CHRIST: the perfect redeemer

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CHRIST: the perfect redeemer

 

The incarnation of the second person of the Trinity ensured Christ humaneness. He was born of flesh and blood and became flesh and blood for us. Bearing in mind the words of  one of the church fathers, St Gregory of Nazianzus “…That which is not assumed cannot be healed.”

Had Christ not incarnated totally human he would NOT have been able to redeem man.

This reminds us to take comfort in knowing that we have a mediator before God as high priest who is able to sympathize with our hurts, our pain, our disappointments and human frailties. For when Christ incarnated and took a human form, He inherited the Adamic nature (although He was free of sin and never sinned) with all its imperfections, as He lived the human experience. He experienced grief, pain, depression, betrayal, rejection, just to name a few.

Second, Christ’s first humiliation was not the cross, but the incarnation. A holy God debasing Himself to the lowest levels as to take on the filthy human nature (although He never sinned); must be tantamount to wallowing in a pigsty.

The human nature of Christ served many purposes. First it testifies to the love of God for man that He would so humiliate His Son. It testifies to the love of Christ for whom, through whom all is made and who offered Himself as a living sacrifice. Not only does it give us the assurance of a high priest who sympathizes with our pain and sorrows and all our human experiences; but additionally, the incarnation ensured the qualification of the redeemer for our salvation. The sole divine nature of Christ would not have sufficed in His substitutionary role in the providential plan of redemption. The dual nature was key to the success of His redemptive mission. 

Had Christ remained divine and appeared on earth as the second person of the Trinity, holy, and Sovereign to redeem man, this would have been problematic; for how can a holy God take on the sin of mankind. On the other hand had Christ somehow discarded his “Godness” (for lack of a better word) and His divine nature and became just a common man, He would not have qualified to be the redeemer because he would have had His own sins to account for. However, when the two natures are combined; fully Divine/fully Human it becomes a masterful combination for a being or person who is able to take upon Himself the sins of mankind.

The Divine nature prevented Christ from sinning and the Human nature remained sinless, thereby able to take, like a vessel, the sins of mankind. This is key in understanding two things:

1) That only God, Himself could have saved mankind.

2) It took a “God-Man” to save mankind

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