‘There is one God,’ says Paul, ‘and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus’ (1 Tim. 2:5). In that great separation between God and man caused by our sin and apostasy which of itself could result in nothing but the utter ruin of the whole human race, there was none in heaven or earth who was fit or able to reconcile them and bring about a righteous peace between them. Yet this must be done and could be done only by a suitable mediator.
This mediator could not be God himself, as God only, for a mediator does not mediate for only one. But if he was God then he could be said to be biased, for there is only one God and man is not God. Man needs a mediator to represent him just as God needs a mediator to represent him (Gal. 5:20). So whatever God might do in the work of reconciliation, yet as God he could not do it as mediator.
As for man, there was no creature in heaven or earth fit to undertake this work. For ‘if one sins against another, God will judge him. But if a man sins against the Lord, who will intercede for him?’ (1 Sam. 2:25). As Job said, ‘Nor is there any mediator between us who may lay his hand on us’ (Job 9:33).
In this state of things, the Lord Christ, as the Son of God, said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God’ (Heb. 10:7). By taking our nature into union with himself, in his own divine person, he became in every way fit and able for this work and so undertakes it. How then may we behold the glory of Christ as mediator? We may behold it in his humbling himself to take up this office of mediator, in his carrying it out, and in its results.
Infinite Humility in His Incarnation
We may behold the glory of Christ in his infinite willingness to humble himself to take this office of mediator on himself, and uniting our nature to his for that purpose. He did not become mediator by chance. Nor was it imposed on him against his will. He did not have to become mediator. He freely chose to become mediator. He willingly humbled himself in order that he might make a righteous peace between God the Judge and man the sinner.
Christ, being in the form of God, says Paul, willingly took on himself the form of a servant. He willingly humbled himself. He willingly made himself of no reputation and was obedient even to the death of the cross (Phil. 2:5-8). It is this willingness to humble himself to take our nature into union with himself which is glorious in the eyes of believers.
Such is the transcendent glory of the divine nature, that it is said of God that he ‘dwells on high’, and yet ‘humbles himself to behold the things that are in the heavens and in the earth’ (Ps. 113:4-6). God is willing to take notice of the most glorious things in heaven and the lowliest things in the earth. This shows his infinite humility.
Consider the infinite distance between God’s essence, nature or being, and that of his creatures. So all nations before him ‘are as the drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance.’ Indeed, they are as nothing. They are counted to him as less than nothing and foolishness. Who can measure the distance between that which is infinite and that which is finite? It cannot be done. So, the infinite, essential greatness of the nature of God, with his infinite distance from the nature of all creatures, means that God has to humble himself to take notice of things infinitely below him.
God is so infinitely high and lofty, so inhabits eternity in his own eternal being, that it is an act of mere grace in him to take notice of things infinitely below him. Therefore he does it in a special way. He does it by taking special notice of those whom the world despises, ‘the humble and contrite ones’ (Isa. 57:15).
God is infinitely self-sufficient both in himself and in all that he does. Man is continually seeking for self-satisfaction. But no creature can find eternal blessedness or satisfaction in itself, for no creature is self-sufficient. Not even Christ’s human nature in heaven is self-sufficient. It lives in God and God in it. It continues to exist in full dependence on God and continually receives blessed and glorious communications from him. God alone lacks nothing and stands in need of nothing. Nothing can be added to him to increase his blessedness, seeing he ‘gives to all life, breath and all things’ (Acts 17:25). No creature can contribute one mite to God’s eternal blessedness. He is infinitely perfect in his own nature (Job 35:6-7).
How glorious then is this willingness of the Son of God to humble himself to be our mediator. What heart can conceive, what tongue can express the glory of that mind of Christ which brought him down from infinite glory to take our nature into union with his so that he could mediate with God on our behalf?
In order to behold the glory of Christ as mediator better, let us consider the special nature of this willingness of his to humble himself. In doing this we must first consider what he did not do when he humbled himself to be our mediator,
- Christ did not lay aside his divine nature. He did not cease to be God when he became man. The real glory of his willingness to humble himself lies in this great truth, that ‘being in the form of God, he did not consider it robbery to be equal with God’ (Phil. 2:6). That is, being really and essentially God in his divine nature, he declared himself to be equal with God, or with the person of the Father. He was ‘in the form’ of God, that is, he was God. He was partaker of the divine nature, for God has no form or shape. So he was equal with God, in authority, dignity and power. Because he was in the form of God, he must be equal with God, for though there is order in the divine persons, there is no inequality in the Divine Being. So the Jews clearly understood his meaning when he said God was his Father. They knew he meant that he was equal with God. For when he said this, he also claimed equal power with the Father in all his divine works. He said, ‘My Father has been working until now, and I have been working’ (John 5:17).
- Christ did not convert his divine nature into the human.
- The humbling of Christ to be our mediator did not change or alter the divine nature.
- What did the Lord Christ do with his divine nature when he willingly humbled himself to become man?
- Christ’s humbling of himself to be our mediator was not by means of some ethereal substance forming a phantasm or an appearance only.
Being in the form of God, he took the form of a servant, and was found in fashion as a man (Phil. 2:7). This is his infinite humility. Paul does not say that he stopped being God, but though continuing to be God, he took ‘the form of a servant.’ That is, he took our nature upon him. He became what he was not, but he did not cease to be what he always was (see John 3:13). Although he was then on earth as Son of man, yet he was still God, for in his divine nature he was still also in heaven.
He who is God, can never not be God, just as he who is not God can never be God. The difference between us and the Socinians (disciples of Faustus and Laelius Socinius in the 16th century who, like the Unitarians and Jehovah’s Witnesses, denied the true and eternal deity of Christ) and is this, that we believe that Christ, being God, was made man for our sakes, whereas they teach that Christ, being only a man, was made a god for own sake.
This, then, is the glory of Christ’s willingness to humble himself. This is the life and soul of all heavenly truth and all heavenly mysteries, namely, that the Son of God, becoming in time what he was not, that is, Son of man, did not cease thereby to be what he was, even the eternal Son of God.
This was what some Arians of old taught, and some still say today that the ‘Word which was in the beginning,’ by which all things were made, was in the fullness of time turned into flesh, that is, the substance of the divine nature was turned into flesh as the water in Christ’s miracle was turned into wine. By an act of divine power, it ceased to be water and was now wine only, not water mixed with wine. So these men suppose a substantial change of the one nature into the other, that is, the divine nature was changed into the human in the same way that Roman Catholics imagine the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ by transubstantiation.
But this doctrine destroys both of Christ’s natures, and leaves him a person who can no longer be our mediator. For, according to this teaching, that divine nature in which he was in the form of God ceased to be God. Indeed, it was completely destroyed because it was substantially changed into the nature of man as the water ceased to be water when it was turned into wine. And that human nature which was made by the transformation of the divine nature into the human has no relationship to us, seeing it was not ‘made of a woman.’ but of the substance of the Word.
Eutyches (378-454) and those that followed him taught that the two natures of Christ, the divine and the human, were mixed and compounded as it were into one. But this could not happen without the divine nature being altered, for it would be made to be essentially what it was not, for one nature has but one and the same essence.
But as we said before, although the Lord became what he was not before, in that our nature was made to be his, yet his divine nature always remained the same. In the divine nature there is neither ‘variableness nor shadow of turning.’ It remained the same in him, in all its essential properties and in all its blessedness as it was from eternity. The Lord Christ did and suffered many things both in his life and in his death as a human being. But all that he did and suffered as a human being was done and suffered by his whole person, even although what he did and suffered as a human being was not actually done and suffered by his divine nature. Because his human nature was part of his whole person, what he did as a human being could be said to have been done by himself as God, e.g., God purchased his church ‘with his own blood’ (Acts 20:28).
Paul tells us that he ‘humbled himself, and made himself of no reputation’ (Phil. 2:7-8). He veiled the glory of his divine nature in ours, so that there was no outward appearance or revelation of it. The world could not see that he was the true God, so it believed he was not a good man in claiming to be God. So when Christ said, ‘Before Abraham was, I am,’ which asserted his pre-existence from eternity in another nature than what they could see, they were filled with rage, and ‘took up stones to cast at him’ (John 8:58-59). They gave as the reason for their madness that ‘he, being a man, should make himself to be God’ (John 10:33). They could not understand that one and the same person could be both God and man. It was beyond their fleshly reason. Nothing in creation had two natures.
But this difficulty is solved by the glory of Christ in his humiliation, for although in himself, in his own divine person, he was ‘over all, the eternally blessed God’ (Rom. 9:5), yet he humbled himself for the salvation of the church. To the eternal glory of God, he took our nature and was made man. Those who cannot see a divine glory in his doing this neither know him, nor love him, nor believe in him, nor in any way belong to him.
So, because these people cannot behold the glory of Christ in this humbling of himself to take our nature, they deny the foundation of our religion, namely the divine person of Christ. If he is willing to be made man, then he shall be treated only as a man and no more. So they reject the glory of God’s infinite wisdom, goodness and grace which concerns him more than does his whole creation. And they dig up the root of all evangelical truths which are nothing but branches growing from it.
To the world, our Lord Jesus Christ is a ‘stumbling block and a rock of offence.’ If we should say he was only a prophet, no more than a man sent from God, there would be no opposition from the world. The Moslems and the Jews both say he was only a man, a prophet sent from God. The hatred of the Jews for Christ was because he professed himself to be God, and as such was believed on in the world. And today, there are many who are willing to say he was a prophet sent from God, who do not, who will not, who cannot, believe the mystery of his willingness to humble himself to take our nature into union with his divine nature, nor see the glory of it. But take this away, and all our religion is taken away with it. Farewell to the mystery, the glory, the truth and the power of Christianity! Let a refined heathenism be set up in its place. But this is the rock on which the church is built, and against this rock the gates of hell shall not prevail.
One of the first heresies that assailed the church was the Docetic (from the Greek word, “to appear, or seem”) heresy. The Docetics taught that all that was done or suffered by Christ as a man was done or suffered by one who only appeared to be a man. His appearance as a man was like the appearance of angels in the shape of men, eating and drinking under the Old Testament. So there was only an appearance of Christ in the man Jesus at Jerusalem, in whom he suffered no more than in other believers. But this heresy was dealt with by the early church telling these heretics that an imaginary Christ gives an imaginary salvation.
We must, then, consider the true nature of this glorious divine humiliation that Christ willingly undertook in order to be our mediator. The essence of the biblical teaching is as follows: The eternal person of the Son of God, or the divine nature in the person of the Son, did, by a wonderful act of his divine power and love, take our nature into union with himself that is, to be his own even as the divine nature is his own.
This is the infallible foundation of faith, even to those who can understand very little of these divine mysteries. They can and do believe that the Son of God took our nature to be his own, so that whatever was done in that nature was done by him as a true human being would do it. The Lord Christ took that nature which is common to all men into union with his divine nature in his own person, so that it became truly his and he was truly the man Christ Jesus. This was the mind that was in him.
In this assumption of our nature in which he lived and suffered, by which he was found in fashion as a man, the glory of his divine person was veiled, and he made himself of no reputation. But this I have already dealt with.
We must also take note, that in taking human nature into union with his divine nature, Christ did not change it into a divine, spiritual nature, but preserved it in its entirety, with all its essential human properties and abilities. So Christ really lived and suffered, was really tried, tempted and forsaken in his true human nature, just as any other man might have so lived and suffered. He was exposed to all earthly evils just as every other man is.
The glory of Christ’s humiliation was the result of the divine wisdom of the Father as well as of the love of the Son. It was the highest evidence of God’s loving care towards his sinful human creatures. What can be compared to it? It is the glory of Christianity and the life-giving power of all evangelical truth. It lifts up the mystery of the wisdom of God above the reason or understanding of men and angels so that it becomes the object of faith and wonder only. It is a mystery that exalts the greatness of God. Considering the infinite distance between God and his creation, it is not surprising that all his works and ways cannot be understood by his creatures (Job 11:7-9; Rom. 11:33-36).
A Great Mystery—A Great Refuge
It is of this great mystery that that great promise concerning him is given to the church. ‘He will be as a sanctuary’ (namely to all believers as Peter tells us, 1 Pet. 2:7-8), ‘but a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence.’ To whom? To those who ‘stumble, being disobedient to the word, to which they also were appointed’ (Isa. 8:14; 1 Pet. 2:8).
Christ is a sanctuary, a sure refuge to all that put their trust in him. And what would a troubled man fleeing to a safe place be looking for? He would look for all his needs to be met, to be delivered from all his fears, to be protected from all dangers. Such is the Lord Christ to all sin-distressed souls.
Christ is a refuge to us in all our spiritual sorrows and troubles (Heb. 6:18). Are you burdened with a sense of sin? Are you weighed down under the oppression of any spiritual enemy? Do we, as a result of any of these things, ‘walk in darkness and have no light?’ One look at the glory of Christ will strengthen and comfort us.
When we go to someone for help, two questions arise. The first is, Is the person to whom we are going for help willing to help us, and secondly, Is he able to help us? We need to know that Christ is both willing and able to help us and to meet all our needs.
We may well ask, What will Christ not do for us? He who emptied and humbled himself, who came down from the infinite height of his glory to take our finite nature into union with his infinite nature, will he not meet all our needs and answer according to his infinite wisdom all our prayers for help? Will he not do all that is necessary for us to be eternally saved? Will he not be a sanctuary for us? We have no reason to fear his ability and power, for in becoming man he lost nothing of his power as the Almighty God, nor of his infinite wisdom and glorious grace. He could still do all that he could do as God from eternity. So Christ is indeed most willing and able to help us. And if we do not see his glory in this, it is because we have no faith in us.
But to unbelievers and the disobedient who stumble at the Word, Christ is a ‘stone of stumbling and a rock of offence.’ They cannot, they will not see the glory of Christ’s infinite willingness to humble himself to take our nature upon him. They have no desire to see it. They hate and despise it. It is offensive to them. So they choose to deny completely that he is God rather than admit that he humbled himself for our sakes. Rather than admit this glory, they will allow him no glory. They say he was merely a man and that this was his only glory. This is the principle of darkness and unbelief which works so effectively in the minds of many. They think it absurd that one person can be both man and God. So they see no glory in Christ and find no refuge or safety in him. But it is just here that faith triumphs against them. Faith sees that to be a glorious sanctuary which unbelief cannot see.
So I exhort you to spend much time meditating on the glory of Christ in his humiliation. Unless we are diligent in this, it is impossible to keep our faith steadily fixed on Christ or be ready for self-denial and taking up our cross, for the humbling of Christ is the chief motive for this duty (Phil. 2:5-8). And no man denies himself rightly, who does not consider the self-denial of the Son of God. For what are the things of which we are to deny ourselves? Is it not our goods, our rights and freedoms, our relations and our lives? They are perishing things from which, whether we like it or not, death will separate us. But the glory of Christ is forever. Believers will never be separated from it. So if you find yourself at any time unwilling to part with this world, then lift up your eyes and by faith behold the glory Christ who ‘made himself of no reputation.’
Slightly edited from The Glory of Christ,, the abridged and edited edition by R. J. K. Law, printed by Banner of Truth. This book is an excellent introduction to John Owen for modern readers. We highly recommend it!
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