The person of our Lord - Chambers, Oswald
There is a difference between being the offspring of god (acts 17:28) and being sons of god ( john 1:12). Offspring means that our genus originated with god; we can only become sons of god by a specific act of regeneration.
Jesus Christ is the only begotten son; his whole personality is son-ship. Every christian knows Jesus Christ as god, not as the equivalent of god; the call to proclaim him to others means that i see him and know him as god. There is no god that is not father, son and holy ghost the triune aspect of one god, from all eternity to all eternity. If i am ever going to get to god as father i must come to him through the miraculously provided way: i am the way, said Jesus, no man cometh unto the father, but by me.
Beware of coming to the study of the person of our lord with preconceived ideas, e. G. , that the nature of deity is necessarily omnipotence, etc. The ultimate display of deity is omnipotence, but the essential nature of deity is holiness. Deity can be limited by choice. Our lord, as son of man, deliberately limited omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence in himself, yet to his own consciousness he was on an equality with god (RV): i and my father are one. The great revelation the bible gives of god is the opposite of what we are apt to imagine him to be, it is a revelation not of the majestic power of god, but of the fact that god was manifested in the flesh (RV); that god became incarnate as a baby in the person of his son. That is the last reach of self-limitation.
We have to remember what our lord presents by his life on earth: he presents the goal to which we have to attain by means of his death on the cross, and the progress his own life went through from childhood to manhood represents for us the progress our spiritual life will go through after we are born again of the spirit. Man was not so created as to be able to reach the goal by drawing the required power from his own resources, he needed the aid of continual communications of life from god, and the reason of our lords coming was in order that the normal development of man, which sin had interrupted, might begin afresh.
There are two kinds of incompleteness the incompleteness which is simply that which is growing to completeness: a child is a perfect human being in the sense of all his adjustments being right, but he is not a perfected human being in the sense of full growth and maturity, therefore the effort of a child to do a thing and not succeed, is not in the same category as failure through wilfulness, it is the limitation of his growing powers that prevents him succeeding. But alongside that is an incompleteness which comes from the presence of an opposing force, something which makes me say i wont. A man with an impulse towards god and all that is right has also an impulse towards that which is against god, he is divided in two; it is not a question of imperfect growth but of downright opposition which not only makes for incompleteness, but makes an hiatus that cannot be bridged. No power outside god can alter that i wont into i will. I wont is not imperfect i will, and it will never develop into i will.
There was no incompleteness in that sense in our lord; he grew, and . . . Increased in wisdom and stature (Luke 2:40, 52), and when we are born again it means that Christ is formed in us, then we have to grow up in all things into him (RV). But that will to oppose must be dealt with before i can do that; i cant develop as Jesus did unless he takes out of me that which never was in him. If he can do that, then i can begin to understand how he is my example; but he is not my example unless the redemption has been made of practical effect in me. When Jesus Christ, the last Adam, came he entered on the same plane as the first Adam, and from that same stage of innocence he worked out the perfect life of holiness that god required, which Adam failed to do. But he had to do more, he had to put the whole human race back, not to where Adam was, but to where Adam had never been, viz. , to where he is himself, an inconceivably higher position. Through his death on the cross Jesus Christ not only readjusts a man in conscience and heart to god, he does something grander, he imparts to him the power to do all god wants, he
Presences him with divinity, i. E. , the holy spirit, so that he is garrisoned from within, and enabled to live without blame before god. Blameless does not mean perfection, but undeserving of censure in gods sight. That is the full meaning of being baptised with the holy ghost. Then, and only then, does Jesus become our example.
We are being told nowadays how like Jesus is to ourselves thank god he is not! The revelation of Jesus in the new testament is that he is absolutely unlike us. Never attempt dextrously to show how altogether human Jesus is; allow the facts of bible revelation to show you the absolute difference between ourselves and Jesus christ, and because of this difference he is able to lift us up into likeness with himself, to conform us to his own image.
What kind of attitude have we got to jesus christ? Are we dictating to him in pious phraseology what we intend to let him do in us, or letting his life be manifested in our mortal flesh as we obey? Is my expe- rience worth his while? If i am not a saint, it was not worth his while. I can be devout, i can put on a pious pose, religious circumspection will do all that, but has there been such an alteration in me that i know nothing at all can account for it saving the almighty grace of god working in me to will and to do of his good pleasure? The net result of the teaching of Jesus is to produce despair if it has never produced despair in me i have not heard it aright; but that despair brings me to the place where i am willing to come, just as i am, without one plea, and accept as an unmerited gift the salvation wrought out by Jesus Christ.