God and Humanity Reunited
What evidence do we have that Christ was not only divine but also human? Matt. 26:38, Luke 2:40, Gal. 4:4.
Ancient Greek philosophy considered human flesh to be intrinsically evil, a prison for the soul. Accepting this view, some early Christians concluded that the Son of God could not have come in a material body but only seemed to have done so. The New Testament, however, makes it indisputably clear that Jesus was a real human being. He was born of a woman, grew and developed as a child, learned obedience (Heb. 5:8), and suffered and died (Matt. 26:38, Luke 23:46). The Bible also is clear that Jesus was divine, God in human flesh (John 1:1, 2, 14; Heb. 1:3). The reality of the union of the human and the divine in Christ is indispensable for the atonement.
Why? Because after the Fall Adam and Eve and all of their descendants were separated from God, a separation that threatened their existence. Because it was impossible for humans by themselves to be reunited with God, the Lord took the initiative and reunited Himself with humans, and this He did with the Incarnation, when God became human. Christ became the “place” where the divine intersected the human in a permanent reunification. In the Incarnation, “divinity and humanity were mysteriously combined, and man and God became one.”—Ellen G. White, Signs of the Times, July 30, 1896. This unity was deeper than the unity that originally existed between God and humans.
How does Paul refer to Jesus (1 Cor. 15:45), and what does that mean?
In Jesus there was a new beginning for the human race, a “new” humanity that was united to God. He was the Creator and the head of that new humanity; He was the new Adam from whom a new human race was coming into existence. Outside of Him there was, and still is, the old humanity, the one in fallen Adam, the one separated from God and heading to extinction (1 Cor. 15:22). The only hope for that humanity was the incarnated God, in whom the divine and the human were united in eternal bonds of love. Through Christ every human being who so wished it could be brought into complete harmony with God.
| Look up at the stars at night. Why should the incredible truth that the power who created all those stars (and so much more) took upon Himself humanity (and in that humanity died for your sins!) change your life? |
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