Once in a while someone claims that he or she has had a glimpse of the Virgin Mary or has seen Jesus in a dream, but the overwhelming majority of us never have such a privilege. We just plod along dreamless and visionless.
Yet we are urged to "fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith." Hebrews 12:2, NIV. And this command is frequent: "Behold the Lamb of God" (John 1:29); "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth" (Isaiah 45:22). We are constantly being told to "keep our eyes on Jesus." How do you look?
"Seeing" an invisible God has always been a problem to man. Ancient peoples felt they had to have images to which they could look and bow down. How otherwise could they "see" an unseen deity? Many even today feel they need images, or at least pictures, to help them visualize Jesus or Mary or the saints or the cross.
The author of Hebrews says, "We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, ... that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man." Hebrews 2:9. His point is that we "see" Him in the Bible. The Holy Spirit has the mysterious ability to make the Word come alive in our mind's eye. In fact, through His vicegerent we can be in a sense closer to Christ than were His apostles two thousand years ago when they walked and talked with Jesus personally. See John 16:8, 10. Christ's portrait is etched in the Bible with startling realism and impressed on our minds and hearts with four-dimensional reality.
But often Christ's picture has been blurred in our mind's eye. As an enemy has confused our idea of agape and faith, so he has painted over the Scripture portrait of Christ with an unattractive, effeminate counterfeit that conveys an impression of fraud. This is why countless people are sincerely frustrated in their desire to fall in love with Christ. They have inherited a false concept of Him, which awakens no genuine response of sympathy or fellowship in their human hearts. It's as hard or harder than trying to fall in love with George Washington from contemplating his picture on a dollar bill.
How can one possibly relate to an anemic "Christ" with doleful, pious eyes in a stained glass window? You are told that He is God in the flesh. But He seems so remote that any flesh-and-blood point of contact is as alien to us as if He were a man living on the moon. Try as you may, you can't feel a dynamic attraction for Him.
The Problem: False Concepts Innocently Inherited
New Testament believers saw something in Christ that His enemy has tried to plaster over. People need to know that it's not their fault that they don't know how to love Him truly. False concepts which they have innocently inherited are the hindrance. We are as capable of the same heart-thrill of genuine affection for Him as were His apostles. The result of such affection—something infinitely beyond the most gripping love affair one can imagine. And it never turns to ashes, for it lasts forever. You never have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps to try to be good. There's something between you and Christ that does it.
That something is not your tedious job to initiate or even to maintain. Whoever heard of a person truly in love having to work to maintain the relationship? The sight, even the memory, of the beloved does it. If effort is necessary, it is usually in the direction of restraining our expressions of love.
In saying this I am not trying to drag faith in Christ down to a sentimental level. I am only trying to point out that constant exhortations to get up earlier in the morning and put forth more effort to maintain a relationship with Christ are often a form of do-it-yourself religion, a subtle kind of legal-ism that can flourish only where the true Christ of the Bible has been plastered over by the enemy's counterfeit. The problem is invariably a false christ who has not truly "come in the flesh," to quote the apostle John who knew Him so well: "This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge [that Jesus has come in the flesh] is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world." 1 John 4:2, 3, NIV.
Today's English Version makes that last sentence a little clearer: "Anyone who denies this about Jesus does not have the Spirit from God. The spirit that he has is from the Enemy of Christ."
The word translated "flesh" is sarx, a term that refers to the fallen, sinful nature of all descendents of Adam, a term never used of Adam's nature before his fall. John's point is that Christ took our fallen nature.
Any "Christ" who did not truly "come in the flesh" is as remote from us and from our human needs as a spaceman on this earth is from a remote planet. He is the "Enemy of Christ," but not openly such, of course. The word antichrist means one who arrogates the place of Christ while actually opposed to Him. It's the nearest that John's language could come to a "counterfeit Christ." A hoax has been foisted on an unsuspecting world—and on the church. It has stalled the spiritual development of a people who long ere this should have grown up "into him who is the head, into Christ" to the place where their sympathy and affection for Him are like that of a bride for her husband. The lack of such devotion for Christ is a sure sign that the counterfeit is present somehow.
Christ's bride is caught in the vise grip of worldly materialism and the endless allurements to self-centeredness, which the Enemy has become so skillful at devising. She can never find the strength to wrench herself free from these things until the counterfeit antichrist is unmasked for what he is and the Christ of the New Testament stands revealed in all His genuine appeal to human hearts.
Christ: Fully God and Fully Man
"Looking unto Jesus" establishes contact with Him more effectually than transmitting electronic command impulses through radio contact with a planetary spacecraft. Most people who say they believe in Christ seldom have trouble seeing Him as divine. Their problem is seeing Him as fully human as well. Unless they can appreciate the full dimensions of His divine-human repertory of temptations, sufferings, and sacrifice, they can experience no bond of heart-union with Him. Hence Christ's Enemy has sought to cut the bond that binds Him to our true human nature. This clever maneuver has become a highly sophisticated accomplishment in our day.
Roman Catholic dogma, quite extrabiblical, proclaims that Christ was born of what is called Mary's "immaculate conception." The idea is that Mary, Jesus' mother, was miraculously wiped clean from every taint of "original sin" at the moment of her conception, so that she was unable thereafter to sin in thought, word, or deed. This superhuman advantage made her "the mother of God" with virtually holy flesh. Since she herself was thus cut off from the stream of fallen humanity, she was enabled to endow her Son with her same kind of holy flesh, different from all other human beings, including Adam in his fallen state.
Since the only kind of flesh there is in the world is our fallen, sinful flesh, this teaching effectively declares that Jesus did not "come in the flesh." There is a serious element of fraud in such a "Christ," for the Bible claims that Jesus "has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin." Hebrews 4:15, NIV. But if He did not take our fallen flesh or our human nature, His temptations were a sham. He could be tempted, yes; but not "just as we are." Such a "Christ" can claim all He likes, "Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world" (John 16:33), but his is a false boast, because the temptations of "the world [are] the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life" (1 John 2:16), and if Christ did not meet these temptations "in the flesh," He did not meet our temptations at all. "The enemy of Christ" is himself "a liar, and the father of lies" (John 8:44, NIV), and we can be sure he loves to make Christ out to be a liar by misrepresentation.
A popular Protestant view of Christ is on the same street as the immaculate conception, in fact, next door, as close as Sunday is to Sabbath. This is the idea that Christ took only the sinless nature of Adam before the Fall. In effect, this accomplishes the same objective, except that it transfers the unfair advantage for Christ from Mary's mother's womb to her own. Christ is effectively cut off from real connection with the fallen race. (Don't confuse this with the virgin birth, which the Bible teaches.) Even when Mary conceived Christ as a virgin, she could only pass on to Him her nature.) But this extrabiblical idea again makes Christ out to be a kind of clever charlatan who tells us that He is "God with us" when He is millions of light-years away from us. For if He did not "come in the flesh" of humanity as it is, He did not come to be "with us" any more than a spaceman from another planet visiting us as a tourist.
Medieval Roman Catholic teaching saw Christ as "exempt" from the inheritance of our true human nature. The word exempt is a favorite word with Roman Catholics in discussing His nature: "The whole mind of the Oriental church ... drew from St. Augustine, the great Doctor of grace, those remarkable declarations which exempt the Blessed Virgin from all sin...
"In the same spirit, and with a like implied exemption from the curse, St. Hippolytus, Bishop and Martyr, says, speaking first of our Saviour: 'He was the ark formed of corruptible wood. For by this is signified that His tabernacle was exempt from sin, of wood not obnoxious to corruption according to man; that is, of the Virgin, and of the Holy Ghost, covered within and without with the pure gold of the word of God.' "—Berington and Kirk, The Faith of Catholics, Confirmed and Attested by the Fathers of the First Five Centuries of the Church, vol. 3, pp. 443-446, emphasis supplied.
According to Scripture, Christ was "exempt" from nothing, for "the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." Isaiah 53:6. His being "without sin" was not due to some prearranged "exemption" from meeting the full force of our human temptations.
What Christ Needs in Order to Be Our Substitute
When John says that Christ "has come in the flesh," he obviously does not mean some miraculous, or special kind that was unknown on this planet in His day. His good news is that this Christ has gained the victory of "authority" over our flesh and all its lusts, setting us free from its tyranny forever. He has worked no deceptive trick on us, pretending to be "God with us" while He cleverly avoided our identical battle with sin by taking a different kind of flesh or nature then we have.
Christ cannot be our Substitute unless He has met our temptations as we must meet them. He must meet our enemy on his own ground, in his own lair, and there slay him.
God's holy law demands from fallen man a righteousness that he cannot give because he has a problem in his "flesh." Paul says: "I am carnal [fleshly], sold under sin... The good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not [do], that I do. Now if I do that I would not [do], it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. ... Evil is present with me, ... warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members... With the flesh [I serve] the law of sin." Romans 7:14-25.
Every man and woman on earth must confess that Paul knows what he is talking about. Sin has established a stranglehold on our nature. Its enticement and allurement are overwhelming. The Enemy of Christ has gloated that he has apparently invented a Frankenstein so strong that not a single human being, other than Christ, has ever escaped its tyranny. If he can prove that it is indeed impossible for human beings to vanquish sin in human flesh, he is well on his way to proving that God is wrong and he is right. And that would be only the last step before dethroning God. How could the universe ever respect a God whom Satan has proved wrong?
For this reason Satan has concocted a lie: Even Christ found sin so impossible to conquer in our flesh that He had to sidestep the encounter by the neat trick of taking the sinless nature of Adam before the fall. He maneuvers Christ into a position where He must virtually agree with His enemy that even He can't conquer our sin if He should take our nature, the nature of the sons and daughters of fallen Adam. In the process Christ is held up as deceptively claiming victory in a battle that never in fact took place.
How God Solved the Problem
After frankly detailing man's problem with "sin that dwelleth in me," Paul explains God's solution: "What the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Romans 8:3, 4.
Christ has won the battle! Paul makes crystal clear what kind of flesh God has sent His son in—"the likeness of sinful flesh." The problem of entrenched sin is not in material things, but "in the flesh" of mankind. There is the lair where the beast, sin, has taken up his residence, where Christ must slay the dragon. This was no paper triumph, for He "condemned sin in the flesh," the flesh in which He came—our fallen nature.
Paul's word likeness cannot mean unlikeness, for it would be a monstrous fraud for Christ to profess to condemn sin in the flesh, the flesh in which Paul says we are "sold under sin" where "the law of sin" operates, if He counterfeited His incarnation by taking only what appeared to be our sinful flesh but which was not the real thing at all. It would leave Satan shouting "Foul!" to high heaven, which is what he does in the dogma of the immaculate conception. Paul uses the word likeness (with good reason) to denote the reality of Christ's full identity with us, yet making clear that He in no way participated in our sin. Christ's glorious victory lay in the fact that He was "tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin." Hebrews 4:15, NIV. We have all yielded to temptations; He "condemned sin in the flesh" with all its allurements.
All the New Testament confirms this good news. "We were slaves to the elemental spirits of the universe... [But] God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law." Galatians 4:3-5, RSV. He entered the sphere where those spirits of sin were entrenched, and having invaded the enemy's territory, conquered.
"You, who were once estranged and hostile in mind [that's what sin is all about!], he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death." "He disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing over them." Colossians 1:21, 22; 2:15, RSV.
The letter to the Hebrews is emphatic. Christ "himself likewise took part of the same nature" as we, in order to meet the problem of our inner alienation, and to "deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage." He "took" the heredity of Abraham, specifically not that of unfallen beings. "He had to be made like his brethren in every respect." Our salvation from sin is inextricably bound up with this truth: only in those areas where we are tempted is He "able to help those who are tempted." Hebrews 2:14-18, RSV. But since He has been tempted "just as we are," He stands revealed as a complete Saviour. James agrees with John and Paul. "Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin." James 1:14, 15, RSV. Temptation would be a sham for Christ and a deception if He did not feel the strength of that desire. But temptation from within is not sin; sensing the strength of the allurement is not a fall unless the temptation is yielded to. And that Christ never did. The glory of His righteousness is that it was the result of constant fierce conflict with temptation, "yet without sin." Thus His holiness is dynamic and glorious. He was "blameless, unstained, separated from sinners" (Hebrews 4:15, RSV) while He came close to redeem them where they are.
Thus the message of Christ's righteousness is tremendous. Have you ever stood by a lake in the evening while the moon is rising and seen that shimmering path of light stretch from your feet to the moon at the horizon's edge? Then as you walk down the shore, lo, the path of light moves with you, always stretching directly from where you are. I think of Christ's righteousness as something distinctly personal for "every man," a path devised by the Saviour to stretch from where my feet stand at this moment to His throne of grace and victory. He has put Himself in my place. He knows exactly the strength of the temptations now assailing me, and He knows how to resist. He was "made to be sin" for me. He knows the weight of the guilt I carry. He has tasted my despair, my disappointments. Nothing has escaped Him. He has even gone beyond everything I have experienced and has "tasted death," the second death, for me.
In fact, He is so fully and exactly my Substitute that He could come no closer if I were the only sinner in the world. He is my true other Self; I am "in him" both legally and practically. No husband and wife are ever so close to each other as I am to Him through faith. Thus He "is able to save [me] to the uttermost," and He lives always for only one purpose: to "make intercession" for me, to plead in my behalf even against my own doubts against myself. See Hebrews 7:25.
Do you know how fierce battles with alluring temptation can be? Do you feel the powerful force of the riptide that would sweep you off your feet into the enticement of sin? Welcome to the human race! This is the problem Christ came to conquer. No wind of temptation ever beat upon us as fiercely as upon Christ, and no riptide ever swept us off our feet as strong as that which Christ braced Himself to withstand.
No matter who you are or where you are, you can know that One has stood exactly in your place, "yet without sinning." Look at Him, "see" Him, with all those clouds of deception blown away by the truth of His righteousness "in the likeness of sinful flesh." Believe that the sin that allures you has been "condemned in the flesh." You can overcome, through that faith in Him.
And not only 2000 years ago is He a Saviour. The good news is that He is working incessantly to make effective for us what He accomplished long ago. This work is not something taking place millions of light-years away. He is "a very present help in trouble.'' See Psalm 46:1.
We must now search for that link that binds justification by faith to the ministry of Christ in the heavenly sanctuary.