What Sort of Redeemer?

"For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." (Isaiah 9:6)

Weeks 21-23 (from the New City Catechism, www.newcitycatechism.com)

Question: What sort of Redeemer is needed to bring us back to God?

Answer: One who is truly human and also truly God.

*Cf. The Heidelberg Catechism, QA 15-17; The Belgic Confession, Articles 10, 17-21.

            We are covering a lot of ground these weeks. There are three reasons for this: 1) to catch up a bit so we can get all 52 questions and answers in this year; 2) these three Q&A’s fit together nicely (both in the New City and Heidelberg catechisms); and 3) because I am going to be out of the office for six days attending General Synod with Clarence DeYong and therefore must pull together a couple of weeks. (Would you please pray for Clarence, for me, and for our entire denomination these weeks?)

            I really encourage you to take a close look at the Heidelberg Catechism on these points. You can find the text of the catechism (in addition to our other creeds and confessions) at https://www.rca.org/SSLPage.aspx?pid=6561. According to the Heidelberg, our Redeemer must be “One who is truly human and truly righteous” (Q&A 15). Why must he be truly human? Because the justice of God demands that our human nature—the nature in which we commit sin—must pay for sin. God is not a god who waves a magic wand. This is the God of creation. He values and loves His creation too much to bypass creation. This, of course, cuts both ways in that while creation is good, creation is also the materiality and substance of the Fall—“For as by a man came death…” (1 Cor. 15:21)—therefore God took it upon himself not to cancel out creation, but to redeem it by “[partaking] of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb. 2:14). God is not a god of magic; he is the God of all creation. The Redeemer must be human.

            The mystery of Christ is that, while he is one hundred percent human, he is also one hundred percent God. Why must our Redeemer be truly God? “So that, by the power of his divinity, he might bear the weight of God’s anger…” (Q&A 17): truly righteous, more powerful, completely obedient, truly God. The Fall was and is so pervasive that no creature can live in complete obedience to God; no creature has not been touched by sin. Furthermore, no creature could bear the weight of God’s holy and righteous anger toward our sin. The Redeemer must be God.

            The term we use to refer to the two natures of Jesus Christ—his one hundred percent humanness and his one hundred percent God-ness—is hypostatic union. This is not a throwaway term for only those people who take an interest in highbrow academic verbage. It is an important word for us to know, as it is used to describe that the two distinct natures (human and divine) co-existed substantively and in reality in the single person of Jesus Christ. Our Belgic Confession states it this way:

“These are the reasons why we confess him to be true God and true man—true God in order to conquer death by his power, and true man that he might die for us in the weakness of his flesh” (Article 19).

I can certainly hear the complaints…in fact, I’ve lodged them myself. Isn’t this just a bunch of theological mumbo-jumbo that has no real bearing on my life and witness? But just think about what we confess for a moment: if Jesus was simply a very good man and moral exemplar, he could not have borne the weight of God’s wrath and his sacrifice would be no more than that of an “unblemished lamb” the Israelites sacrificed in their cultic system. The sacrificial system would continue on for perpetuity and we would have no real confidence in our salvation. He must be God. If, on the other hand, Jesus was not human, then God’s salvific action would not include us—it would be a transcendent, cosmic affair off somewhere in the heavenlies with no creational impact. How could we ever talk about “the resurrection of the flesh.” He must be human. Our salvation and resurrection depend on both.

            All those old guys (Athanasius, et al) actually knew what they were doing. God was leading and teaching them to articulate these truths well so that we would understand. It really was, and is, important. But the more practical question is this: what does it mean for us today beyond head knowledge? It means that we have good news to speak to our neighbor—that God so loved his creation that he took on our flesh, died a horrible death, and rose again…all for our sake, in order to redeem us and set us free from sin and death. We can live in the confidence of full and never-ending life because of what God has done for us. That confidence gives me joy for today and hope for tomorrow.

            Hypostatic union…a pretty interesting term. For all that the world might think about God, I wonder if this term arrests all such thinking. Only because we find in this term that as we come to the cross, we find God there.

            Reach the lost. Grow the found.