The relation between Incarnation and Atonement

The book "Atonement, the Person and Work of Christ" compiles the lectures of T.F. Torrance. In the introduction, the book's editor, Robert Walker, notes that the "linchpin" of Torrance's trinitarian, incarnational theology is his understanding of the nature of Jesus Christ:

"He who is the eternal Son of God, of one being with the Father, is he who is now also man and the fact that the same person who is fully and truly God is now fully and truly man, means that his person is and constitutes in itself...the union of God and humanity... In his one person, therefore, God and man, God and all humanity, are now irrevocably and eternally united. God and man can now no more be separated from one another in Christ than the person of Christ can be undone, or the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection be reversed" (pp.xxxvii-xxxviii).

Torrance understands this union of God and humankind in the person of Jesus to be an "event, a becoming, the action of God in beginning and continuing to be a human being" (p xxxviii).  This dynamic event started with the conception of Jesus in Mary's womb, continued in his birth and his earthly life, which led to the cross, the tomb, the resurrection and now continues in his ascension which includes his sending of the Holy Spirit. All this is a continuing, eternally living event - "God acting and man acting, one person performing the work of salvation" (p. xxxix).

Torrance is thus careful to emphasize that the person (being) and the work (doing) of Jesus, as the union of God and humanity in one person, are inseparable. Jesus Christ is one person, the God-man, performing the work of salvation in his own person on behalf of all humanity.

In this blog we often note the biblical, orthodox Christian doctrine of the continuing humanity of Jesus. This doctrine tells us that Jesus did not shed his humanity at the resurrection or ascension - indeed, as Torrance notes, Jesus Christ forever remains human. Said another way, there is now a human being permanently included in the inner-communion of the Holy Trinity. This human being is the eternal Son of God (become human) - the very one who created and now sustains all humanity. And it is on this basis of the union of humanity with God in Jesus Christ, that we understand that what happens to Jesus (in his humanity) happens to and for us all.

As so Paul declares in 2Cor. 5:15 that Jesus "died for all and therefore all died." What happened to Jesus in his humanity happened to all humanity because Jesus, as our creator and sustainer is become our representative and substitute. This is the doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Jesus. As Paul goes on to note, through Jesus, "God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them" (v19).  As Torrance notes, this reconciliation is not merely what Jesus does, but who Jesus is (as fully God and fully human).  All this for us!

Concerning the sacraments

A trinitarian, incarnational understanding of the sacraments has significant implications for how we approach both baptism and the Lord's Supper. This issue is helpfully addressed by many trinitarian theologians. Here are two examples:

Paul Fiddes writes in Participating in God:

[We understand] the sacraments as pieces of earthly stuff that are meeting places with this [triune] God who exists in ecstatic movements of love. They are doors into the dance of perichoresis in God. [They are a means] of God’s gracious coming and dwelling with us. They are signs which enable us to participate in the drama of death and resurrection which is happening in the heart of God. We share in death as we share in the broken body of the bread and the extravagantly poured out wine, and as we are covered with a threat of hostile waters. We share in life as we come out from under the waters…to take our place in the new community of the body of Christ, and to be filled with the new wine of the Spirit (p. 281).

Graham Buxton writes in Dancing in the Dark:

Both sacraments [baptism and the Lord's Supper] declare the gospel of participation in the perfect worship of the Son, who has accomplished what we could not accomplish. When we receive the bread and wine at the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, we echo the cry of Jesus on the cross: ‘It is finished!’ Christ has done what I could never do…But we do more than engage in a memorial service! The word anamnesis, which translates into remembrance, has rich meaning…[conveying] a sense of re-living the past as if it were real today….Not only do we participate in shared and thankful remembrance of Christ’s perfect self-offering on our behalf, but we also participate in Christ’s continuing self-offering of himself on our behalf. We do not remember just the Christ of history – we remember the living Christ today, and the Christ who carries us into the future…The sacrament powerfully draws past, present, and future together in the life of the faith-community (pp. 137-138).

Your thoughts?

Question on John 3:36

I was sent the following question: "Doesn't John 3:36 (and also v18) indicate that non-believers will not see life, and that God's wrath is still on them?"  Here is my reply:

John 3:36 says this: "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him." How are we to understand this statement?

From a perspective of a theology of separation, this verse would be interpreted as saying that God stands separate from and in wrath toward all people *until* the moment they believe in his Son, at which point in time, God enters their lives (for the first time), stops being wrathful toward them, and grants them eternal life.

But is this interpretation justified?  We would say no. Why? Because it is not consistent with what Scripture tells us about who God is - as revealed to us in the person of Jesus. According to that revelation, rather than  separate from sinners, God is "a friend of sinners" - he is "Immanuel" (God with us and for us, as one of us), who in love died for us and has forgiven us, accepting us and including us in his life in union with Jesus, who himself, is the union of God and humanity.

It is to this God that John bears witness in his Gospel: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son" (3:16-18).

"But," one might reply, "doesn't John 3:36 and now John 3:18 imply that a person *remains condemned* by God *until* they believe?  Here we must be very careful that we don't misunderstand the point John is making. Throughout his gospel, John makes it clear that God's action on our behalf *precedes* our personal belief. We don't cause salvation to occur by believing. Rather, what John is telling us is that we receive (and John uses the word "see" as a metaphor for this receiving) what is already true when we believe. John likens this believing to *illumination* - having one's eyes opened to the light (see 3:20-21).  A person who does not believe cannot see the light that is already present, and thus they remain in darkness (in their personal experience).

By believing, their eyes are opened - they now see what was already there. To not believe is to deny what is there and thus to cut oneself off from its benefits: Though God has forgiven, accepted and included me in his life in Jesus, because I don't believe it, I don't experience these benefits.

Of course, the "light" that is present with all humans is Jesus himself (John 1:4, 9). Unfortunately, not all "see" and thus embrace and benefit from this light. But to say that some do not benefit, is not the same as saying that God condemns those people and remains separate from them, in a state of wrath toward them.

Quite the contrary, in love, God sent his Son who died for all in order to forgive and accept all. From God's perspective, all people are his dearly loved children. Of course, not all know this, and some who know reject this truth. But all are invited to reciprocate - to live as who they truly are - God's dearly loved children (see John 1:12).

In all this, we are seeking to do what the Apostles were very careful to do in their writings (including John in his Gospel) - establish all aspects of salvation in Jesus - not in our action (including our believing). Following their example, we seek to uphold the truth of the gospel that Jesus, the Lamb of God, has, indeed, "taken away the sin of the world" (John 1:29).  And the gospel invitation is to believe ("see" in John's terminology) this good news - not to obtain forgiveness by believing, but to *experience* our forgiveness through now opened eyes.

Indeed, as Jesus said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life" (John 8:12).  Here "to have" is not to receive what one did not have before, but to possess/experience - grab hold of what was there all along. And in that experiencing, one is "born again."

And thus John summarizes the purpose for his gospel: "...That you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name" (John 20:31). To "have life" is not to be given something new, but to possess/see/experience/lay hold of, what was granted to all humanity 2,000 years ago through the incarnation, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ.

Where is God when the world suffers?

The current tragedy in Haiti leads many to ask: Where is God when the world suffers? 

For some, human suffering is evidence that there is no God. For others, it is evidence that God is either aloof (ignoring our suffering) or vengeful (causing it). The truth, revealed to us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth is this: God cares deeply, and is fully present with us in our suffering.

We learn in Holy Scripture that God loved the world so much that he sent his one and only Son to become one of us in order suffer and die with us and for us (John 3:16). He did not come among us 2000 years ago, and he is not with us now, as a God of retribution who brings suffering upon his creation (John 3:17). No, the God we know in Jesus came and remains with us as Immanuel - God with us and for us - as one of us. God in the flesh (John 1:14).

Through the Incarnation, the Son of God, in the person of Jesus, took upon himself the fullness of our humanity - with all its sin and suffering. He did so to bring us relief - the deliverance and healing that God alone can bring. He is the God who suffers in order to save. He suffered not only in the hours leading up to and including his crucifixion (a time of terrible suffering and a horrendous death), but all his life was one of suffering. And his life in the flesh continues.

Sadly, some people mistakenly think that following his death and resurrection, Jesus shed his humanity (which is subject to suffering), left the planet, and now in heaven stands aloof from our suffering. But this idea is an error on a couple of points.  First, Jesus did not stop being human. He died a human, was resurrected a human (glorified) and ascended a human.  In his continuing humanity, the man Jesus is in heaven, but in the Spirit, he remains united with us all, and in that union experiences directly all that we experience. He continues suffering with us and for us, working within our suffering humanity to eventually bring complete deliverance and healing. It's a journey, and Jesus is with us every step of the way.

Note what Paul says in Col 1:24: "Now I have joy in my pain because of you, and in my flesh I undergo whatever is still needed to make the sorrows of Christ complete, for the salvation of his body, the church; (BBE, emphasis added).  Jesus sorrows with us, in us and through us - continuing to complete  (NIV says "fill up") his suffering on our behalf.

But you might be asking, "If Jesus is suffering with us, why doesn't he do something?"  The question assumes that Jesus is absent and inactive in the face of our suffering. But that is not the case. Back to the quote from the Apostle Paul above, Jesus is suffering as he shares Paul's suffering in order to serve others who need help.

I believe that Jesus is weeping over and with the suffering people of Haiti (and in all other places). And I believe that in the Spirit, he is present with them, and through caring and compassionate people is reaching out to help - in prayer, in financial assistance, in bringing food, comfort, medical help and the like. If people act out of compassion, they are sharing in Jesus' compassionate heart for suffering people. There is no other source for compassion - we are able to love because God is love and shares himself with us. Scripture says he is sharing himself with all humanity, because he has adopted us all in and through his Son Jesus Christ.

One last point. Jesus is not the caring God who is present with us, while the Father is the aloof, even vengeful God who remains separated from us. As one theologian put it, "there is no other God behind the back of Jesus."

The one God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit - three divine persons who are of one mind; one heart and one will. In the divine-human person of Jesus, this one God loves us, saves us, and in the Spirit, is fully present with us. In our suffering. And this God is now and always at work to bring us to the new heaven and a new earth in which sorrow and suffering is gone. That is the hope for us all. In the meantime, let us embrace and extend to others the compassion of our suffering God.

If you'd like to help out the people in Haiti in this time of dire need, there are many good relief agencies that can use your help. Within my own tribe, Grace Communion International, we have a disaster relief fund that will be used to help Haitians in the current crisis. You can donate at www.wcg.org/DisasterDonation.asp or mail a check to:
      Disaster Relief Fund
      Grace Communion International
      PO Box 5005
      Glendora, CA 91740

Final quotes from "The God Who Believes"

We've been tracking through Christian Kettler's book, The God Who Believes - Faith, Doubt, and the Vicarious Humanity of Christ.  Now we conclude with several more quotes.


"Jesus believes when I am unable to believe. Jesus acts when I am unable to act. Jesus loves when I am unable to love. Jesus forgives when I am unable to forgive. Jesus lives when I am dead in my sins. That is the power of truth become personal, the power of a vicarious life" (p. 102).

"A vicarious life is a life that can be shared with others. The worship of the Father by the Son in the Spirit is but a part of a complete life of faith and obedience to the Father that in turn offers to us a share in this intimate communion between the Father by the Son in the Spirit. The Son indeed 'sanctifies' himself, sets himself apart for a holy use, for our sakes" [John 17:19 & Heb. 2:11] (p. 102).

"The problem of humanity, and therefore of God's creation, is its corruption due to sin, resulting in death. The Father of Jesus, however is not afraid of the contradictions in his creation. The crazy quilt of our world of woe can bring us so easily to doubt and despair, but the Son knows the Father who has sent the Son to bear the contradiction on the cross. Since the Son is of one essence (homoousios) with the Father, this contradiction is now not alien to God's own being. God has made the problem of creation his own problem in sending the Son in the power of the Spirit. He has taken our place. Can we say then that the problem of evil and suffering in a world created by an all-powerful and loving God is no longer our problem? This is what Christ's vicarious faith proclaims" (p. 103).

"The actions of Jesus are the foundations of our actions. Because he acts, we can act. This is no mere imitation, however. The free God has freed us through the free acts of the Son. Something has happened to us and in us...Since the actions of the Son continue through all eternity... we are not left to act on our own...Our union with Christ is too close...Belonging to him means that we can participate in his faith, the faith we have been unable to keep...'All of grace' does not mean nothing of man, but precisely the opposite: all of grace means all of man,' T.F. Torrance is fond of saying" (p. 112).

"God's love for the world is vicarious, on our behalf, and in our  place. The Spirit enables us to participate in the journey of the Son, in his faith, obedience, and love, so that we too might believe that God loves the world, including ourselves" (p. 126).

"The faith of Jesus is included in the totality of his ministry. In a sense, his ministry is an accomplished deed. He has taught, healed, wrought miracles, was crucified, dead, buried, and was raised from the dead. This has already happened. 'It is finished!' is the cry from the cross (John 19:3). Yet a finished ministry is not one that is an an end. The Holy Spirit makes sure that the accomplished ministry of Jesus continues to be accomplished...  The one who has accomplished the work is still alive. He still thinks of things today! as Ray Anderson quips... Jesus' life and ministry should not be viewed as a memory of a revered yet long-dead hero. The resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit will not permit that" (pp. 144-5).

"What God has done in Christ was not done by us, so there is nothing we can do to reverse these acts. Even in our misery of doubt, Jesus lives for us, Jesus believes for us... We wrestle with the goodness of God in what seems to be a less than good world. So it is very good to be with Jesus in the midst of our misery, rejection, and doubt. '...It is there that God Himself is good for us,' [Barth]. Here we find the care, the providence, of God; here is where we find that good which is good for us. God cares for us by sending Jesus. In his freedom God is free to care by becoming lowly and share in our misery... His freedom is found in taking upon [himself] our shame and curse, in interceding for us... Here is a lordship more powerful than a pure fiat: the power to take the place of humanity, taking the matter out of our hands and making our business his business" (pp. 155-6).

"[Lasting] faith is not entrusting ourselves to our own faith. That faith can fail... The alternative is the faith of the One who is unique... Herein Jesus demonstrates his lordship, a demonstration found in his exaltation, the exaltation in which we now share (Phil. 2:9-11). This has already happened. We are already in him, sharing in that which is foreign to our fallen state, fellowship with God. Integral to that fellowship is our participation in the obedience of the Son, an obedient movement we have not been able to make. Our existence has been 'anticipated and virtually accomplished in His'" (pp. 163-4).

"Paul makes it very clear that we are all dead people, incapable of a response [to God] (Romans 6: Eph. 2:1). Anything else is a delusion... It is only because of Jesus' faith that we have forgiveness" (pp. 169-70).

"In times of despair, anxiety, grief, and doubt, another person, the community, can be there for us. For the Christian, this is the vicarious humanity of Christ living through the Church, 'the community of the Last Adam' (1 Corinthians 15), a Body that is constantly judged by its Head. Here the Christian brother or sister can say to the one in doubt, 'Because Jesus believes when we cannot believe, let me believe for you right now.' As daring as this sounds, should we do less if the Church is truly the body of Christ and Christ is continuing his vicarious life and ministry through the Church?" (pp. 176-7).

"Taking our place, our standards for God are not just filled out or improved upon, but replaced. The substitutionary reality of Christ is total: no part of our humanity is left untouched, including our religious attempts. Our restored faith consists only in admitting that something was done for us once and for all. Someone has believed for us once and for all. A genuine exchange... has taken place (2 Cor 5:19), including our faith for his faith" (p. 181).

"If [Jesus] keeps the faith that we cannot keep, then this casts a question over a spirituality that centers in 'striving' to become spiritual 'athletes.' Jesus is not just a coach who instructs us how to train for spiritual fitness. A true vicarious mysticism of Christ begins with Jesus' spirituality, neither our piety nor our mystical strivings.... [Our] worship is being caught up in his response!... Here is true spirtuality: casting ourselves upon Jesus our advocate, a Jesus who is truly human and who truly acts vicariously, on our behalf and in our place. Our spirtuality is to allow God, 'to do what we cannot do and go where we need not go'" (pp. 184-5).

"Even 'sanctification,' usually reserved for our human actions, has its source in Christ. Paul assumes the whole life of Christ as the essence of our Christian life: 'It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God [subjective genitive, see KJV translation] who loved me and gave himself for me' (Gal 2:20). 'So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!' 'Jesus Christ is our human response to God,' F.F. Torrance dares to say. To reply that this leaves no place for a human response refuses to take seriously the seriousness and desperation of our situation. We are helpless and lost, unloved or at least loved only conditionally in a hostile world of which we contribute though our own selfishness and desire to be God. Yes, we are called to faith and repentance, but never apart from the one response to God in the humanity of Jesus Christ" (p. 192).

The Lion in Exile

Following is a gift to Surprising God readers from Dr. John McKenna, a trinitarian theologian and fellow traveler in the life we share with the Father, Son and Spirit.

The Lion in Exile

The other night, I dreamt of lions. I am a poor man and I do not think my dreams have any real value. I live in a rented room of a cheap hotel in the hum and drum of a graffiti written city. Dreams are things I throw into the trash, stuff I send down the toilet. I do not spend any more time thinking about them than I spend thinking about breathing. But since the lions, I have begun to change my mind about them. I was walking in a field of high grass and trees and the lions watched me intently, their faces kindly. They surprised me with their friendliness. Do not lions attack and eat us?

My room is a barren place, a few pictures hanging on the walls, a cracked mirror above an old sink, a bathroom down the hall. I sleep in it, that is all. I like to walk. I walk most all day long. I know the city from its streets. I think of myself as something of a poet, though admittedly in my time it is like singing in the shower. I do not publish my poetry. I just pretend for a while that it is good and I am a poet then and then I know again that I am a poor man living in a rented room of a cheap hotel in the hum and drum of a graffiti written city.

I think of my race in various ways. Let me explain. I once knew a man who wrote a book entitled All Men Are Mariners. I never read his book, but I liked his title for it very much, so that one day I wrote:

Men are mariners on the homeless waters
And they call with sea sick mouths
To the sirens dancing along the shores
In the sands of their restless hours,
The storms under a blood red moon
Threatening to drown them in the deep.

Another way I looked at my contemporaries had to do with the time I spent in the Army. Hung over, I spent some time on a hill overlooking a little town. From the hill, I watched men leading their cattle pulling carts full of wood from the hills back to their town, where their women and children, after a day in the fields, waited for them. The axels in the wheels of these carts, ungreased, seem to scream up to me on the hill, piercing the headache of my hangover with a knife of sound that seemed to cut in two my soul from my body, my body from my soul. I wrote:

In the silence of the world,
We tread the dusts of a dirt hard road
Beside thinning animals
And withering trees
Towards our barren towns,
A fire our only comfort there
For the children our wives bear alone.
Who can speak for us?

Then there is death. We are born free to die. We breath air like fish swim water and birds fly the winds in the skies around the planet, until we die. Are all things meant but oblivion? When I was a boy, I used to imagine, in the woods where I played near my home, that after the whole world vanished I also would vanish and there would only be the nothingness. I used to have to shake myself loose from the grip of this imagination, take a deep breath, and become a breathing boy once more. But I could never forget the nothingness. When I went to high school and read Sartre's Nausea, I thought I knew better than him Quentin's sickness. I wrote:

The dark drowns in its depths
The breath of all breathing things,
Like a flood of the waters,
Like a quake of the mountains,
Like a fire from the heavens,
And what is there left to say
In the dark of the depths?
Who can speak for us?

You may imagine that I felt like an outsider in this world, a kind of misfit, exiled from the main flow of things, unable to catch on to where people thought they were going. I was like a child in winter gazing through a window into the warmth of a home from which I had been orphaned, a stranger in the cold. Why should I reckon with my dreams? They were nothing but the garbage of the hard time a prisoner serves for a crime he cannot remember committing.

That was the way it was before I dreamt of the lions. I wrote then:

He roars in judgment
But also for salvation.
What he devours,
He also saves.
When he devours death,
We know his joy shapes,
Out of the nothingness,
His life for the living.
We know he speaks for us!

Let me explain. In exile with me is the lion who is the king of the beasts. We fear him with our cities and roads and towns and harbors. We fear him as if he were a devouring animal. We would capture him and cage him up in our zoo. We would train him to serve our pleasure. But he remains an exile, a lion in exile, and it was there that he found me, and gave me a family of lions with which to be. More and more these days, I feel less alone and more in the main streams of time with the lions in exile. We are found by the Lion in Exile. I write now:

He roars to gather his people
From the warped generations,
From the lost generations,
From the beat generations,
From the silent generations,
From the warped generations,
From the twisted generations
Unto Himself in a world where
His Name is almost forbidden,
The Son of God,
The Son of David,
The Son of Man,
The Lion King He is,
The Lamb He is,
The Person Jesus Christ is.

Actually, I am an old man you see sitting alone in a park and dreaming of lions in his barren room in the hum of the city.

Sharing in Jesus' knowing, believing and obeying

In the last two posts, I've shared quotes from Christian Kettler's book, "The God Who Believes," in which he discusses Jesus' believing, knowing and acting on our behalf. Here are more:

Lest we misunderstand, this does not mean that there is not a place for our own believing, knowing, and acting. According to Kettler, "Because Jesus believes for us does not exclude the imperative for us to believe!" (p. 71).  However, Kettler notes that "we do not initiate our knowledge of God" (p. 71). Jesus is the only human who truly knows God; and he shares, by grace, that knowledge with us. Thus the faith that saves us, is Jesus' faith, not our own. And his faith is grounded in his intimate knowledge of the Father. And so we know God, because Jesus knows God and shares that knowledge with us. Thus Kettler quotes Karl Barth: "We must not only believe in the risen Christ. We must believe with the risen Christ" (p. 72).

"But," some might retort, "don't we know God because he is revealed to us in Scripture?"  Kettler responds by noting that, "The Bible has no authority of its own. The Bible has genuine authority because Jesus reads it with us today" (p. 73, referencing Ray Anderson). Kettler continues: "Knowledge of God, divine revelation, is essentially discovered in the humanity of Christ, the 'real text' of revelation" (quoting T.F. Torrance).

The key point in this is the vicarious (representative, substitutionary) humanity of Jesus. The eternal Son of God became one of us in order to stand in for us - to have faith for us, which as noted above is grounded in his intimate knowledge of God for us. The same can be said about our obedience.Our Christian discipleship (growth in Christ), which leads to our transformation, "is more than 'The Little Engine That Could': 'I think I can...I think I can...' Christ loves before we love...Then we can enter with him into the practical movement and consequences of that faith and love" (p. 76). Our obedience is our participation in Jesus' loving and living.

Kettler continues: "We are brought to God to worship, adore, and serve [Him], participating in the deep 'Abba' experience of the Son, his immediacy and intimacy with the...Father...a relationship that we have been unable to live" (pp. 80-81).

Jesus' lordship in all this, "Is not the lordship of an arbitrary sovereign, but a lordship that grants us the grace of participation in the intimate union between the Father and the Son through the Spirit, the 'condition' the Son creates for us (John 17:10, 18-23, 26; Eph 3:16-17)" (p.82). "Such a 'sweet exchange'...is the act of God's grace. Grace is not simply the reality of salvation, but just as important for the knowledge of God. Just as we have no ability to save ourselves, so also, we have no ability to know the Holy One of Israel (Exod 3:4). As Torrance reminds us, the knowledge of God is neither based on nature (Roman Catholicism), nor on our own subjective piety (Protestant liberalism, and I might add, American evangelicalism). God provides the One from the human side who already knows God. This is an act of God's grace as much as salvation is" (p.83).

But if God knows/believes/obeys for us, then why should we participate?  Kettler answers: "Having received [all these graces from God]...means that a wellspring of gratitude can now flow forth" (p.85).  Along similar lines, and now concerning our participation in the faith of Christ, Kettler asks, "What is faith in Christ...if the faith of Christ is significant? Here is not a continuation of Christ's faith by our imitation, but a genuine following of Jesus. Such following is an actual following Jesus down his road, but realizing that he always goes before us. He is the 'pioneer' (Heb. 12:2), the Kit Carson, the Daniel Boone of our faith. So walking behind him is a genuine walking, a genuine faith, but not without him going first...He replaces our attempts to blaze our trails, even to help ourselves. Still, we are enabled to then walk the trail. We are enabled to actually have the knowledge of faith, yet it is faith in the 'exchange of status' between us, the 'sweet exchange' of his life for ours" (p. 85).

"We share in the intimacy of relationship in the Son's knowledge of the...Father through the Spirit. This is our 'adoption' as sons and daughters of God (Gal 4:4-7). Through this participation we are genuinely connected to, but not identified [confused] with the Son. Just as God's deity was not obliterated when he became human, so also our humanity is not destroyed as we participate in the vicarious humanity of Jesus. No longer is our salvation to be seen in terms of an ordo salutis, an order of salvation in which Christ is only an instrument that leads to our acts of justifying faith and sanctifying works. It is Christ who has beome for us 'wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption' (1Cor 1:30). Sanctification is not to be seen as only 'our part.'" (p. 86).

"'Following Jesus' means not to [merely] imitate...but to be with him. To be with Jesus is to take up one's cross, to deny oneself, yet not apart from his cross and his self-denial (John 12:26)...Karl Barth's words are encouraging: 'It is good to be with Jesus and not elsewhere. This is good because there God Himself is good for us'" (p. 90).

Amen!

More from The God Who Believes

In my last post, I provided representative quotes from the book, "The God Who Believes" by Christian Kettler (pictured left). Here are more:

"The modern age...values...reason...[but] faith...confesses at times 'I don't know'...[We see this in Jesus, where] God has voluntarily restricted his knowledge in the person of the incarnate Son. The Son does not need to know, for in his humanity he possesses a faith that continually seeks understanding. The Son seeks understanding, as we know from the earliest days in the temple, where he was both 'listening to them and asking them questions' (Luke 2:46), increasing 'in wisdom and in years' (Luke 2:52). The Epistle to the Hebrews, indeed, speaks of the Son who 'learned obedience through what he suffered' (Heb. 5:8). Jesus' faith was the kind that sought understanding, in clear contrast to the skepticism and cynicism of one who abandons faith for the supposedly neutral objectivism [of reason]" (p. 49).

"[Jesus'] very last question was, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' (Mark 15:34)...If one views this cry in a vicarious sense, it is a cry not just of Jesus but also on behalf of and in place of all humanity... Jesus is crying out for all of us, making our questions his own...Jesus' faith enables him to pray the cry of abandonment for us and in our place. We are not able to pray it. It is too dangerous for us. Despair and then destruction can easily be the next steps. Only God can pray this prayer for us!...Only God possesses the love that dares to embrace the doubts of doubting creatures through providing the faith they need in the faith of Jesus Christ. Love does not fear doubt, Ray Anderson suggests, because love springs from reality not reason. The reality here is God's compassion and mercy, the outward manifestation of his inward trinitarian being (John 17:26)...The compassion of God will not allow our doubts to go ignored. He will take them upon himself on the Cross, not as an example of 'deeper' faith, but as an act of mercy for our desperate condition We are not left to even answer the questions by ourselves. Jesus himself is the answer to God. The vicarious humanity of Christ can become our humanity; his faith can become our faith" (p.49-51).

"Jesus bears witness to God and his goodness when we are unable to do so.This is the meaning of his history of solidarity with us; in baptism, temptation, by fulfilling the Law for us as a demonstration that the Law is made for humanity, not humanity for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27). His emotional solidarity reaches its crescendo with the cry of abandonment [on the cross].  Did Jesus, then doubt? No, not in the sense that doubt is contrary to absolute faith in the Father and his purposes. Yes, he did, in the sense that he took upon [himself] our doubt, our fallen human nature, in order to heal and redeem it through solidarity with us. In a similar sense, Christ became guilty, not because he sinned, but because the Father 'made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God' (2 Cor. 5:21)....In a similar fashion, Christ took upon our doubt, taking it seriously...in order to transform it by the faith and obedience of Christ, even through the depth of the Cross...The vicarious faith of Christ provides a triumph of faith over doubt....Jesus' faith is enough...to be the foundation for the faith of those who follow him" (p. 51-52).

"The paradox of the Crucified God is one who takes upon all of our sufferings, including our doubts, and triumphs over them by his faith, not ours. There is certainty in the faith of Jesus in that we can lean on his faith, not our own, for that certainty. If Jesus is wrong about God, heaven, resurrection, etc., then it is his burden not mine!  We can have a 'paradoxical certainty' because of the certainty of the faith of the Crucified One. The foundation of that faith is the love of the Son for the Father through the Spirit...[Jesus] has conquered doubt; something we try in vain to abolish through determined effort or rationalizing it as an essential part of faith" (p.53).

"Jesus doubts, yet without sin, for he takes our doubts and faithfully prsents them to the Father. He is God the Advocate in his vicarious humanity...God our Advocate is the God of fellowship, of communion, expressed most of all at the Lord's Table. Communion speaks boldly of this 'presence with absence' as his body and blood is broken for us (presence) and yet at the same time absent in that he is the ascended Christ who prays for us as our High Priest, continuing to share in our humanity, enabling us to participate in his thanksgiving (Eucharist) to the Father. Communion is thus the power of the presence of God in the midst of his absence, such can be felt profoundly in times of doubt" (p. 56).

"The twin prayers of one, abandonment ('My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'), and two, commitment ('Father, into your hands I commend my spirit')...reveal the...transcendence...of God... as well as [his] ...intimacy... The vicarious doubt of Christ that takes upon our doubt is released into the vicarious faith of Christ" (p. 57).

"The gospel proclaims that Jesus knows God, on our behalf and in our place. There is a vicarious knowledge of Christ as well as the vicarious atonement of Christ...Since Jesus knows God and we can participate in his knowledge of God we can go beyond doubt as only a problem in a skeptical, postmodern age. Many questions may be raised about the historical Jesus, but it is hard to doubt that Jesus believed in God and in his special relationship with him (Matt 11:25-27). This may be just enough for us. a 'sweet exchange' has taken place, not just in term of the righteous for the unrighteous, but of the one who knows God for the ones who do not know God...We may now participate in the Son's knowledge of God (John 17:25)" (p. 59).

"The proper function of our faith, therefore, is to acknowledge its 'incompetence' to comprehend its object, [which is] God...The presence of [our] doubt is not the last word. God in Christ takes the doubt upon himself. Yet we will never rid ourselves of doubt by seeking a false certainty or even 'absolutes'...A 'sweet exchange' is needed between our limited minds of reason and the mind of Christ, a mind of faith in God the Father...The knowledge of the Son reminds us of a knowledge from within God, within the triune relationship of  Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Knowledge is possible when obstructions have been removed and the mind can participate in the reality of th object. Genuine knowledge is communion, particularly of persons and the person. Therefore, our knowledge of God begins by acknowleding the uselessness of taking refuge in some principle outside of God's self-knowledge, which we know only by grace (p. 65-67).

The God Who Believes: the vicarious humanity of Jesus

I'm reading Christian Kettler's book, The God Who Believes (Faith, Doubt, and the Vicarious Humanity of Christ). He shows how Jesus, as the representative and substitute for all humanity, has faith on our behalf. To view a "You're Included" interview with Kettler, click here.

Fundamental to the thesis of Kettler's book, is the Christian doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. Here are a few representative quotes:

"As common as it has been to consider Christ's death to be vicarious, carried out in our place and for us, what if we were to consider that the entirety of his humanity was lived vicariously for us and in our place?" (p. x).

"Can we say that Jesus believes, not just as an example of a believer, but believes for me and in my place vicariously, so that I can be helped in my unbelief (Mark 9:24)?" (p. xii).

"The nature of Christ's vicarious work is not simply one moment on the cross, but his entire life, so that the entirety of our lives might be affected. The Word took on the entirety of humanity, body and soul, in order to save the entire human..." (p. 6).

"Let me carefully define what 'vicarious' means in term of the vicarious humanity of Christ. Unfortunately, it can often mean to some people, 'pseudo' or 'false,' as in the father getting a 'vicarious' thrill from his son's accomplishments as an athlete...In that way it is 'false,' not real....[But] the vicarious humanity of Christ does not mean that Christ's humanity is unreal. Quite the contrary! It does mean that the vicarious humanity of Christ speaks of the deep interaction between Christ's humanity and our humanity at the level of our being, the ontological level. So the atoning work of Christ is neither simply a means by which we are declared righteous by God, nor simply a demonstration of God's love. It is both, but much more, in the sense of God desiring to recreate our humanity at the deepest levels, addressing our needs and fears, our doubts from within our very being" (p. 6).

"A vicarious sense of Christ's humanity signifies that Jesus Christ is both the representative of and the substitute for my humanity. He represents my humanity before God the Father, having taken my humanity upon himself, bringing it back to God from the depths of sin and death. He is High Priest, representing the people before God (The Epistle to the Hebrews). But he is also the sacrifice himself. He is the substitute, doing in my place, in my stead, what I am unable to do: live a life of perfect faithfulness to, obedience to, and trust in God. 'Vicarious' at its heart means doing something for another in their stead, doing something that they are unable to do" (p. 6).

"[Our] response of faith [to God] should not begin with the weakness and vacillation of our faith, but with the faith of Jesus, a faith that is part of his wider human response in every way, even including our repentance. [Jesus'] solidarity [with us] is the means for Christ to be our substitute... Jesus the Son of God must walk the path of sinful humanity, sharing in our stories, including our doubts and fears. This is the path of both representing our humanity and taking our place" (p. 27).

"Jesus' vicarious humanity is a story about our humanity too and its need for completion, for fulfillment, to fill up what has been lacking" (p. 28).

"The vicarious humanity of Christ in the sense of his obedience [on our behalf] is not antithetical to [our personal] faith in Christ. Jesus 'sees' the Father (John 6:46). 'The will of the Father' is 'that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day' (John 6:40). The believer 'eats' of Jesus 'the living bread...and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh' (John 6:51). The humanity (flesh) of Christ is integrally connected to the life of the believer. Jesus' 'food,' in turn, 'is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work' (John 4:34)" (p. 30).

"If there is a vicarious humanity of Christ there is also a vicarious deity of Christ. [Just as] Christ represents and stands in for us before the Father. So he also represents and stands in for the Father" '...And no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him' (Matt 11:27). Christ puts himself in God's place since the relationship between the Father and the Son 'falls within the very being of God'" (p. 32).

"To share in Christ's vicarious humantiy is not to be released from faith and discipleship. In fact, discipleship is intensified. Jesus predicts that his disciples will be handed over to be tortured, put to death, and hated 'because of my name' (Matt 24:10, cf. v.22). The follower of Jesus will now act vicariously for Jesus ('because of my name'). The 'sheep...blessed by my Father' will be rewarded because they acted on behalf of Jesus, meeting Jesus himself when they clothed the naked, fed the hungry, and visited the imprisoned (Matt 25:31-46)" (p. 34).

Interview with Michael Horton in Christianity Today

Michael Horton was interviewed in the November 2009 Christianity Today.  I find his comments both helpful and insightful, flowing as they do from a biblical understanding of the gospel of God's grace in Jesus. 
Here's part of what he says:

"In such a therapeutic, pragmatic, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps society as ours, the message of God having to do all the work in saving us comes as an offensive shot at our egos...The gospel has nothing to do with what I do. The gospel is entirely a message about what someone else has done not only for me but also for the renewal of the whole creation."

You can read the full interview, titled "Christ at the Center," by clicking here. Let me know what you think.