For some people Christmas is a very hard time. And for others, it's a time when you say thanks for just simple basic things. G.K. Chesterdon said many years ago when we're children, we're grateful for those who fill our stockings with toys. Now that we are adults, we ought to be grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs...Read More
Want even more on this important topic? Check out what our Bro. Lehman has to say, "The Incarnation of the Son of God is the fact of God becoming Man; the Virgin Birth is the method by which God the Son became Man." Want More?
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Annunciation of the Birth of Jesus Lk.1
26 Now in the sixth month [this is the passage from which we learn that John was six months older than Jesus] the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth [Luke alone tells us where Mary lived before the birth of Jesus. That Nazareth was an unimportant town is shown by the fact that it is mentioned nowhere in the Old Testament, nor in the Talmud, nor in Josephus, who mentions two hundred four towns and cities of Galilee. The way in which Luke introduces Galilee and Nazareth shows that he wrote to those unfamiliar with Palestine. Compare the conversation at John 1:45, 46. Galilee comprised the lands of Zebulun, Naphtali, Issachar and Asher. It was rich in trees and pastures. Its people were hardy and warlike],
27 to a virgin betrothed to a man [In the East, the betrothal or engagement was entered into with much ceremony, and usually took place a year before the marriage. It was so sacred that the parties entering into it could not be separated save by a bill of divorcement--Matthew 1:19] to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David [that is, Joseph was of the house of David]; and the virgin's name was Mary. [The same as Miriam--Exodus 15:20.]
28 And he came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee.
29 But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this might be. [Whether it meant a present sorrow or joy, for God's salutations all mean joy, but usually is in the distant future--Hebrews 12:11; 2 Corinthians 4:17, 18.]
30 And the angel said unto her, Fear not [the gospel is full of "Fear nots"; it teaches us that perfect love which casts out fear--1 John 4:18], for thou hast found favour with God.
31 And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. [The same as Hoshea (Numbers 13:8), Joshua, and Jeshua ( 3:1). It means the "salvation of Jehovah." It was one of the most common Jewish names, but was given to Jesus by divine direction because of its fitness--Matthew 1:21.]
32 He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High [A common Hebrew way of saying "He shall be." Even the evil spirits called Jesus by this name--Mark 5:7]: and the Lord God shall give unto him [he shall not receive his kingdom as a bribe from Satan (Matthew 4:9), nor win it by force of arms (John 18:10, 11, 36; Matthew 26:53), but as the gift of God--Acts 2:32-36; Philippians 2:9-11; Matthew 28:18] the throne [see Psalms 132:11] of his father David [this must refer to Mary's descent from David, for she is expressly told in verse 35 that her son would have no earthly father]:
33 and he shall reign over the house of Jacob [That is, over the family or descendants of Jacob; but the expression includes his spiritual, rather than his carnal, descendants (Galatians 3:7, 28, 29). This name therefore includes the Gentiles as the name of a river includes the rivers which flow into it] forever [Daniel 2:44; 7:13, 14, 27; Micah 4:7; Psalms 45:6; Hebrews 1:8; Revelation 11:15]; and of his kingdom there shall be no end. [Isaiah 7:9. Christ shall resign his mediatorial kingdom to the Father at the close of this dispensation (1 Corinthians 15:24-28); but as being one with his Father he shall rule forever.]
34 And Mary unto the angel, How shall this be [Her question indicates surprise, not disbelief. Unlike Zacharias, she asked no sign. The youthful village maiden, amid her humble daily duties, shows a more ready faith in the far more startling message than the aged priest in the holy place of of the sacred incense], seeing I know not a man?
35 And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow [the Spirit of God is thus spoken of as "brooding over" or overshadowing creation to develop it--Genesis 1:2] thee [This indicates that the Holy Spirit himself created the body of Christ (Hebrews 10:5). The spirit, or divine nature, of Christ was from the beginning, and was unbegotten--that is, in the sense of being created]: wherefore also the holy thing. [the body of Jesus--Hebrews 7:26; 1 Peter 2:22] which is begotten [Galatians 4:4] shall be called the Son of God. [As the Evangelist is here talking about the bodily and human nature of Jesus, it is possible that he may here speak of Jesus as the Son of God in the same sense in which he called Adam the son of God (Luke 3:38); that is, his body and human nature were the direct and miraculous production of the divine power. If so, we find Jesus called the Son of God in three several senses: 1. Here, because he was born into the world in a supernatural manner. 2. Elsewhere, because by his resurrection he was begotten from the dead (Romans 1:4; Acts 13:33; Psalms 2:7). 3. Also elsewhere, because of the eternal, immutable, and unparalleled relationship which he sustains to the Father--John 1:1, 14, 18.]
36 And behold, Elisabeth thy kinswoman, she also hath conceived a son in her old age. [The angel tells of Elisabeth's condition, that it may encourage the faith of Mary, and lead her to trust in Him with whom nothing is impossible--Jeremiah 32:17, 27; Genesis 18:14; Matthew 19:26.]
37 For no word from God shall be void of power. [Isaiah 55:11.]
38 And Mary said, Behold, the handmaid [Literally, "slave" or "bondservant." It is the feminine form of the word which Paul so often applies to himself (Romans 1:1; Titus 1:1). Mary uses it to indicate her submissive and obedient spirit] of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. [In great faith she not only believes the promise, but prays for its Eli (1 Samuel 3:18), and became the mother of Him who prayed, "Not my will, but thine, be done"--Luke 22:42.] And the angel departed from her.
27 to a virgin betrothed to a man [In the East, the betrothal or engagement was entered into with much ceremony, and usually took place a year before the marriage. It was so sacred that the parties entering into it could not be separated save by a bill of divorcement--Matthew 1:19] to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David [that is, Joseph was of the house of David]; and the virgin's name was Mary. [The same as Miriam--Exodus 15:20.]
28 And he came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee.
29 But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this might be. [Whether it meant a present sorrow or joy, for God's salutations all mean joy, but usually is in the distant future--Hebrews 12:11; 2 Corinthians 4:17, 18.]
30 And the angel said unto her, Fear not [the gospel is full of "Fear nots"; it teaches us that perfect love which casts out fear--1 John 4:18], for thou hast found favour with God.
31 And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. [The same as Hoshea (Numbers 13:8), Joshua, and Jeshua ( 3:1). It means the "salvation of Jehovah." It was one of the most common Jewish names, but was given to Jesus by divine direction because of its fitness--Matthew 1:21.]
32 He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High [A common Hebrew way of saying "He shall be." Even the evil spirits called Jesus by this name--Mark 5:7]: and the Lord God shall give unto him [he shall not receive his kingdom as a bribe from Satan (Matthew 4:9), nor win it by force of arms (John 18:10, 11, 36; Matthew 26:53), but as the gift of God--Acts 2:32-36; Philippians 2:9-11; Matthew 28:18] the throne [see Psalms 132:11] of his father David [this must refer to Mary's descent from David, for she is expressly told in verse 35 that her son would have no earthly father]:
33 and he shall reign over the house of Jacob [That is, over the family or descendants of Jacob; but the expression includes his spiritual, rather than his carnal, descendants (Galatians 3:7, 28, 29). This name therefore includes the Gentiles as the name of a river includes the rivers which flow into it] forever [Daniel 2:44; 7:13, 14, 27; Micah 4:7; Psalms 45:6; Hebrews 1:8; Revelation 11:15]; and of his kingdom there shall be no end. [Isaiah 7:9. Christ shall resign his mediatorial kingdom to the Father at the close of this dispensation (1 Corinthians 15:24-28); but as being one with his Father he shall rule forever.]
34 And Mary unto the angel, How shall this be [Her question indicates surprise, not disbelief. Unlike Zacharias, she asked no sign. The youthful village maiden, amid her humble daily duties, shows a more ready faith in the far more startling message than the aged priest in the holy place of of the sacred incense], seeing I know not a man?
35 And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow [the Spirit of God is thus spoken of as "brooding over" or overshadowing creation to develop it--Genesis 1:2] thee [This indicates that the Holy Spirit himself created the body of Christ (Hebrews 10:5). The spirit, or divine nature, of Christ was from the beginning, and was unbegotten--that is, in the sense of being created]: wherefore also the holy thing. [the body of Jesus--Hebrews 7:26; 1 Peter 2:22] which is begotten [Galatians 4:4] shall be called the Son of God. [As the Evangelist is here talking about the bodily and human nature of Jesus, it is possible that he may here speak of Jesus as the Son of God in the same sense in which he called Adam the son of God (Luke 3:38); that is, his body and human nature were the direct and miraculous production of the divine power. If so, we find Jesus called the Son of God in three several senses: 1. Here, because he was born into the world in a supernatural manner. 2. Elsewhere, because by his resurrection he was begotten from the dead (Romans 1:4; Acts 13:33; Psalms 2:7). 3. Also elsewhere, because of the eternal, immutable, and unparalleled relationship which he sustains to the Father--John 1:1, 14, 18.]
36 And behold, Elisabeth thy kinswoman, she also hath conceived a son in her old age. [The angel tells of Elisabeth's condition, that it may encourage the faith of Mary, and lead her to trust in Him with whom nothing is impossible--Jeremiah 32:17, 27; Genesis 18:14; Matthew 19:26.]
37 For no word from God shall be void of power. [Isaiah 55:11.]
38 And Mary said, Behold, the handmaid [Literally, "slave" or "bondservant." It is the feminine form of the word which Paul so often applies to himself (Romans 1:1; Titus 1:1). Mary uses it to indicate her submissive and obedient spirit] of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. [In great faith she not only believes the promise, but prays for its Eli (1 Samuel 3:18), and became the mother of Him who prayed, "Not my will, but thine, be done"--Luke 22:42.] And the angel departed from her.
The Incarnation of Jesus Christ
The word incarnation does not occur in the Bible. It is derived from the Latin in and caro (flesh), meaning clothed in flesh, the act of assuming flesh. Its only use in theology is in reference to that gracious, voluntary act of the Son of God in which He assumed a human body. In Christian doctrine the Incarnation, briefly stated, is that the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, became a man. It is one of the greatest events to occur in the history of the universe. It is without parallel.
The Apostle Paul wrote, ''And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh . . . " (I Timothy 3:16). Confessedly, by common consent the Incarnation of Jesus Christ is outside the range of human natural comprehension and apprehension. It can be made known only by Divine revelation in the Holy Scriptures, and to those only who are illumined by the Holy Spirit. It is a truth of the greatest magnitude that God in the Person of His Son should identify Himself completely with the human race. And yet He did, for reasons He set forth clearly in His Word.
Before we examine those reasons, it would be well at the outset to distinguish between the Incarnation and the Virgin Birth of our Lord, two truths sometimes confused by students of Scripture. The Incarnation of the Son of God is the fact of God becoming Man; the Virgin Birth is the method by which God the Son became Man.
These two truths, while distinct and different, are closely related to each other and stand in support of each other. If Jesus Christ was not virgin born, then He was not God in the flesh and was therefore only a man possessing the same sinful nature that every fallen child of Adam possesses. The fact of the Incarnation lies in the ever-existing One putting aside His eternal glory to become a man. The method of the Incarnation is the manner by which He chose to come, namely, the miraculous conception in the womb of a virgin.
A noteworthy passage pertinent to the Divine purpose in the Incarnation is recorded in the Gospel according to John-- ''And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt 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).
Cerinthus, a representative of the system which arose in the early church under the name of Docetism, claimed that our Lord had only an apparent human body. But the statement, ''the Word became flesh," indicates that He had a real body.
John 1:14 cannot be fully appreciated apart from verse one: ''In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . And the Word became flesh." He who was one with the Father from all eternity became Man, taking upon Him a human body. He ''was with God'' (vs. 1); He ''became flesh" (vs. 14). He “was with God”' (vs. 1); He ''dwelt among us'' (vs. 14). From the infinite position of eternal Godhood to the finite limitations of manhood! Unthinkable but true!
Paul gives another significant passage on the Incarnation in his Galatian Epistle: ''But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons'' (Galatians 4:4, 5). In these verses Paul establishes the fact of the Incarnation-- " God sent forth His Son, made of a woman."
God sending His Son presupposes that God had a Son. Christ was the Son in His eternal relationship with the Father, not because He was born of Mary. Since a son shares the nature of his father, so our Lord shares the Godhead coequally with His Father. Yes, "God sent forth His Son," from His throne on high, from His position of heavenly glory. God did not send one forth who, in His birth, became His Son, but He sent One who, through all eternity, was His Son. Centuries before Christ was born, the Prophet Isaiah wrote of Him, ''For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given . . . '' (Isaiah 9:6). The Son was given in eternity past before we knew Him. His human birth was merely the method of coming to us.
Again, Paul records the following noteworthy statement in the Epistle to the Philippians: ''Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also bath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father'' (Philippians 2:5-11).
Before His Incarnation Jesus Christ was ''in the form of God'' (vs. 6). From the beginning He had the nature of God, He existed (or subsisted) as God, and that essential Deity which He once was could never cease to be. If He seems Divine, it is only because He is Divine. He is God.
He ''thought it not robbery to be equal with God'' (vs. 6). The eternal Son did not consider it a thing to be seized unlawfully to be equal with the Father. Equality with God was not something He retained by force or by farce. He possessed it in eternity past and no power could take it from Him. But in the Incarnation He laid aside, not His possession of Deity, but His position in and expression of the heavenly glory.
One of the purposes of the Philippian epistle was to check the rising tide of dissension and strife growing out of Christians thinking more highly of themselves than they ought to think. Being a general letter, it exposes no false doctrines but does enunciate our Lord Jesus Christ as the believer's pattern in humiliation, self-denial, and loving service for others. This is evident in the seven downward steps of the Saviour's renunciation of Himself.
(1) ''He made Himself of no reputation." God emptied Himself! He did not lose His Deity when He became Man, for God is immutable and therefore cannot cease to be God. He always was God the Son; He continued to be God the Son in His earthly sojourn as Man; He is God the Son in heaven today as He will remain throughout eternity. He is ''Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever" (Hebrews 13:8).
(2) ''He took upon Him the form of a servant.'' His was a voluntary act of amazing grace, the almighty Sovereign stooping to become earth's lowly Servant. Instead of expressing Himself as one deserving to be served, He revealed Himself as one desiring to serve others. He did not boast His eternal glory and right to be ministered to, but instead evinced His humility and desire to minister. ''The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many'' (Matthew 20:28).
(3) "He was made in the likeness of men." This phrase expresses the full reality of His humanity. He participated in the same flesh and blood as man (Hebrews 2:14). Although He entered into a new state of being, His becoming Man did not exclude His possession of Deity, for He was and is today a Person who is both God and Man, Divine and human, perfect in His Deity and perfect in His humanity.
(4) ''And being found in fashion as a man." When He came into the world, Christ associated with His contemporaries and did not hold Himself aloof. Thus He manifested to all that He was a real Man. One obvious distinction marked our Lord's humanity; His perfection and sinlessness. As a Man He was made under the law, yet He never violated the law. As a Man He was tempted in all three points in which we are tempted (I John 2:16), yet His temptation was apart from any thought, word, or act of sin.
(5) "He humbled Himself." The world has never witnessed a more genuine act of self-humbling. So completely did our Lord humble Himself that He surrendered His will to the will of His Father in heaven. His desire was to do the will of the Father, therefore He could testify, "I do always those things that please Him" (John 8:29). It was humiliation for the eternal Son of God to become flesh in a stable, and then to dwell in a humble home in subjection to a human parent. God was ''sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin'' (Romans 8:30). Only eternity will reveal the depth of meaning for Him and for us found in those words, " He humbled Himself."
(6) "He became obedient unto death." Remarkable indeed! Here the God-man dies. Did He die as God, or did He die as Man? He died as the God-Man. The first Adam's obedience would have been unto life, but because he disobeyed unto death, the last Adam must now obey unto death in order that He might deliver the first Adam's posterity ''out of death into life'' (John 5:24 R.V.). ''For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive" (1 Corinthians 15:22). To subject Himself to the cruel death of a criminal on the cross was a necessary part of God's plan of salvation for men, and to such a death our Lord voluntarily submitted. Implicit obedience!
(7) '' . . . even the death of the cross." Our Lord died as no other person died or ever will die. Other men had died on crosses, but this Man, the eternal Son of God, voluntarily and willingly died the kind of death meted out to criminals, even the death upon a cross. His own countrymen considered crucifixion the worst kind of disgrace. In their law it was written, "For he that is hanged is accursed of God'' (Deuteronomy 21:23; cf. Galatians 3:13). Not only did our Lord die, but He died bearing the burden of the worst of criminals and the guiltiest of sinners. Down He came from heaven's glory to earth's sin and shame through His Incarnation.
The purposes underlying this phenomenal occurrence can be summed up in seven points.
He Came to Reveal God to Man
The Incarnation of the Son of God unites earth to heaven. God's greatest revelation of Himself to man is in Jesus Christ. Revelation is the disclosure of truth previously unknown. Before the coming of the Son of God to earth many varied forms of revelation existed. Belief in the existence of God is innate. Since man is a rational, moral being, his very nature provides him with intuitive knowledge. As the mind of a child begins to unfold, it instinctively and intuitively recognizes a Being above and beyond the world that he experiences.
Man is so constituted that he recognizes the fact and the power of God by the things that are made. Many of the ancient philosophers marveled at the starry heavens above them and the moral law about them. We live in a world of order and harmony conducive to our happiness and well being, and we, too, recognize a revelation of God in nature.
The Apostle Paul wrote, "Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse" (Romans 1:19, 20). Men may hinder or suppress the truth by their unrighteous living, but there is that which may be known of God which ''is manifest in them." The existence and power of God are discernible to us all by the things we observe in the external world. Those only who have abnormal, distorted, or biased minds can possibly deny God's existence.
Job realized that the nature of God in its different characteristics and qualities was not all revealed to man, yet he knew, as all men know, that the omnipotence and unchangeableness of God are exhibited in creation (Job 6:10; 23:12). The savage and the scientist can know two things about God; He is a Being and He is supreme. These are the two things God has been pleased to reveal about Himself.
Do not plead innocence for the man who does not possess a copy of God's Word. All men have a Bible bound with the covers of the day and the night whose print is the stars and the planets. What is knowable about God has been displayed openly, and any man who suppresses the truth does it "without excuse." Nature reveals the supernatural, and creation reveals the Creator. Read Psalm 19:1-6 and you will see that the heavens are personified to proclaim the glory of their Creator. Day and night pass on their testimonies giving clear evidence of the existence of the One who made them.
There are other evidences of primeval revelations of God to man, such as to Adam (Genesis 3:8) and to Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3; 26:3-5). The writer to the Hebrews quotes the Son speaking to the Father, in which reference is made to an early primitive and temporary revelation through a book which God allowed to pass out of existence (Hebrews 10:5-7). Doubtless there were other books which likewise have passed out of existence, as the Book of Enoch of which Jude made mention (Jude 14).
We know, further, that God often revealed Himself in dreams as when He spoke to Jacob (Genesis 28), to the patriarch Joseph (Genesis 37), to Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 2-4), to Joseph (Matthew 1:20), and to others. Through Moses and the prophets God revealed Himself (Exodus 3:4 and chapter 20). Over thirty-five authors, writing over a period of fifteen hundred years, wrote consistently and coherently, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, of one historically accurate plan of salvation. The Bible in its entirety is a progressive revelation of God.
But of all the amazing revelations of almighty God, none was set forth more clearly and fully than God's final revelation of Himself in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Since God is an infinite Being, no man could understand Him fully save the Son who is One in equality with the Father. Jesus said, ''. . . neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him'' (Matthew 11:27). Here, then, is one reason for the Incarnation—to reveal God to man. The fact of God's existence may be seen through test tubes and laboratory experiments, detected through microscope and telescope, and stated in the discussions of the seminar. But the glorious attributes of a loving God manifested in behalf of sinners can be found in no place or person apart from Jesus Christ.
Philip said to the Lord Jesus, ''Lord, shew us the Father . . . " and our Lord answered, ''. . . He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father . . . " (John 14:8, 9). When the Word became flesh He brought to man an adequate revelation of God. Whatever the ancient seers and saints knew about God before Jesus came, we have a more adequate revelation. Since God remains an abstraction until we see Him in terms of personality, so the Son became Incarnate that we might see and know God. ''No man hath seen God at anytime; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him'' (John 1: 1, 8, 9).
The dictionary definition of the word ''light'' means nothing to a blind man, but one glimpse of a glowworm would be worth more for the understanding of light than all the definitions in the world. One glimpse of Jesus Christ will bring God closer to the human mind and heart than all the theological definitions of Him. No man could perceive the grace of God until the almighty Sovereign of the universe stooped to the level of His own creatures, suffering cruel treatment and dying the death of shame for them. No man understood fully the patience and longsuffering of the Father until Jesus Christ who, when He was reviled, reviled not again, and when He suffered, threatened not (I Peter 2:23). No man can comprehend just how perfect and holy God is until He comes face to face with the sinless Son of God. God has revealed Himself anew to the intelligence of man through the Incarnation.
He Came to Reveal Man to Himself
Through His Incarnation Jesus Christ reveals man to himself. He shows us what we are and what we may become. As we study the purposes of God in Christ, the fact impresses us that man is grossly ignorant of his real self, and that the
mission of the Son's coming included a plan that would enable man to see and know himself as God sees and knows him. We are not the least bit impressed with man's vain philosophical views of himself, but rather with the accurate historical account of man as it is recorded in the Bible.
The primary fact that man needs to know about himself is his origin. Men are divided in their theories concerning this. We are not strangers to the evolutionary idea which attempts to explain man's place in the earth. In 1871 Darwin published his book, The Descent of Man, but he said very little that had not been said before. The idea of evolution might be here to stay, but not because Darwin said so. Evolution was taught by Roman and Greek philosophers and even by ancient Egyptians. But the evolutionary idea that man must swallow his pride and be content with the fact that he has oozed from the slime along with the snails is contrary to the revelation in Scripture.
The Bible teaches clearly that the human race had its origin by the immediate creation of God (Genesis 1:26, 27) and that man is the grand consummation of all creation. We are forced to accept this view as against the theory of evolution because of the immeasurable gulf which separates man, even in his barest savage condition, from the nearest order of creation below him. Moreover, history corroborates Scripture in that man was destined to rule over all other animal life. God took special care in the creation of man, for " God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them" (Genesis 1:27). Actually it was not the body of man that was created, for the body was merely ''formed'' of those elements necessary for man's body and which were created long before man ( Genesis 1 :1). What was new in man's creation was a form of life which only God and man possess (Genesis 2:7). Created in the image and likeness of God, man differs from every other form of animal. Man, in his lowest estate, seeks an object of worship and has been known to bow before gods that he cannot see, but animals never!
However, man did not retain God's image and likeness. When God placed our first parents in Eden He set before them one simple restriction, namely, not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for, said God, "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Genesis 2:17). Genesis 3 is a record of the fall of man. He disobeyed God and
immediately the life-cord was severed. Adam died both physically and spiritually. Physical death began to do its work, and the grave for Adam was but a matter of time. Then, too, his spirit was separated from God, so that he was dead spiritually while alive physically.
Now all men, from Adam down, are born into this world spiritually dead in sin, possessing a sin-nature capable of every trespass against God (Ephesians 2:1). The sin-nature of Adam and the guilt of his sin were imputed to the whole human race, so that Adam's corrupted nature is of necessity a part of all his posterity. The highest self in man is altogether unprofitable to God. All men are not equally corrupt in word and deed, but all are equally dead, and unless the function of death is brought to a halt, it will destroy not only the body but also the soul in hell. Because of the solidarity of the human race, sin and death have passed upon all men (Romans 5:12). When Adam defaced the Divine image and lost the Divine likeness, he begat sons ''in his own likeness, after his image" (Genesis 5:3). Yes, "by man came death" and ''in Adam all die" (I Corinthians 15:21, 22).
While all of this is clearly stated in the Bible, man still thinks of himself more highly than he ought to think. There were many who had no Scriptures at all in Christ's day, and they needed this revelation. In order that man should see himself, not in the light of his own goodness, but beside the perfect standard of God's holy Son, the Son of God became Incarnate. Our Lord said, ''If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin" (John 15:22).
Responsibility increases with knowledge, and so Christ's coming showed man how far short he came of God's standard of a righteous man. The Lord Jesus said, "If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin . . . " (John 15:24). Our Lord did not mean by this statement that man would have been without sin if He had not come. There had been sin all along, as God's dealings with the human race through its four thousand years of earlier history prove. But the coming of Christ to the earth revealed the heart of man in cruel hatred for Divine holiness. The Son of God Incarnate was sinless in every respect, yet man, Jew and Gentile alike, crucified Him. Alongside Christ's perfect life and works, man can see the sin and guilt of his own heart.
When man sinned against the Son of God, he sinned against the clearest possible light, "the Light of the world'' (John 8:12). He came unto His own and His own received Him not (John 1:11), and then Gentiles joined hands with ''His own'' to put Him to death. How sinful is the heart of man? Look at that spectacle on Calvary's hill and you will see human hearts and hands at their worst.
Time has not improved human nature. Today men still trample under food the precious blood of Christ, and if our blessed Lord were to appear in person today as He did nineteen centuries ago, the world would crucify him again. The world, having seen the light, has turned from the light, for "men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil'' (John 3:19). Romans 1:18 to 3:20 enunciates the most searching and conclusive arraignment of the human race found anywhere, and the birth and death of Jesus Christ attest to the truth of this awful indictment.
He Came to Redeem Man
The Apostle Paul states clearly the purpose of the Incarnation in the following words--''But when the fulness of the was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law" (Galatians 4:4, 5). The Old Testament contains the accurate record of some four thousand years of sin, human failure, and consequent Divine judgment. The one bright hope was the coming of the promised Seed, the Redeemer (Genesis 3:15). With each succeeding revelation from God, the promise grew clearer and the hope brighter. The prophets spoke of the Messiah who would come to deliver the people from their sins. Perhaps the classic prophecy is Isaiah 53. Since the people needed a deliverer from the guilt and penalty of sin, the intent of the Incarnation was to provide that Deliverer. Moreover, all of history and prophecy moved toward that goal even as all subsequent movements have proceeded from it.
Jesus Christ is man's Redeemer, his Saviour. This truth is implied in His name. Said the angel, " Thou shalt call his name JESUS (meaning Saviour), for He shall save His people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). At His birth the angel testified again, "For unto you is born this day in the city of David a
Saviour, which is Christ the Lord" (Luke 2:11). Even the Lord Jesus Himself voiced emphatically the purpose of His Incarnation when He said, "For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10).
The awful state of the world of mankind necessitated the coming of the Redeemer since there could be no hope of deliverance apart from Him. The character of God, which is righteousness, absolute and uncompromising, demands that every sin be dealt with. While God is merciful, gracious, and slow to anger, forgiving iniquities and transgressions, ''that will by no means clear the guilty " (Exodus 34:7)., While God is love, God is also holy and righteous, so holy that He is "of purer eyes than to behold evil, and [canst] not look on iniquity'' (Habakkuk 1:13). His righteousness demands that every sin must be dealt with impartially. In order to be true to Himself, God had to deal with the problem of sin. In order to deal justly and, at the same time, mercifully, someone had to suffer the death penalty for the sin of the world.
In the Person of Jesus Christ God solved the problem of the eternal well-being of the sinner. He sent His Son to die as the sinner's perfect Substitute, and thereby redeemed the sinner. Man was lost to God and heaven, and God's purpose in redemption could be realized only through the Incarnate Son of God, for the Son of God Incarnate is the connecting link bringing together God and sinful man. The sinner's relation to Jesus Christ is vital. Christ became a man "that He by the grace of God should taste death for every man" (Hebrews 2:9). The Word, who is the eternal Son of God, became flesh and was obliged to be made in the likeness of man in order to redeem him.
Christ defined the purpose of His Incarnation and earthly ministry when He said, "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance" (Mark 2:17). There is no implication in these words that there is a sinful class of men who need repentance and another righteous class who do not. Nor is there a suggestion that there are "righteous ones," for in Romans 3:10 it is said, "There is none righteous, no, not one."
Consider the conditions under which Christ stated this purpose. Scribes and Pharisees were upbraiding Him because He had gone into the house of Levi to eat with publicans and sinners (Mark 2:14-16). His critics exalted themselves above sinners, priding themselves in an unpossessed righteousness which thereby excluded them from any realization or acknowledgement of their own sin.
In Levi's house, however, there were those who recognized their sinful state. It was for this reason that the Lord Jesus went to that group, namely, to bring salvation to them. Physicians go into sick rooms, not because of the pleasantness of disease and suffering, but because of a desire to relieve and cure the sick. So sinners are the special objects of the Saviour's love and power. He came into the world to save sinners.
Although all men are unrighteous, those scribes and Pharisees called themselves ''righteous," for they were possessed of self-righteousness that is as "filthy rags" in God's sight (Isaiah 64:6). Therefore, as they went about seeking to establish their own righteousness, they failed to see the purpose of His coming. Hence they never heeded the Saviour's call to salvation. Their kind seldom do!
Had there been righteousness in the human heart, there would have been no need for the Incarnation of the Son of God. And only in the self-righteous heart of the religious, moral man, satisfied with himself, do we find the careless indifference to the Gospel of redemption. When a man assumes a righteousness all his own, he is outside the reach of the Great Physician. The man who excludes his own need of Christ misses the purpose of the Saviour's coming and will not be saved. Each of us must say with the Apostle Paul, " This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief" (I Timothy 1:15).
He Came to Restrain Satan
The purpose of the Incarnation is further revealed in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Three verses, linked together, assert that the coming of Jesus Christ was to destroy the devil. "But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that He by the grace of God should taste death for every man . . . Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same [flesh and blood]; that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage" (Hebrews 2:9, 14, 15).
In these three verses in Hebrews, we are reminded that the subject of death is dealt with in each of them, and the fact of the Incarnation is substantiated in the clause, "who was made a little lower than the angels." Furthermore, the purpose of the Incarnation appears in the words, "that He by the grace of God should taste death for every man." From this verse, as well as verse 14, it is evident that the eternal Son became flesh in order to die.
Christ's crucifixion by wicked hands was "by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God" (Acts 2:23). Our Lord Jesus Christ testified, "The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many" (Matthew 20:28). Jesus Christ willed to die, not a sudden and unexpected death but a lingering, anticipated death that He would taste every day of His earthly sojourn. He became man to suffer death.
But why should it be so? We considered the purpose of the Incarnation relative to the sin question. Referring to the matter of death, the Word affirms that the Son of God became incarnate that "through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil." Of all the works of Satan, among the worst is that of destroying life. Our Lord testified, "He was a murderer from the beginning" (John 8:44). Satan is the spoiler of humanity, his malignant purpose being to bring both physical and spiritual death to mankind.
God placed our first parents in the Garden of Eden and surrounded them with every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. Two of these trees are mentioned; ''the tree of life . . . and the tree of knowledge of good and evil" ( Genesis 2 :9). Eating the fruit of the latter tree would bring sin and death, for, said God, " In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Genesis 2:17). Satan knew this, therefore we are not surprised when we read that it was of the fruit of this very tree of death that he enticed Eve to eat. He chose the tree of death because he is a murderer. He knew that the death sentence was already pronounced upon all who would eat of it. He delighted in the fall of Adam and Eve, for he knew that physical and spiritual death had struck.
But thanks be to God for the Incarnation of His Son. By the coming of Jesus Christ into the world, through His death and resurrection, He wrested from Satan the power of death. Death no more holds its lethal grip upon the believer. Although death has held sinners in bondage ever since the severing of the life-cord between God and man, the appearing of the Lord Jesus has broken its grip. "According to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began . . . the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel" (II Timothy 1:9, 10).
Before sin was indulged in and death struck, the inclusive salvation plan provided death's abolition. Since the death and resurrection of our Lord dealt comprehensively with sin, it of necessity affected death. The coming of the Saviour rendered death harmless, and the "sting" of it is gone (I Corinthians 15:55). Oh, the blessedness of an accomplished redemption! How wonderful to know Him who said, " I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death" (Revelation 1:18). Death once held man in the vise of hopeless doom, but now Satan is defeated.
The shadow of the cross hung over the manger in Bethlehem, assuring the world that the Seed of the woman would bruise the serpent's head (Genesis 3:15). As Adam yielded himself to Satan, Satan held him in death; but by His dying, Christ entered into our death and wrested from Satan that power which he held over us. At Calvary Satan was brought to naught, and now "death is swallowed up in victory. . . Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (I Corinthians 15:54, 57). "The prince of this world is judged" (John 16:1 1). The Seed of the woman traversed the realms of death but was not captured by the enemy. Instead, He conquered the enemy. Thank God the Saviour came.
He Came to Rescue the Whole Creation
The Incarnation of the eternal Son is part of the divine plan. That plan comprehends a goal, and God assures the accomplishment of it. Though the salvation of man was God's chief concern, His plan was never limited to the world of mankind. It is written of the eternal Son, who was with God and who is God, that "all things were made by Him" (John 1:3). Paul writes, ''For by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth'' (Colossians 1:28). Man was higher than all other created beings in the earth, and other creatures were subject to him. However, after the fall this condition changed. Now if man is to have dominion over the beasts, he must first capture them at the risk of his own life, and then imprison them until they are tamed. All of this resulted from the fall.
But the question is, Will God restore again to man the dominion which he lost through the fall? The prophet said, ''The wolf also shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the suckling child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cocatrice's den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea" (Isaiah 11:6-9). Indeed, it appears that the prophet here is looking beyond to a time of rescue and restoration of the earth and all of its creatures.
The cruelty of beasts was not the order before sin entered. Such discord among God's creatures has sprung from the sinfulness of man and is a necessary part of the curse. To remove this curse and rescue God's creation is one of the purposes of the Incarnation. When Christ comes back to reign and "the government shall be upon His shoulder" (Isaiah 9:6), then the sons of God will be manifested and will share with Him in a restored creation. If it were not so, then all of animated nature would remain spoiled by Satan. But God has said, "In that day will I make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven, and with the creeping things of the ground" (Hosea 2:18). Yes, God will "gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth, even in Him'' (Ephesians 1:10). At that day our blessed Lord will "reconcile all things unto Himself' (Colossians 1:20).
Many Christians fail to see that this redemptive work, wrought through the Incarnation of the Son of God, is wider than the salvation of human beings and that it affects the whole creation. The Apostle Paul writes, " For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope. Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. (Romans 8:19-23). Here we are told that the deliverance of the whole creation will be revealed at the manifestation of the sons of God.
All creation lies in hope (expectancy) of a rescue from present corruption and of deliverance to that place God gave it in the beginning. Nature is now under the curse of sin, groaning and travailing in pain. It is not what it was at first. Nor is it now what it will be when the incarnate Son returns to "put all things in subjection under His feet" (see Hebrews 2:5-9). Before Adam sinned, no savage beasts, no desert wastes, no thorns and thistles existed; but when he fell, all creation fell with him. Now that the Son of God has come and purchased redemption by His death at Calvary, the whole creation must be rescued from the curse, and restored to its original state.
He Came to Restore Israel
Any reader of the Old Testament cannot escape the clear teaching that the Messiah was promised to Israel. Of this the prophets spoke and wrote. The Jew had great advantages. "Unto them were committed the oracles of God" (Romans 3:2). Theirs was "the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises" (Romans 9:4). None can deny that from the call of Abraham (Genesis 12:1) to the Babylonian captivity under Nebuchadnezzar (606 B.C.), authority in the earth and divine representation was vested in the Jew. It is common information that since the overthrow of Jerusalem and the transfer of dominion in the earth to the Gentiles, Israel, as a nation, has not held authority in the earth.
When Jesus Christ, the Word, "was made flesh," "He came unto His own, and His own received Him not" (John 1:11, 14). ''His citizens hated Him, and sent a message after Him, saying, We will not have this man to reign over us" (Luke 19:14). In blind unbelief the children of Abraham, refusing to recognize or receive Him, drove Him from their midst and crucified Him. After His resurrection and ascension He revealed to the apostles this mystery. No longer did Israel have priority on the truth, but the message was to be spread abroad to every creature and, during the present dispensation of grace, God would visit the Gentiles to take out of them a people for His name (Acts 15:14).
When Christ came the first time He traversed Palestine proclaiming, " Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matthew 4:17). He opened the door into the kingdom, but only the regenerated could enter. Were the people ready to receive the kingdom, the King would establish it. However, the offer of the kingdom met with an ever-increasing opposition, and our Lord withdrew the offer for that time. He said to the Jews, ''Therefore say I unto you, The Kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof" (Matthew 21:43). There was no mistaking what the Lord Jesus meant, for the chief priests and Pharisees "perceived that He spake of them" (vs. 45).
Israel is still set aside, but only temporarily. The Apostle Paul writes, ''I say then, Hath God cast away His people? God forbid . . . God hath not cast away His people which He foreknew . . . For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own
conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in" (Romans 11:1, 2, 25).
Anti-Semitism, raging throughout the world today, might lead one to question the future restoration of the Jew. Yet we know that both national restoration and national regeneration for the Jew are a definite part of the plan of God. Israel is not beyond recovery; she is not irretrievably lost. By her fall the whole world was blessed with the message of salvation. A national tragedy resulted in an international triumph. ''And so all Israel shall be saved'' (Romans 10:26). The Jew lives in a dark present with a bright future before him. When our Lord said in Matthew 21:43, that "the kingdom shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof," He was not referring to any Gentile nation but to regenerated Israel.
God gave Palestine to the Jews unconditionally as a possession and a dwelling place (Genesis 12: 1-3). He wants them there. That the Jews would be scattered is plainly taught in the Word of God, but coupled with such teaching are the assertions that they will also be regathered. Study Hosea 3:4,5 and see plainly the scattering and the gathering with the period between. (See also Ezekiel 36: 19,24). The Word became flesh and tabernacled among them once (John 1:14). That same holy One, the incarnate Christ, will come again to tabernacle with Israel. Study, for example, such passages as Isaiah 12:1-6; Joel 2:26, 27; Zephaniah 3:14-17; Zechariah 8:3-8. Already modern inventions have revolutionized Palestine and its surrounding territory. This fact, coupled with the thought of the vast area granted by God to Abraham 1Genesis 15: 18), will assure any interested person that there is ample room in the Holy Land to hold all Jews.
While the Jews continue to return to the Land, all signs point to the return of the incarnate Son, the One who is both human and Divine, and the One in whom God's purposes for Israel are to be fulfilled. According to prophecy, the incarnate One, Immanuel, the virgin's Son, is to occupy David's throne. ''For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this'' (Isaiah 9:6, 7). Let us rejoice to see that day approaching.
He Came to Reign
When the Incarnation had been announced, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, "Where is He that is born king of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the east, and are come to worship Him" (Matthew 2:1, 2). They were wise men indeed, for they were followers of the truth of God. When the Old Testament prophets wrote of Messiah's offices, they included that of King. "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy king cometh unto thee: He is just, and having salvation: lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass" (Zechariah 9:9). David wrote of Christ and His kingdom when he recorded the words of God, "Yet have I set My king upon My holy hill of Zion" (Psalm 2:6). Our Lord is not only Prophet, and Priest, but also Potentate.
In studying the purposes of the Incarnation we are forced to the scriptural observation that the eternal Son became Man in order that He might be King of the earth. Paul wrote that "God hath highly exalted Him" (Philippians 2:9). We dare not limit the exaltation of Christ as some try to do. We acquiesce with those who teach that the steps in Christ's exaltation were His resurrection, ascension, and His sitting at the right hand of God. But such teaching does not go far enough. Study carefully Philippians 2:5-11, and you will see that the steps in our Lord's humiliation were temporary steps leading to a permanent exaltation, culminating with the bowing of every knee and the confessing of every tongue in heaven and in earth, that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
The incarnate Son is to appear in His resurrection body and is to sit on the throne of His glory. Jesus Himself spoke of the day "when the Son of man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him; then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory" (Matthew 25:31). John writes, ''Every eye shall see Him'' (Revelation 1:7). The prophetic utterance spoken by God to David in 2 Samuel 7:12-16 concerning David's seed having an everlasting throne and kingdom, has a double fulfillment. Primarily it referred to Solomon's temple. Ultimately and finally it speaks of Christ's earthly reign as Zechariah 6:12 shows. The day must come when all things will be subjected unto Him (I Corinthians 15:28).
The Psalmist spoke of His throne as an enduring throne (Psalm 89:4, 29, 36). God promises that this earthly throne and kingdom are to continue forever, and that the One to occupy it shall be David's seed, his rightful Son (I Chronicles 17:11). The genealogies in Matthew 1 and Luke 3 will support the relationship of Jesus Christ to David. During our Lord's earthly ministry, those who sought His help called Him "the son of David" (see Matthew 9:27; Mark 10:47; Luke 18:38).
Christ's kingdom is literal, therefore it cannot be realized apart from the Incarnation. Such a kingdom men have been trying to establish for centuries, but nations are farther from realizing it today than ever before. A perfect kingdom demands a perfect King. At the end of the conflict of the ages, Jesus Christ, the God-Man will return to earth to establish His righteous kingdom which will never be destroyed. His kingdom of glory, and His throne in the midst, was God's first promise through the mouth of the angel Gabriel to Mary, and it links together the Incarnation and reign of the Son of God, ''And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David: and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of His kingdom there shall be no end" (Luke 1:31-33).
When the King comes, then will His perfect will be done in earth as it is in heaven. This is a blessed truth not without history or hope. The day will surely come when all men will see the revelation of the glory of holiness and joy in the earth. But His reign awaits His return to carry away His Bride, the Church. Everything has been deferred until He gathers her unto Himself. It may be at any moment that the last soul will be added to the Church, and then He will come.
This meditation in no wise exhausts the divine purposes of the Incarnation. Others have written at greater length and, doubtless, we could do likewise. But one thing more must be said. The supreme purpose in the eternal Son's coming into the world was to glorify the Father. In His great intercessory prayer, Jesus said, " I have glorified Thee on the earth: I have finished the work which Thou gayest Me to do" (John 17:4). God had been glorified in creation, in the remarkable deliverances of His people, and in the exercise of His power over His enemies, but at no time had He been glorified like this. God could never have been glorified if the Son would have failed in His earthly mission in the smallest degree. But the Lord Jesus could say, " I have finished the work which Thou gayest Me to do." Nothing was left undone, and in everything He did, the Son had the Father's glory in view. He glorified the Father; His earthly mission was complete.
And now to all of us who have been redeemed by His precious blood, the Apostle Paul writes: "For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's" (I Corinthians 6:20).
The Apostle Paul wrote, ''And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh . . . " (I Timothy 3:16). Confessedly, by common consent the Incarnation of Jesus Christ is outside the range of human natural comprehension and apprehension. It can be made known only by Divine revelation in the Holy Scriptures, and to those only who are illumined by the Holy Spirit. It is a truth of the greatest magnitude that God in the Person of His Son should identify Himself completely with the human race. And yet He did, for reasons He set forth clearly in His Word.
Before we examine those reasons, it would be well at the outset to distinguish between the Incarnation and the Virgin Birth of our Lord, two truths sometimes confused by students of Scripture. The Incarnation of the Son of God is the fact of God becoming Man; the Virgin Birth is the method by which God the Son became Man.
These two truths, while distinct and different, are closely related to each other and stand in support of each other. If Jesus Christ was not virgin born, then He was not God in the flesh and was therefore only a man possessing the same sinful nature that every fallen child of Adam possesses. The fact of the Incarnation lies in the ever-existing One putting aside His eternal glory to become a man. The method of the Incarnation is the manner by which He chose to come, namely, the miraculous conception in the womb of a virgin.
A noteworthy passage pertinent to the Divine purpose in the Incarnation is recorded in the Gospel according to John-- ''And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt 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).
Cerinthus, a representative of the system which arose in the early church under the name of Docetism, claimed that our Lord had only an apparent human body. But the statement, ''the Word became flesh," indicates that He had a real body.
John 1:14 cannot be fully appreciated apart from verse one: ''In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . And the Word became flesh." He who was one with the Father from all eternity became Man, taking upon Him a human body. He ''was with God'' (vs. 1); He ''became flesh" (vs. 14). He “was with God”' (vs. 1); He ''dwelt among us'' (vs. 14). From the infinite position of eternal Godhood to the finite limitations of manhood! Unthinkable but true!
Paul gives another significant passage on the Incarnation in his Galatian Epistle: ''But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons'' (Galatians 4:4, 5). In these verses Paul establishes the fact of the Incarnation-- " God sent forth His Son, made of a woman."
God sending His Son presupposes that God had a Son. Christ was the Son in His eternal relationship with the Father, not because He was born of Mary. Since a son shares the nature of his father, so our Lord shares the Godhead coequally with His Father. Yes, "God sent forth His Son," from His throne on high, from His position of heavenly glory. God did not send one forth who, in His birth, became His Son, but He sent One who, through all eternity, was His Son. Centuries before Christ was born, the Prophet Isaiah wrote of Him, ''For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given . . . '' (Isaiah 9:6). The Son was given in eternity past before we knew Him. His human birth was merely the method of coming to us.
Again, Paul records the following noteworthy statement in the Epistle to the Philippians: ''Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also bath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father'' (Philippians 2:5-11).
Before His Incarnation Jesus Christ was ''in the form of God'' (vs. 6). From the beginning He had the nature of God, He existed (or subsisted) as God, and that essential Deity which He once was could never cease to be. If He seems Divine, it is only because He is Divine. He is God.
He ''thought it not robbery to be equal with God'' (vs. 6). The eternal Son did not consider it a thing to be seized unlawfully to be equal with the Father. Equality with God was not something He retained by force or by farce. He possessed it in eternity past and no power could take it from Him. But in the Incarnation He laid aside, not His possession of Deity, but His position in and expression of the heavenly glory.
One of the purposes of the Philippian epistle was to check the rising tide of dissension and strife growing out of Christians thinking more highly of themselves than they ought to think. Being a general letter, it exposes no false doctrines but does enunciate our Lord Jesus Christ as the believer's pattern in humiliation, self-denial, and loving service for others. This is evident in the seven downward steps of the Saviour's renunciation of Himself.
(1) ''He made Himself of no reputation." God emptied Himself! He did not lose His Deity when He became Man, for God is immutable and therefore cannot cease to be God. He always was God the Son; He continued to be God the Son in His earthly sojourn as Man; He is God the Son in heaven today as He will remain throughout eternity. He is ''Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever" (Hebrews 13:8).
(2) ''He took upon Him the form of a servant.'' His was a voluntary act of amazing grace, the almighty Sovereign stooping to become earth's lowly Servant. Instead of expressing Himself as one deserving to be served, He revealed Himself as one desiring to serve others. He did not boast His eternal glory and right to be ministered to, but instead evinced His humility and desire to minister. ''The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many'' (Matthew 20:28).
(3) "He was made in the likeness of men." This phrase expresses the full reality of His humanity. He participated in the same flesh and blood as man (Hebrews 2:14). Although He entered into a new state of being, His becoming Man did not exclude His possession of Deity, for He was and is today a Person who is both God and Man, Divine and human, perfect in His Deity and perfect in His humanity.
(4) ''And being found in fashion as a man." When He came into the world, Christ associated with His contemporaries and did not hold Himself aloof. Thus He manifested to all that He was a real Man. One obvious distinction marked our Lord's humanity; His perfection and sinlessness. As a Man He was made under the law, yet He never violated the law. As a Man He was tempted in all three points in which we are tempted (I John 2:16), yet His temptation was apart from any thought, word, or act of sin.
(5) "He humbled Himself." The world has never witnessed a more genuine act of self-humbling. So completely did our Lord humble Himself that He surrendered His will to the will of His Father in heaven. His desire was to do the will of the Father, therefore He could testify, "I do always those things that please Him" (John 8:29). It was humiliation for the eternal Son of God to become flesh in a stable, and then to dwell in a humble home in subjection to a human parent. God was ''sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin'' (Romans 8:30). Only eternity will reveal the depth of meaning for Him and for us found in those words, " He humbled Himself."
(6) "He became obedient unto death." Remarkable indeed! Here the God-man dies. Did He die as God, or did He die as Man? He died as the God-Man. The first Adam's obedience would have been unto life, but because he disobeyed unto death, the last Adam must now obey unto death in order that He might deliver the first Adam's posterity ''out of death into life'' (John 5:24 R.V.). ''For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive" (1 Corinthians 15:22). To subject Himself to the cruel death of a criminal on the cross was a necessary part of God's plan of salvation for men, and to such a death our Lord voluntarily submitted. Implicit obedience!
(7) '' . . . even the death of the cross." Our Lord died as no other person died or ever will die. Other men had died on crosses, but this Man, the eternal Son of God, voluntarily and willingly died the kind of death meted out to criminals, even the death upon a cross. His own countrymen considered crucifixion the worst kind of disgrace. In their law it was written, "For he that is hanged is accursed of God'' (Deuteronomy 21:23; cf. Galatians 3:13). Not only did our Lord die, but He died bearing the burden of the worst of criminals and the guiltiest of sinners. Down He came from heaven's glory to earth's sin and shame through His Incarnation.
The purposes underlying this phenomenal occurrence can be summed up in seven points.
He Came to Reveal God to Man
The Incarnation of the Son of God unites earth to heaven. God's greatest revelation of Himself to man is in Jesus Christ. Revelation is the disclosure of truth previously unknown. Before the coming of the Son of God to earth many varied forms of revelation existed. Belief in the existence of God is innate. Since man is a rational, moral being, his very nature provides him with intuitive knowledge. As the mind of a child begins to unfold, it instinctively and intuitively recognizes a Being above and beyond the world that he experiences.
Man is so constituted that he recognizes the fact and the power of God by the things that are made. Many of the ancient philosophers marveled at the starry heavens above them and the moral law about them. We live in a world of order and harmony conducive to our happiness and well being, and we, too, recognize a revelation of God in nature.
The Apostle Paul wrote, "Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse" (Romans 1:19, 20). Men may hinder or suppress the truth by their unrighteous living, but there is that which may be known of God which ''is manifest in them." The existence and power of God are discernible to us all by the things we observe in the external world. Those only who have abnormal, distorted, or biased minds can possibly deny God's existence.
Job realized that the nature of God in its different characteristics and qualities was not all revealed to man, yet he knew, as all men know, that the omnipotence and unchangeableness of God are exhibited in creation (Job 6:10; 23:12). The savage and the scientist can know two things about God; He is a Being and He is supreme. These are the two things God has been pleased to reveal about Himself.
Do not plead innocence for the man who does not possess a copy of God's Word. All men have a Bible bound with the covers of the day and the night whose print is the stars and the planets. What is knowable about God has been displayed openly, and any man who suppresses the truth does it "without excuse." Nature reveals the supernatural, and creation reveals the Creator. Read Psalm 19:1-6 and you will see that the heavens are personified to proclaim the glory of their Creator. Day and night pass on their testimonies giving clear evidence of the existence of the One who made them.
There are other evidences of primeval revelations of God to man, such as to Adam (Genesis 3:8) and to Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3; 26:3-5). The writer to the Hebrews quotes the Son speaking to the Father, in which reference is made to an early primitive and temporary revelation through a book which God allowed to pass out of existence (Hebrews 10:5-7). Doubtless there were other books which likewise have passed out of existence, as the Book of Enoch of which Jude made mention (Jude 14).
We know, further, that God often revealed Himself in dreams as when He spoke to Jacob (Genesis 28), to the patriarch Joseph (Genesis 37), to Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 2-4), to Joseph (Matthew 1:20), and to others. Through Moses and the prophets God revealed Himself (Exodus 3:4 and chapter 20). Over thirty-five authors, writing over a period of fifteen hundred years, wrote consistently and coherently, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, of one historically accurate plan of salvation. The Bible in its entirety is a progressive revelation of God.
But of all the amazing revelations of almighty God, none was set forth more clearly and fully than God's final revelation of Himself in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Since God is an infinite Being, no man could understand Him fully save the Son who is One in equality with the Father. Jesus said, ''. . . neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him'' (Matthew 11:27). Here, then, is one reason for the Incarnation—to reveal God to man. The fact of God's existence may be seen through test tubes and laboratory experiments, detected through microscope and telescope, and stated in the discussions of the seminar. But the glorious attributes of a loving God manifested in behalf of sinners can be found in no place or person apart from Jesus Christ.
Philip said to the Lord Jesus, ''Lord, shew us the Father . . . " and our Lord answered, ''. . . He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father . . . " (John 14:8, 9). When the Word became flesh He brought to man an adequate revelation of God. Whatever the ancient seers and saints knew about God before Jesus came, we have a more adequate revelation. Since God remains an abstraction until we see Him in terms of personality, so the Son became Incarnate that we might see and know God. ''No man hath seen God at anytime; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him'' (John 1: 1, 8, 9).
The dictionary definition of the word ''light'' means nothing to a blind man, but one glimpse of a glowworm would be worth more for the understanding of light than all the definitions in the world. One glimpse of Jesus Christ will bring God closer to the human mind and heart than all the theological definitions of Him. No man could perceive the grace of God until the almighty Sovereign of the universe stooped to the level of His own creatures, suffering cruel treatment and dying the death of shame for them. No man understood fully the patience and longsuffering of the Father until Jesus Christ who, when He was reviled, reviled not again, and when He suffered, threatened not (I Peter 2:23). No man can comprehend just how perfect and holy God is until He comes face to face with the sinless Son of God. God has revealed Himself anew to the intelligence of man through the Incarnation.
He Came to Reveal Man to Himself
Through His Incarnation Jesus Christ reveals man to himself. He shows us what we are and what we may become. As we study the purposes of God in Christ, the fact impresses us that man is grossly ignorant of his real self, and that the
mission of the Son's coming included a plan that would enable man to see and know himself as God sees and knows him. We are not the least bit impressed with man's vain philosophical views of himself, but rather with the accurate historical account of man as it is recorded in the Bible.
The primary fact that man needs to know about himself is his origin. Men are divided in their theories concerning this. We are not strangers to the evolutionary idea which attempts to explain man's place in the earth. In 1871 Darwin published his book, The Descent of Man, but he said very little that had not been said before. The idea of evolution might be here to stay, but not because Darwin said so. Evolution was taught by Roman and Greek philosophers and even by ancient Egyptians. But the evolutionary idea that man must swallow his pride and be content with the fact that he has oozed from the slime along with the snails is contrary to the revelation in Scripture.
The Bible teaches clearly that the human race had its origin by the immediate creation of God (Genesis 1:26, 27) and that man is the grand consummation of all creation. We are forced to accept this view as against the theory of evolution because of the immeasurable gulf which separates man, even in his barest savage condition, from the nearest order of creation below him. Moreover, history corroborates Scripture in that man was destined to rule over all other animal life. God took special care in the creation of man, for " God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them" (Genesis 1:27). Actually it was not the body of man that was created, for the body was merely ''formed'' of those elements necessary for man's body and which were created long before man ( Genesis 1 :1). What was new in man's creation was a form of life which only God and man possess (Genesis 2:7). Created in the image and likeness of God, man differs from every other form of animal. Man, in his lowest estate, seeks an object of worship and has been known to bow before gods that he cannot see, but animals never!
However, man did not retain God's image and likeness. When God placed our first parents in Eden He set before them one simple restriction, namely, not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for, said God, "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Genesis 2:17). Genesis 3 is a record of the fall of man. He disobeyed God and
immediately the life-cord was severed. Adam died both physically and spiritually. Physical death began to do its work, and the grave for Adam was but a matter of time. Then, too, his spirit was separated from God, so that he was dead spiritually while alive physically.
Now all men, from Adam down, are born into this world spiritually dead in sin, possessing a sin-nature capable of every trespass against God (Ephesians 2:1). The sin-nature of Adam and the guilt of his sin were imputed to the whole human race, so that Adam's corrupted nature is of necessity a part of all his posterity. The highest self in man is altogether unprofitable to God. All men are not equally corrupt in word and deed, but all are equally dead, and unless the function of death is brought to a halt, it will destroy not only the body but also the soul in hell. Because of the solidarity of the human race, sin and death have passed upon all men (Romans 5:12). When Adam defaced the Divine image and lost the Divine likeness, he begat sons ''in his own likeness, after his image" (Genesis 5:3). Yes, "by man came death" and ''in Adam all die" (I Corinthians 15:21, 22).
While all of this is clearly stated in the Bible, man still thinks of himself more highly than he ought to think. There were many who had no Scriptures at all in Christ's day, and they needed this revelation. In order that man should see himself, not in the light of his own goodness, but beside the perfect standard of God's holy Son, the Son of God became Incarnate. Our Lord said, ''If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin" (John 15:22).
Responsibility increases with knowledge, and so Christ's coming showed man how far short he came of God's standard of a righteous man. The Lord Jesus said, "If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin . . . " (John 15:24). Our Lord did not mean by this statement that man would have been without sin if He had not come. There had been sin all along, as God's dealings with the human race through its four thousand years of earlier history prove. But the coming of Christ to the earth revealed the heart of man in cruel hatred for Divine holiness. The Son of God Incarnate was sinless in every respect, yet man, Jew and Gentile alike, crucified Him. Alongside Christ's perfect life and works, man can see the sin and guilt of his own heart.
When man sinned against the Son of God, he sinned against the clearest possible light, "the Light of the world'' (John 8:12). He came unto His own and His own received Him not (John 1:11), and then Gentiles joined hands with ''His own'' to put Him to death. How sinful is the heart of man? Look at that spectacle on Calvary's hill and you will see human hearts and hands at their worst.
Time has not improved human nature. Today men still trample under food the precious blood of Christ, and if our blessed Lord were to appear in person today as He did nineteen centuries ago, the world would crucify him again. The world, having seen the light, has turned from the light, for "men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil'' (John 3:19). Romans 1:18 to 3:20 enunciates the most searching and conclusive arraignment of the human race found anywhere, and the birth and death of Jesus Christ attest to the truth of this awful indictment.
He Came to Redeem Man
The Apostle Paul states clearly the purpose of the Incarnation in the following words--''But when the fulness of the was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law" (Galatians 4:4, 5). The Old Testament contains the accurate record of some four thousand years of sin, human failure, and consequent Divine judgment. The one bright hope was the coming of the promised Seed, the Redeemer (Genesis 3:15). With each succeeding revelation from God, the promise grew clearer and the hope brighter. The prophets spoke of the Messiah who would come to deliver the people from their sins. Perhaps the classic prophecy is Isaiah 53. Since the people needed a deliverer from the guilt and penalty of sin, the intent of the Incarnation was to provide that Deliverer. Moreover, all of history and prophecy moved toward that goal even as all subsequent movements have proceeded from it.
Jesus Christ is man's Redeemer, his Saviour. This truth is implied in His name. Said the angel, " Thou shalt call his name JESUS (meaning Saviour), for He shall save His people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). At His birth the angel testified again, "For unto you is born this day in the city of David a
Saviour, which is Christ the Lord" (Luke 2:11). Even the Lord Jesus Himself voiced emphatically the purpose of His Incarnation when He said, "For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10).
The awful state of the world of mankind necessitated the coming of the Redeemer since there could be no hope of deliverance apart from Him. The character of God, which is righteousness, absolute and uncompromising, demands that every sin be dealt with. While God is merciful, gracious, and slow to anger, forgiving iniquities and transgressions, ''that will by no means clear the guilty " (Exodus 34:7)., While God is love, God is also holy and righteous, so holy that He is "of purer eyes than to behold evil, and [canst] not look on iniquity'' (Habakkuk 1:13). His righteousness demands that every sin must be dealt with impartially. In order to be true to Himself, God had to deal with the problem of sin. In order to deal justly and, at the same time, mercifully, someone had to suffer the death penalty for the sin of the world.
In the Person of Jesus Christ God solved the problem of the eternal well-being of the sinner. He sent His Son to die as the sinner's perfect Substitute, and thereby redeemed the sinner. Man was lost to God and heaven, and God's purpose in redemption could be realized only through the Incarnate Son of God, for the Son of God Incarnate is the connecting link bringing together God and sinful man. The sinner's relation to Jesus Christ is vital. Christ became a man "that He by the grace of God should taste death for every man" (Hebrews 2:9). The Word, who is the eternal Son of God, became flesh and was obliged to be made in the likeness of man in order to redeem him.
Christ defined the purpose of His Incarnation and earthly ministry when He said, "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance" (Mark 2:17). There is no implication in these words that there is a sinful class of men who need repentance and another righteous class who do not. Nor is there a suggestion that there are "righteous ones," for in Romans 3:10 it is said, "There is none righteous, no, not one."
Consider the conditions under which Christ stated this purpose. Scribes and Pharisees were upbraiding Him because He had gone into the house of Levi to eat with publicans and sinners (Mark 2:14-16). His critics exalted themselves above sinners, priding themselves in an unpossessed righteousness which thereby excluded them from any realization or acknowledgement of their own sin.
In Levi's house, however, there were those who recognized their sinful state. It was for this reason that the Lord Jesus went to that group, namely, to bring salvation to them. Physicians go into sick rooms, not because of the pleasantness of disease and suffering, but because of a desire to relieve and cure the sick. So sinners are the special objects of the Saviour's love and power. He came into the world to save sinners.
Although all men are unrighteous, those scribes and Pharisees called themselves ''righteous," for they were possessed of self-righteousness that is as "filthy rags" in God's sight (Isaiah 64:6). Therefore, as they went about seeking to establish their own righteousness, they failed to see the purpose of His coming. Hence they never heeded the Saviour's call to salvation. Their kind seldom do!
Had there been righteousness in the human heart, there would have been no need for the Incarnation of the Son of God. And only in the self-righteous heart of the religious, moral man, satisfied with himself, do we find the careless indifference to the Gospel of redemption. When a man assumes a righteousness all his own, he is outside the reach of the Great Physician. The man who excludes his own need of Christ misses the purpose of the Saviour's coming and will not be saved. Each of us must say with the Apostle Paul, " This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief" (I Timothy 1:15).
He Came to Restrain Satan
The purpose of the Incarnation is further revealed in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Three verses, linked together, assert that the coming of Jesus Christ was to destroy the devil. "But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that He by the grace of God should taste death for every man . . . Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same [flesh and blood]; that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage" (Hebrews 2:9, 14, 15).
In these three verses in Hebrews, we are reminded that the subject of death is dealt with in each of them, and the fact of the Incarnation is substantiated in the clause, "who was made a little lower than the angels." Furthermore, the purpose of the Incarnation appears in the words, "that He by the grace of God should taste death for every man." From this verse, as well as verse 14, it is evident that the eternal Son became flesh in order to die.
Christ's crucifixion by wicked hands was "by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God" (Acts 2:23). Our Lord Jesus Christ testified, "The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many" (Matthew 20:28). Jesus Christ willed to die, not a sudden and unexpected death but a lingering, anticipated death that He would taste every day of His earthly sojourn. He became man to suffer death.
But why should it be so? We considered the purpose of the Incarnation relative to the sin question. Referring to the matter of death, the Word affirms that the Son of God became incarnate that "through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil." Of all the works of Satan, among the worst is that of destroying life. Our Lord testified, "He was a murderer from the beginning" (John 8:44). Satan is the spoiler of humanity, his malignant purpose being to bring both physical and spiritual death to mankind.
God placed our first parents in the Garden of Eden and surrounded them with every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. Two of these trees are mentioned; ''the tree of life . . . and the tree of knowledge of good and evil" ( Genesis 2 :9). Eating the fruit of the latter tree would bring sin and death, for, said God, " In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Genesis 2:17). Satan knew this, therefore we are not surprised when we read that it was of the fruit of this very tree of death that he enticed Eve to eat. He chose the tree of death because he is a murderer. He knew that the death sentence was already pronounced upon all who would eat of it. He delighted in the fall of Adam and Eve, for he knew that physical and spiritual death had struck.
But thanks be to God for the Incarnation of His Son. By the coming of Jesus Christ into the world, through His death and resurrection, He wrested from Satan the power of death. Death no more holds its lethal grip upon the believer. Although death has held sinners in bondage ever since the severing of the life-cord between God and man, the appearing of the Lord Jesus has broken its grip. "According to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began . . . the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel" (II Timothy 1:9, 10).
Before sin was indulged in and death struck, the inclusive salvation plan provided death's abolition. Since the death and resurrection of our Lord dealt comprehensively with sin, it of necessity affected death. The coming of the Saviour rendered death harmless, and the "sting" of it is gone (I Corinthians 15:55). Oh, the blessedness of an accomplished redemption! How wonderful to know Him who said, " I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death" (Revelation 1:18). Death once held man in the vise of hopeless doom, but now Satan is defeated.
The shadow of the cross hung over the manger in Bethlehem, assuring the world that the Seed of the woman would bruise the serpent's head (Genesis 3:15). As Adam yielded himself to Satan, Satan held him in death; but by His dying, Christ entered into our death and wrested from Satan that power which he held over us. At Calvary Satan was brought to naught, and now "death is swallowed up in victory. . . Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (I Corinthians 15:54, 57). "The prince of this world is judged" (John 16:1 1). The Seed of the woman traversed the realms of death but was not captured by the enemy. Instead, He conquered the enemy. Thank God the Saviour came.
He Came to Rescue the Whole Creation
The Incarnation of the eternal Son is part of the divine plan. That plan comprehends a goal, and God assures the accomplishment of it. Though the salvation of man was God's chief concern, His plan was never limited to the world of mankind. It is written of the eternal Son, who was with God and who is God, that "all things were made by Him" (John 1:3). Paul writes, ''For by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth'' (Colossians 1:28). Man was higher than all other created beings in the earth, and other creatures were subject to him. However, after the fall this condition changed. Now if man is to have dominion over the beasts, he must first capture them at the risk of his own life, and then imprison them until they are tamed. All of this resulted from the fall.
But the question is, Will God restore again to man the dominion which he lost through the fall? The prophet said, ''The wolf also shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the suckling child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cocatrice's den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea" (Isaiah 11:6-9). Indeed, it appears that the prophet here is looking beyond to a time of rescue and restoration of the earth and all of its creatures.
The cruelty of beasts was not the order before sin entered. Such discord among God's creatures has sprung from the sinfulness of man and is a necessary part of the curse. To remove this curse and rescue God's creation is one of the purposes of the Incarnation. When Christ comes back to reign and "the government shall be upon His shoulder" (Isaiah 9:6), then the sons of God will be manifested and will share with Him in a restored creation. If it were not so, then all of animated nature would remain spoiled by Satan. But God has said, "In that day will I make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven, and with the creeping things of the ground" (Hosea 2:18). Yes, God will "gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth, even in Him'' (Ephesians 1:10). At that day our blessed Lord will "reconcile all things unto Himself' (Colossians 1:20).
Many Christians fail to see that this redemptive work, wrought through the Incarnation of the Son of God, is wider than the salvation of human beings and that it affects the whole creation. The Apostle Paul writes, " For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope. Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. (Romans 8:19-23). Here we are told that the deliverance of the whole creation will be revealed at the manifestation of the sons of God.
All creation lies in hope (expectancy) of a rescue from present corruption and of deliverance to that place God gave it in the beginning. Nature is now under the curse of sin, groaning and travailing in pain. It is not what it was at first. Nor is it now what it will be when the incarnate Son returns to "put all things in subjection under His feet" (see Hebrews 2:5-9). Before Adam sinned, no savage beasts, no desert wastes, no thorns and thistles existed; but when he fell, all creation fell with him. Now that the Son of God has come and purchased redemption by His death at Calvary, the whole creation must be rescued from the curse, and restored to its original state.
He Came to Restore Israel
Any reader of the Old Testament cannot escape the clear teaching that the Messiah was promised to Israel. Of this the prophets spoke and wrote. The Jew had great advantages. "Unto them were committed the oracles of God" (Romans 3:2). Theirs was "the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises" (Romans 9:4). None can deny that from the call of Abraham (Genesis 12:1) to the Babylonian captivity under Nebuchadnezzar (606 B.C.), authority in the earth and divine representation was vested in the Jew. It is common information that since the overthrow of Jerusalem and the transfer of dominion in the earth to the Gentiles, Israel, as a nation, has not held authority in the earth.
When Jesus Christ, the Word, "was made flesh," "He came unto His own, and His own received Him not" (John 1:11, 14). ''His citizens hated Him, and sent a message after Him, saying, We will not have this man to reign over us" (Luke 19:14). In blind unbelief the children of Abraham, refusing to recognize or receive Him, drove Him from their midst and crucified Him. After His resurrection and ascension He revealed to the apostles this mystery. No longer did Israel have priority on the truth, but the message was to be spread abroad to every creature and, during the present dispensation of grace, God would visit the Gentiles to take out of them a people for His name (Acts 15:14).
When Christ came the first time He traversed Palestine proclaiming, " Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matthew 4:17). He opened the door into the kingdom, but only the regenerated could enter. Were the people ready to receive the kingdom, the King would establish it. However, the offer of the kingdom met with an ever-increasing opposition, and our Lord withdrew the offer for that time. He said to the Jews, ''Therefore say I unto you, The Kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof" (Matthew 21:43). There was no mistaking what the Lord Jesus meant, for the chief priests and Pharisees "perceived that He spake of them" (vs. 45).
Israel is still set aside, but only temporarily. The Apostle Paul writes, ''I say then, Hath God cast away His people? God forbid . . . God hath not cast away His people which He foreknew . . . For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own
conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in" (Romans 11:1, 2, 25).
Anti-Semitism, raging throughout the world today, might lead one to question the future restoration of the Jew. Yet we know that both national restoration and national regeneration for the Jew are a definite part of the plan of God. Israel is not beyond recovery; she is not irretrievably lost. By her fall the whole world was blessed with the message of salvation. A national tragedy resulted in an international triumph. ''And so all Israel shall be saved'' (Romans 10:26). The Jew lives in a dark present with a bright future before him. When our Lord said in Matthew 21:43, that "the kingdom shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof," He was not referring to any Gentile nation but to regenerated Israel.
God gave Palestine to the Jews unconditionally as a possession and a dwelling place (Genesis 12: 1-3). He wants them there. That the Jews would be scattered is plainly taught in the Word of God, but coupled with such teaching are the assertions that they will also be regathered. Study Hosea 3:4,5 and see plainly the scattering and the gathering with the period between. (See also Ezekiel 36: 19,24). The Word became flesh and tabernacled among them once (John 1:14). That same holy One, the incarnate Christ, will come again to tabernacle with Israel. Study, for example, such passages as Isaiah 12:1-6; Joel 2:26, 27; Zephaniah 3:14-17; Zechariah 8:3-8. Already modern inventions have revolutionized Palestine and its surrounding territory. This fact, coupled with the thought of the vast area granted by God to Abraham 1Genesis 15: 18), will assure any interested person that there is ample room in the Holy Land to hold all Jews.
While the Jews continue to return to the Land, all signs point to the return of the incarnate Son, the One who is both human and Divine, and the One in whom God's purposes for Israel are to be fulfilled. According to prophecy, the incarnate One, Immanuel, the virgin's Son, is to occupy David's throne. ''For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this'' (Isaiah 9:6, 7). Let us rejoice to see that day approaching.
He Came to Reign
When the Incarnation had been announced, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, "Where is He that is born king of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the east, and are come to worship Him" (Matthew 2:1, 2). They were wise men indeed, for they were followers of the truth of God. When the Old Testament prophets wrote of Messiah's offices, they included that of King. "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy king cometh unto thee: He is just, and having salvation: lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass" (Zechariah 9:9). David wrote of Christ and His kingdom when he recorded the words of God, "Yet have I set My king upon My holy hill of Zion" (Psalm 2:6). Our Lord is not only Prophet, and Priest, but also Potentate.
In studying the purposes of the Incarnation we are forced to the scriptural observation that the eternal Son became Man in order that He might be King of the earth. Paul wrote that "God hath highly exalted Him" (Philippians 2:9). We dare not limit the exaltation of Christ as some try to do. We acquiesce with those who teach that the steps in Christ's exaltation were His resurrection, ascension, and His sitting at the right hand of God. But such teaching does not go far enough. Study carefully Philippians 2:5-11, and you will see that the steps in our Lord's humiliation were temporary steps leading to a permanent exaltation, culminating with the bowing of every knee and the confessing of every tongue in heaven and in earth, that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
The incarnate Son is to appear in His resurrection body and is to sit on the throne of His glory. Jesus Himself spoke of the day "when the Son of man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him; then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory" (Matthew 25:31). John writes, ''Every eye shall see Him'' (Revelation 1:7). The prophetic utterance spoken by God to David in 2 Samuel 7:12-16 concerning David's seed having an everlasting throne and kingdom, has a double fulfillment. Primarily it referred to Solomon's temple. Ultimately and finally it speaks of Christ's earthly reign as Zechariah 6:12 shows. The day must come when all things will be subjected unto Him (I Corinthians 15:28).
The Psalmist spoke of His throne as an enduring throne (Psalm 89:4, 29, 36). God promises that this earthly throne and kingdom are to continue forever, and that the One to occupy it shall be David's seed, his rightful Son (I Chronicles 17:11). The genealogies in Matthew 1 and Luke 3 will support the relationship of Jesus Christ to David. During our Lord's earthly ministry, those who sought His help called Him "the son of David" (see Matthew 9:27; Mark 10:47; Luke 18:38).
Christ's kingdom is literal, therefore it cannot be realized apart from the Incarnation. Such a kingdom men have been trying to establish for centuries, but nations are farther from realizing it today than ever before. A perfect kingdom demands a perfect King. At the end of the conflict of the ages, Jesus Christ, the God-Man will return to earth to establish His righteous kingdom which will never be destroyed. His kingdom of glory, and His throne in the midst, was God's first promise through the mouth of the angel Gabriel to Mary, and it links together the Incarnation and reign of the Son of God, ''And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David: and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of His kingdom there shall be no end" (Luke 1:31-33).
When the King comes, then will His perfect will be done in earth as it is in heaven. This is a blessed truth not without history or hope. The day will surely come when all men will see the revelation of the glory of holiness and joy in the earth. But His reign awaits His return to carry away His Bride, the Church. Everything has been deferred until He gathers her unto Himself. It may be at any moment that the last soul will be added to the Church, and then He will come.
This meditation in no wise exhausts the divine purposes of the Incarnation. Others have written at greater length and, doubtless, we could do likewise. But one thing more must be said. The supreme purpose in the eternal Son's coming into the world was to glorify the Father. In His great intercessory prayer, Jesus said, " I have glorified Thee on the earth: I have finished the work which Thou gayest Me to do" (John 17:4). God had been glorified in creation, in the remarkable deliverances of His people, and in the exercise of His power over His enemies, but at no time had He been glorified like this. God could never have been glorified if the Son would have failed in His earthly mission in the smallest degree. But the Lord Jesus could say, " I have finished the work which Thou gayest Me to do." Nothing was left undone, and in everything He did, the Son had the Father's glory in view. He glorified the Father; His earthly mission was complete.
And now to all of us who have been redeemed by His precious blood, the Apostle Paul writes: "For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's" (I Corinthians 6:20).
Monday, December 15, 2008
Christ in the Old Testament - Gen 3:15
Genesis 3:15
The Seed of the Woman
The salvation of every soul begins with God. As soon as Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden we hear the Shepherd's voice calling out for His lost sheep, "Adam, where are you?" It is the Father searching for the prodigal (Genesis 3:8-13).
Genesis three is not a place where we would expect grace. It is in the context of judgment after the Fall that the LORD God curses the serpent. Adam and Eve hear God speaking to the "shining one." It is not a direct promise to Adam and Eve, but a word of judgment to Satan (Rev. 12:9; 20:2). He says to the serpent, "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel" (Gen. 3:15).
God created enmity
There will be an undying opposition between Satan and the generations to follow. No doubt Adam and Even were so impressed with the message of hope that they reinforced it in the minds of their children and their children passed it own from generation to generation. Then came the day centuries later when Moses under the guidance of the Holy Spirit penned this great promise against the darkest day in human history.
The promise of salvation was given before anyone died physically. Here is the first word of grace in the Bible at a time when least expected. It is also the first messianic prophecy.
At the time of the giving of this promise no child had been born to Adam and Eve. Probably with the birth of every male child there was the hope that he would be the one who would overthrow the evil that had been unleashed on the new world.
The promised one will "bruise you on the head." There will be a head wound. The idea is there will be a deathblow. Satan would have this eternal dread hanging over him that with the birth of every male child this could be the very one who would be his end.
In the battle, Satan would "bruise him on the heel." The promised seed would suffer, but he would not suffer a destructive blow.
It is true that we do not have a great deal of information at the on set of this promise in Genesis. Hindsight is great for the sincere student! We have the advantage of looking back over time and seeing the One person who fulfilled this growing hope in the heart of sinful man.
Christ crushed Satan
Jesus Christ went to the cross and died on our behalf to crush Satan (Hebrews 2:9–15).
Satan was crushed at Calvary. He was defeated when Jesus rose from the dead. The final blow will be the submission of Satan to Jesus Christ when Jesus returns in glory (Revelation 20:1-15).
The Apostle Paul saw this great promise being fulfilled in the salvation and sanctification of God's people. He alludes to this promise in Romans 16:20, "And the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you." The word for "crush" is literally to rub together and so to shatter, to crush, to trample underfoot, break in pieces by crushing, "to grind," "to crush," "to smash," "to break," "to destroy." Paul reminds believers to draw daily strength from the blessed promise of final victory over Satan. We are not on the loosing team! The image of smashing Satan in Romans 16:20 (cf. Gen. 3:15; Ps. 91:13) suggests both present victory over the powers of darkness and the imminent eschatological destruction of Satan.
God uses some strange words when He pronounced the undying opposition between Satan and the woman. He describes it as "between your seed and her seed . . ." (Gen. 3:15).
The apostle Paul observed, "When the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law" (Galatians 4:4).
It is impossible to see the fulfillment of this promise without reflecting on and seriously considering Isaiah 7:14 and Luke 1:30–35. It is completely impossible without a miracle from God. Ever since the Fall of Adam and Eve the sin nature has been transmitted from parent to child from generation to generation. We are all born in sin and this included Joseph and Mary. As King David reflected on his sin nature he concluded, we are all "shapen in iniquity" (Psalm 51:5). We sin because we are sinners by nature. Mary was a sinner born to sinful parents who came from sinful parents. If Jesus had received a corrupt sinful nature from either Joseph or Mary He could not have been our sinless substitute dying for our sins. He would have been in the need of a redeemer like all other sinful men.
Jesus’ sinless nature
How did Jesus then have a sinless nature? Mary's hymen was broken from within. She was a virgin. Mary knew this when she questioned, "How can this be, since I am a virgin?" (Luke 1:34; cf. Matt. 1:23; Gal. 4:4; I Tim. 2:15). The angel explained, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God" (Luke 1:35). The Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary. Luke uses the figure of a cloud, the symbol of divine presence coming upon Mary. The Holy Spirit came upon Mary and overshadowed her with His power, through which she became pregnant. The overshadowing presence of God causes Mary to become pregnant. It was a miracle.
Jesus was born of God, not by humans. The entire operation from the creation in the fetus, the daily development in the womb for nine normal months was the work of the Holy Spirit.
Because He was the "seed of the woman" Jesus was God Incarnate. He was God–man. He was human just like you and me, but he was not fallen sinful humanity. His humanity and divinity were so woven together that you could not have seen the difference except when His deity shown forth at the Transfiguration. The Apostle Paul said, great is the mystery of the incarnation. I Timothy 3:16.
The virgin birth points back to the promise in the protoevangelium or the first glimmer of the gospel of redemption.
The child of promise is “the seed of the woman” who is the branch of David, the Eternal Word made flesh.
For further study spend some time reflecting on Christ as the fulfillment of the promise of the "seed of the woman" in Matthew 1:18; Galatians 3:16, 19; 4:4; Genesis 12:7; II Samuel 7:8, 12; Romans 1:1, 3; 16:20
The undying opposition is further seen in the bruising or crushing of Satan's head in Genesis 3:21; Luke 1:26–35; John 8:44; Matthew 1:18; Isaiah 53; Galatians 3:16, 19; John 19:30; Revelation 20:10.
Christ was made a curse for us. "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’—" (Galatians 3:13).
Death symbolized the wounding of the heel by Satan and takes place before the smashing of the head of Satan by the seed of the woman. The wounding appears to be the death on the cross, since Christ identified His executioners as the seed of the serpent. Jesus said, "You are of your father, the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him . . . " (Jn. 8:44).
This preceding death makes mandatory the resurrection of the seed of the woman to perform the smashing of the serpent's head.
This promise was no doubt the cause of Abraham greeting the "day of Christ" with glad assurance in John 8:54.
Genesis 3:15 is the first shining light on the horizon of eternal life. It is the root of Abraham's obedience to the Lord to offer Isaac as a burnt offering. Why else would he make such a sacrifice if he did not have the hope before him that God would raise the son of the promise from the dead? Abe probably believed the seed of the woman was the promise of a seed through Isaac. Hebrews 11:19, Abraham "considered that God is able to raise men even from the dead; from which he also received him back as a type." Jesus said, "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad" (John 8:56).
Partakers of glory
Genesis is more than a story. It is the record of God's work on behalf of the redeemed. It is the history of God's redemptive work.
Romans 16:20, "The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet." That crushing certainly includes all the labor of Jesus the Messiah. The hope of the resurrection is as old as sinful men and is mighty to support them in all their pilgrimages to heaven.
Genesis 3:15 has become the most important verse in the entire Bible because the central message of the whole Bible are the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The greatest commentary on Genesis 3:15 is John 3:16. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:16).
Satan thought that he had won in the battle over the Son of God at Calvary, but the full weight of the crucifixion came down on him three days later when Christ rose from the dead. The all wise sovereign God fulfilled His eternal purpose of redemption.
The resurrection faith is at the center of God’s provision of salvation for sinners. In the crushing of the head of the serpent, deliverance was promised. Moreover, to effect that deliverance, the redeemer had to be able to conquer death. Christ rose from the dead triumphantly. He is alive! The “seed of the woman” took upon Himself the consequences of the serpent’s sting and rose from the dead.
No doubt, the "seed of the woman" is referring to the virgin birth of Christ. The virgin born Son of God conquers death, hell and the grave. Christ will give the deathblow to Satan when He returns.
The Seed of the Woman
The salvation of every soul begins with God. As soon as Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden we hear the Shepherd's voice calling out for His lost sheep, "Adam, where are you?" It is the Father searching for the prodigal (Genesis 3:8-13).
Genesis three is not a place where we would expect grace. It is in the context of judgment after the Fall that the LORD God curses the serpent. Adam and Eve hear God speaking to the "shining one." It is not a direct promise to Adam and Eve, but a word of judgment to Satan (Rev. 12:9; 20:2). He says to the serpent, "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel" (Gen. 3:15).
God created enmity
There will be an undying opposition between Satan and the generations to follow. No doubt Adam and Even were so impressed with the message of hope that they reinforced it in the minds of their children and their children passed it own from generation to generation. Then came the day centuries later when Moses under the guidance of the Holy Spirit penned this great promise against the darkest day in human history.
The promise of salvation was given before anyone died physically. Here is the first word of grace in the Bible at a time when least expected. It is also the first messianic prophecy.
At the time of the giving of this promise no child had been born to Adam and Eve. Probably with the birth of every male child there was the hope that he would be the one who would overthrow the evil that had been unleashed on the new world.
The promised one will "bruise you on the head." There will be a head wound. The idea is there will be a deathblow. Satan would have this eternal dread hanging over him that with the birth of every male child this could be the very one who would be his end.
In the battle, Satan would "bruise him on the heel." The promised seed would suffer, but he would not suffer a destructive blow.
It is true that we do not have a great deal of information at the on set of this promise in Genesis. Hindsight is great for the sincere student! We have the advantage of looking back over time and seeing the One person who fulfilled this growing hope in the heart of sinful man.
Christ crushed Satan
Jesus Christ went to the cross and died on our behalf to crush Satan (Hebrews 2:9–15).
Satan was crushed at Calvary. He was defeated when Jesus rose from the dead. The final blow will be the submission of Satan to Jesus Christ when Jesus returns in glory (Revelation 20:1-15).
The Apostle Paul saw this great promise being fulfilled in the salvation and sanctification of God's people. He alludes to this promise in Romans 16:20, "And the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you." The word for "crush" is literally to rub together and so to shatter, to crush, to trample underfoot, break in pieces by crushing, "to grind," "to crush," "to smash," "to break," "to destroy." Paul reminds believers to draw daily strength from the blessed promise of final victory over Satan. We are not on the loosing team! The image of smashing Satan in Romans 16:20 (cf. Gen. 3:15; Ps. 91:13) suggests both present victory over the powers of darkness and the imminent eschatological destruction of Satan.
God uses some strange words when He pronounced the undying opposition between Satan and the woman. He describes it as "between your seed and her seed . . ." (Gen. 3:15).
The apostle Paul observed, "When the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law" (Galatians 4:4).
It is impossible to see the fulfillment of this promise without reflecting on and seriously considering Isaiah 7:14 and Luke 1:30–35. It is completely impossible without a miracle from God. Ever since the Fall of Adam and Eve the sin nature has been transmitted from parent to child from generation to generation. We are all born in sin and this included Joseph and Mary. As King David reflected on his sin nature he concluded, we are all "shapen in iniquity" (Psalm 51:5). We sin because we are sinners by nature. Mary was a sinner born to sinful parents who came from sinful parents. If Jesus had received a corrupt sinful nature from either Joseph or Mary He could not have been our sinless substitute dying for our sins. He would have been in the need of a redeemer like all other sinful men.
Jesus’ sinless nature
How did Jesus then have a sinless nature? Mary's hymen was broken from within. She was a virgin. Mary knew this when she questioned, "How can this be, since I am a virgin?" (Luke 1:34; cf. Matt. 1:23; Gal. 4:4; I Tim. 2:15). The angel explained, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God" (Luke 1:35). The Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary. Luke uses the figure of a cloud, the symbol of divine presence coming upon Mary. The Holy Spirit came upon Mary and overshadowed her with His power, through which she became pregnant. The overshadowing presence of God causes Mary to become pregnant. It was a miracle.
Jesus was born of God, not by humans. The entire operation from the creation in the fetus, the daily development in the womb for nine normal months was the work of the Holy Spirit.
Because He was the "seed of the woman" Jesus was God Incarnate. He was God–man. He was human just like you and me, but he was not fallen sinful humanity. His humanity and divinity were so woven together that you could not have seen the difference except when His deity shown forth at the Transfiguration. The Apostle Paul said, great is the mystery of the incarnation. I Timothy 3:16.
The virgin birth points back to the promise in the protoevangelium or the first glimmer of the gospel of redemption.
The child of promise is “the seed of the woman” who is the branch of David, the Eternal Word made flesh.
For further study spend some time reflecting on Christ as the fulfillment of the promise of the "seed of the woman" in Matthew 1:18; Galatians 3:16, 19; 4:4; Genesis 12:7; II Samuel 7:8, 12; Romans 1:1, 3; 16:20
The undying opposition is further seen in the bruising or crushing of Satan's head in Genesis 3:21; Luke 1:26–35; John 8:44; Matthew 1:18; Isaiah 53; Galatians 3:16, 19; John 19:30; Revelation 20:10.
Christ was made a curse for us. "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’—" (Galatians 3:13).
Death symbolized the wounding of the heel by Satan and takes place before the smashing of the head of Satan by the seed of the woman. The wounding appears to be the death on the cross, since Christ identified His executioners as the seed of the serpent. Jesus said, "You are of your father, the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him . . . " (Jn. 8:44).
This preceding death makes mandatory the resurrection of the seed of the woman to perform the smashing of the serpent's head.
This promise was no doubt the cause of Abraham greeting the "day of Christ" with glad assurance in John 8:54.
Genesis 3:15 is the first shining light on the horizon of eternal life. It is the root of Abraham's obedience to the Lord to offer Isaac as a burnt offering. Why else would he make such a sacrifice if he did not have the hope before him that God would raise the son of the promise from the dead? Abe probably believed the seed of the woman was the promise of a seed through Isaac. Hebrews 11:19, Abraham "considered that God is able to raise men even from the dead; from which he also received him back as a type." Jesus said, "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad" (John 8:56).
Partakers of glory
Genesis is more than a story. It is the record of God's work on behalf of the redeemed. It is the history of God's redemptive work.
Romans 16:20, "The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet." That crushing certainly includes all the labor of Jesus the Messiah. The hope of the resurrection is as old as sinful men and is mighty to support them in all their pilgrimages to heaven.
Genesis 3:15 has become the most important verse in the entire Bible because the central message of the whole Bible are the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The greatest commentary on Genesis 3:15 is John 3:16. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:16).
Satan thought that he had won in the battle over the Son of God at Calvary, but the full weight of the crucifixion came down on him three days later when Christ rose from the dead. The all wise sovereign God fulfilled His eternal purpose of redemption.
The resurrection faith is at the center of God’s provision of salvation for sinners. In the crushing of the head of the serpent, deliverance was promised. Moreover, to effect that deliverance, the redeemer had to be able to conquer death. Christ rose from the dead triumphantly. He is alive! The “seed of the woman” took upon Himself the consequences of the serpent’s sting and rose from the dead.
No doubt, the "seed of the woman" is referring to the virgin birth of Christ. The virgin born Son of God conquers death, hell and the grave. Christ will give the deathblow to Satan when He returns.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Virgin or Young Maiden?
Almah: Virgin or Young Maiden? by Zhava Glaser
The identity of the mother of Immanuel in Isaiah 7:14 has been a subject of debate over the centuries: Was the prophet Isaiah speaking of a virgin conceiving or not? The Gospel of Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14, linking Jesus' conception to the sign the prophet Isaiah had given centuries earlier. Those who believe the gospel account regard Isaiah 7:14 as a messianic passage fulfilled by Jesus. Others disagree. Did the prophet intend that word to mean "virgin" or merely "young maiden"? Are Christian interpreters reading too much into this verse? Zhava Glaser presents the case for you to decide for yourself:
The word almah is rare—usually translated as "maiden" it appears only ten times in the Hebrew Scriptures, six1 of these in the plural and four2 in the singular.3 Some say the word almah is merely the feminine of elem, or "young man."4
In the few verses where almah appears, the word clearly denotes a young woman who is not married but is of marriageable age. Although almah does not implicitly denote virginity, it is never used in the Scriptures to describe a "young, presently married woman." It is important to remember that in the Bible, a young Jewish woman of marriageable age was presumed to be chaste.
The prophet could have chosen a different word had he wanted to describe Immanuel's mother as a virgin. Betulah is a more common way to refer to a woman who has never been with a man (both in biblical and modern Hebrew).
In the Hebrew Scriptures, there are two types of betulot—the true virgin, and the "betrothed virgin" (betulah m'orashah). In Deuteronomy 22, a betrothed virgin is referred to as a man's "wife" (ishah). The state of betrothal was just as serious and sacred as the married state5 and the difference between the two appears, in some instances, to be a mere formality. The word betulah, commonly understood as virgin, is still not precise.
Joel 1:8 presents another example of the word betulah in a context which does not convey the usual meaning of virginity: "Mourn like a virgin (betulah) in sackcloth, grieving for the husband of her youth."
Some commentators say this refers to a betrothed virgin, thus making the lamentation all the more poignant because the marriage had never been consummated. The use of ba'al (husband) in this verse, however, seems to imply the opposite. The word ba'al is never used in the Jewish Scriptures of the betrothed state, but only of a married man.
Therefore, even if the prophet Isaiah had used the word betulah, it could have been argued that he did not intend to say that this woman had never had sexual relations with a man.
A look at the Septuagint translation of almah by Semitics scholar Dr. Cyrus Gordon, provides additional insight on the matter:
The commonly held view that "virgin" is Christian, whereas "young woman" is Jewish is not quite true. The fact is that the Septuagint, which is the Jewish translation made in pre-Christian Alexandria, takes almah to mean "virgin" here. Accordingly, the New Testament follows Jewish interpretation in Isaiah 7:14. Therefore, the New Testament rendering of almah as "virgin" for Isaiah 7:14 rests on the older Jewish interpretation, which in turn is now borne out for precisely this annunciation formula by a text that is not only pre-Isaianic but is pre-Mosaic in the form that we now have it on a clay tablet.6
Jewish and Christian scholars would be hard pressed to deny that the Greek term parthenos and the Hebrew term almah may have been used interchangeably by those Jewish communities that adopted the Septuagint.
On the other hand, J. Gresham Machen, who has done a definitive study on this passage, asserts that the translation in the Septuagint of the Hebrew word almah as parthenos cannot be used to show a Jewish doctrine of the virgin birth, for one also finds the word parthenos used in the Septuagint to translate the word na'arah, which merely means "young girl."
For Machen, the very fact that the passage does not have a history of Jewish messianic interpretation and the very unlikelihood of this passage being interpreted messianically makes the New Testament account all the more credible. In other words, the gospel writer, Matthew, was not trying to fit Jesus' life into a traditional mold, but rather turned to Scripture to explain what had taken place in the event of the virgin birth.
One cannot assert that the prophet was speaking of a virgin technically on the basis of the word almah. Nor can a serious student lightly dismiss the word as having no possible reference to a miraculous conception.
Footnotes
1. Psalm 9:1, 46:1, 68:26; Song of Solomon 1:3, 6:8; 1 Chronicles 15:20.
2. Genesis 24:43; Exodus 2:8; Isaiah 7:14; Proverbs 30:19.
3. For a thorough study of these passages, see Young, Edward J., The Immanuel Prophecy: Isaiah 7:14-16 (Second Article). The Westminster Theological Journal, 16:23-50 (November 1953), p. 171-177.
4. LaSor, William Sanford, n.d., Isaiah 7:14—"Young Woman" or "Virgin," Unpublished manuscript, Fuller Theological Seminary, p. 5-6.
5. Young, p. 33.
6. Gordon, Cyrus H., Almah in Isaiah 7:14, The Journal of Bible & Religion, Vol. 21 (April 1953), p. 106.
The identity of the mother of Immanuel in Isaiah 7:14 has been a subject of debate over the centuries: Was the prophet Isaiah speaking of a virgin conceiving or not? The Gospel of Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14, linking Jesus' conception to the sign the prophet Isaiah had given centuries earlier. Those who believe the gospel account regard Isaiah 7:14 as a messianic passage fulfilled by Jesus. Others disagree. Did the prophet intend that word to mean "virgin" or merely "young maiden"? Are Christian interpreters reading too much into this verse? Zhava Glaser presents the case for you to decide for yourself:
The word almah is rare—usually translated as "maiden" it appears only ten times in the Hebrew Scriptures, six1 of these in the plural and four2 in the singular.3 Some say the word almah is merely the feminine of elem, or "young man."4
In the few verses where almah appears, the word clearly denotes a young woman who is not married but is of marriageable age. Although almah does not implicitly denote virginity, it is never used in the Scriptures to describe a "young, presently married woman." It is important to remember that in the Bible, a young Jewish woman of marriageable age was presumed to be chaste.
The prophet could have chosen a different word had he wanted to describe Immanuel's mother as a virgin. Betulah is a more common way to refer to a woman who has never been with a man (both in biblical and modern Hebrew).
In the Hebrew Scriptures, there are two types of betulot—the true virgin, and the "betrothed virgin" (betulah m'orashah). In Deuteronomy 22, a betrothed virgin is referred to as a man's "wife" (ishah). The state of betrothal was just as serious and sacred as the married state5 and the difference between the two appears, in some instances, to be a mere formality. The word betulah, commonly understood as virgin, is still not precise.
Joel 1:8 presents another example of the word betulah in a context which does not convey the usual meaning of virginity: "Mourn like a virgin (betulah) in sackcloth, grieving for the husband of her youth."
Some commentators say this refers to a betrothed virgin, thus making the lamentation all the more poignant because the marriage had never been consummated. The use of ba'al (husband) in this verse, however, seems to imply the opposite. The word ba'al is never used in the Jewish Scriptures of the betrothed state, but only of a married man.
Therefore, even if the prophet Isaiah had used the word betulah, it could have been argued that he did not intend to say that this woman had never had sexual relations with a man.
A look at the Septuagint translation of almah by Semitics scholar Dr. Cyrus Gordon, provides additional insight on the matter:
The commonly held view that "virgin" is Christian, whereas "young woman" is Jewish is not quite true. The fact is that the Septuagint, which is the Jewish translation made in pre-Christian Alexandria, takes almah to mean "virgin" here. Accordingly, the New Testament follows Jewish interpretation in Isaiah 7:14. Therefore, the New Testament rendering of almah as "virgin" for Isaiah 7:14 rests on the older Jewish interpretation, which in turn is now borne out for precisely this annunciation formula by a text that is not only pre-Isaianic but is pre-Mosaic in the form that we now have it on a clay tablet.6
Jewish and Christian scholars would be hard pressed to deny that the Greek term parthenos and the Hebrew term almah may have been used interchangeably by those Jewish communities that adopted the Septuagint.
On the other hand, J. Gresham Machen, who has done a definitive study on this passage, asserts that the translation in the Septuagint of the Hebrew word almah as parthenos cannot be used to show a Jewish doctrine of the virgin birth, for one also finds the word parthenos used in the Septuagint to translate the word na'arah, which merely means "young girl."
For Machen, the very fact that the passage does not have a history of Jewish messianic interpretation and the very unlikelihood of this passage being interpreted messianically makes the New Testament account all the more credible. In other words, the gospel writer, Matthew, was not trying to fit Jesus' life into a traditional mold, but rather turned to Scripture to explain what had taken place in the event of the virgin birth.
One cannot assert that the prophet was speaking of a virgin technically on the basis of the word almah. Nor can a serious student lightly dismiss the word as having no possible reference to a miraculous conception.
Footnotes
1. Psalm 9:1, 46:1, 68:26; Song of Solomon 1:3, 6:8; 1 Chronicles 15:20.
2. Genesis 24:43; Exodus 2:8; Isaiah 7:14; Proverbs 30:19.
3. For a thorough study of these passages, see Young, Edward J., The Immanuel Prophecy: Isaiah 7:14-16 (Second Article). The Westminster Theological Journal, 16:23-50 (November 1953), p. 171-177.
4. LaSor, William Sanford, n.d., Isaiah 7:14—"Young Woman" or "Virgin," Unpublished manuscript, Fuller Theological Seminary, p. 5-6.
5. Young, p. 33.
6. Gordon, Cyrus H., Almah in Isaiah 7:14, The Journal of Bible & Religion, Vol. 21 (April 1953), p. 106.
Winning the Battle for the Mind
Winning Battles of the Mind
Break the chain of “thought-bondage” by submitting your concerns to God.
It's 10 p.m. Alone in your bed, you close your eyes and try to rest. The room is cool, and the night is still. Yet, sleep is unreachable. A barrage of thoughts floods your mind—problems of the present day, issues from the past, and concerns for the future. This relentless state of thinking plagues victims with unproductive, nagging thoughts—thoughts that are not edifying to God, others, or themselves. This affliction affects many people. Exhausted from over-thinking, they withdraw from normal activity to wrestle with anxiety for many hours at a time.
To break this chain of "thought-bondage," you must first take inventory of your thoughts. If your thought life is causing you to feel worried, tense, anxious, or depressed, it's time for a change.
Generally, unproductive thoughts follow a clear pattern.
Stage one: A problem/concern/issue enters your mind.
Stage two: When no clear solution comes to mind, you begin to experience negative feelings (worry, fear, stress, guilt).
Stage three: Negative feelings take root and produce anxiety, tension and/or depression as you frantically try to resolve the problem yourself.
To effectively combat the ill-effects of stages two and three, we must learn to submit our concerns to God in stage one. The longer we hold on to the idea that we’re capable of solving our own problems without God's help, the more risk we run of becoming trapped in a negative thought pattern. If our thoughts are truly submitted to God, negative feelings should disappear in the palms of His capable hands.
In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul addresses the battles of the mind. He praises the church at Corinth for their mental successes, saying, "We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing that raises up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:5). What does it mean to take a thought "captive"? It means we are to examine and compare each thought we have against the standard of thinking God set for us.
The fourth chapter of the book of Philippians provides an insightful glance into the ideal state of mental "health" God intended for his children. Beginning in verse four, we're first encouraged to rejoice in the Lord always. Next, we're instructed to be anxious for nothing, but rather, to lift our concerns to God in prayer and supplication (v. 6). Finally, we're encouraged to dwell on things that are true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, excellent, praiseworthy and of good repute (v. 8). According to these words from God, is it acceptable to obsess over problems, worries, and fears? Absolutely not. Instead, we should leave our burdens with God and turn our thoughts to positive things.
How can unproductive thought patterns be put down before they begin? Our best defense is the Word of God. The more time we spend studying and learning the truth of the Scriptures, the more prepared we'll be for our next mental attack. Take, for example, the powerful words of Romans 8:6, "For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace."
Satan likes nothing more than to distract believers from seeking God. One of his most common and successful tactics is to entangle believers' minds with negative thoughts. If our minds are divided with problems, we'll be unable to put God first. Do not be tricked by Satan's schemes. Instead, trust in the One who can provide total peace.
No matter how difficult our circumstances seem, no matter how tempting it is to sit around wondering how to solve our own problems, the Bible tells us we're not to take these burdens upon ourselves. Worry, anxiety, fear, and depression are not of God, and He can provide deliverance from these paralyzing conditions. Take the words of 1 Peter 5:7 to heart: "Therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you." God loves you infinitely and perfectly. He never intended for you to walk through valleys of fear, insecurity, and uncertainty alone. He's the Great Shepherd waiting to guide you and direct your path (Proverbs 3:6).
Give your mind a vacation from worry by turning negative thoughts immediately over to God. When Satan tempts you to take matters into your own hands, lift up this simple prayer, "Lord, I cannot handle this situation on my own. I submit my concerns to You. Help me release my negative thoughts and trust You completely. Amen."
Break the chain of “thought-bondage” by submitting your concerns to God.
It's 10 p.m. Alone in your bed, you close your eyes and try to rest. The room is cool, and the night is still. Yet, sleep is unreachable. A barrage of thoughts floods your mind—problems of the present day, issues from the past, and concerns for the future. This relentless state of thinking plagues victims with unproductive, nagging thoughts—thoughts that are not edifying to God, others, or themselves. This affliction affects many people. Exhausted from over-thinking, they withdraw from normal activity to wrestle with anxiety for many hours at a time.
To break this chain of "thought-bondage," you must first take inventory of your thoughts. If your thought life is causing you to feel worried, tense, anxious, or depressed, it's time for a change.
Generally, unproductive thoughts follow a clear pattern.
Stage one: A problem/concern/issue enters your mind.
Stage two: When no clear solution comes to mind, you begin to experience negative feelings (worry, fear, stress, guilt).
Stage three: Negative feelings take root and produce anxiety, tension and/or depression as you frantically try to resolve the problem yourself.
To effectively combat the ill-effects of stages two and three, we must learn to submit our concerns to God in stage one. The longer we hold on to the idea that we’re capable of solving our own problems without God's help, the more risk we run of becoming trapped in a negative thought pattern. If our thoughts are truly submitted to God, negative feelings should disappear in the palms of His capable hands.
In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul addresses the battles of the mind. He praises the church at Corinth for their mental successes, saying, "We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing that raises up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:5). What does it mean to take a thought "captive"? It means we are to examine and compare each thought we have against the standard of thinking God set for us.
The fourth chapter of the book of Philippians provides an insightful glance into the ideal state of mental "health" God intended for his children. Beginning in verse four, we're first encouraged to rejoice in the Lord always. Next, we're instructed to be anxious for nothing, but rather, to lift our concerns to God in prayer and supplication (v. 6). Finally, we're encouraged to dwell on things that are true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, excellent, praiseworthy and of good repute (v. 8). According to these words from God, is it acceptable to obsess over problems, worries, and fears? Absolutely not. Instead, we should leave our burdens with God and turn our thoughts to positive things.
How can unproductive thought patterns be put down before they begin? Our best defense is the Word of God. The more time we spend studying and learning the truth of the Scriptures, the more prepared we'll be for our next mental attack. Take, for example, the powerful words of Romans 8:6, "For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace."
Satan likes nothing more than to distract believers from seeking God. One of his most common and successful tactics is to entangle believers' minds with negative thoughts. If our minds are divided with problems, we'll be unable to put God first. Do not be tricked by Satan's schemes. Instead, trust in the One who can provide total peace.
No matter how difficult our circumstances seem, no matter how tempting it is to sit around wondering how to solve our own problems, the Bible tells us we're not to take these burdens upon ourselves. Worry, anxiety, fear, and depression are not of God, and He can provide deliverance from these paralyzing conditions. Take the words of 1 Peter 5:7 to heart: "Therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you." God loves you infinitely and perfectly. He never intended for you to walk through valleys of fear, insecurity, and uncertainty alone. He's the Great Shepherd waiting to guide you and direct your path (Proverbs 3:6).
Give your mind a vacation from worry by turning negative thoughts immediately over to God. When Satan tempts you to take matters into your own hands, lift up this simple prayer, "Lord, I cannot handle this situation on my own. I submit my concerns to You. Help me release my negative thoughts and trust You completely. Amen."
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
How do you define "church" ?
Words used for the church in the New Testament
- Church
- The word translated "church" in the English Bible is ekklesia. This word is the Greek words kaleo (to call), with the prefix ek (out). Thus, the word means "the called out ones." However, the English word "church" does not come from ekklesia but from the word kuriakon, which means "dedicated to the Lord." This word was commonly used to refer to a holy place or temple. By the time of Jerome's translation of the New Testament from Greek to Latin, it was customary to use a derivative of kuriakon to translate ekklesia. Therefore, the word church is a poor translation of the word ekklesia since it implies a sacred building, or temple. A more accurate translation would be "assembly" because the term ekklesia was used to refer to a group of people who had been called out to a meeting. It was also used as a synonym for the word synagogue, which also means to "come together," i.e. a gathering. "Body of Christ" Since believers have been united with Christ through spiritual baptism, they are sometimes corporately referred to as the body of Christ. (Rom. l2:4-5; 1 Cor. l2:11,13,l8,27; Col. l:l8; Eph. 5:30) The idea seems to be that the group of Christians in the world constitute the physical representation of Christ on earth. It is also a metaphor which demonstrates the interdependence of members in the church, while at the same time demonstrating their diversity from one another. (Rom. 12:4; 1 Cor. 12:14-17)
- The Temple of God
- (1 Cor. 3:l6; Eph. 2:2l,22; 1 Pet. 2:5).
- The Jerusalem From Above or The Heavenly Jerusalem
- (Gal. 4:26; Heb. l2:22). Both of these terms (as well as "temple") illustrate how the Old Testament notions of outward sanctuary have been replaced with the literal dwelling of God in his people.
- Bride of Christ or Christ's Betrothed
- (Eph. 5:25-32; 2 Cor. 11:2). These titles refer to the love and loyalty existing between Christ and believers.
- What is the local church?
In this discussion exercise, ask the students to describe the scope or area encompassed by each of the following references. The point is that in each reference, the word "church" is in the singular. Since the scope of what is meant by each reference is different, we can draw conclusions about what constitutes a local church. - Discussion exercise:
For each of the following verses, answer the question: "What geographical area is being described?"
- Col. l:l8
- Acts 9:3l
- 1 Cor. l:2
- Rom. l6:5,l0,11,l4
Answers:
- Col. l:l8 the church throughout the world
- Acts 9:3l the church throughout a region
- 1 Cor. l:2 the church in a city (compare 14:34)
- Rom. l6:5,l0,11,l4 several house churches within one city
Question: What are some implications can we draw from these four passages concerning what size or structure a group must have to be considered a local church?
Answers: The word "church" is not a technical designation of a local group of any particular size or structure. Instead, it apparently described any extent of locality under discussion.
Therefore, in answer to the question, "What constitutes a local church?" the scriptural answer is that any part of the universal church which is somehow local can be said to be a local church. We would suggest this holds even down to the level where ". . . two or three have gathered together in my name. . . " (Mt. l8:20) This seems to be Christ's version of what is necessary to have a local church.
A church of two or three may not be a very good church in that it is not able to fulfill all of the functions that are appropriate for a local church according to the New Testament, but this does not mean that it is not a church. A distinction must be made between that which determines the "being" of the church versus the "well-being" of the church.
The local church in the New Testament.
While the definition of the local church is based upon our understanding of the universal church, the imperative passages about church life usually refer to the local church (i.e., Rom. l2, 1 Cor. l2,l4; Eph. 4).
The significance of this is that if we try to apply principles like the inter-working of the members of the body as taught in 1 Cor. 12 to the universal church, we move away from the intention of the author to focus on the interaction of members on each other in Christian community.
Likewise, no structure or polity is given for the universal church except the unifying influence of the apostles who planted the local churches. There is also an example of a council of leaders from more than one local church meeting to resolve differences in Acts 15. We cannot say what the biblical pattern of extra-local church government was, since it is not given.
Optional discussion: It is customary in many theologies to construct a restrictive definition of what constitutes a local church. Sometimes several conditions, such as the proper observation of the sacraments, the presence of duly established clergy, a formal government, and ministry to all ages are given before a group can be called a church. What might be the motive for constructing such added conditions?
- his word is the Greek words kaleo (to call), with the prefix ek (out). Thus, the word means "the called out ones." However, the English word "church" does not come from ekklesia but from the word kuriakon, which means "dedicated to the Lord." This word was commonly used to refer to a holy place or temple. By the time of Jerome's translation of the New Testament from Greek to Latin, it was customary to use a derivative of kuriakon to translate ekklesia. Therefore, the word church is a poor translation of the word ekklesia since it implies a sacred building, or temple. A more accurate translation would be "assembly" because the term ekklesia was used to refer to a group of people who had been called out to a meeting. It was also used as a synonym for the word synagogue, which also means to "come together," i.e. a gathering. "Body of Christ" Since believers have been united with Christ through spiritual baptism, they are sometimes corporately referred to as the body of Christ. (Rom. l2:4-5; 1 Cor. l2:11,13,l8,27; Col. l:l8; Eph. 5:30) The idea seems to be that the group of Christians in the world constitute the physical representation of Christ on earth. It is also a metaphor which demonstrates the interdependence of members in the church, while at the same time demonstrating their diversity from one another. (Rom. 12:4; 1 Cor. 12:14-17)
- The Temple of God
- (1 Cor. 3:l6; Eph. 2:2l,22; 1 Pet. 2:5).
- The Jerusalem From Above or The Heavenly Jerusalem
- (Gal. 4:26; Heb. l2:22). Both of these terms (as well as "temple") illustrate how the Old Testament notions of outward sanctuary have been replaced with the literal dwelling of God in his people.
- Bride of Christ or Christ's Betrothed
- (Eph. 5:25-32; 2 Cor. 11:2). These titles refer to the love and loyalty existing between Christ and believers.
- What is the local church?
In this discussion exercise, ask the students to describe the scope or area encompassed by each of the following references. The point is that in each reference, the word "church" is in the singular. Since the scope of what is meant by each reference is different, we can draw conclusions about what constitutes a local church. - Discussion exercise:
For each of the following verses, answer the question: "What geographical area is being described?"
- Col. l:l8
- Acts 9:3l
- 1 Cor. l:2
- Rom. l6:5,l0,11,l4
Answers:
- Col. l:l8 the church throughout the world
- Acts 9:3l the church throughout a region
- 1 Cor. l:2 the church in a city (compare 14:34)
- Rom. l6:5,l0,11,l4 several house churches within one city
Question: What are some implications can we draw from these four passages concerning what size or structure a group must have to be considered a local church?
Answers: The word "church" is not a technical designation of a local group of any particular size or structure. Instead, it apparently described any extent of locality under discussion.
Therefore, in answer to the question, "What constitutes a local church?" the scriptural answer is that any part of the universal church which is somehow local can be said to be a local church. We would suggest this holds even down to the level where ". . . two or three have gathered together in my name. . . " (Mt. l8:20) This seems to be Christ's version of what is necessary to have a local church.
A church of two or three may not be a very good church in that it is not able to fulfill all of the functions that are appropriate for a local church according to the New Testament, but this does not mean that it is not a church. A distinction must be made between that which determines the "being" of the church versus the "well-being" of the church.
The local church in the New Testament.
While the definition of the local church is based upon our understanding of the universal church, the imperative passages about church life usually refer to the local church (i.e., Rom. l2, 1 Cor. l2,l4; Eph. 4).
The significance of this is that if we try to apply principles like the inter-working of the members of the body as taught in 1 Cor. 12 to the universal church, we move away from the intention of the author to focus on the interaction of members on each other in Christian community.
Likewise, no structure or polity is given for the universal church except the unifying influence of the apostles who planted the local churches. There is also an example of a council of leaders from more than one local church meeting to resolve differences in Acts 15. We cannot say what the biblical pattern of extra-local church government was, since it is not given.
Optional discussion: It is customary in many theologies to construct a restrictive definition of what constitutes a local church. Sometimes several conditions, such as the proper observation of the sacraments, the presence of duly established clergy, a formal government, and ministry to all ages are given before a group can be called a church. What might be the motive for constructing such added conditions?
I agree wholeheartedly with the belief that the manuscripts from which we get our English translations have the nonreligious word "ekklesia." It is a compound of the Greek "ek" (from, out) and a derivative of "kaleo" (call). Taken together, "ekklesia" means "called out" and applied to an assembly or a grouping together of individuals.
An examination of the Greek text shows that "kaleo" (call) occurs several times in passages that speak of believers or disciples of Christ. The following are examples of how Scripture uses "kaleo." Matthew 9:13, Jesus came to call sinners to repentance. Romans 8:30, those whom God predestined he also called. Galatians 1:6, God called us by the grace of Christ. Galatians 5:13, God called us to freedom. First Corinthians 7:15, God called us to peace. Ephesians 4:1, we are to walk in a manner worthy of our calling. Second Thessalonians 2:14, God / Jesus calls us through the gospel. First Thessalonians 2:12, our walk is to be worthy of the God who calls us (First Peter 1:15). Colossians 3:15, God called us in one body. There are other passages I could cite, each using the word "kaleo" of God's people.
As we ponder the significance of "ekklesia" in light of the many passages that speak of our divine calling, we soon discover the truth of our being the "ekklesia" of God not only when we are together but also when we are away from other believers
Sunday, November 23, 2008
The How, Why, and When of Creation, Pt. 1
The How, Why, and When of Creation, Pt. 1
Genesis 1:1
If you want to open your Bible, you may to Genesis chapter 1...Genesis chapter 1. And we are finally going to arrive at the section on origins in Genesis 1, and then a little in to chapter 2, which is going to be the emphasis of our study in the weeks ahead.
The Bible opens with a monumental statement, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." And with that statement the Word of God, holy Scripture, affirms the existence of the universe and everything in it as the product of God's created act. It's a very important statement. This verse, I'll say it again, affirms the existence of the universe and everything in it as the product of God's created act. We are here shown in this verse that evolution, the dominant theory of science, is not true. What exists, exists not because it evolved but because God created it.
In past weeks we've tried to show that evolution is not scientific. Evolution is not reasonable. Evolution is impossible and irrational. We've been saying that there has never been one shred of evidence that matter on any level chemically can or will, can or will organize itself all by itself. Even when energized, let alone organizing itself by itself upward to viable life and continually higher life, and finally reaching human life, there has never been one shred of evidence that matter does that, or can do that.
It was over a hundred years ago that Louis Pasteur proved that spontaneous biogenesis cannot occur. A cell cannot increase its complexity. A cell cannot add information necessary in its DNA, or its genetic code, to take itself to a higher level. That is impossible. It has never been done, it has never been seen.
Nothing mutates upward. In fact, natural selection, which was a phrase that Darwin leaned on, natural selection, or the process of change or mutation is always downward, never upward. Individual lifes who vary too much from the center of the species go downward, the law of entropy. Thus, mutants don't improve the species, they are a decline. Inevitably they die at the cellular level. Natural selection then is only downward, not upward, and natural selection actually prevents evolution from taking place. No species is capable of moving up. It can decrease itself by a decrease in its information by some inotropic event that sends it into disorganization, but it cannot increase what it is because it cannot come across new information.
It is true that species die out. There are frankly millions of species that have died out in this world. And there are thousands, they tell us, that become extinct every day. There were more species than there are now. There were species in the past that we don't have today, such as dinosaurs. There may well have been other kinds of apes and other kinds of mammals as species, as well as insects and birds and snakes and creatures of the sea and all of that, that have died out and they may look like there are links between various species, but there has never been one shred of proof that one kind of species can become another, let alone a higher kind of life. What appears to be some kind of intermediate link found in some kind of vertebrae field or fossil field, may be nothing other than just an ancient species that went out of existence, as they do by the thousands all the time.
Evolution with its theory of chaos and its theory of unintelligent matter existing in random features, organizing itself by chance into highly complex forms and ultimately to the level of human intelligence and personality, is so preposterous and so impossible, and so scientifically inaccurate that no honest person could believe it. Evolution is a violation of all that modern science knows to be true.
On the other hand, we don't need evolution to explain anything because we just read how it happened in Genesis 1:1. Inorganic matter cannot organize itself upward to become organic matter. Organic matter cannot organize itself by random features to become more complex and ultimately reach the level of human intelligence and personality. That can't and doesn't happen.
Well people ask...and this is a very popular view today...but, "Couldn't God...we acknowledge God, we acknowledge a creator, but couldn't God have used evolution after creating the original matter? Couldn't God have used evolution in the sense of theistic evolution?" No, God couldn't have used evolution because evolution is impossible. Evolution assumes that matter can organize itself upward by itself.
A.E. Wilder Smith, a brilliant scientist who has done some literally ground-breaking work on this subject and who is a staunch creationist, wrote, "The necessary information to build man does not reside in the few elements it takes to compose him," end quote. You cannot explain man even by the components that he can be reduced to in a lab. Genetic information cannot come from nowhere. Genetic information cannot rise spontaneously, nor does matter itself operate itself into organizing itself in to some higher level of complexity. Well, you get the message.
Everything requires information from the outside. Intelligence is critical to all matter and all energy, information from an intelligent life-giving source, namely God. There shouldn't be any question about how the universe came into existence, it is clearly answered right in verse 1 of the Bible.
And I believe, I think it's accurate to say that if there was a theory other than evolution, except divine creation, if there was something other than divine creation or evolution, scientists would line up to get it. Scientists would gladly take a more rational explanation or a rational explanation than to continue to postulate evolution, but they don't have any alternative except divine creation. And that is intolerable to sinful man because the creator is also the moral authority of the universe and the judge of all men. Evolution doesn't make any sense at all. On the other hand, the Bible does.
Now, starting in verse 2, the first chapter of the Bible expands on verse 1. Verse 1 says that God created the heavens and the earth, and starting in verse 2 we find out how.
"And the earth was formless and void and darkness was over the face of the deep, or the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light. God saw that the light was good and God separated the light from the darkness and God called the light day and the darkness He called night, and there was evening and there was morning, one day. "Then God said, 'Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters and let it separate the waters from the waters,' and God made the expanse and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse and it was so. And God called the expanse heaven and there was evening and there was morning, a second day.
"And God said, 'Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place and let the dry land appear,' and it was so. And God called the dry land earth and the gathering of the waters He called seas. And God saw that it was good. And God said, 'Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants, yielding seed and fruit and trees bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them on the earth,' and it was so. And the earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind and trees bearing fruit with seed in them after their kind, and God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.
"Then God said, 'Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night and let them for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heaven to give light on the earth.' And it was so. God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He made the stars also. And God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth and to govern the day and the night and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.
"And God said, 'Let the waters team with swarms of living creatures and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens.' And God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves with which the waters swarmed after their kind and every winged bird after its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas and let birds multiply on the earth. And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.
"Then God said, 'Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind,' and it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth after their kind and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the earth after its kind. And God saw that it was good and God said, 'Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.' And God created man in His own image. In the image of God He created him male and female, He created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.' Then God said, 'Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed it shall be for food for you. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to everything that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food and it was so. And God saw all that He had made and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
"Thus the heavens and the earth were completed and all their hosts. And by the seventh day, God completed His work which He had done and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made."
Now there is the accurate eye-witness account of the creation of the universe. The creation account is laid out from Genesis 1:1 to Genesis 2:3. And the outline of the book of Genesis falls into two parts. The first part is the creation, Genesis 1:1 to 2:3. The second part is called the generations. Starting in chapter 2 verse 4 you start to follow the history of man. The whole creation 1:1 to 2:3, starting in 2:4 you start to follow the history of man all the way to the end of Genesis and through the patriarchal period.
We could say then that Genesis 1:1 gives a general and inclusive account of creation. God created the heavens and the earth. You cannot make a broader statement than that. That covers everything. That's a way of saying God created everything in the universe, everything that exists, whether you're talking about galaxies, or whether you're talking about nebulae or solar systems, whether you're talking about those things that are at the farthest reaches of the universe in space, or whether you're talking about the smallest grain of sand, or whether you're talking about a bacterial microbe on the planet earth, absolutely everything was created by God. He is the creator of all things visible and invisible, and all things means everything from various ranks of angels, every form of life from whales and elephants to viruses. Everything, all things include every form of energy, every form of matter, the speed of light, nuclear structure, electromagnetism, gravity, every law by which nature operates was created within the framework of this creation. All things...all things.
Behind the creation of everything in the universe stands the living God who had eternally existed as God but had not always been creator. But here He becomes creator and He creates everything...absolutely everything.
Starting in chapter 2 verse 4, as I said, He singles out man and goes back over the creation of man. And then tells the story of man which flows right really to the end of Scripture. But this is the only eye-witness account of creation, Genesis 1:1 to 2:3. It is not allegory. There's nothing in the Hebrew text or in the English text, for that matter, to indicate that this is a fanciful story, that this is some kind of an allegorical picture. There's nothing here to indicate that this is some kind of mystical poetry, that this is some kind of lyrical literary style that is something other than actual history. To put it to you, this is purely expressed history from God, written down by Moses. The creator Himself gave Moses this accurate account of history. And we accept the Scripture as inspired of God and inerrant and there's nothing in this text to indicate that it's anything other than plain history.
Now when it says in verse 1 "In the beginning God created," it uses the word bara. Bara when used in the...what's called the cowl-stem(??) of Hebrew is used in Scripture only with reference to the divine work of God. It has a uniqueness about it here and that uniqueness is its absoluteness. It means basically that the infinite, eternal, personal, triune God of the universe brought things into existence which were not in existence prior to this moment. He created, the Latin says, ex nihilo(?), out of nothing. That is there was no pre-existing material. Hebrews 11:3 says, "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." The things that we see in the created universe were not made from something else. They were made from nothing, ex nihilo, without pre-existing material. It's a way of saying everything around us, your body, the bench you're sitting on and the building you're in, the streets around us, the trees, the flowers, the city, the state, the nation, the continent, the world all of it, the stars, the moon, everything, everything you can see, everything you can't see, protozoa, amoeba, or sheer dust, any arrangement of matter at all came into existence instantaneously out of no pre-existing material. It didn't come from things that do appear, it came from nothing. And Genesis is the only record of creation. It is the only source of creation information.
Now as we look at this first verse, let's ask three questions, and I think these are fascinating questions and I think you'll find that out as we go. First question...how? How did God create? By which method? We've already suggested to you that He couldn't have used evolution, for two reasons we affirm that. Number one, the text of Genesis 1 leaves no room for evolution. And two, evolution doesn't happen. How did He do it? How did God do this?
Very simple really, verse 3, "And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light." Verse 6, "And God...then God said, 'Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters and let it separate the waters from the heavens," and that's what happened. Verse 9, "Then God said, 'Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, let the dry land appear,' and it was so." Verse 11, "Then God said, 'Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them on the earth,' and it was so." Verse 14, "Then God said, 'Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. Let there be...let them be for signs and for seasons, for days and years. Let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth,' and it was so." Verse 20, "Then God said, 'Let the waters team with swarms of living creatures. Let birds fly above the earth and the open expanse of heaven,'" and goes on to talk about that creation. "And God saw it and it was good." And then in verse 24, "Then God said, 'Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, cattle and creeping things, and the beasts of the earth after their kind,' and it was so." Verse 26, "Then God said, 'Let's make man.'"
How did God do this? What was His method? He spoke...He spoke...He spoke it into existence out of nothing. This is...this is God. Psalm 33:6,9 "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made and all the hosts of them by the breath of his mouth for He spoke and it was done, He commanded and it was established." That is the psalmist's affirmation of the Genesis account of creation. God said, "Let there be...let there be...let there be..." and every time He said it there was. This is what we call fiat creation, He willed it and spoke it into existence. Psalm 148:5 says, "He spoke and they were created."
This is where everything came from. It didn't exist. God willed it to exist. He spoke and it came into existence. That is the divine account of creation. In Mark 13:19 it talks about the beginning of the creation which God created...just in case somebody might question. And you have that all through the New Testament, the emphasis on the fact that God created. Matthew 19:4, "Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female?" Again and again the Scripture makes reference to God as creator. Romans 1 says it's so evident that God is the creator that if you don't see it you're without excuse. Colossians, that great first chapter, verse 16 where it says, "By Him all things were created both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created by Him and for Him." That sums it up. That is always the biblical, the New Testament and Old Testament, affirmation of God as creator. Hebrews 1:10, "And Thou, Lord, in the beginning didst lay the foundation of the earth and the heavens are the works of Thy hands." I mean, Scripture just continually affirms God as the creator and He created simply by willing it and then speaking it into existence.
Listen to Romans 4:17, this is another testimony. It says, "As it is written, a father of many nations have I made you, in the sight of Him of whom he believed, even God...and here is the definition of God...God who gives life to the dead...listen to this...and calls into being that which does not exist." That's Romans 4:17. Creation is God calling into existence what does not exist. There's no room in that for evolution. Evolution is something appearing that has mutated from something else. That's not creation.
At a particular point in eternity the eternal God spoke everything into existence, made up of components which had never before existed. Therefore we say the material, space-time-universe, had an absolute beginning, not some kind of relative beginning. And the plain...going back to Genesis, the plain meaning of Genesis 1:1 is frankly not arguable, it's unmistakable. "In the beginning God created everything...everything." St. Augustine wrote in his Confession, "For You created them from nothing, not from Your own substance or from some matter not created by Yourself, or already in existence, but from matter which You created at one and the same time as the things that You made from it since there was no interval of time before You gave form to this formless matter," end quote.
There was no pre-existing material. And nothing is in existence that God didn't create. John 1:3, "All things came into being by Him and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being." There isn't anything that exists that God didn't create. That's a very, very clear scripture.
Go back to Genesis 1 for a moment and I want to remind you of something that's very important. All creation began and ended in six days...clearly there's no argument about it. Look at chapter 2 verse 2, "And by the seventh day, God completed His work which He had done and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done." He created the entire universe out of nothing, from no pre-existing material and He did it in six days. We know that from verse 5. The first day He created light and it says there was evening and there was morning, one day. Just to make sure you don't miss it, He says it was one day. And then just to make sure you don't exactly what He means, it was the kind of day that has an evening and a morning. What kind of day is that? Well that's basically what we call a solar day, it's just a plain, ole normal common every-day day.
Now I want to tell you something. God did all this in six days. Verse 8 says there was an evening and a morning on day two. And verse 13 says there was an evening and a morning on day three. And it goes all the way down that way. Verse 19, there was evening and morning on day four. Verse 23, there was evening and there was morning on day five. And verse 31, there was evening and there was morning on day six. He's just talking about six normal common days...just like we understand days to be.
The whole of creation, folks, was over on the sixth day. And the Bible, and this is very important to note, the Bible always speaks of creation as a past event. Mark that in your mind. The Bible always speaks of creation as a past event. Evolution speaks of creation as continuing, right? It's always going on. That's never how the Bible refers to creation. Hebrews 4:3 says, "His works were finished from the foundation of the world." Hebrews 4:10, "For the One who has entered His rest has Himself also rested from His works." The Bible always views creation as completed and finished. It is a past event. God finished creation, never adding to that original creation. On the seventh day He rested from creation and He's continued to rest from creation.
You say, "What's He doing now?" Not creation, conservation. You want to get the flow? Creation, Genesis...conservation, He upholds all things by the word of His power. Millennial Kingdom, restoration, when He restores the earth as we know it in the universe back to its edenic, or near edenic character. So you have creation, conservation, restoration...finally, recreation is the new heaven and the new earth. But creation is a past event. Conservation is a present one. Restoration is a future millennial one. And recreation is the new heaven and the new earth. The creation work, that's past, and the Bible always speaks of creation as a past event. It is not an on-going event. Evolution demands on-going transition, even theistic evolutionists who say they believe the Bible have the evolutionary process of necessity going on and going on and going on and ostensibly bringing new things to life.
But God created everything in six days. There's no evolution in that chapter. There's not a hint of evolution anywhere in this chapter. There's no place for an evolutionary theory because you have days. Verse 31, "And God saw all that He made and behold, it was very good." Now God finished His creation, six days, and He said it's very good. Then what does that mean? Nothing was bad. Nothing was bad would mean nothing was inferior. Nothing didn't survive. Nothing sort of, you know, like the plants you plant, nothing died out. You know why? There was no death..there was no death.You see, when God finished His creation He looked at all of it...in fact it says several times He saw that it was good. And He looked it all over in verse 31 and saw that it was very good, nothing was inferior, nothing didn't survive, nothing had died out or been killed in the struggle for the survival of the fittest. If creation had involved some evolutionary process, then God would have had to said, "Well, the good made it to the end." He didn't say that. And how could there have been billions and billions of evolving years, billions of years of struggle and death and survival in a world where there was no curse? In a world where there was no death? You don't even have death till Genesis chapter 3.
The Apostle Paul makes it absolutely explicit in the book of Romans that it was through sin that death entered the world. There's no...there was no sin in that perfect creation. There was no sin, there couldn't have been death. So there's no place for plants and animals to die...no Fall no sin, no sin no death, no death no evolution. The Fall came and introduced death, death introduced the law of thermodynamics, entropy, the disintegration and disorder. At this point no such thing existed.
So there's no way that you can inject evolution legitimately into this text. And just another thing, when God made everything He made everything full grown. You know, the old, "What came first, the chicken or the egg?" You want the answer, you know the answer? The chicken full grown. God didn't just throw seeds in every direction and unborn life species, He created an absolutely and completely full-grown, fully matured creation that was capable then of reproducing itself, sustaining its life and that's why He said it's very good.
So how did God create? He spoke it in to existence and He did it in six days. There's no way around that. Just to kind of help you a little bit with that. People say, "Well what about the word 'day,' can't it mean something else?" It's the plain old Hebrew word yom, it means day. It's used in the Bible to indicate a 24-hour normal solar day or sometimes to refer to the daylight portion of a day. You might say, "I'll be gone four days," and you mean four days, both day and night. Or you might say to someone, "This has been a beautiful day," and you're referring to the daylight portion of it. You use the word the same way the Hebrews used it.
When yom is modified by a number, universally, without exception, in Scripture it refers to a normal solar day. Now sometimes "day" is used in Scripture to refer to some period of time not precisely defined. Job said, "My days are vanity." Psalm 90 verse 9 says, "Our days are passed away." And that's not defined, but we understand what that means, a period of time. But even at that, day still means some finite succession of normal days, not some vast age of millennial years, or millions of years.
And I think maybe the strongest affirmation, and I need to do this because you can ask the question about, you know, why God took six days, why didn't He do it in six minutes or six seconds? Well, the answer is He took six days because He wanted to establish a pattern. In Exodus chapter 20 He gives us the pattern. "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, six days you shall labor, do all your work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall not do any work, you or your son, or your daughter, your male or your female servant, or your cattle, or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy." God wanted to establish a pattern for mankind. And that pattern was, you work six days and you have one day when you set it aside to rest and replenish your body and focus on worshiping God.
God chose to do it in six days to set a pattern for us.
Now if in fact it took Him billions of years, then the pattern is ridiculous. God's work of creation set the pattern for man who bears His image...six days you work and one day you worship.
Henry Morris in his book, The Genesis Record, says, "God called the light day and the darkness He called night. As though in anticipation a future misunderstanding, God carefully defined His terms. The very first time He used the word 'day,' He defined it as the light to distinguish it from the darkness called night. Having separated the day and night, God had completed His first day's work. The evening and the morning were the first day. This same formula is used at the conclusion of each of the six days...as I read you. It's obvious that the duration of each of the days, including the first, was the same. It is clear that beginning with the first day and continuing thereafter there was a period established of cyclical succession of days and nights, periods of light and periods of darkness." There's no other way to interpret that, no other way at all.
You say, "Well then how did we come up with this ages and billions of years stuffed into Genesis?" Not from Genesis, only factors outside Scripture...false scientific theory imposed on the Bible, higher criticism that attacks the historicity of the Bible and distorted human self-centered philosophies. But, you know, false scientific theory and higher criticism coming from unbelieving scholastics have caused Christian scholars to torture this text with unwarranted interpretations. There's absolutely nothing whatsoever on the pages of Genesis 1 and 2 that allows anything but a six, 24-hour, solar-day creation. It may offend the evolutionists but that doesn't change the truth. And no man fairs well who sits in judgment on the Bible.
Let's ask "when," that's why, lets ask when...when did this happen? Did it happen millions and billions of years ago? Science used to say two billion years but now they've changed it. They lean toward 20 billion and about every year it gets longer. You see. they've never seen anything evolve so they think it probably took longer. But if things don't evolve, what does longer do? It doesn't do anything. If things don't evolve, if matter doesn't randomly organize itself by chance upward and upward and upward, if there's no evidence that it ever does that, what does more time achieve? Since there is no evolution it's not necessary to have billions or millions of years, all you need is six days...that's all you need. Man didn't evolve finally from an ape over five billion years. He was created in the same 24-hours as the apes.
You say, "Well what about fossils?" What about fossils? I'll tell you one thing about fossils, they must have been formed after the creation, not before. They had to be formed after the creation...let me give you a scientific definition of fossils: dead stuff. That is...that's profound but that's it. Fossils, that's dead stuff. And there's no any death. Romans 5:12, as I mentioned earlier, that death came by sin. There's no death before the fall of Adam. You can't have billions and billions of years of billions and billions of things dying and becoming fossils if you don't have death. It is true, there are billions of fossils and there are fossil fields all over the world...massive, massive death did occur.
What caused it? There was clearly a tremendous rain of death all over the earth. There was clearly a massive, massive death and the Bible gives the absolutely accurate information into what it was. It was the universal, world-wide Flood, Genesis 6 and 7. And you can look into the science of that, it's absolutely fascinating. Very likely at that time the once what scientists think was a super continent split up, fountains of the deep were broken up and the earth's surface was changed and tectonic plates collided and pushed up mountains which used to be at the bottom of the sea. That's why you find fish fossils in the Himalayas and in Grand Canyon. The whole earth was fractured. There's not enough rain water falling for 40 days to drown the earth above the Himalayas, in excess of 25 thousand feet in elevation. There's no enough rain water to fall, the water had to come from somewhere else. And it did. It came up from the ocean floors as lava cracked out and cracked open. The earth's surface cracked open and lava poured out heating the water to a fever pitch and as the water went into steam in to the sky and eventually vaporized again, turned back into water and fell on the earth and flooded the earth in a massive flood. All this...all this tectonic plate activity colliding...these plates colliding, pushing up mountains and all of that, can be traced back to the Flood.
In Matthew chapter 2 verses 37 to 39 it refers to the Flood there. And it uses the Greek word kataklusmos, the word cataclysm. It literally, totally rearranged the surface of the earth and engulfed the entire earth in water. And that massive hydraulic cataclysm is what produced the extinction of many animals instantaneously frankly, or over the periods of the days when it rained, and created this world-wide death that produced the fossils.
Second Peter 3 talks about how God destroyed the whole earth, verse 6, by flooding it with water. That one great world cataclysm produced the ice caps, produced the Ice Age, and explains the fossils. And there's much more on that that you can read for yourself. There's an immense amount of scientific material on the Flood and its cataclysmic impact on the earth.
So, we ask the question...when did this happen? When did all of this...how do we...if we don't need ages and ages and ages and ages and billions and billions of years to form fossils...and by the way, that generally won't do it. I mean, if you take the bones of your dead bird and put them in the back yard, how long will it take before they become a fossil? They'll never become a fossil. The ground would have to open up and crush those bones and hold them there for you to have some kind of a fossil. There has to be cataclysm to create that kind of thing, such as we have already seen in the sediments and the bones that are found, for example, in the terrain surrounding Mount St. Helens...which kind of a cataclysm has the same dramatic effect as would appear to a uniformitarianist, would have had to occur over millions and millions and millions of years. So the Flood answers the problem of fossils and sediment and the rearrangement of the surface of the earth. All legitimate science, frankly, points back to the great cataclysm.
But now let's see if we can't get a time line on when this all happened. Well we know here...from the creation of the universe to the creation of man was how long? Six days...start counting. From the creation of the universe to the creation of man was six days. Starting in Genesis 5...Genesis 5 you get Adam and then you start with Adam, Genesis 5, and you go to the Flood and you've got a whole lot of people in there and all the years of their life are given. You see it there in chapter 5. You have the sequence...he lived so many years and he had a son, and he lived so many years and he had a son, he lived so many years and he had a son. You add up those, you have six days from the creation of the universe to the creation of man...from the first man Adam to the Flood you have 1656 years. Sixteen hundred and fifty-six years the Flood comes.
Genesis 11 gives you the chronology from the Flood to Abraham...from the Flood to Abraham. It starts out with the children of Noah...Shem, verse 10, goes right on down to Abraham, that's 225 years. Okay? Six days, 1656 years, and 225 years...so something under 2000 years and you're at Abraham.
Start in Genesis 12:1-3 with Abraham and go through the Old Testament historical books...Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles. Just proceed through those books and you have the chronology from Abraham to the Babylonian captivity...from Abraham to the Babylonian captivity..that would be 430 years in Egypt, 40 years in the wilderness, seven years conquering Canaan, 350 years of the Judges, 110 years of the United Kingdom under Saul, David and Solomon, 350 years under the divided kingdom of Judah and Israel, 70 years...350 years and then you have the Babylonian captivity, 70 years. And then you have the return and the rebuilding, 140 years. So, from Abraham to the return and rebuilding of Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the nation Israel you have about 1500 or so years if you add all that up.
Following the rebuilding and the restoration, you're at the end now of the Old Testament, you've got 400 years of silence. So you have about 2000 years, we sort of started out from the creation to Abraham is about 2000 years. From Abraham to the New Testament is about 200 years. And from the beginning of the New Testament to now is about 2000 years.
Archbishop James Usher, a great scholar, by the way, lived from 1581 to 1656, added all the genealogical chronological records of Scripture and said that he felt that the creation occurred in 4004 B.C. Now, you know, the evolutionists just mock that. The world, the universe...6000 years old? But he was no doubt very close to being accurate.
And prior to Charles Darwin, any educated man who suggested that mankind was over 6000 years old was seen as a fool. All historical records fit in to that 6000 years. You can go back and study European history, you can go back and study the records, the Egyptian records, and they all go back no further than that. You say, "Well isn't it possible that some names got skipped in the genealogies?" That's one of the things you hear all the time. "Isn't it possible that some names got skipped?"
Let me tell you something. One very hard thing to prove is what got left out. That is very hard to prove. How can you say some other name should be in there? If it's not there, it's not there. Even if you add a few names that God left out of the genealogy of 5 or the genealogy of chapter 11, the history of Israel, that's set, we know that. And the times from Christ to now, we know that. So if you're talking about that first period of time and you want to give a little space to the genealogies, well, you can add a few hundred years here and there.
Nineteenth century Princeton scholars, William Green(?) and B.B. Warfield both were inerrantists--they believed in the authority of the Bible. But they tried to harmonize the Bible with evolution and the way they wanted to do it was to stretch the genealogies. There's nothing to argue about over the last 2000, there's nothing to argue about over the 2000 really from Abraham to the New Testament period, that's pretty well fixed in history. So they decided they had to stuff some years in the first 2000 and they said there were various generations omitted and that father and begat could skip generations and refer to a more remote ancestor.
Well, there's no evidence for it. William Kelley writes, "Even if Green and Warfield were correct in depositing gaps within the genealogies of Genesis, the most generous assigning of gaps between various generations couldn't add more than several hundred, or at the most maybe a thousand or so years to the ushers chronology. Indeed a more careful look at these gaps will indicate that they really do not change the overall biblical chronology for the following reason. The writer of Genesis defined the length of the patriarchal age in terms of the time between the birth of the patriarchs who are actually listed, not in terms of how many other descendants there may have been who are not listed." You get the point? If you hit the high peaks of the patriarchs and you give the years for those, you can't stuff any more years in between.
James B. Jordan wrote, "Anyone who opens the Bible to Genesis chapter 5 and 11 will notice that the age of each father is given for the time of his son's birth. Adam was a 130 years old at the birth of Seth, who was a 105 years old at the birth of Enosh and so forth. Thus we appear to have an unbroken chronology from creation to Abraham. There are no gaps in the sequence. Son follows father in strict succession it seems. The length between Genesis 5 and 11 is established by Genesis 6:7 and Genesis 11:10. Arphaxad was born in Noah's 602 year, thus at first glance there appears to be good reason to accept the chronologies of Genesis 5 and 11 at face value."
Now even if there are some gaps, as I said, and you wanted to stuff them with everything you could possibly think of, you'd never come up with millions of years. At best it's just a few thousand years ago. And then scientists come along and says, "Well I've got a problem with that. What about the speed of light? If God created a star out there and it's X number of light years away, it would take a million years for it to get here. The light can't get here. The fact that we can see the light of the star way out there indicates that millions of years must have gone by."
Well how about this for a wild solution? God not only created the star, He created the light in between there and here. Does that sound impossible? Well if that's too simplistic, let me give you another solution. Hang on. Research has been done on the speed of light. They've done it in kilometers. The speed of light is generally accepted as being 299 thousand, 792.458 kilometers per second...or rounding it off, 300 thousand kilometers a second. A light year is the distance light travels in a year. "Thus a star might come into being a million light years away from the earth but couldn't actually be observed until a million years later because it would take that long for the starlight to reach the earth from outer space. If this is the case then the solar system has to be immensely older than the few thousands years indicated by the Genesis chronologies. This fact would seem to remove the biblical chronology from serious consideration if we're going to have any honest assessment from science."
Well let me tell you why that doesn't work. First, this comes from some interesting fascinating research by an Australian scientist named Barry Setterfield(?), listen to this. "Arguments that the speed of light has been slowing down and thus traveled much more rapidly in the past would indicate a very young universe in terms of thousands rather than billions of years." Barry Setterfield, an Australian scientist, proposed the decay in the speed of light in his writings called The Velocity of Light and the Age of the Universe. According to Setterfield the first careful measurement of the speed of light was made by a Danish astronomer, Reemer(?), in 1675 and then by an English astronomer, Bradley, in 1728. It's been measured many times since then and is said to have reached an equilibrium at the number I gave you a moment ago. The data indicate that the speed of light in 1675 was about 2.6 faster than today and that it continued to decline until 1960 when atomic clocks began to be employed to measure it. Setterfield chartered a rate of about 5.7 kilometers decrease in velocity per second between 1675 and 1728 and 2.5 kilometers per second decrease between 1880 and 1924 and he kept charting the decrease. He worked out a curve tracing the decay of the velocity of light. On this basis, Setterfield figures the earth was created about 4000 and 40, plus or minus a hundred years.
At the time of creation the speed of light was going so much faster than it does now. If the speed of light has indeed decayed, along with everything else, then the most basic empirical measurement of the age of the solar system would fit precisely into the genealogical chronologies of Genesis. Wow, if you just take those same figures, put them on a curve, you have light being almost instantaneous 6000 years ago.
Does that surprise you? It shouldn't. Moreover, assuming that's correct, that would explain why the dates derived from various types of radio active measurements on physical geological elements such as the half life of uranium 238 decaying into lead over millions of years would all be skewed. The velocity of an electron in its orbit is proportional to the speed of light. Everything changes and what appears to be old isn't old at all if you understand this immense fact.
Hence, radio metric ages in rocks, meteorites and other astronomical objects in conventionally allocated years can all be predicted by the high initial value of sea and accommodated within a 6000 year framework. I don't want to go into any more detail, I've said more than I know now. But I'll tell you this, we can start with a fixed point and the fixed point is Genesis 1. Genesis 1. We don't find anything in science that legitimately cast doubt on the veracity of this creation in six days, six thousand or so years ago.
Well our time is gone so I'll save what else I was going to say for next time. And that's the kind of nice thing about this series. I can kind of cut it off wherever.
There were three acts of creation, just summarizing...the universe, animals and man. And man really stands apart, made in God's image so God could communicate with us as intelligent, moral, self-aware beings who can understand abstract symbolic speech and thus can come to know our creator personally so we can worship Him and serve Him forever. And we'll get more into the why next time. All right, pray with me.
Father, thank You again for Your word which gives light, even on this incredible subject of creation. Continue to lead and direct us as we confidently sit at the feet of the Spirit of God, the author of Scripture, who gives us the eye-witness account of the very moment of creation. We bless You that You the creator are also the Redeemer whom we know and love and with whom we communicate regularly and shall fellowship together with forever. Thank You for this great grace to us. In Christ's name. Amen.
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