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Post by Admin on Mar 13, 2024 13:22:46 GMT -5
Sermon Notes from Kit Culver.The Inbreaking Kingdom - The Incarnation
The Inbreaking of the Kingdom – And the Word Became Flesh
I. Introduction
1. As we enter the New Testament and the “fullness of the times,” we’re immediately confronted with the incarnation and its contribution to the biblical doctrine of the Messiah.
2. Historically, the so-called “christological controversies” of early church history focused on the divine-human dynamics in Jesus’ person and nature, but more from a philosophical than a biblical standpoint. That is, they approached these issues in the abstract (Jesus as “God” and Jesus as “man”) rather than in terms of the Bible’s perspective and presentation.
The christological controversies arose out of early trinitarian considerations and disputes that focused on the nature and extent of Jesus’ divinity and His place in the Godhead. If true deity is ascribed to Him, how does this implicate His humanness? And how do the divine and human natures exist and function within the same human person? In general, these controversies reflected concern for the primacy either of biblical monotheism (one true God), or the Scripture’s presentation of Jesus as a truly human son of Adam, Abraham, and David.
a. The Ebionites were an early Jewish Christian sect that held to a quasi-Jewish form of messianism. They were “adoptionists,” maintaining that Jesus was a man whom God uniquely adopted as His son and empowered with His Spirit for his messianic work.
b. Docetism was another early belief structure in Christianity. It paralleled the Gnostic philosophy that preceded the Christian era in the Greco-Roman world. There were differences among its adherents, but all Docetists denied Jesus’ true, physical humanness.
c. Somewhat later, Monarchianism gained a following among Christians. In its two forms, Monarchianism emphasized the absolute unity of God. The one form held that Father, Son, and Spirit are three modes of operation of the one God; the other viewed Jesus as a man who was progressively “deified” by adoption and God’s transforming work in Him.
d. Such controversies concerning Jesus’ divine and human natures led to later doctrines and disputes regarding the relationship between the two natures and Jesus’ person. One view, often associated with Nestorius, maintained Jesus’ full deity and humanity, but argued that these two natures remained distinct and don’t comprise one unified human person; two unique natures cannot form one hypostasis (i.e., a hypostatic union). Others argued that Jesus’ human nature was absorbed by His divine nature, while others maintained that the two natures merged to form a unique, blended nature, so that Jesus’ human existence was entirely distinct; He wasn’t a man in the same way as other human beings are.
3. The Council of Chalcedon (451 A.D.) sought to establish a biblical doctrine of Christ (christology) according to His two natures existing in one person, but it didn’t put an end to the controversies. Indeed, disputes regarding the doctrine of incarnation continue to this day.
But again, what is important to note here is that historical christological controversies and doctrinal formulations in the Church have tended to reflect and work within the abstract philosophical categories of deity (“God”) and humanness (“man”), rather than in the way the Scriptures perceive and interact with these truths.
II. The Scripture’s Perspective on Incarnation
A. Purpose and Promise
1. The incarnation presupposes and serves God’s formation of man as image-son (priestly viceregent) on behalf of the creation. That design lay behind God’s protoevangelium pledge in Eden, which led to Abraham’s election as God’s human agent of blessing for all mankind.
2. Because of man’s role as mediator of the Creator/creation relationship, human alienation brought the curse of alienation and death on the wider creation. Thus God’s election of Abraham and his family looked beyond mankind and its future. Man was the source of the creation’s calamity, and so it was to be with its restoration. In scriptural terms, the creation’s destiny hinged on Israel’s faithfulness to its election and calling, and yet the covenant people couldn’t be the remedy for the creational curse that they themselves were subject to.
3. This human obligation and quandary underlies the solution the Scriptures disclose: God was committed to a human deliverer/restorer, and this required a man who could prevail over the curse, but so as to achieve that same outcome for the human race and the creation under human rule. This man would have to be a true image-son, but as a first fruit. Given God’s covenant oath to Abraham, this person would have to be Israel in truth, thereby enabling Israel to fulfill its mandate to be the instrument of mankind’s reconciliation and ingathering.
4. The OT scriptures progressively build this case, even as they tell Israel’s story within God’s purposes. Isaiah’s four servant songs (42:1-7, 49:1-7, 50:4-9, 52:13-53:12) provide a key focal point in this unfolding story. These poems disclose and celebrate a servant “Israel” whom the prophet presented as the central figure in Yahweh’s return to Zion to deliver and restore Abraham’s family, that they should fulfill their covenant calling on behalf of the nations. Each of the four poems makes its own distinct contribution to the servant depiction, but in a progressive and cumulative way as described in the previous section.
5. Yahweh was adamant that Israel’s desolation and exile would not be the last word. He would arise as their Redeemer, just as He had done with their forefathers in Egypt. A second exodus awaited Abraham’s children, but of an entirely different sort. For this time they needed to be delivered, not from another nation’s power, but their own spiritual adultery. Their exile was the result of covenant unfaithfulness, so that this new redemption would require forgiveness, cleansing and reconciliation. But Yahweh would indeed deal with this enslaving power, just as He had done with Egypt’s pharaoh. The servant songs, then, clarify how He would do this.
6. Isaiah closely associates this servant “Israel” (who represents the true Abrahamic “seed”) with Yahweh Himself (cf. 52:13 with 6:1, 57:15), but stops short of directly indicating the phenomenon of incarnation (7:14 arguably comes the closest with the sign of Immanuel). What is clear is that this servant would embody faithful Israel and be Yahweh’s human instrument, through the power of His Spirit, for redeeming Israel for the sake of the world.
B. Fulfillment and Result
Israel’s scriptures don’t speak of incarnation as such, and addressing this doctrine in terms of the abstract categories of deity and humanity only further isolates it from them. In contrast to the traditional formulations and historical arguments regarding natures and persons, the Scripture
treats the incarnation as the God of Israel taking up Israel’s life and circumstance in Himself.
1. God’s goal for His creation was sacred space: being present and manifest in His creation in and through intimate communion with His image-children. Israel’s existence underscored that goal, and His sanctuary in their presence signified that intimacy as the place of Father Son encounter
– the place where heaven and earth converged.
2. But Israel shared in the creation’s alienation, and thus Yahweh pledged a day when He would remedy that condition and finally establish the perfect intimacy He intended. He issued that promise to Israel, but it pertained to the whole creation. Reconciling Israel had its goal in reconciling all things to Himself.
3. And increasingly over time, the prophets seemed to concentrate that work in a particular Israelite who is the promised son of David. This individual would be the focal point in Yahweh’s return to Zion to redeem and restore Israel, and he would embody Israel as the true son of Abraham in whom Israel would return to God in order to fulfill their election and calling on behalf of the world. This “Israel” would embody both sides of the covenant and its obligations, and so embody all of God’s will, words and works. Hence John’s declaration that Jesus is the Word become flesh.
4. By embodying both covenant parties and fulfilling the covenant relationship from both sides (Isa. 42:1-7, 49:1-10), this Israelite would bring covenant Father and son together in truth and righteousness in Himself. He would be the point of divine-human encounter and communion, and this is why Yahweh’s prophets connected him with His sanctuary.
a. This association is perhaps most pronounced in Isaiah’s prophecy, who spoke of all people streaming to Yahweh’s sanctuary on Mount Zion, and then declared that the messianic son of David was to be that rallying point (cf. Isa. 2:1-3, 11:1-13). He further hinted that Yahweh would make this messianic figure the firm cornerstone in His sanctuary – a stone upon which His “house” would be built. * 28:16; cf. Zech. 6:9-15
b. Not surprisingly, then, the apostle John treated Jesus’ birth as the promised restoration of Yahweh’s sanctuary and the return of His divine glory to again fill it. * John 1:14-18
5. The sanctuary was the place of divine-human encounter, and so the preeminent image for incarnation. Indeed, the incarnation fulfilled the sanctuary and its role in God’s purposes, but in a way that infinitely transcends it: The sanctuary brought God and Israel together spatially, but incarnation has brought them together ontologically.
a. Yahweh returned to Israel by taking up Israel’s life and lot in Himself; the birth of the Israelite, Jesus of Nazareth, was God forever humanizing Himself. That is, incarnation involved God’s determination in self-giving love to have His own existence forever bound up in human existence. Thus the doctrine of a triune God is the doctrine of the God who has assumed human existence into Himself.
b. So also the incarnation was the beginning of the true human existence for which man was created: man as image-son bearing and manifesting the life and likeness of God, such that seeing the son is seeing the Father. * cf. John 5:1-23, 10:22-38, 14:1-11, 15:18-25, etc.
6. In the incarnation, then, God has fully revealed Himself and His human creature. Jesus is God unto man and man unto God, and that for the sake of God’s all-comprehending design for His creation. Hence Paul’s christology – Eph. 1:1-3:12; Col. 1:15-20, 2:9-10
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Post by Admin on Mar 13, 2024 13:23:28 GMT -5
The Return of the King – A Biblical Theology of Incarnation
1. Incarnation must be understood, not in the abstract categories of deity and humanity, but in biblical terms as the return of Yahweh to Zion, with all that theme encompasses and implies. As such, incarnation is the substantial fulfillment of the great promise, hope and longing developed in Israel’s scriptures, showing that common notions about it must be reworked.
a. Christians are commonly taught to understand the incarnation in terms of a suitable atoning sacrifice. That is, only a human being can stand in the place of another human, but only a perfect human being can atone for the sins of other people. Thus Jesus needed to be both divine (hence sinless) and human in order to pay the penalty for sinners.
b. Incarnation does pertain to atonement for sin, but atonement in the Scripture isn’t about legal satisfaction in the way people typically conceive it. That is to say, God’s intent wasn’t to exact payment for the debt and guilt associated with violating legal demands, but to see His human creatures conformed to their created nature and purpose. His goal
wasn’t justice under “law,” but a human race of faithful image-children.
c. Sin is deviation from the truth, so that sin for human beings is deviation from who and what they are according to God’s creative design and intent for them. And God’s intent was that humans should be one Spirit with Him, manifesting and administering His life, mind and loving will in the earth as regal and priestly image-children, so that seeing the children is seeing the Father. Sin, then, exists when a person’s life testifies of himself.
d. Atonement for sin, then, is about righting what is wrong; it is vindicating and establishing what is true by exposing, condemning and overcoming falseness. Put simply, atonement is concerned with a thing’s conformity to the truth of its created nature and function, not
its compliance with a legal standard.
2. This is precisely the reason that Jesus’ atoning work was cosmic in its scope, a truth that escapes many Christians and confounds conventional soteriological formulations that focus on human salvation as the issue in atonement.
a. Indeed, cosmic atonement makes no sense when atonement is understood in terms of legal satisfaction, for the non-human creation isn’t guilty of violating divine commandments or legal standards.
b. But if atonement addresses “sin,” biblically defined as deviation from the truth, then it must be universal in its intent and effect. For human sin – man’s deviation from the truth of himself by insisting upon self-definition and self-direction – subjected the wider creation to deviation and falseness (Gen. 3:17), since its proper (truthful) existence depends on the Creator’s image-children fulfilling their created design. In the nature of
the case, human atonement implies cosmic atonement, so that human renewal entails creational renewal (cf. Isaiah 11:1-12, 65:17-66:24; Col. 1:19-20; Rev. 21:1-5; etc.).
3. And so, while it is true that incarnation is the basis and means of atonement, the relationship between them is significantly different from what many Christians (and soteriological formulations) understand. Atonement does concern remediation of sin, but as remediation involves reconciliation unto the realization of shalom the Creator/creature and intercreational intimacy and harmony – God as “all in all” – for which He created the cosmos.
Indeed, this intent in the incarnation is evident in the very fact of it. Incarnation isn’t some abstract conjoining of the divine and human natures, but the Creator-God taking up in Himself the existence of His alienated image-bearers.
a. In scriptural parlance, incarnation involves the God of Israel returning to Zion to liberate His people from their captivity in exile (which resulted from and expressed their alienation from Him due to covenant unfaithfulness) and restore them to Himself for the sake of their covenant calling and mission in the world.
b. Incarnation is the Creator taking up human existence under the creational curse, not to vindicate legal justice, but to vanquish the curse and heal and renew His creation by becoming one with it in and through man as He intended from the beginning.
4. Understanding atonement in this way shows that the incarnation should not be perceived as the first step in the process leading to atonement at Calvary, but itself the very substance of atonement. For by incarnation, God achieved the comprehensive and everlasting intimacy between Himself and man that was His primary goal in creating an image-bearer.
a. This incarnational atonement, then, was worked out in Jesus’ life through His faithful sonship, which involved His continual and faultless contradiction of His Adamic humanness (“likeness of sinful flesh” – Rom. 8:3) in perfect submission and communion with His Father. This is what the Hebrews writer meant when he insisted that the manJesus “was tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.” * Heb. 4:15; cf. 2:1-18
b. This atonement reached its apex at Calvary, where Jesus confronted and condemned Adamic humanness, not as it existed in His own person, but in the human race as a whole. For there, on the cross, the full extent and power of Adamic contradiction, hostility and opposition – human “sin” – directed itself against Jesus, which He embraced in order to put it to death in His own death. By taking up Adam’s calamity and resolving it in Himself, Jesus, the Son of Man, fulfilled His own calling to be the New Adam.Hence Paul’s concise summary: “What Torah (God’s prescription of sonship) could not do,
weak as it was through the flesh (Adamic humanness), God did, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and with regard to sin, He condemned sin in the flesh of Jesus.”
5. The incarnation, then, was both the substance and the effectual source of divine-human reconciliation, and so also of Creator-creation
reconciliation. Stated in other terms, the incarnation was the very substance of the recovery and perfection of sacred space, poignantly evident in the Scripture’s use of sanctuary imagery to depict it. Yahweh had pledged to return to a restored and fitted sanctuary in order to dwell evermore
with His faithful image-children; the incarnation was both the fulfillment of that promise and the revelation of just what He meant by this promise.
a. He would return to His covenant people, not by again inhabiting a physical sanctuary in their midst, but by taking up their existence – their election and their failing – in Himself.
b. He would become Israel for the sake of Israel, in order that Israel (the Abrahamic “seed”) should become Israel in truth and fulfill its calling to bring His blessing to all people.
c. And by becoming Israel in truth, the incarnate Yahweh became man in truth – man as image-son manifesting the Creator-God in His creation.
d. And by making man truly human in Himself, Yahweh was addressing the creation’s alienation. Human violation brought creational alienation, so that human reconciliation and renewal signaled the same outcome for the non-human creation (Col. 1:19-20). Thus the incarnation was the beginning and sure pledge, not just of a renewed human race, but a renewed heavens and earth. * Rom. 8:1-23 Israel’s prophets obliquely connected Yahweh’s dwelling place with the messianic figure, and the New Testament writers picked up this connection and made it explicit and concrete.
1) Jesus is the fulfillment of Jacob’s dream at Bethel. * cf. Gen. 28:10-22; John 1:43-51
2) So Jesus fulfilled in Himself Yahweh’s promise to restore and return to His temple. He made this clear by His words (John 2:13-21, 4:19-26, 14:1-23), but also by His shocking and scandalous actions in taking to Himself the priestly prerogative that belonged to the temple and its ministration, most notably the prerogative to deal with sin (Mark 2:1-12).
3) Jesus’ actions during the Feast of Booths further underscore this (John 7:1-53). At the feast’s climax, when the high priest poured out water in the sight of the assembly waving palm branches and praying the hosanna of Psalm 118, Jesus stood and loudly proclaimed that all who believe in Him would see living water flow from their innermost being. - He was echoing Israel’s prophets, who spoke of life-giving water flowing out of Yahweh’s temple in the day when He returned to Zion to cleanse and renew His people and His creation and establish His everlasting kingdom (ref. Ezek. 47:1-12;
Joel 3:16-21; Zech. 14:1-11).
- But He was locating this promise and its fulfillment in Himself, claiming that the lifegiving Spirit was going to cause “living water” to spring up in the very core of His followers’ being because they drank of Him (v. 37). Jesus was declaring Himself to be the source of the “river of the water of life,” and therefore the true sanctuary. * cf. also Rev. 21:22, 22:1-2
4) And if Jesus is the true sanctuary, He is the fulfillment of the law of the central sanctuary, which prescribed to the sons of Israel that they meet with Yahweh in the place where He determined to put His name (Deut. 12:1-14). This requirement was the reason for the question posed by the Samaritan woman in John’s gospel (4:19-24), and Jesus’ answer showed that He was replacing Jerusalem and its temple as the place of divine-human encounter, and not just for Israel, but for all men. * cf. also Isaiah 2:1-3, 11:1-13
6. And if the incarnation is the essence and beginning of God’s recovery of sacred space, it is the pinnacle revelation of His ultimate design for His creation. And it reveals that design by embodying it: The incarnation, with its own destiny in resurrection, was the first-fruits of God’s new creation that would see all things “summed up” (i.e., attain their ultimate glory) in the glorified Son. * Eph. 1:9-10; Col. 1:15-19; cf. also Rom. 8:1-25; 1 Cor. 15:20-28
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Post by Admin on Mar 13, 2024 14:08:33 GMT -5
On Earth As It Is In Heaven – A Practical Theology of Incarnation
1. Beginning with the creation account, God continued to demonstrate His intent for His creation to become sacred space in and through human mediation and administration. The incarnation amplified this truth by revealing the nature of the divine-human relationship at the center of this plan: God would be fully and manifestly present and operative in His creation by joining Himself to His human creature in and through Jesus, the singular Image Son. Thus Paul’s declaration that God’s work in the world is directed toward “summing up” everything in His creation in His Son unto His ultimate goal to be “all in all.”
The incarnation underscores the truth that God is known in His creation in terms of His essential relation to man, even as man is known in terms of his essential relation to God. This truth, in turn, points to a crucial corollary that is commonly missed by Christians: the living God is fully disclosed in and through incarnation. This means that one must begin with Jesus as the New Testament reveals Him in order to rightly discern the God of the Scriptures.
a. The theological task is typically approached in the opposite fashion. That is, the process usually starts with developing a catalog of attributes and qualities of deity that are ascribed to the God of the scriptures, and then seeking to impose that definition on the person of Jesus as Himself “fully God.” The historical christological controversies generally reflect this approach, as do other contemporary doctrinal discussions, as for
instance those concerning kenosis and the omniscience of the incarnate Son.
b. But incarnation – and the Scriptures – insist that one obtains a true knowledge of the living God from knowing Jesus the Messiah. Rather than seeking to impose abstract divine attributes onto Jesus in order to vindicate His true deity, we need to instead perceive and discern God through the process of rightly discerning the man Jesus. However strange or shocking this may seem, this is precisely what Jesus meant when He insisted that seeing Him is seeing His Father. Notably, it was John who recorded this statement (John 14:8-9), which is consistent with his intent to demonstrate that the incarnate Messiah is the exegesis (interpretation) of the living God. * 1:14-18; cf. Col. 1:15, 2:9
2. Incarnation is concerned with God unto man, but also man unto God – and not just in terms of communication and outward relation, but ontological union. Again, this concept is central to the Scripture’s sanctuary motif and the way it has been fulfilled in Jesus.
a. As He pledged, the God of Israel has once again established His habitation among His people, not in a physical structure in their midst, but by taking up their human existence in the man Jesus of Nazareth. As the incarnate Word, Jesus is the true sanctuary of the living God. He is the man in whom God’s design for human beings has been realized; He is the true image-son whose relationship with the Creator-Father is determined and
defined by the absolute intimacy of “I in you and you in me.”
b. But what Jesus fulfilled in Himself was for the sake of all people. He became the Last Adam by putting to death Adamic humanness in order to inaugurate a new human race in Himself – a family of image-children sharing His life and likeness. Incarnation, then, is the explanation for how Yahweh intended to fulfill His promise to gather all the nations to His sanctuary to commune with Him there. * cf. Isaiah 2:1-4; Zech. 2, 8:19-23 with
John 12:23-32, 14:1-23; Eph. 2; 1 Pet. 2:1-10
c. This underscores that Jesus is not merely an example to be followed, but the very substance of human existence. He uniquely embodies true humanness – the humanness for which God created man, so that authentic human existence is a matter of incorporation into Him, the incarnate and glorified image-son, not imitating Him. Jesus is Man unto mankind, but as Last Adam; He is the first-fruit of God’s new creation.
3. And so, rightly understanding the nature and outcome of incarnation puts the whole matter of personal salvation in an entirely different light.
a. Again, salvation is typically viewed in forensic terms as God addressing a person’s violation of their obligation of obedience to His revealed standard (“law”). To be “saved” is to be cleansed from the guilt and defilement of disobedience, forgiven, and brought into a right standing with God. So the concept of “new birth” or regeneration is generally understood in terms of new capacity and resource for obedience, not ontological union
with God – being taken up in God’s own life so as to become “one spirit” with Him through union with the resurrected Messiah through His indwelling Spirit. * 1 Cor. 6:17
b. But if personal salvation involves becoming “one spirit” with the triune God, it involves the loss of one’s independent existence. To be taken up in the life of God by His Spirit is to be joined in that same Spirit to all other Christians. In Paul’s words, the Messiah is one, but as He has many members unified to become one body by sharing in the one Spirit. * 1 Cor. 12:12-13; cf. Eph. 4:1-6
c. And given the preeminent place of the concept of sanctuary in God’s design for His creation as it has been fulfilled in the incarnate Messiah, it’s not surprising that this same imagery is employed in relation to the individual and corporate aspects of salvation:
Believers are built together as living stones to form the one dwelling place of the living God (Eph. 2:11-22; 1 Pet. 2:4-5). This is a radical departure from the personal and individualistic perspective that characterizes contemporary evangelism and the way people think about their own salvation and its goal.
4. The incarnation is critical to understanding the nature and goal of personal salvation (what it means to be “saved”), and so it is with the matter of sanctification. Where salvation is understood in forensic terms, so also is sanctification (when defined as the process of living out and progressing in one’s salvation). Put simply, if salvation entails entrusting oneself in faith to the One who has perfectly kept God’s law, then sanctification involves devoting oneself to that same sort of obedience, but now in the power of the Spirit. Thus Calvin’s “third use” of the “Moral Law” and Reformed Theology’s emphasis on its central principles of “law” and “gospel” for Christian sanctification as well as evangelism.
But if salvation involves being taken up in God’s life through union with Christ by His Spirit (Eph. 2:1-6; Col. 3:1-4), then sanctification is the process of perfecting that ontological union and God’s goal in effecting it. Rightly viewed in terms of incarnation, sanctification is concerned with christiformity: conformity to the person of the resurrected and glorified Messiah, not increasing conformity to a divine standard. And conformity to Christ is full participation in His consummate, glorified human existence through the transforming work of His Spirit. The resurrected and enthroned Messiah is man as God intends – man as His regal and priestly image-son animated, informed, and led by His Spirit. But again, this glorified man is the Last Adam, so that His destiny and inheritance are ordained for all of God’s image-children. * ref. 1 Cor. 15:35-49; 2 Cor. 3:17-18; also Rom. 8:9-39; Heb. 2
a. From this perspective, it is clear that Christian “works” are neither salvific (contributing to one’s salvation) nor testamentary in the sense that upright behavior and lifestyle are sure evidence of one’s salvation. Christians are indeed called to “good works” and their faith is attested by them, but as those works are the outflow of their renewal in Christ.
b. Put simply, Christian “good works” are the manifestation of Christ’s life and the continuation of His work in the world in the power of His Spirit (ref. Eph. 2:8-9 within the larger context). They are the works of christiformity, and so affirm new creation and serve its fruitfulness as the work of God in and through His faithful image-children. Thus they are nothing more than the Christian living into who he really is. Hence Paul’s
characteristic rebuke, “Don’t you know who you are?” Christians aren’t called to behave properly, they are called to be true – to be who they are. * Rom. 6:1-16; 1 Cor. 3:16-23, 6:1-20, 9:1-27; cf. also 2 Cor. 6:14-18; Gal. 3:1-9, 4:19-31, 5:18-26; Phil. 3:1-21; etc.
5. Thus incarnation informs and directs Christian mission. The incarnation, lived out in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, reveals God’s loving commitment to His creation (John 3:16-17) and the destiny He has appointed for it (Eph. 1:8-9). The Father sent the Son into the world in
view of His determination to flood the earth with His loving presence and wise and just rule, and Jesus then entrusted His own commission to His disciples; He would carry out His mission in the world – the mission first covenanted to Abraham and then fleshed out in Israel’s history – through those in whom He now lives through His Spirit (cf. John 20:19-23 with 14:18-20, 15:12-16:15; ref. also Matthew 28:18-20). Indeed, Jesus punctuated this core truth with His “high-priestly prayer” that was the climax of His final instruction to His disciples before His death. * John 17:1-26
a. This, then, shows that Christian mission isn’t about “soul-winning,” but the ministration and cultivation in the world of new creation and its fruits. This work clearly involves proclaiming to people the “good news” of God’s triumph in Christ, but not as a salvation formula for getting them into heaven. Rather, the gospel proclaims Christ’s lordship as king over the inaugurated kingdom of God’s new creation (Acts 17:1-7). Thus the gospel
calls people to forsake the old order and its pattern of humanness defined by the creational curse and become truly human by embracing life in the Last Adam.
This is what Jesus meant when He challenged His disciples to take up their cross and follow Him. He wasn’t calling them to an ascetic lifestyle, but to follow Him in condemning and opposing Adamic humanness as He had done by His faithful sonship that was soon to culminate at Calvary. He was calling them to self-denial that consists in renouncing and forsaking one’s pseudo-life under the curse to find one’s authentic life – the life for which the Creator created him. * ref. Mat. 10:34-39, 16:21-25; Luke 9:18-24; cf. Paul’s instruction to the churches in Col. 2:20-23 and 1 Tim. 4:1-6
b. And if the Christian mission consists in the “good works” of new creation (Eph. 2:10), it pertains to the non-human creation as much as the human. The gospel proclaims Jesus’ lordship over all creation; in Him Yahweh has taken up His everlasting reign as King over all the earth (Isaiah 52:7-10; ref. also Isaiah 61:1-11 with Luke 4:14-21), and this obligates His subjects to uphold and administer His lordship in every arena of life.
Indeed, vice-regency over the earth is precisely the role for which man was created. Thus Christian mission cannot be reduced to “spiritual” concerns, for the Spirit who imparts salvation is the creator Spirit whose work of re-creation is directed toward all creation being renewed, gathered up, and glorified in the Image-Son.
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Post by Admin on Mar 13, 2024 14:58:59 GMT -5
The Work of Incarnation – Jesus as Light and Life
I. Introduction
1. The promise of the messianic kingdom was the promise of the recovery of sacred space: Yahweh’s return to redeem and regather exiled Israel and again dwell in their midst as their covenant Lord and Father with the covenanted son of David ruling on His behalf.
2. Abraham’s descendants had waited for more than five centuries for Yahweh to arise and accomplish this work, and now He had done so in Jesus of Nazareth, but in a most unexpected way: All of Yahweh’s promises of return, redemption, renewal, ingathering and kingdom had converged on Him, with incarnation being the very essence of their fulfillment and the basis for their full fruition.
3. The incarnation is closely associated with the sanctuary theme, but the gospel writers also describe and interpret it in terms of other images and themes, including light and life.
II. The Work of Incarnation
A. Jesus as the True Light
1. This theme is central in John’s gospel in particular, and comes to the forefront at the outset in his prologue (1:1-18). From that introduction, John referred to it repeatedly throughout his account. * 3:1-21, 5:33-36, 8:12, 9:1-5 with 9:35-41, 11:1-10, 12:20-46
2. Considered as a whole, John’s use of light imagery provides important insight into the incarnation and its role in God’s designs.
a. First, light is a metaphor for God Himself, but particularly as He exists in relation to His creation (cf. Psa. 4:6, 104:2). John stated that God is light, but as a way of expressing His absolute integrity and truthfulness. He is truly and fully who He presents Himself to be, so that there is no darkness – no obscurity, deception or falseness – in Him (1 John 1:5).
b. Light illumines and discloses, and so the God who is light discloses Himself to His creation – and most especially to His human image-children – in complete accord with who He is. This is the sense in which God’s words and actions are synonymous with His person; to discern God’s words and acts is to discern Him in truth. In terms of the imagery of light, God’s words and deeds give light to men as conveying to them the God who is light. * cf. Psalm 18:28, 36:7-9, 43:3-4, 89:14-15; Isaiah 51:1-5; Micah 7:7-9
c. This truth underlies John’s understanding of incarnation. If God’s word (expressed truth) is synonymous with who He is, then the “word become flesh” is God’s absolute self disclosure; incarnation is the full and final articulation of the living God and the truth asit is in Him. Thus John declared that Jesus is the true light that has come into the world.
d. And as the incarnate logos, Jesus is God’s fully enacted word. He is God’s disclosed truth acted out in time and space such that it assumed actual, realized existence (ref. John 14:6, 18:37). And crucially, this enacted word is enacted human word, both in its substance and its object. Jesus is God’s word manifest in human existence, but as “spoken” to human beings for their sake, and so ultimately for the sake of the whole creation.
“In Christ, what God communicates to man is not something, but his very self. This is distinct from all other acts of God. This is God’s unique act, his reality-in-the-act, and apart from this act there is no God at all. In the act of creation, God does not communicate himself, but creates a reality wholly distinct from himself, but here in Jesus Christ, God acts in such a way that he is himself in his act, and what he acts he is, and what he is he acts… Jesus Christ as act of God in humanity is identical with God’s own person. Christ Jesus is identical in his human existence and life with the self-giving of God to and for men and women, and so in Jesus it is with the operation of God himself for our salvation that we have to do. Thus we must think of the person of Christ and the work of Christ as completely one, so that he is in himself what he reveals of the Father, and he is in himself what he does all through his life and on the cross in reconciliation. It is only because Jesus is that in himself, and lives it out in himself, that he reveals the Father and reconciles the world.” (Torrance, Incarnation)
3. But as stressed previously, incarnation specifically involves the God of Israel taking up Israel’s existence in Himself in order that Israel should become Israel in truth (cf. Isa. 40:1-11 with Luke 3). And Yahweh’s goal in reconstituting Israel in Himself was that Israel should fulfill its servant vocation on behalf of mankind with a view to the creation’s renewal.
a. The God who is light embodied Israel as true son, disciple, servant and witness that Israel should become the light of the nations and so fulfill their election as Abraham’s offspring. * ref. Isa. 42:1-6, 49:1-6, 51:1-6, 59:1-60:3; cf. also Luke 2:25-32; John 8:12
b. Israel’s restoration would see them become Yahweh’s light into the world, but as He had Himself first returned to Zion to shine upon her and deliver her from the darkness of alienation and exile. Isaiah spoke in this way, but so did others among Israel’s prophets. * ref. Isa. 9:1-7, 58:8-11; Micah 7:7-9; Zech. 14:1-10; cf. Luke 1:76-79; Matt. 4:12-17
4. All of these considerations highlight the fundamental relational dynamic in the Scripture’s use of light imagery. Light dispels darkness and illumines, but for the sake of intimacy.
a. The introduction of light was the beginning of God’s creative process. The Genesis account introduces the Spirit as “brooding” over the deep in the context of the dark and empty chaos of the newly established earth. Thus light was the first point of remedying the earth’s primeval state (disordered and empty), and the Creator-Spirit accomplished this work, not as a distant and detached power, but as intimately present in the world.
b. Light comes to the forefront again in the Egyptian redemption and exodus episode. Yahweh’s light embraced Israel while He plagued the rest of the land of Egypt with paralyzing darkness (Exod. 10:21-23). And when He had crushed Egypt and its gods, Yahweh led His covenant children toward His sanctuary land with the light of His presence in a pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night (Exod. 13:17-22).
c. And having directed Israel to build Him a sanctuary, Yahweh took up His place in their midst in the form of His shekinah – His radiant glory-presence – in the Holy of Holies. And on the other side of the curtain, the perpetual light of the lampstand testified of the endless day – the complete absence of darkness – that defines the realm of Yahweh’s habitation. * ref. Exod. 25:31-37, 27:20-21, 40:33-38; cf. also Rev. 21:22-27
d. Eventually, Israel’s infidelity led Yahweh to depart from His sanctuary and then destroy every facet of the Israelite kingdom, including His own dwelling place (Ezek. 10-11).
The Jews later rebuilt the Jerusalem temple, but without the Lord’s return; the next five centuries would find Israel dwelling in the darkness of exile and subjugation and waiting for Yahweh’s light to again dawn upon them. * Hag. 2:1-9; Mal. 3:1-4; cf. also Zech. 4
e. The Lord had promised that this day would come, but it came in a way that Israel could never have imagined. Yahweh returned to Zion by incarnation, so that the light of His presence was in a human being. In John’s words, this was God’s true light in the world that illumines all people, so that everyone who beholds this light and embraces it becomes himself a “son of light.” * John 1:4-13, 3:14-21, 8:12, 11:5-10, 12:23-36
f. Jesus was God’s light in the world, which itself spoke to His identity as embodying Israel and fulfilling their calling to be the light of the nations. He was Israel unto Israel, and thus the focus of Jesus’ exhortations: returning to Yahweh in reconciliation and renewal involved becoming Israel in truth by following Him. * ref. the Sermon on the Mount
B. Jesus as the True Life
1. Jesus and the New Testament writers closely associated Him with the themes of light and life, and these two themes are themselves closely related. Both were introduced in the creation event, with light being the first and foundational manifestation of God’s work of ordering and filling. Light, in turn, enabled the introduction of life. The Genesis account indicates this relation, and the earth’s living systems explicitly demonstrate it.
2. That same relationship between light and life is present in the rest of the preparatory salvation history. In particular, light is associated with God’s presence and provision, while darkness – the absence of light – is a symbol for death, desolation and chaos as they reflect God’s relational distance, whether in judgment or actual withdrawal.
3. Darkness, desolation and death emblemized Israel’s alienation and exile, so that God’s promise of deliverance and reconciliation was the promise of light and life returning to His people. * cf. Isa. 8:16-9:3, 42:1-16, 43:1-21, 49:1-10, 59:1-60:3; Ezek. 37; Dan. 12:1-3
4. The gospels take up this theme as they announce Yahweh’s return and restorative work in His messianic son. But, whereas Israel tended to view this renewed life in terms of national renewal, God’s intent was human renewal at the essential level: When He brought life out of deliver them from desolation and death, not by liberating them from Gentile powers, but from the enslaving and destroying power of sin. This redemption would transcend earthly circumstances, so much so that it would not address or alter them. Israel’s Messiah had come to defeat the dark, enslaving powers that empowered Rome and all human enmity, and He would do so by letting them do their worst; through death, He would become the Lord of life.
5. The life that Jesus came to bring, then, is life as it inheres in God Himself – the life that He intended for His image-children by taking them up in His own life through the enlivening power of His Spirit. Thus the Spirit who ordered and filled the earth with light and life did so with a view to His ultimate creative work, namely bringing forth God’s new creation that has its substance and fullness in the glorified Image-Son – the Man of the Spirit (cf. Isa. 11:1-11, 42:1-7, 61:1-11; 2 Cor. 3:1-18, 4:6) in whom is the light of life (John 1:4, 8:12), even as He is
the manifest fullness of the God who Himself is light and life. * cf. Ezek. 36:16-29, 37:1-14;
Joel 2:21-32; Micah 4:1-7 with John 1:4, 4:1-14, 5:1-40, 6:22-63, 11:1-27, 12:20-25, 14:6
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Post by Admin on Mar 13, 2024 15:02:44 GMT -5
The Work of Incarnation – Jesus as the True Israel
I. Introduction
1. The New Testament upholds and exalts the doctrine of incarnation, not as an abstract theological concept, but as the way in which God brought into actual existence all that He had been revealing and promising throughout Israel’s long and agonizing history.
2. Put simply, the incarnation amounted to Yahweh returning to Zion to end Israel’s exile, heal its alienation, renew the covenant relationship, and again take up His place in their midst. This return and work were the nation’s expectation and longing; what Israel never imagined was that their God would do this by taking up their failed existence in Himself.
3. Thus the Scripture’s treatment of incarnation isn’t concerned with philosophical or metaphysical issues, but with the profound and shocking way that the God of Abraham had determined to see Abraham’s “seed” fulfill their election and calling on behalf of the world. Israel’s God would cause Israel to become Israel by Himself embodying Israel.
4. Yahweh had given the children of Israel five centuries to ponder how the dead and desiccated bones of the covenant household could be renewed to life and full vitality. He’d pledged to do it (Ezek. 37), but such an outcome must have seemed utterly beyond hope.
5. This hope and the divine promise behind it are the context for the incarnation, evident in the way the four gospel writers approached their task of documenting the “Christ event.”
II. Jesus as the True Israel
A. Jesus’ Genealogy
1. Matthew and Luke provided accounts of Jesus’ birth and genealogy, whereas Mark opened his gospel with the ministry of John the Baptist and Jesus’ baptism, and John began with the eternal Logos and the scheme and purpose of incarnation. * cf. Mat. 1:18ff; Luke 1:26ff
2. Both Matthew and Luke explicitly identified Jesus as Israel’s promised and long-awaited Messiah (ref. Mat. 1-2; Luke 1-2), but they differ in their genealogical accounts. This difference has puzzled many and caused some to question the accuracy of one or both genealogies, and even the inspiration of these two gospel records. But the differences are easily accounted for when the two accounts are examined closely.
a. First of all, the way Matthew constructed his genealogy shows that he was concerned with Jesus’ messianic credential and its regal significance. He traced Jesus’ ancestry only back to Abraham, and then through David’s regal line culminating with Joseph. Moreover, he explicitly partitioned that ancestral line into three symmetrical partitions: Abraham to David, David to the Babylonian exile, and exile to Messiah. * 1:1-17
This partitioning, together with his opening statement emphasizing Jesus’ descent from Abraham and David, makes it clear that his focus was on establishing Jesus’ status as Israel’s long-awaited messianic redeemer-king: the covenanted Son of David whom Yahweh promised would end Israel’s centuries-long exile initiated by Babylon and inaugurate and preside over the kingdom He had pledged to Abraham.
b. Luke, on the other hand, constructed his genealogy so as to highlight Jesus’ full humanness as a son of Adam. Thus he traced Jesus’ descent back through Mary rather than Joseph, stating that Jesus, the supposed son of Joseph, was actually descended from Eli (Heli), Mary’s father. In the ancient world – certainly in the Jewish world, a person’s line of descent was traced through his father, and so Luke didn’t mention Mary as Jesus’ mother, but pointed to His maternal grandfather as His most immediate male forefather.
In this way, then, Luke’s genealogy underscores two crucial truths: First, Jesus was the human son of Mary, but conceived by the Holy Spirit, not a human father (1:26-38; cf. again Mat.1:18-25); but secondly, Jesus was fully and truly human as a son of Adam, just like all other men (3:23-38). He wasn’t some sort of divine-human hybrid or quasi-human person; He fully shared the fallen Adamic humanness that defines every other human
being. Luke understood that, only in this way – by being made like His brethren in all things, could Jesus truly encounter and heal Adam’s race.
3. Taken together, Matthew’s and Luke’s genealogies provide a composite portrait of Jesus of Nazareth that lays the foundation for all that follows in their accounts of His life and work, culminating with His resurrection and ascension as the glorified regal and priestly Image Son. The two genealogies show Him to be a bona fide son of Adam, born into and bearing in Himself the curse and brokenness of the human race, but as a member of Abraham’s covenant household, and specifically the messianic offspring promised to David. Thus Matthew and Luke introduce Jesus as the Israelite in whom Israel would become Israel indeed, and so Yahweh’s vessel of renewal and ingathering for all of the earth’s families.
B. Jesus’ Baptism
Only Matthew and Luke addressed Jesus’ birth and genealogy, but all four gospel writers gave an account of Jesus’ baptism. This alone shows how significant it was in the early Church’s understanding of Jesus as Yahweh’s Messiah (ref. esp. John 3:22-36). Many Christians recognize that Jesus’ baptism laid the foundation for His public ministry, but far fewer see that episode as crucial substantiation of His incarnational role as True Israel for the sake of Israel. Indeed, Jesus’ full identification with Israel was precisely the reason for His baptism and the meaning of it.
1. But before examining that topic, it’s first important to reiterate John’s role as the Isaianic forerunner. All four evangelists take note of this, explicitly identifying John as the ambassador promised by Isaiah through whom Yahweh would prepare His people for His return to Zion to liberate, renew and regather them and establish His kingdom. * Isa. 40:1ff
This is the sense in which John’s baptism was concerned with repentance: It was a symbolic washing at the Jordan River that spoke to Israel’s need to return to Yahweh in their hearts and minds and so be prepared to receive Him when He returned to them. Israel passed through the Jordan when they entered Yahweh’s sanctuary land after He redeemed them from Egyptian exile, and so it was to be with their present exile. The Israelites who went out
to the Jordan to undergo John’s baptism understood this symbolism, and their repentance was their conscious recommitment to their God, but with the recognition that the presence of His forerunner heralded the end of their alienation. After five agonizing centuries, Yahweh was returning to them as He’d promised and they wanted to be ready to receive Him. John’s public relationship with Jesus (announcement and baptism), then, spoke to two crucial
issues: Jesus’ relationship with the God of Israel and His relationship with Israel itself.
a. With respect to Jesus’ relationship with Israel’s God, the way John identified Him (Mat. 3:11-12; Mark 1:7-8; Luke 3:15-17; John 1:19-27) showed that he recognized Jesus to be the One through whom Yahweh was returning to Zion to judge, purge and renew His people. For the forerunner’s role was to prepare Israel for Yahweh’s coming, and John pointed the people to Jesus as the “coming one” who would winnow Israel. So also he insisted that his own baptizing work had its goal in Jesus being manifested to Israel (John 1:19-31). John had come to understand that fulfilling His calling as forerunner – preparing the children of Israel to receive their returning covenant God – involved directing their attention and discernment toward the One He had sent.
b. At the same time, John’s announcement and baptism of Jesus identified Him as the messianic “son” in whom Israel’s sonship was faithfully embodied. Israel was “son of God,” empowered and led by Yahweh’s Spirit to serve Him faithfully and so make Him known in the world (a son is of his father, so that faithful sonship testifies of the father), but Israel had failed its election and vocation. Jesus would prove to be the faithful son that Israel had never been – an Israelite in whom there was no guile. * John 1:44ff These two relationships, then, which John’s ministry highlighted, speak to the reality of incarnation: Jesus, the incarnate Word, was the God of Israel returning to Zion to enact His Word by taking up in Himself Israel’s failed existence and calling as elect son on behalf of the world. Thus Jesus, the messianic servant-son, embodied God’s covenant with Israel,
fulfilling both sides of the covenant relationship in Himself. * Isa. 42:1-7, 49:1-10
2. These considerations are crucial to understanding Jesus’ own perception of His baptism, which He hinted at in His response to John’s objection (Mat. 3:13-15): “Permit it at this time; for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” This statement has puzzled multitudes of Christians who understand “righteousness” in moral and ethical terms. Indeed, they want to raise exactly the same objection that John did: It was utterly inappropriate for Jesus to undergo a baptism of repentance when He was the spotless Son of God; He had nothing to repent of. So why would He insist that He needed to be baptized to fulfill all righteousness? Did Jesus believe Himself to be in some sense an unrighteous man?
a. The dilemma immediately disappears when “righteousness” is properly defined. In its general biblical usage, righteousness speaks, not to personal morality or ethics, but conformity to what is right, with “rightness” being defined by God and His purposes and their outworking in and for His creation. Righteousness, then, speaks to integrity and faithfulness in regard to God’s will and work; put simply, it is conformity to the truth. In
that way, God shows Himself to be righteous, not by upholding a moral standard, but by upholding His commitment to accomplish what He has purposed and promised. God is righteous in that He is faithful and will not lie or change His mind.
b. So Jesus perceived His baptism as “fulfilling all righteousness,” not because He needed to repent of any sin or failing, but because He understood and was committed to His mission in the world: His Father had sent Him to take up Israel’s life and lot, and that meant showing complete solidarity with His Israelite brethren in their unfaithfulness and guilt under the covenant. The God of Israel had willed that His messianic servant should
be Israel for the sake of Israel, and so Jesus honored and fulfilled “all righteousness” when He fully yielded to this design and its process. Thus His baptism had nothing to do with His own moral standing before His God and Father, but was a critical dimension of His faithful ownership of His messianic identity and mission.
3. Jesus’ baptism was a key component of His obedience to His calling as Israel’s Messiah, and the Lord openly attested Him when He declared in the hearing of the assembled crowd that this man, Jesus of Nazareth, was His beloved and well-pleasing son. Many have viewed this pronouncement as simply God’s affirmation of Jesus’ obedient sonship, while others have detected in it an opaque reference to Jesus’ unique status as God’s incarnate Son. But the surrounding context – and especially what followed immediately after this episode – shows that God intended His words to identify Jesus to Israel as uniquely what Israel itself was supposed to be. God had chosen and consecrated the Abrahamic people to be His beloved and well-pleasing “son” for the sake of His purposes in the world, but neither the patriarchs nor their descendants had ever been able to fulfill their election and calling.
The eventual result was the Babylonian siege that left Israel in exile, alienated from their God who had abandoned His sanctuary and not returned when the temple was rebuilt. For five long centuries the Israelite people had languished in their distress and waited expectantly for Yahweh to arise and resolve their calamity as He had promised, and John’s ministration at the Jordan testified that that time was at hand: Yahweh was returning to Zion as her Redeemer to end her exile, gather her children, and renew the covenant (cf. again Isa. 40:1-11 with Mat. 3:1-3; Mark 1:1-5; Luke 3:1-6; John 1:19-23), which meant that He was raising up from within Israel a faithful servant-son for that work (so Isaiah’s four Servant Songs).
This, then, was the significance of Yahweh’s pronouncement: By identifying and affirming Jesus as He did in the context of His baptism and John’s ministration, Israel’s God was bearing witness to His people that this man was the faithful servant “Israel” through whom the reconciliation and restoration symbolized by John’s baptism would be realized. All Israel went out to John in the hope that their exile was coming to an end; Yahweh’s pronouncement reoriented and focused that hope by directing it toward Jesus.
This also explains the significance of Yahweh giving His Spirit to Jesus. This might appear puzzling viewed through the lens of Jesus’ deity; why would Jesus need the Spirit when He was “very God”? But again, Jesus’ sonship here points to His status as True Israel, and thus Yahweh’s “man of the Spirit” (cf. Isa. 42:1-7, 61:1-3 with Luke 4:14-21). He had shown solidarity with Israel by undergoing their baptism, and Yahweh affirmed this status by endowing Him with His Spirit. He had given His Spirit to Israel to empower them to fulfill their sonship through all of its trials (Isa. 63:7-14), and so it was with Jesus as He prepared to undergo Israel’s testing. Hence His baptism led directly into the wilderness. Jesus’ public interaction with John the Baptist, then, was crucially important in the outworking of His messianic calling, especially in regard to His self-presentation to Israel. First, because John was the forerunner promised by Isaiah, his interaction with Jesus associated Him with Yahweh’s return to Zion (cf. again Luke 1:68). But secondly, Jesus’ open identification with His Israelite brethren in baptism linked Him with Israel itself as Yahweh’s elect son, servant, disciple and witness. And thirdly, Yahweh’s response to Jesus’ baptism – punctuated by John’s own witness – showed that He was Israel in the way Israel had failed to be; He was the faithful servant-son ordained to be Yahweh’s agent of redemption and renewal.
All of this attested that Jesus was Israel for the sake of Israel, the One through whom Yahweh’s purposes and promises were coming to fruition. Thus the Spirit drove Him from the Jordan east into the wilderness to undertake in Himself the nation’s ancient testing. Jesus had made Himself
one with them in baptism, and now He would bear their own ordeal under a trial of faith and faithfulness – not just to succeed where they had failed, but for the sake of Israel’s renewal.
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Post by Admin on Mar 13, 2024 15:04:03 GMT -5
The Work of Incarnation – Fulfilling Israel’s Sonship
I. Introduction
1. The four gospel writers set down their own accounts of Jesus’ life and ministry, culminating with His death and resurrection, but each according to his own perspective and priorities.
2. Together they provide a composite portrait, with both shared and distinct content among them. But, at bottom, each writer was concerned to show that Jesus of Nazareth is Israel’s long-awaited Messiah. Thus all four evangelists oriented their accounts to connect Jesus’ person and work with the Scripture’s intricate and organic messianic revelation.
3. At the center of this revelation was God’s oath to Abraham that his covenant descendants would be the instrument of His restorative project in the world. This oath necessitated that the Messiah would be a son of Abraham, and Yahweh later connected him with David and his regal line. But all of this meant that Israel’s Messiah would be an Israelite, and the later writing prophets indicated that Yahweh’s design was that this Israelite would restore Israel so that Israel could fulfill its sonship on behalf of the nations and the cursed creation.
4. And because Israel’s prophets situated this messianic work within Yahweh’s pledge to return from His own self-imposed exile to liberate and restore His people, the gospel writers show that Jesus of Nazareth, who is Israel’s Messiah, embodies Yahweh’s return to Zion: He is the human embodiment of Israel’s God and His intentions, disclosures and promises. He is the incarnate Logos, but as taking up Israel’s life in order to reconstitute Israel in Himself.
5. The gospel writers recognized, and demonstrated in their own way, the reality of incarnation as Israel’s God taking up Israel’s existence, so that Jesus the Messiah, the incarnate Son, is the True Israel as the ultimate “seed” promised to Abraham and David. * Gal. 3:1-29
II. Fulfilling Israel’s Sonship – Jesus’ Wilderness Testing
The theme of Jesus as True Israel – the Israelite in whom Israel is reconstituted – is fundamental to all four gospel records, evident first in the genealogical accounts provided by Matthew and Luke, and then secondly in Jesus’ baptism. As noted previously, all four evangelists recounted Jesus’ interaction with John the Baptist and His own baptism in solidarity with Israel. The three synoptic writers, then, turned their attention to Jesus’ wilderness testing, which they indicated followed immediately after His baptism. * Mat. 4:1-11; Mark 1:12-13; Luke 4:1-13
A. General Considerations
Matthew, Mark and Luke all present Jesus as departing from the Jordan River and heading into the wilderness (most likely toward the east into what is present-day Jordan). This close chronological connection, together with the Spirit’s central role in both Jesus’ baptism and His wilderness ordeal, indicate that the two episodes must be interpreted together. Matthew and Mark recorded that the Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness after descending upon Him at His baptism (Mat. 4:1; Mark 1:12), while Luke’s language suggests that the Spirit led Jesus throughout the time of His wandering and testing (Luke 4:1). The Spirit of Yahweh who anointed and empowered Jesus for His messianic mission directed Him in executing it, and the starting point was His agonizing ordeal in the hostile wilderness.
1. The synoptic gospels show that Jesus’ baptism and testing must be interpreted together, with the Spirit as the centerpiece of both episodes. And because the Spirit’s descent accompanied Yahweh’s affirmation of Jesus as His well-pleasing son, the Spirit’s presence and leading in these two episodes must be understood in terms of Jesus’ status as God’s True Israel: His faithful son empowered, informed, and led by His Spirit (Hag. 2:4-5; Isa. 63:11). As True Israel, then, Jesus was True Man: man of the Spirit; man as God created him to be.
2. The Spirit’s descent upon Jesus and God’s pronouncement identified Him as True Israel, and this suggests that God intended His forty-day testing to correspond to Israel’s forty-year ordeal in the Sinai desert. And when the particulars of His testing are examined, it becomes obvious that Jesus was undergoing what was essentially a repeat of Israel’s testing. The Spirit and divine affirmation singled out Jesus as Yahweh’s faithful son – Israel in truth, but now that status needed to be proven out by His triumph through the same trial of faith and faithfulness that Israel had endured and miserably failed.
a. Israel’s journey from Sinai – where its sonship was ratified – led them through the Sinai wilderness toward Canaan where they were to dwell with their covenant God and Father.
A vast wasteland lay between Israel and its covenant inheritance, and Yahweh used this passage as a test of the nation’s faithfulness to its sonship. This episode fills two of the Pentateuch’s five books and details Israel’s complete failure as covenant son and the catastrophic consequences of it. Of the adult generation that Yahweh redeemed from Egypt, only Joshua and Caleb lived to enter Canaan. Even Moses himself fell short and was sentenced to die outside the promised land. * Num. 20:1-13; Deut. 32:48-52
b. But Israel’s testing didn’t begin with its departure from Mount Sinai; the Pentateuch records five distinct tests during the three months that preceded the people’s arrival at Yahweh’s holy mountain (ref. Exod. 15:22-18:27), as well as the gold calf incident that occurred there. But these failures were all addressed by covenant renewal mediated by Moses, so that Israel left Sinai with a “clean slate,” as it were. Nevertheless, the people’s penitence and recommitment didn’t transform their hearts, and their rebellion resumed as soon as they marched out into the Sinai wilderness, reaching its climax when their scouts returned from spying out the land. The spies’ mixed report provoked paralyzing fear and hopelessness among the people, and this faithless reaction proved to be a decisive moment in Israel’s covenant life; in response to it, Yahweh decreed that all of the adult generation that came out of Egypt (except Joshua and Caleb) would perish outside the land and the entire nation would wander and suffer in the desert until His sentence was fully executed.
Those who claimed to fear for their children, disbelieving Yahweh’s covenant oath and faithfulness, would watch their children suffer because of their unbelief, and then they would die without seeing those children enter the land and flourish in it. * Num. 13-14
3. If the Israelite people viewed the Exodus as the great redemptive event that gave birth to the covenant nation, the wilderness episode symbolized their failure as covenant son, which eventually culminated with the desolation of the kingdom and the exile of its sons and daughters. Hence, if Jesus were to fulfill His election and calling to be True Israel, He would need to relive Israel’s testing of its sonship and triumph where they had failed. Only then would He be able to reverse the outcome of Israel’s failure and bring them back from their exile and restore Yahweh household and kingdom.
4. As noted, all three of the synoptic writers mentioned this testing episode, but only Matthew and Luke recounted its details. Both of them record the same three core temptations at the hand of the Satan, although they differ in their order. Both accounts also suggest that these satanic enticements occurred at the end of the episode when Jesus was at His weakest point, having endured forty days without food and water while battling the elements and wild animals. And finally, both accounts have Jesus issuing the same rebuffs to Satan’s temptations – rebuffs that reinforce the conclusion that this episode amounted to Jesus repeating Israel’s wilderness testing, but so as to prevail where they had succumbed.
B. The First Test – Sonship and Submissive Trust
1. The first temptation derived from Jesus’ excruciating hunger at the end of his ordeal. Both Matthew and Luke recorded that He didn’t eat for forty days, afterward “becoming hungry” (Mat. 4:2; Luke 4:1-2). On the face of it, this seems like an absurd understatement; after forty days with no food, Jesus would have been nearing death from starvation. Clearly Matthew and Luke understood this, and so they must have had a reason for their understatement. It’s impossible to be certain, but the test itself and Jesus’ response to it suggest that both writers wanted to emphasize Jesus’ submissive trust and His Father’s care in His situation, not the dire state of His physical condition and how He was able to survive 40 days with no
food. Certainly Jesus would have been on the verge of starvation, but His bodily needs were His Father’s creation and He would address them (cf. Mat. 6:25-34).
a. The adversary tempted Jesus at the point of His imminent starvation, but the actual temptation transcended His desperate need for food; it pressed Him to stumble in regard to His identity and mission. At face value, the tempter’s challenge was straightforward:
“If you are the Son of God, then use your authority and power to provide for your need.”
b. But this wasn’t a crass attempt to provoke Jesus to pride of power; it was a subtle assault on His sonship and His faithfulness to it. Satan directed his ploy at Jesus’ divine identity as Son of God, but the real target was His human sonship. The purpose for Jesus’ wilderness ordeal was to prove out His identity and calling as God’s new Israel, and taking up divine prerogative would render Him unfaithful and disobedient. Turning a
stone into bread would be failing His sonship just as Israel had.
c. Drawing on divine power would break Jesus’ solidarity with Israel (demonstrated at His baptism) and so render Him disobedient to His calling. At the same time, seeking self remedy in His need and not trusting His Father’s care and provision would demonstrate solidarity with unfaithful Israel. For this was Israel’s consistent pattern throughout the nation’s history, and certainly during the wilderness episode. In every circumstance of
lack and threat, Yahweh’s covenant children bemoaned their lot and wailed that their demise was at hand. They accused their God of capriciousness and lack of concern and sought to remove themselves from Him and remedy their plight themselves.
This satanic temptation, then, has echoes of the seduction in Eden, which isn’t surprising since it pressed against the fundamental human obligation required of man as divine image bearer. Jesus was being tested as True Israel, but Israel was to be God’s image-son in the world – a family of human beings defined by unfailing love, devoted trust, confident dependence, and humble gratitude as is appropriate to true children of the divine Father.
2. In both gospel records Jesus answered Satan with a citation from Deuteronomy, but Matthew has a fuller version. Many Christian readers and commentators focus on the fact that Jesus used Scripture to rebuff the adversary, and so conclude that this is the primary point to be taken: When believers find themselves encountering testing or temptation in any form, their proper recourse is to turn to the Scriptures. A person’s ultimate need isn’t for physical food, but the spiritual food that is God’s word. But to treat the incident this way is to entirely miss the point – both of the temptation itself and of Jesus’ answer to it.
a. Jesus cited from Deuteronomy 8:3, and this wasn’t simply Him drawing on this passage because it speaks to the human need for nourishment (“bread”). He was quoting Moses as he had reminded the children of Israel of their God’s faithfulness to them, not just in providing for their physical needs in the wilderness, but in disciplining and nurturing them in their sonship. Indeed, Yahweh had used their physical needs and deprivation as a teaching tool – not that they would develop the ability to delay self-gratification, but that they would learn what it is to be true sons, the very marrow of which is genuine, loving trust and humble dependence – i.e., believing and submitting to the Father’s words regardless of one’s own perceptions, judgments and experiences. * Deut. 8:1-5
b. Thus Jesus wasn’t plucking out an isolated scriptural proof-text to waylay the adversary, but was meeting his deceitful challenge with the truth of His identity and calling and His resolve to fulfill them. Put simply, Satan’s temptation was directed at Jesus’ sonship as He embodied Israel in order to fulfill its election and vocation in obedience to the Father, and He answered that temptation as the faithful son that Israel had failed to be.
3. Jesus’ wilderness ordeal repeated the one that Israel had undergone centuries earlier as they departed from Mount Horeb to make their way to their inheritance in Canaan.
a. When Yahweh redeemed the children of Israel, He brought them to His holy mountain where He affirmed and ratified the covenant relationship of Father and elect “son.” But within days, Israel violated its obligation of sonship, leaving their God to pick up the pieces. He renewed the covenant relationship through Moses’ mediation, and then led His covenant children out into the Sinai wilderness where a great test of sonship awaited
them. * cf. Exod. 3:1-10, 6:1-8, 19:1-8, 32:1-14, 34:1-28, 40:1-38; Num. 9-10
b. There they experienced every sort of physical challenge in an unimaginably hostile and oppressive environment, but with Yahweh’s covenant pledge to carry them through to their inheritance, supported by the presence and power of His Spirit.
c. Yahweh’s covenant and presence stood with them in their adversity and deprivation, yet Israel’s response was unbelief, fear, unceasing complaint, and attempts at self-remedy (cf. Exod. 16:1-20, 17:1-7, 32:1; Num. 11:1-35, 12:1-10, 13:1-14:38, 16:1-17:13, 20:1-13, 21:1-5 with Deut. 1, 8-9).
Israel’s wilderness episode tested the nation’s sonship, and they utterly failed. But Jesus, the well-pleasing son, was determined to triumph through His trial, entrusting Himself without reserve to His Father, fully confident that He would prove faithful to His love and His purposes in and through Him. Jesus understood – and insisted that the adversary understand – that He was Yahweh’s image-son in truth: a man who lives in single-minded devotion and trusting dependence on the Father, well content with every provision that comes from His hand and finding all sufficiency in it.
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Post by Admin on Mar 22, 2024 15:58:05 GMT -5
The Work of Incarnation – Fulfilling Israel’s Sonship
I. Review Observations
1. Jesus’ wilderness ordeal was a test of His sonship, ordained and orchestrated by His Father
who had affirmed Him as His beloved, well-pleasing Son and anointed Him with His Spirit at
His baptism. Immediately after, the Spirit drove Jesus into the desert and then led Him
through His trial. The Satan – the adversary/accuser – was only the instrument of the test.
Thus this episode must not be understood (as is often the case) as the devil devising a scheme
to temp Jesus to submit to his own evil agenda. The entire ordeal was the Father’s doing,
intended to vindicate His own declared assessment of the Son.
2. God intended this testing ordeal – which the Spirit directed and the Satan served – to prove
out Jesus’ sonship as True Israel and True Man. It would demonstrate to Jesus Himself, as
well as the satanic adversary, that He is God’s image-son in truth, the true human being.
Thus Jesus came away from this testing fully confirmed in His self-understanding, thereafter
adopting the title Son of Man as His characteristic way of referring to Himself.
3. As seen, the first of the three tests challenged Jesus’ sonship in terms of His dependent,
patient trust in His Father. Fundamentally, the test involved the confusion of categories:
Jesus as divine Son of God and as human Son of God (son of Adam and son of Abraham).
a. God had identified Jesus as His beloved, well-pleasing Son in the context of His
solidarity with Israel and the anointing of the Spirit, and it was as God’s messianic
servant-son “Israel” that Jesus was led out into the wilderness to be tested.
b. The adversary understood this, and so his challenge to Jesus to exercise His prerogative
as divine Son of God had its goal in leading Him to deviate from the truth of His human
sonship, thereby falsifying His Father’s assessment and the Spirit’s anointing.
II. Fulfilling Israel’s Sonship – Jesus’ Wilderness Testing
C. The Second Test – Distinguishing Faith and Presumption
1. The second test in Matthew’s gospel is the final one in Luke’s gospel. Both writers recorded
that the Satan took Jesus to Jerusalem (“the holy city”) and had Him stand on the pinnacle of
the temple (Mat. 4:5; Luke 4:9). Since Jesus was in the wilderness, scholars have debated
whether this was a literal or visionary journey to Jerusalem. Neither writer addressed this
question, but both emphasized that the devil (the slanderer) orchestrated this circumstance.
Clearly he didn’t march Jesus through the streets of Jerusalem and up into the temple, but
Matthew and Luke focused their attention on the test itself and the way Jesus responded to it.
2. Having positioned Jesus on the top of the temple, the Satan challenged Him to throw Himself
down, citing one of the core promises set out in Psalm 91: “He will give His angels charge
concerning you… they will bear you up in their hands, lest you strike your foot against a
stone…” (vv. 11-12). As before, the adversary’s premise was that Jesus is the beloved Son of
God, and therefore He has legitimate claim to Yahweh’s pledge of care and protection as set
forth by the psalmist. Two initial observations are important to note:
a. First of all, the devil’s citation underscores the fact that he knows the holy Scriptures and
is neither repelled by them nor unwilling to interact with them in his dealings with men.
This, in turn, implies a critical truth that many miss or downplay: The Scriptures can be
readily used to deceive and mislead, even when they are accurately quoted in context.
The reason is that scriptural truth – and therefore inspiration – is a matter of meaning, not
linguistic features as such (words, grammar, syntax, etc.). The implication is that God’s
inspired “word” becomes false when it is misunderstood and/or misapplied.
b. Secondly, and flowing out of the previous observation, this test exposes the inherent
danger in the common Christian practice of “claiming promises” extracted from the
Scriptures. God’s integrity and the truthfulness of His word are the usual justification for
this practice; if God has promised something, we can claim that promise with full
assurance, for He always keeps His word. But this sort of thinking fails to recognize two
crucial truths: First, the Bible isn’t a collection of timeless divine promises and truisms
that have universal pertinence. But beyond that, a person’s perception of what God has
promised isn’t necessarily what He actually promised. Both of these truths show the folly
and wrongfulness of carelessly “claiming” scriptural promises; those who do so are
almost certainly attempting to bind God to their own notions and expectations, and all in
the name of believing and trusting Him who is true and whose word cannot fail.
3. Once again the devil tempted Jesus with respect to His sonship (Mat. 4:6a), pointing Him
back to God’s pronouncement at His baptism (Mat. 3:16-17). As noted earlier, the title Son of
God connotes both Jesus’ divine and human sonship. In the first test, the Satan drew on
Jesus’ divine sonship, exhorting Him to use His prerogative to produce bread from a stone.
He attempted to undermine Jesus’ faithfulness to His human sonship (True Israel and True
Man) by seducing Him to intervene on His own behalf as the divine Son.
Here the devil was again targeting Jesus’ human sonship, but from a different vantage point.
In the first test he attempted to get Jesus to violate His human sonship by drawing on divine
prerogative; in this second test, he was enticing Jesus to violate His human sonship by fully
embracing it in accordance with His Father’s own word of promise.
a. The tempter shrewdly drew from Psalm 91, a jubilant summary of the triumph, protection
and blessing that mark the relationship between Yahweh and His faithful children. It
celebrates the vast riches that are the portion of the faithful man, and so served as a
compelling exhortation to the Israelite people to become such faithful sons and daughters.
b. Put simply, this psalm is an ode to man as truly man – man as living with God in a
relationship of perfect intimacy, loving devotion, and complete trust as image-son. This is
the reason the adversary drew from it in his temptation (which he strategically
orchestrated at the temple – the place most associated with God’s presence, faithfulness,
care, and provision). This, then, was the devil’s challenge:
God Himself has openly affirmed that you are His faithful and beloved son; you are
preeminently the sort of man the psalmist extolled, and thus you will demonstrate your
faithfulness to your sonship by fully owning the relationship of care and provision the
psalm celebrates. Indeed, anything less than that indicates distrust of your God and
Father. If you would honor your sonship and your Father and the integrity of His pledge
to you, you must embrace and act upon His promise of care and protection.
4. Satan presented his temptation as an exhortation to faithfulness and trust, but Jesus saw
through the deception. He didn’t deny that the psalm pertained to Him or accuse the tempter
of twisting its meaning, but He recognized that it was being misused. Hence His rebuke: “On
the other hand, it is written, ‘You shall not put Yahweh, your God, to the test.” * Deut. 6:16
a. The Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness to undergo an ordeal of testing (Mat. 4:1) to
prove out His Father’s affirmation of Him and His faithful sonship (Mat. 3:16-17). And
here, Jesus rebuked the devil as attempting to provoke Him to test God. Both of these
instances involve the same Greek verb, but the form used in verse 7 (and also in Luke’s
account) adds a preposition that focuses and intensifies the meaning, indicating a test
whose specific purpose is to prove out the truth or falseness of a claim or status (hence,
“put to the test”). * cf. Luke 10:25; 1 Cor. 10:9; also LXX of Deut. 6:16, 8:2, 16
b. Here it is Yahweh – the God of Israel and of Jesus the Israelite – who was to be tested,
which itself would test Jesus’ solidarity with Israel. Hence He answered from the same
context (Deut. 6-8) in which Moses was exhorting the Israelites to be mindful of their
God and His past interaction with them as they now prepared to enter the land. He
warned them about becoming complacent and self-satisfied once they settled in Canaan
and were enjoying its abundance and rest. Their ease would encourage forgetfulness and
neglect, and they could easily find themselves straying from Yahweh and embracing the
culture and idolatrous practices of the people around them. Thus Moses warned
Yahweh’s sons against “putting Him to the test” in the land as they had done in the
wilderness, citing the Massah episode as exemplifying their unbelief throughout that
period. * ref. Exod. 17:1-7; cf. Deut. 9:22, 32:51, 33:8; Psa. 81:7, 95:8, 106:32
The sons of Israel didn’t “test” God by tempting Him to do evil; yes, they charged Him
with evil intentions and actions when they suffered under His care, but they never tried to
elicit evil from Him. Israel “tested” Yahweh by questioning and even denying His
integrity and faithfulness and requiring that He prove it to their satisfaction based on their
own judgment, expectations and concerns. In Israel’s judgment, their God would show
Himself faithful and true when He complied with their criteria of faithfulness.
5. This, then, was the issue in this second temptation and Jesus wasn’t about to fall for it. Put
simply, the adversary was attempting to get Him to confuse presumption with faith. In this
way, he was actually challenging Jesus as True Man and not simply True Israel. For
mistaking presumption for faith is inherent in all human religious practice, even as it is a
fundamental manifestations of the broken relationship between God and humans. Put another
way, presumption is how people naturally conceive and express “faith,” but the two are
actually antithetical: Presumption is a hallmark of the natural mind, while faith distinguishes
a renewed mind; presumption defines natural human interaction with God, while faith and
faithfulness define the relationship of true image-sons with their Father. At bottom,
presumption reflects a life governed by sight, which is antithetical to faith.
Presumption defines Adamic man because he is effectively his own god. As such, he cannot
help but assess and appropriate God’s words through the lens of his own personal judgments,
sensibilities, concerns and expectations. Presumption “puts God to the test” because it
demands that He submit His veracity and faithfulness to human judgment and determination;
presumption takes truth away from the One who is Truth and makes it the servant of the
sovereign self. Presumption seeks and insists upon what it believes God has promised; faith
entrusts itself to the One who has promised – the One who is faithful, whatever may come.[/font]
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Post by Admin on Mar 22, 2024 16:02:18 GMT -5
The Work of Incarnation – Fulfilling Israel’s Sonship
I. Review Observations
1. Jesus’ wilderness ordeal was a key aspect of His solidarity with Israel. It was His testing as
“son of God,” orchestrated by the Spirit to prove out His sonship as affirmed by His Father.
2. Each of the three recorded temptations connected His testing with Israel’s wilderness testing
and highlighted His triumph as faithful son where Israel had failed.
3. All three tests were directed at Jesus’ human sonship as True Israel (and so True Man), with
each one confronting that sonship from a particular vantage point.
a. The first test challenged Jesus’ sonship in terms of His confident, dependent trust as
human image-son. It tempted Him to undermine that sonship through divine prerogative.
b. The second one challenged His human sonship by tempting Him to defer to His Adamic
humanness in His relationship with His Father. Yielding to this temptation, Jesus would
have shown wrongful solidarity with Israel by joining it in its failure as Yahweh’s son.
c. The third test had a climactic quality in that it tested Jesus at the point of the ultimate goal
of His human existence as God’s image-son. Specifically, man was created to be image lord,
administering God’s rule over His creation, and this was the vantage point from
which the Satan made his final assault against the Son.
II. Fulfilling Israel’s Sonship – Jesus’ Wilderness Testing
D. The Third Test – The Snare of Human Lordship
1. Matthew placed this test last, while Luke situated it in between the other two. Scholars and
others have proposed various explanations for this, but it’s impossible to be certain. The
difference might reflect an intentional decision by either Matthew or Luke to deviate from
the actual order of the tests, but it’s equally possible that the order is irrelevant to the
meaning of the tests and their combined contribution to Jesus’ testing. In other words, the
three tests form a crucial and complete whole, but not as a matter of sequence. At the same
time, this final test does have a notable climactic quality, and so its being treated last here.
2. The setting for this third test was a high mountain from which Jesus could survey the
kingdoms of the earth (Mat. 4:8; Luke 4:5). Interestingly, Luke used an expression that
emphasizes the inhabited world rather than the earth as such. This is not to say that he
contradicted Matthew’s account, but he made it clear that the focus here was the human
realms and kingdoms – inhabitations – that fill the earth, and not the physical planet.
To a modern reader, the first question that likely comes to mind is how Jesus could possibly
view the entire inhabited world from the top of a mountain. The mountains in Israel aren’t
very tall, and though the Middle East does have a mountain that exceeds 18,000 ft. (Mount
Damavand in Iran), a round earth makes it impossible to see its entire surface, no matter how
high one’s vantage point. This obvious reality, along with the fact that Jesus was still in the
wilderness after this test was completed (cf. Mat. 4:11 and Luke 4:14), shows that this was a
visionary experience (as was likely the case with the temple one).
3. As with His appearance at the temple, Matthew and Luke weren’t concerned to explain the
phenomenon of Jesus finding Himself on a high mountain; once again, the issue was the test
itself, its significance for the messianic work, and the way Jesus responded to it. Here, the
Satan was tempting Jesus with the lure of complete authority over the human realm and all of
the splendor, power, and glory associated with it.
a. The first thing to note is that the devil insisted that this grant was his to bestow – “I will
give you all this dominion and its glory, for it has been handed over to me…” (Luke 4:6;
cf. Mat. 4:9) – and Jesus didn’t question his claim. This raises the question of satanic
authority and rule over the world and what it means that it was “handed over” to him.
Jesus Himself spoke of this lordship by identifying the devil as the “ruler of this world”
(John 12:31, 16:11), and Paul similarly referred to him as the “god of this world” (2 Cor.
4:4). So John insisted that the whole world “lies in the evil one,” indicating universal
satanic influence over the lives of men and the course of this world (1 John 5:19).
b. The Scripture is clear about the Satan’s dominion in the world, but gives no direct
explanation for how it came about. (Passages like Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 are often cited
to explain Satan’s “fall,” but that exegesis is questionable.) Here, the devil asserted that
his rule over the world had been given to him, which suggests that he obtained it from
God, since He is the sovereign Lord of all creation. Many Christians have held this view,
but the language, context, and especially the significance and purpose for Jesus’ testing
all point in a different direction.
Viewed within the wider biblical narrative, it’s clear that the Satan’s dominion over the
world was “delivered over” to him by man – first in Eden, and then continually after by
Adam’s offspring. For man was created to be lord of the earth, with his lordship
manifested in a corporate human “inhabitation” that reflects and propagates God’s own
life, mind and rule throughout the earth. The Creator is sovereign Lord, but He
determined to exercise His lordship over His creation in and through man, His image-son.
God gave man dominion over the earth, but man unwittingly handed over his dominion to
the Satan when he succumbed to the seduction to establish human identity and lordship
independent of the Creator whose image man bears. Adam and Eve embraced the Satan’s
counsel with the intent of establishing their autonomous supremacy in the earth, but in so
doing they delivered over themselves and their God-ordained lordship to the adversary.
c. Thus the devil was offering to grant Jesus a dominion that was his to bestow, but he was
merely presenting Him with the same enticement he’d offered up in Eden. Like Adam
and Eve, Jesus could become lord of the earth in His own right, but under the ultimate
sovereignty of the Satan: “All these things I will give you, if you fall down and worship
me.” Autonomous human authority and rule is subjugation to the destroyer of men.
Once again, Jesus was being tested as the human son of God. This final test was a clear
recapitulation of the original satanic temptation in Eden, and so particularly targeted Jesus’
status as a son of Adam and His calling to be True Man. But this same dynamic of human
autonomy operating under satanic governance defined Israel’s existence throughout its
generations. One need only consider Israel’s persistent idolatry to make the case. The
children of Israel were continually seduced by the “gods” of the nations – powers and
influences other than Yahweh, all of which reflected and served the “god of this world.”
Thus Yahweh’s perpetual assessment of His people was that they were unclean adulterers
given over to other “lovers” (i.e., other “gods” – Ezek. 16; 23; Hos. 1-2, etc.). Indeed, they
used His material blessings to pursue and show their devotion to these lovers, until He’d
finally had enough and sent them away, even as He also departed from them. Not all
Israelites became open worshippers of other gods, but even the faithful among them were
sons of Adam, and so subject to the satanic lord and his governance of the human world.
4. Thus the Satan was challenging Jesus as son of Adam and son of Israel, but, unlike His
human counterparts, He recognized that this offer of autonomous lordship held out the
promise of His destruction as man, not His glorification. For man is the image of the living
God, so that a human being “dies” – he ceases to be truly human – when he distances himself
from the One who is His life and truth; man’s independence is his abolition.
Humans were created to rule God’s creation, but as image-children administering His rule.
The human vocation is priestly as well as kingly, and this precludes any notion of human
autonomy, let alone autonomous human authority and dominion in the world. Thus Jesus
answered the Satan in a way that expressed His authority and power over him – the authority
and power that were His as man in proper relation to God as image-lord. * Mat. 4:10
The satanic lord sought to elicit the Son’s fealty, but Jesus commanded him to leave His
presence, again citing from Deuteronomy (ref. 6:13) to assert His absolute devotion to His
God and His commitment to seeing His Father’s will accomplished (cf. Mat. 16:21-23). And
once again Jesus’ citation was right on target, coming from a passage in which Moses was
warning Israel to remain utterly committed to their covenant God and Father and not allow
their devotion to be distracted or displaced to other “gods.” They were to worship and serve
Yahweh alone, and this faithful devotion would ensure their well-being in their promised
habitation and their triumph over all their enemies. * ref. Deut. 8:1-16, also 6:1-19
Put simply, Moses challenged the Israelites to fulfill their election as sons by keeping His
covenant. Through their faithfulness they would become a royal and priestly kingdom,
exercising Yahweh’s sovereign, wise, and loving lordship in the earth, thereby ministering
the light of His truth and blessing to all of its inhabitants. Thus they would prove themselves
well-pleasing sons. But Israel’s failure in the wilderness was followed by even worse
unfaithfulness in the land; everything that Moses had warned about ultimately came true.
Israel was an unruly and incorrigible son, prideful and independent and determined to pursue
its well-being through relations forged with the surrounding nations and their gods.
5. But now, Yahweh had focused Israel’s election and vocation on Jesus of Nazareth. He had
taken up Israel’s life and lot in the incarnate Son for the sake of His intent for His creation,
bound up in Israel by covenant oath. Thus Jesus was born a son of Israel in order to liberate
and renew Israel by crushing the satanic power that had enslaved all men, subjecting them to
an anti-human, anti-creation reign of terror. And redeemed and renewed, Israel could finally
fulfill its mandate on behalf of mankind, so that Israel’s God could at last realize His design
to fill the earth with His presence and glory through the rule of His faithful image-children.
In Jesus’ own words, He had come to “bind the strongman” in order to “plunder his house,”
and this conflict saw its initial triumph in the wilderness. Thereafter, Jesus’ interaction with
the Satan and his minions would reflect this decisive encounter and manifest His triumphal
power as the Son of Man – the Father’s beloved and well-pleasing Son whose ultimate
triumph through the power of love would bring many sons to glory. * John 12:23-32
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Post by Admin on Mar 31, 2024 11:46:44 GMT -5
The Work of Incarnation – Manifesting the Kingdom
I. Introduction
1. All four gospel writers recorded Jesus’ baptism as publicly attesting His solidarity with
Israel, but as Israel’s messiah – Yahweh’s anointed well-pleasing Son.
2. From that point, the gospel writers constructed their individual accounts of Jesus undertaking
His messianic vocation as the servant-son through whom Israel was to be liberated and
restored and God’s kingdom established as pledged by His prophets.
a. The three synoptic writers pointed to Jesus’ wilderness testing as initiating His work. It
was through that ordeal that Jesus’ messianic status was proven out in His own
experience and He emerged from it prepared to execute His mission.
b. For his part, John bypassed the wilderness episode altogether (although his account
seems to allude to it – cf. John 8:42-46, 14:28-31, etc.), moving from Jesus’ baptism to
His work in forming His inner circle of disciples (ref. John 1:35-51).
II. Manifesting the Kingdom
Jesus’ wilderness ordeal was ordained by His Father to prove out His sonship, but it also initiated
what was to be a perpetual conflict between rival kingdoms: the kingdom He had come to
inaugurate and the kingdom of the world ordered and administered under the Satan’s lordship.
These two kingdoms were set in absolute antithesis, with neither allowing for the other.
- The kingdom Jesus was born into was the satanic anti-creation, anti-man world kingdom
arranged against the Creator and His designs for His creation. This was the kingdom that
ruled over the children of Israel in their alienation, even as it did the Gentile nations.
- In contrast, the kingdom Jesus had come to inaugurate was the “kingdom of God” – the
kingdom Yahweh had promised to establish when He returned to Zion, liberated and
regathered Israel, set His Davidic king on the throne and again took His place in His
sanctuary in the midst of His people. This kingdom, promised to Israel, would fulfill the
Creator’s design for His own loving, life-giving rule over His creation in and through man.
Jesus departed the Jordan river into the wilderness fully aware of His messianic mission, what it
would demand of Him, and what was at stake. He realized that He was undertaking a conflict of
cosmic proportion; a conflict that would divide the world in two. This is what He meant when He
told His followers that He hadn’t come to bring peace but a sword – a sword, not for killing, but
for cleaving (Mat. 10:34-36). So Simeon prophesied to Mary: “Behold, this child is appointed
for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and for a sign to be opposed…” (Luke 2:34).
Thus Jesus emerged from the wilderness having withstood the satanic world ruler, and
immediately began His messianic work of proclaiming and manifesting the kingdom He would
soon inaugurate as Yahweh’s anointed King, once He had fully defeated the opposing powers.
Until that day, His mission involved announcing the in-breaking kingdom, demonstrating the
kingdom’s nature, power, and goal, confronting Israel’s notions and expectations of the
kingdom, and challenging them to return to Yahweh and enter it as true sons.
A. Announcement and Confrontation
1. The three synoptic writers transitioned from the wilderness episode differently, though they
all show Jesus commencing His public proclamation of the “gospel of the kingdom”
accompanied by His call to the sons of Israel to repent (i.e., rethink their notions of the
kingdom and its King), lest they miss its coming. In this sense, Jesus picked up where John
the Baptist left off. * Note Mat. 4:12-17 and Mark 1:14-15
2. All three recorded that Jesus was going throughout Galilee proclaiming the good news of the
kingdom, which eventually led Him to Nazareth. Their accounts indicate that Jesus was in
Nazareth shortly after His wilderness ordeal, and then again later in His ministry (cf. Mat.
4:12-13 with Luke 4:13-30 and Mat. 13:54-58 with Mark 6:1-6). All three synoptic writers
mention Jesus’ rejection by the people of His hometown, but Luke provided the most detail.
3. Luke transitioned very quickly from Jesus’ wilderness testing to His appearance in the
Nazareth synagogue, emphasizing that the Spirit who had anointed Him as Messiah and led
Him through His wilderness ordeal now brought Him to Galilee and His hometown. By the
time He arrived in Nazareth, Jesus had been preaching in the villages and teaching in
synagogues throughout Galilee, so that the Nazarenes were well aware of His activities when
He entered their synagogue that Sabbath day (4:14-15). And though Luke didn’t mention that
Jesus had been working miraculous signs as part of His early witness to the kingdom, his
account of the Lord’s comments in the synagogue indicate this (4:23).
4. No doubt every eye was on Jesus when He walked into the synagogue and sat down. He’d
grown up in that town (Mat. 2:19-23), and so most of the men present would have known His
family and Him from the time He was a small child. They knew Him as Yeshua (Joshua), the
son of Joseph (v. 22), and had watched Him grow up and work alongside His father. But in
recent days they’d been hearing astonishing reports about things He was saying and doing,
and this certainly would have caught their attention and sparked their interest.
a. Men would stand and read from certain scrolls when the synagogue was convened, with
the occasion determining the readings. That day, one of the readings was to come from
the prophet Isaiah, and eager to hear from Jesus, the attendant was instructed to hand the
scroll to Him to read. The passage Jesus read may have been assigned to Him, but Luke’s
account suggests that He selected it (4:17-19). Either way, He read the opening verses of
Isaiah 61, which identify a servant-messenger anointed with Yahweh’s Spirit in order to
bring to Israel good news of her liberation and restoration in His favor. * ref. 61:1-11
b. After He finished, Jesus handed the scroll back to the attendant and sat down. And with
every eye locked on Him – and likely after an awkward silence, Jesus announced that the
prophet’s words were being fulfilled in their very presence. He was the one Isaiah’s text
was referring to, and this explained His words and works of power and healing: Through
Jesus, and in the power of His Spirit, Yahweh was at last fulfilling His pledge to return to
Zion, liberate His captive people, renew His covenant with them, and establish them in
glory. Put simply, Jesus’ presence meant that Yahweh’s kingdom was at hand. * 4:20-21
5. This statement broke the silence and immediately the room was filled with voices marveling
at His words and His claims (4:22-23). The men were exultant at this news of God’s gracious
favor (“gracious words”) at last coming upon Israel, but Jesus knew that their exultation
betrayed their lack of understanding of how God’s graciousness was going to play out.
Hence His seemingly strange response: “No doubt you will quote this proverb to Me,
‘Physician, heal yourself…’” Jesus recognized that the enthusiastic reception He was
receiving was due to the assembly’s expectation of blessings that awaited them – the
blessings of liberation, healing and peace that Jesus had referenced in His Isaiah reading.
They’d already heard the news that their God had been doing mighty things through this man
Jesus, and now here He was affirming that Isaiah’s words were indeed being fulfilled in Him.
Surely they could expect the same miracles of healing and provision, especially since they
were Jesus’ closest neighbors and the people He’d known from His childhood.
6. Jesus, however, answered their expectation in a way that not only deflated their enthusiasm,
it filled them with rage; these men who moments earlier were singing Jesus’ praises were
now determined to kill Him. This much is obvious from Luke’s account, but the reason for
their sudden outrage is often missed, resulting in all sorts of speculations. One is that these
men hotly resented Jesus’ disparaging and dismissive attitude toward them (4:24). Another
possibility is that they sensed that Jesus found their praise disingenuous and motivated only
by self-interest. But perhaps the most common view among Christians is that Jesus enraged
these men by denying their hope of special favor as fellow Nazarenes when He indicated that
God shows no preference in His mercy and provision. * 4:25-27
There’s no doubt that Jesus was exposing His hearers’ unbelief, and some might argue that
this was sufficient to provoke their outrage. But He was actually making a much more
profound point, and this was what infuriated these men. Jesus wasn’t simply exposing their
unbelief, but drawing out the significance of it. And not just for them as a community, but as
they were a microcosm of the Israelite nation.
This is clear from the two parallel examples Jesus cited. These weren’t arbitrary examples
demonstrating that God extends His mercy beyond Israel to the Gentiles, but pointers to a
crucial time in Israel’s history – a time of decision that would determine the nation’s fate as
Yahweh’s covenant son. This historical era is recorded in 1 Kings 16 through 2 Kings 5.
Yahweh had withdrawn His favor from Israel because of their rebellion, demonstrated by His
bringing severe drought and famine on the land. This episode reached its climax with Elijah’s
confrontation with the prophets of Baal and Asherah on Mount Carmel. There Yahweh
demonstrated His supremacy over these fertility gods (He’d already shown His sovereign
authority by shutting up the rains, which Baal was believed to control), leaving Israel to
decide who they would serve going forward; He would no longer allow them to “hesitate
between two paths” (1 Kings 18:1-21). The Israelite observers confessed Yahweh’s triumph
and their solemn ownership of Him as the only true God (18:38-39), but this voiced fealty
proved an empty conviction. Israel continued its idolatry and apostasy until the Lord finally
destroyed them, with Judah following the same path and experiencing the same outcome.
Elijah (with Elisha) represented a crucial time of decision and the turning point in Israel’s
history. The writing prophets emerged soon after with the message that a day of desolation
and exile now awaited both houses of Israel. So Yahweh had appointed another day of
decision for the nation, and He would send Elijah again to herald it (Mal. 4:5-6). Israel failed
its first “day,” and the result was centuries of exile and oppression with an empty sanctuary.
Now Elijah had come as promised (Mat. 11:1-14, cf. 3:1-12), and Israel was faced with its
supreme day of decision: Would the unfaithful nation embrace its God who’d returned to
them in His messianic servant, or would they miss the day of their visitation and see their
house left desolate while Yahweh’s mercy flowed out to the nations? Jesus indicated the latter
(cf. Luke 13:22-35, 14:1-24, 19:11-44), and this is why His hearers wanted Him dead.
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