would be united with the other nature in the one Person, thus joining the work of both natures. If He had only been a man indwelt by God, He would have been a great prophet, but not the One who could redeem; just one of the prophets of old. Under this circumstance, when He died, we would be left with a dead man and a distant God. But as God-man in one person, when He shed His blood, it was the blood of God: “to shepherd the Church of God which He purchased with His own blood.”[13]

(4) If the Son gave up His deity while one earth, where is the doctrine of co-inherence of the Persons of the Trinity, which means “that each person manifests the fullness of God, which means that each person must manifest the other two persons as well”?[14] And does not this also mean that each person indwells the other two to the infinite degree? How could the Son of God gives this up, even temporarily? What kind of God are we left with if He can change His essence?

(5) If Christ only gradually became aware of who He was while on earth, we would have a gradual Incarnation, not one complete from the beginning. This carries its own refutation. If this were a gradual incarnation, this would in turn mean that Christ only had one nature for most of His incarnate years, so for all those years His work for us was human only. Moreover, considering that one’s self-knowledge identifies oneself, that when one has amnesia he is not the same person, we would have one who was completely unaware of Himself for most of His life. Can you imagine how absurd it would be to have Him suddenly “come to Himself” one day and say, “Hey, I just remembered I’m God.” But if He remembered He was God, it was not true, for God by definition is omniscient, but He would not have been such.

(7) If Incarnation by deicide is true, by giving up His deity or the use of it, how is God revealed since Jesus functioned only as a man? Whom do we know? Jesus said that the one who had seen Him had seen the Father (John 14:9), but how is this true if His deity is suppressed? With this view, we do not know God but only another prophet, though perhaps the greatest one of all, but still just a prophet.

(8) There is only one essence in God, and that essence is fully manifested by each divine Person, Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. If one Person can opt out of that essence, we must have more than one essence, or the essence must be divisible, denying the unity of God, or somehow the essence is not necessary to each person, so that perhaps later the Father can opt out. Or, if one person (the Son) can cease to function as God while still being God, we have meaningless words. What does it mean to have the essence of something without manifesting it? Can a dog not function as a dog, a whale not function as a whale, and so on? Someone will say, “God can do anything,” which is emphatically false. God cannot lie, cannot deny Himself, cannot cease to be God, and certainly cannot cease to function as God.

(9) Theologically, the Incarnate Son was the second person of the Holy Trinity, which meant that His self-consciousness was that of God the Son, the Son from all eternity, the One who cannot change (Heb 13:8). To elaborate, this meant that it was the second person of the Holy Trinity who was the person of the incarnation. He was not two persons. He could not be a human person apart from the divine person, for that would make Him two persons. The divine person without His divine nature does not and cannot exist. The PERSON who was the subject of the Incarnation was God the Son, who added a human nature to Himself but did not gave up His divine nature or nullify His divine person in some way. He did not add a human person to Himself, only an impersonal human nature. There was no separate human person, only the divine person before the Incarnation and then the divine-human Person after the Incarnation.

(10) The New Testament is clear that the Son functioned as God while on earth. For example, at age 12 He said He had to be about his Father’s business (Luke 2:49), thus revealing His divine self-knowledge. He claimed to be the I AM when the soldiers came to arrest Him, and by His divine power they went backwards and fell to the ground (John 18:6). He claimed to be able, like the Father, to reveal Himself sovereignly to the elect (Matt 11:27). He was on earth and in heaven at the same time (John 3:13, NKJ, majority text). The New Testament makes clear that Christ is the One who sustains all things (Heb. 1:3) and the one in whom all things hold together (Col. 1:17). Apart from Him, the universe has neither Preserver nor Governor; so who did this while He was allegedly not God or not functioning as God?

Indeed, if Jesus only did miracles in the power of the Holy Spirit, and not also His own power, then what did John mean when he said he wrote his Gospel around signs so that people would see the uniqueness of Christ as the Son of God and come to faith in Him (John 20:30-31)? If He were not unique and His miracles reveal such, if we can do all the same miracles by the Holy Spirit, then John’s statement makes no sense. So did Christ heal by the Holy Spirit? Of course, but not by the Holy Spirit only. As the Council of Ephesus reminded us, He did so by His own authority also. Indeed, in Matthew 9 when the Jews questioned His statement that the paralytic’s sins were forgiven, He said:

“For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Arise and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins”—then He said to the paralytic, “Arise, take up your bed, and go to your house.” (Matt 9:5-6)

It was the “Son of Man” who had the divine authority both to heal and to forgive, and that miracle spoke to the uniqueness of His Incarnation, that He was both God and man, fully functioning that way all the time. Let us believe the Nicene Creed fully. AMEN.
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[1] As quoted in Gerald Bray, Creeds, Councils, and Christ, p. 162ff. See also vol. 1, p. 544 of Christ in Christian Tradition, by Alos Grillmeier.
[2] J. B. Lightfoot, Philippians, p. 110ff.
[3] Henry R. Percival, The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1979), pp. 213-214.
[4] This was the faith deposited in the Church that was handed down from Apostles to bishops and others and was protected by the writings of the Apostles. The early fathers often speak of it. [5] The “pure silver,” so to speak.
[6] Schaff-Herzog, pp. 315-316.
[7] Galatians 4:4
[8] Hebrews 13:8
[9] The modern day heresy of kenosis states that Christ’s incarnation was by subtraction, that He gave up something of either His deity or the use of His deity.
[10] Hebrews 2:9
[11] Hebrews 2:10 (The grammar indicates that Jesus was bringing many sons to glory by His being made perfect.)
[12] Isaiah 53:5; Romans 3: 25; Galatians 3:13
[13] Acts 20:28
[14] Gerald Bray, The Doctrine of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), p. 224.

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More from Dean Crenshaw on the Incarnation (PDF)

Christology from Below vs. Christology from Above

(John 1:1-4, 14, 18)
by The Very Rev. Dr. Curtis I. Crenshaw, Th.D.
© 17 September 2007

It is becoming ever more common for modern Christian scholars to speak of a Christology from below. The problem is not so much the statement itself as it is with what they do with it. By this they mean that we must begin with the human Jesus and work our way back to the divine Son of God. They may challenge us that though John unequivocally begins with the Word as the second person of the Holy Trinity, yet Matthew begins with the Virgin Birth of the lowly Jesus. True, but Matthew quickly adds that He was Immanuel, which means “God with us.”

Yet the modern approach—contra 2,000 years of church history—begins with the historical man Christ and seeks to work back to God, if indeed it ever arrives at God, and whoever “God” may be. Of course, this nearly always results in a thoroughly human but not divine Christ. As Carl Henry rightly observes of this position:

Despite its deep ecclesial inroads, modernistic theology failed to stifle transcendent Christology. Modernism’s christological inconsistency Lawton traced to a vulnerable and indeed “wrong starting-point.” “In the realm of pure Christology,” he commented, it is “inexcusable . . . to begin with Christ’s humanity and human life, and . . . to work upwards . . . to the confession of his Deity. Those who do not begin with the fundamental Christian assumption that ‘the Word was made flesh,’ but . . . attempt to show how . . . a complete man as they suppose Christ to have been was united to God” cannot but end in confused and self-contradictory views.[1]

But the modern approach is basically to ignore John’s Gospel and to begin with a human Jesus, who—surprise, surprise—never quite reaches full divinity. James Dunn even says that it would be “irresponsible to use the Johannine testimony on Jesus’ divine sonship in our attempt to uncover the self-consciousness of Jesus himself.”[2] Yet St. Athanasius in his masterly defense of the deity of Christ in the early church (from the Council of Nicea 325) constantly uses the Gospel of John for the self-consciousness of the Son of God, as did the other early fathers.

But how does the Gospel of John begin? It begins with the diivine Word, eternal in being (“in the beginning was the Word”), states that He was with the Father from all eternity (“the Word was with God”), was Himself of the same essence as the Father (“the Word was God”), and that He was the Creator (“All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made”).

It is only after the Christology from above is given in clear terms that John gives us the Christology from below: “And the Word became flesh and [tabernacled] among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). We cannot appreciate verse 14 and the Word becoming flesh unless we first know who He was.

But the Christology from below is allegedly the “scientific” approach of modern criticism, allowing the documents to speak once the faith of the Church has been stripped out, which in turn means no supernaturalism. As Henry rightly says: “The notion that the biblical writers believed in miracles because as pre-scientific men they were ignorant of the laws of nature is preposterous.”[3]

Such arrogance assumes that the last one hundred fifty years is the measure of all things, that those who were there and saw the miracles invented them (read: lied), and that only now in this scientific age can we truly know what happened then. Of course, no historical fact can be scientifically tested by a repeated experiment, and the only way we can know any historical event is by documents and eyewitness testimony. It is not the objective history of the early church and the Gospels that is the problem, but the assumptions of the modern scholars and their neverending search for the “historical Jesus” that predetermine what they see.

Of course, Chalcedon and the whole Church for 2,000 years have a Christology from above, beginning with the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Son of God. But there is much talk today of a functional Christ, meaning that it does not matter who Christ was, only what He did was important. But as the Church has noted from Nicea in 325 on, what He did is predicated on who He was. Functionality is based on ontology. To restate this: “Ontology and soteriology mutually condition one another.”[4] Or to put this in our terms, what Christ did was based on who He was.

The modern theologian considers his philosophical views as more substantive than God’s revelation. Once again, Henry is on target:

The recurring appeal to regnant modern philosophy as sufficient reason for abandoning incompatible views [such as rejecting Chalcedon] rests on a presumptive culture-pride more than on truth. Modern philosophy is not necessarily superior to ancient philosophy; at its best it even sometimes echoes enduring aspects of ancient philosophy. Nor has “modern philosophy” achieved a consensus. Nor is it necessarily superior to the philosophy of the future; the philosophy of the end-time will prevail over it.[5]

Let us forever remember that the Incarnation is not from below, not from mankind, but it is from above, from the realm of eternity. To put this another way, the Incarnation is by addition, not by subtraction. It was the eternal, divine Son of God who added to Himself perfect humanity that constituted the Incarnation, not the boy of Mary who somehow realized He had a divine mission one day when He was about thirty years old. Even at age twelve He said that He had to be about His Father’s business (Luke 2:49).[6] It was God the Son who became man, not a son of man who became in “some sense” divine. It was the eternal Son of God who constituted the Person of the Incarnation, for He had been the Son from all eternity, not a human person who “somehow” became divine or cognizant of some divine mission, as is often stated today. Amen.

[1] Carl F. H. Henry, The Identity of Jesus of Nazareth (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1992), p. 20.
[2] James D. G. Dunn, Christology in the Making, p. 31. Italics are Dunn’s.
[3] Henry, 29.
[4] Henry, 94.
[5] Henry, 102.
[6] If we translate this “My Father’s house,” the idea is the same.