Sunday, August 3, 2014

How was Christ like us in the flesh?

How was Christ like us in the flesh?
(Heb 2:17)  Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren...

We saw that Christ had to be made perfect in His humanity. Divinity was already perfect. He had to accomplish what Adam failed to accomplish in humanity by taking what was left of humanity after the fall.
Adam was created perfect with the opportunity to hold to it.To be created perfect is not the same as choosing the way of perfection. Adam failed to choose the way of perfection and as a result we inherit his then broken nature. If Adam and Eve had succeeded in the task of overcoming Satan they would have passed on a nature invested with moral strength. The temptation could have been removed from the offspring of Adam. But the result of Adam's failure results in our inheriting a spiritually handicapped nature which is the natural prostitute of Satan.
God cannot legally prevent us from inheriting that weakness which is quickly controlled by the prince of the power of the air. Ephesians 2:1-3. But He can send the Son to our rescue and in Christ our weakness is combined with the well spring of divine strength. Christ Himself took our weakness, the likeness of sinful flesh (Romans 8:3) and was made, or took upon His unmade divine nature, a made-ness that was in all points our own weakened humanity. Through suffering He had to forge out a new and living way for the human family. Christ literally had to train the human will to bow to the will of the Father. In the Gethsemane trial the struggle was so intense that His humanity could have expired, but an angel strengthened Him so that He could offer up His life on the cross.
We obey by the power of His life. He obeyed by complying to the divine life within Himself. There had to be a cooperation of the humanity of Jesus with the divinity of the Godhead which fullness was in Him (Collosians 2:9). This translates to us as obeying the will of the Father but it does not exclude the divinity of Jesus itself. A cooperation had to happen between Jesus' two natures for the Word who had a nature was made flesh and took on flesh. The divine will of Christ was already one with His Father's will. But Christ became human and therefore must contend with the will of the flesh.This involved great suffering for Him in His human experience. Christ knew the instinctive will of the flesh to avoid suffering and embrace pleasure. This instinctive and impulsive will had been strengthened over generations. As man indulges this will then propensities to sin are developed in the mind. Christ had to continually choose to crucify this impulse without a single failure. Therefore He had no propensity to sin, but many assume this to mean that Christ did not inherit any tendency of the flesh. If that were the case Christ could never have crucified the flesh for us. He could not be our atonement. Thus Satan targets this truth to cause man to doubt it. If we doubt it we shall doubt that complete crucifixion of the will of the flesh is a condition for us. Thus the Antichrist spirit denies that Christ came in our flesh. Apostate Christianity has for centuries denied that Christ took sinful flesh and looks for other means for man to be made acceptable to God. This lie takes two forms. Salvation by works (human merit) and salvation without law (salvation in sin).
But Christ perfected that way that Satan denies.This was the price of our redemption and the work of our uplifting. An enduring link had to be forged between the humanity and divinity of Jesus, all the way to the extreme temptation of the Gethsemane and into death itself. That was the only perfection that could be offered up as our atonement for it not only provided perfect payment, rather it was a perfect payment for it provided a perfect restoration for the race in Christ alone. Nothing else could suffice.
The enemy of souls exhausted every energy of his evil force upon the Savior but he failed to even once cause a single yielding of the humanity of Jesus to his suggestions. Jesus could say..."which of you convinceth me of sin" John 8:46. Brothers and sisters...because of this we may receive this power of Christ's perfect life, but can you see the great cost of your redemption? Can you see how we must never boast that man alone can do as Christ, rather we must acknowledge that we may only receive what Christ alone can impart to our otherwise helpless state. The Captain of our Salvation was made perfect through suffering for our sake. This was love incarnate.

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