“Q & A 17 Why must the mediator also be true God? So that the mediator, by the power of his divinity, might bear the weight of God’s wrath in his humanity and earn for us and restore to us righteousness and life.
Q & A 18 Then who is this mediator—true God and at the same time a true and righteous human? Our Lord Jesus Christ, who was given to us to completely deliver us and make us right with God.
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You have doubtlessly had decisive moments in your life. Perhaps you made a decision that altered the course of your career. Perhaps you found yourself in a crisis and your response has continued to impact each day of your life.
There have been several decisive moments in the history of this world of which you are a part. In August of 410, Germanic tribes sacked the eternal city of Rome. The subsequent slow collapse of the Roman Empire has colored Western history ever since and has given rise to so much of the culture, language, and government with which we live every day. Another such decisive moment occurred in 1683 when the seemingly invincible armies of the Turks were pushed back at Vienna. The date of that great battle, September 11, has continued to color the relationship between the middle east and the west into our own day.
There are decisive moments in history and life cannot help but be different as a result. History is now divided around one such event. There is a reason that we live in what is called the year 2019. It is the year of our Lord 2019. We mark our calendar by the incarnation of the Son of God.
The incarnation of the Son of God is the decisive event of human history. It has had a greater impact upon the world in which we live than any other event. If you take the event seriously, you cannot help but recognize that. The creator of the universe was born into His own universe and lived as one of us.
The fact that the world so consistently ignores this event is perplexing. This incarnation is given a token acknowledgment at Christmas, but a token acknowledgment will never do. This is either the most decisive event in human history or it never happened. If it happened, it is obviously the most important event in human history. If it didn’t happen, it is a conspiracy of the highest scale and it should be roundly ignored. What is bewildering, however, is the actual response of the majority of humanity; it is a response which is the same today as it was 2,000 years ago. “He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.”
The strangest thing which you can say about humanity is that, by and large, we are indifferent to the fact that God took on flesh and lived as one of us. What is more is that, by and large, we are indifferent to the fact that he died a criminal’s death at humanity’s hands so that humanity might live. This is somehow of less interest to a man than his mortgage rate or his own popularity or the events of his own life story.
Now if you are a Christian, this most decisive moment of human history is also the decisive moment of your own life story. The most important event of your life wasn’t even your own birth; it was Jesus’ birth. Your own life-changing decisions and doings are not as decisive for the trajectory of your life as what Jesus decided and did as recorded in the gospels. Your own sins no matter how decisive you might consider them to be are not as decisive as the grace secured on your behalf by Jesus. If you are a Christian, your personal story is more about the life of God in the flesh than it is about your own life. I hope you see that as very good news. It is announced as very good news for all humanity.
God took on flesh in history because that was what it took to save us. This is the good news of the incarnation. This is the claim of this sermon: God took on flesh in history because that was what it took to save us
We will study this in two points. First: God in the flesh. Second: God on the cross.
First: God in the flesh. We’ve seen that God became a human because a righteous human needed to live a righteous life on behalf of us sinful humans. We’ve seen that God became a human because a righteous human needed to die on behalf of us sinful humans. We’ve been focusing on the human aspect of Jesus. Today we will focus on the divine aspect of Jesus. In other words, in our last study, we made clear that Jesus is fully human and fully God, but we focused on why he needed to be fully human. Today, we affirm that Jesus is fully human and fully God, but we focus on why he needed to be fully God.
The gospels underline the divinity of Jesus quite early. Matthew is very clear that the wise men from the east considered Jesus to be a god. As they told Herod, “We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” They didn’t come to merely pay homage to a king. They came to worship a god. Now, these men most likely saw all kings as gods. That was part of their culture and as the Roman empire assimilated peoples from further east this king-worship bled into the empire until the Caesars began to be worshipped as gods. Now it is very probable that the wise men were quite misguided in their worship of Jesus but even in their confused understanding, they got it right. They were worshipping God; they just didn’t realize that they were worshipping the only God.
This fact that there is only one God and that Jesus is God is the startling thing about the incarnation. The Hindus have all sorts of stories about the gods visiting this world. Christianity is radically different because it says there is only one God and Jesus of Nazareth is God.
This recognition that there is only one God and Jesus is God is the burden of the prologue of the gospel of John. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made… The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth… No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made Him known.”
The gospels take pains to show that Jesus is the God whom the Jews knew from the Old Testament. The feedings of the 4,000 and 5,000 are demonstrations that he is the same God who gave manna, quail, and water in the wilderness. He gave the sermon from the mount from atop a mountain because he is the same God who spoke from Mount Sinai. His breathing of the Spirit upon his disciples in John 20 is a demonstration that he is the same God who breathed life into Adam’s nostrils.
The gospels didn’t include the account of Jesus’ walking on water to show that he was an astounding man. They included this account to show that he is the God revealed in the Old Testament. “Your path led through the sea, your way through the mighty waters, though your footprints were not seen,” as Psalm 77:19 put it. The gospels show Jesus doing what only God did.
Jesus claimed authority that belonged to God alone. He claimed to have the ability to forgive sins. When the scribes said that this claim was blasphemy, Jesus asked them, ‘which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he then said to a paralytic—“Rise, pick up your bed and go home.” And he rose and went home.’
Jesus made clear by his teachings that he was God and the Jews understood what he meant. When, ‘he told the Jews, “I and the Father are one,” [they] picked up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.”’ The Jews weren’t slow in understanding what Jesus meant. They simply refused to believe that he was right in what he said.
Jesus claimed the divine name. When he was speaking to the Jews about Abraham, he said, ‘“Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.’
They tried to execute him because when he said, “before Abraham was, I am,” he wasn’t simply using a grammatically awkward sentence; he was saying ‘I am’ as in ‘I am who I am.’ The Jews recognized that this carpenter was claiming to be the God who they worshipped in the temple and they called him a blasphemer. Reflecting upon this interaction, GK Chesterton is certainly right to say that you, ‘should expect the grass to wither and the birds to drop dead out of the air, when a strolling carpenter’s apprentice said calmly and almost carelessly, like one looking over his shoulder: “Before Abraham was, I am.”’
Jesus claimed to be the God who spoke to Abraham and called him out of Ur. Jesus claimed to be the God who brought Israel through the Red Sea. He claimed to be the God of Mount Sinai. Unless he is indeed that God, he is most certainly unhinged. He claimed to be the God who gave favor to David. He claimed to be the God who forgave David. He claimed to be the God who sent Israel into exile and brought them back. He claimed to be the God who created the world. He claims to be the God who created you. You must understand that Jesus never asks for your admiration. He never asks for you to merely acknowledge that he is a better person than you are. He asks for what belongs to God alone.
CS Lewis is right, “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
Now you either treat Jesus as God or you treat Jesus as something less than God. If Jesus were in this sanctuary this evening, would you bow down before him as if he were God? When you saw his wounds would you say with Thomas, “my Lord and my God”? Do you treat his words as if they are binding upon you as the words of God? That is the most sensible way to treat Jesus of Nazareth and that is the most sensible way to understand life now that God has lived among us. You are not strange for being a Christian if you are indeed a disciple of this God-man. You are quite sensible.
If you are not a Christian, please be sensible. Read the gospels. Ask yourself if this Jesus is anything less than humble even though he deserves what belongs to God alone. He does what only God does and yet he would be the least proud person in this sanctuary. Meet him. It will be the most bewildering experience of your life. It will change everything. It is designed to change everything.
The fact that Jesus is God is all the more remarkable when you consider his death on the cross. That is our second point: God on the cross.
Now we can wrap our minds around the idea of a fellow human dying on a Roman cross, but what are we to make of the fact that a man who was also fully God died on a cross? RC Sproul explains it well, “It’s the God-man who dies, but death is something that is experienced only by the human nature, because the divine nature isn’t capable of experiencing death.”
God didn’t die on the cross. Rather Jesus’ divinity sustained his humanity so that he could suffer the full wrath of God on the cross.
None of us know the full power of the wrath of God. A man can only learn the full wrath of God due him when he experiences hell. We talk about moments that seem like hell in this life, but they are certainly not the full wrath of God. Jesus was the only man who has ever suffered hell in this life, and he suffered it on the cross.
Now Jesus didn’t merely suffer the wrath due one man. He suffered the wrath that was proper for every soul would ever come to him. As Scripture explains, “by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy,” and, “you were slain, and purchased for God with your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.”
Adolf Hitler will only suffer the wrath due Adolf Hitler. Jesus of Nazareth suffered the wrath due everyone who would believe in him. Jesus suffered far more wrath than Hitler. Now for anyone to sustain that wrath for more than a millisecond would require power far beyond human ability to endure. Jesus’ divinity sustained his humanity so that he could atone for the sins of all God’s people. Or as the Catechism puts it, “the mediator, by the power of his divinity, might bear the weight of God’s wrath in his humanity and earn for us and restore to us righteousness and life.”
The Roman guards were surprised how quickly Jesus died. Crucifixion is normally a much slower death. When Jesus was crucified, the Roman guards broke the legs of the criminals crucified with Jesus. They did so that these criminals would no longer be able to prop themselves up; they would suffocate quicker as a result. They wanted to kill them quicker because the Sabbath was coming up and the Jews didn’t want to see such a grisly sight on their way to temple worship. When the guards broke the criminals’ legs, they were surprised to find that Jesus was already dead. He died so quickly because he suffered not just for himself but for Peter and Paul and Ruth and David and Mary and John. The question, of course, is did he suffer what you deserved? “I lay down my life for the sheep,” said Jesus. Are you one his sheep?
Jesus was only able to suffer the wrath due so many for so long because his divinity enabled him to do so. There is also another aspect of hell to consider. The hell which humanity suffers is eternal and Jesus had to suffer that infinite hell in a finite amount of time. The author of the Catechism explains it this way, “There was a necessity that the punishment of the mediator should be of infinite value, and equivalent to that which is eternal, that there might be a proportion between sin, and the punishment thereof.”
Jesus had to suffer in real time what is suffered forever in hell and he had to suffer it for all who would come to grace. Jesus suffered this anguish on the cross, which is why he cried out, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” This was symbolized by the darkness that came over the whole land. Jesus was suffering the fullness of hell for the full number of those who would love him.
No one in hell will have any reason to think that Jesus suffered less than they are. Jesus has suffered far more hell than anyone will ever suffer. He has suffered so much that he needed to be God to sustain it.
Now if you are not a disciple of Jesus, I urge you to consider the following question: if you had the power of God, what would you do with it? You have seen what Jesus did with it. By that power, he endured infinite hell for any who would come to him. What you do with power says a lot about you. Please consider what the cross says about Jesus. Please consider that this love is available to you.
If you are a disciple of Jesus, please recognize that what Jesus did on the cross is obviously sufficient for all your sins. Jesus’ divinity sustained his humanity sufficiently to atone for all your sins. His blood is sufficient to cleanse you. To say that it wasn’t enough and that somehow your sins are beyond his power is to doubt the power of God. Jesus knew what he was saying he cried, “it is finished.”
Now consider what you are most likely already considering. Consider that since Jesus gave his all—fully God and fully man—for you, the only fitting thing for you to do is to give your all to him. “Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small; love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.” That is the proper response to the death of the man who is also God. Amen.