An Advent Meditation — “Strong Enough to Save, Near Enough to Heal”
“Why did Jesus Christ have to be God?” the potential ordinand was asked. And, at least so it seemed to me, he muffed it: “It took God to offer perfect obedience.”
Well, no.
The perfect obedience Christ offered for us he offered because he was human. Jesus Christ came as the Last Adam, the “Son of God, the Son of Adam,” who undid in a wilderness and on a cross the harm done in a garden and by the eating of forbidden fruit (see 1 Corinthians 15:45; Romans 5:12-19; and Luke 3:38-4:13). To offer perfect obedience was why Jesus Christ had to be human.
My puzzlement at the potential ordinand’s stumbling over the necessity of our Savior’s divinity sent me back to Robert Webber’s cogent discussion of the incarnation in his Ancient Future Faith. Even as I write, my late-in-life friend battles terminal cancer, and I find myself especially prizing the economy with which he says profound things.
Webber notes that the early church settled on (or perhaps groped towards) two axioms:
One: “only God can save.” The other: “only that which God becomes is healed.”
The first axiom comes from Athanasius (d. 373). “Only God can save” explains our salvation from above. It is a response to those Christologies (e.g., Arianism) that would not allow the full divinity of our Savior. If God himself has not come for us, but merely (as in Arianism) has sent a sub-divine surrogate, then we do not have a champion adequate to the task. As Ezekiel had prophesied: “I myself will shepherd them” (Ezekiel 34:11). Or in Isaiah’s terms: “Behold, the Lord God will come with might, with his arm ruling for him … Like a shepherd he will tend his flock, in his arm he will gather the lambs…” (Isaiah 40:10-11). It was — and had to be — God himself who had taken our humanity to himself, sympathized with us, bled for us, and risen for us. It was the only way to break the yoke of Satan’s oppression, to unbend the warp that the Fall introduced into God’s good creation. The full reclamation of all that was lost in the Garden is guaranteed because, in Christ, God himself has taken the field.
The second axiom was pressed by the Cappadocian Fathers (Basil the Great and the two Gregories — all three younger contemporaries of Athanasius). “Only that which God becomes is healed” explains our salvation from below. It is a response to those Christologies that denied the full humanity of our Savior. If God hasn’t become completely one of us, then we are left not fully reclaimed, not fully redeemed. We needed one who was like us in all things “except sin.” Only such a one could be our High Priest. Only such a one could touch — and in touching, heal — that which is deeply broken and dead in us. So it really was — and really had to be — that it was as one of us that Jesus was born, lived, obeyed, suffered, died, and was raised. And it is as one who has united himself to us that he still intercedes at the right hand of the Father.
This Advent Season I give thanks for that great line of saints in the early church who — taking their bearings especially from John and Paul and the writer to the Hebrews — understood what was at stake in defending and articulating what Chesterton would eventually call “the romance of orthodoxy.”
This Advent Season I give thanks for Robert Webber and his winsome challenge to the postmodern church to reacquaint itself those early orthodox saints who had become so dear to him. If, despite our pleas to the contrary, the Lord should be pleased to add Bob to the great “cloud of witnesses,” we who still remain below can console ourselves in the knowledge that Bob will be in familiar company.
Finally, this Advent Season I give thanks for a fully incarnate Jesus — strong enough to save and near enough to heal.
Well, no.
The perfect obedience Christ offered for us he offered because he was human. Jesus Christ came as the Last Adam, the “Son of God, the Son of Adam,” who undid in a wilderness and on a cross the harm done in a garden and by the eating of forbidden fruit (see 1 Corinthians 15:45; Romans 5:12-19; and Luke 3:38-4:13). To offer perfect obedience was why Jesus Christ had to be human.
My puzzlement at the potential ordinand’s stumbling over the necessity of our Savior’s divinity sent me back to Robert Webber’s cogent discussion of the incarnation in his Ancient Future Faith. Even as I write, my late-in-life friend battles terminal cancer, and I find myself especially prizing the economy with which he says profound things.
Webber notes that the early church settled on (or perhaps groped towards) two axioms:
One: “only God can save.” The other: “only that which God becomes is healed.”
The first axiom comes from Athanasius (d. 373). “Only God can save” explains our salvation from above. It is a response to those Christologies (e.g., Arianism) that would not allow the full divinity of our Savior. If God himself has not come for us, but merely (as in Arianism) has sent a sub-divine surrogate, then we do not have a champion adequate to the task. As Ezekiel had prophesied: “I myself will shepherd them” (Ezekiel 34:11). Or in Isaiah’s terms: “Behold, the Lord God will come with might, with his arm ruling for him … Like a shepherd he will tend his flock, in his arm he will gather the lambs…” (Isaiah 40:10-11). It was — and had to be — God himself who had taken our humanity to himself, sympathized with us, bled for us, and risen for us. It was the only way to break the yoke of Satan’s oppression, to unbend the warp that the Fall introduced into God’s good creation. The full reclamation of all that was lost in the Garden is guaranteed because, in Christ, God himself has taken the field.
The second axiom was pressed by the Cappadocian Fathers (Basil the Great and the two Gregories — all three younger contemporaries of Athanasius). “Only that which God becomes is healed” explains our salvation from below. It is a response to those Christologies that denied the full humanity of our Savior. If God hasn’t become completely one of us, then we are left not fully reclaimed, not fully redeemed. We needed one who was like us in all things “except sin.” Only such a one could be our High Priest. Only such a one could touch — and in touching, heal — that which is deeply broken and dead in us. So it really was — and really had to be — that it was as one of us that Jesus was born, lived, obeyed, suffered, died, and was raised. And it is as one who has united himself to us that he still intercedes at the right hand of the Father.
This Advent Season I give thanks for that great line of saints in the early church who — taking their bearings especially from John and Paul and the writer to the Hebrews — understood what was at stake in defending and articulating what Chesterton would eventually call “the romance of orthodoxy.”
This Advent Season I give thanks for Robert Webber and his winsome challenge to the postmodern church to reacquaint itself those early orthodox saints who had become so dear to him. If, despite our pleas to the contrary, the Lord should be pleased to add Bob to the great “cloud of witnesses,” we who still remain below can console ourselves in the knowledge that Bob will be in familiar company.
Finally, this Advent Season I give thanks for a fully incarnate Jesus — strong enough to save and near enough to heal.
1 Comments:
I had almost given up hope for a new post, but you offer up another gem! Thanks Reggie. I'll be checking back monthly, er, quarterly. :)
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