The most interesting Character of all time! As Christ was conceived of the Holy Spirit, God had to be His Father from the earliest moment of conception. But "unto us a child is born." He becomes a member of our fallen race.
This divine paternity did indeed impart to Him an advantage that no other human baby has ever had. But we must not misunderstand. When we have the faith of Jesus, we have the same advantage. If this were not true, all the inspired statements we read about Christ being our "example" would be meaningless. Christ never knew that He had this advantage except by faith (DA 81, 82). The "advantage" was not an "exemption" from our human nature or flesh; it was a joining of the divine nature to our fallen sinful nature. That's what made all the difference.
Further, His so-called "advantage" did not excuse Him from our most terrible conflicts with temptation to sin. If anything, His "advantage" in being conceived of the Holy Spirit only exposed Him to a far more severe conflict than any fallen descendant of Adam has ever had to meet. Seen this way, His "advantage" can be understood as a disadvantage.
Neither did His divine paternity impart to Him any preprogrammed character as such, for His life was to be a life of faith:
Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered. And being made perfect, He became the Author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him (Heb. 5:8, 9).
Christ, coming to earth as man, lived a holy life, and developed a perfect character (DA 762).
He rendered perfect obedience to His Father's commandments. In coming to the world in human form, in becoming subject to the law, in revealing to men that He bore their sickness, their sorrow, their guilt, He did not become a sinner (SD 25).
He "developed" a perfect character through constant conflict with temptations to sin. Just how did His "advantage" operate? A Scriptural principle may help us understand:
In every converted soul a battle is waged continually between two motivations—one to evil, and the other to holiness. One comes from the genetic inheritance of a sinful nature (and in our case by our own cultivated tendencies to evil); the other is supplied by the working of the Holy Spirit who contends against these evil motivations.
Christ being the God-man, He experienced this same constant conflict. Having never sinned, He had no "evil propensity," no cultivated tendencies to evil—which are sin. But because He inherited our genetic nature through His human mother, He knew the strength of the motivations to evil that constantly assail us. Not only did He in reality (not merely vicariously) bear our fallen, sinful flesh; He also "his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree," "made to be sin for us" (1 Pet. 2:24; 2 Cor. 5:21). Those who maintain that Christ was "exempt" from battling with the terrible power of sinful addictions need to consider what Peter says. If you are any kind of an addict (and who isn't an addict to sin?), take heart; you have a Saviour who overcame in your flesh and knows the strength of your addiction.
Being conceived of the Holy Spirit, Jesus also knew the motivation to holiness that it is our privilege to know through faith. But being conceived of the Holy Spirit did not force Him automatically to be righteous. His "advantage" only enabled Him to choose freely:
Unless there is a possibility of yielding, temptation is no temptation. Temptation is resisted when man is powerfully influenced to do a wrong action and, knowing that he can do it, resists, by faith, with a firm hold upon divine power. This was the ordeal through which Christ passed. … In His closing hours, while hanging upon the cross, He experienced to the fullest extent what man must experience when striving against sin (5BC 1082). [Yes, He knew the strength of the terrible struggle addicts have.]
As a free agent, He was placed on probation, with liberty to yield to Satan's temptations and work at crosspurposes with God (idem).
In other words, Christ was "programmed" neither toward sin nor toward holiness; but He felt the full force of the undertow that has swept us all into sin and He simply refused to be swept into it. "He knows how strong are the inclinations of the natural heart" (5T 177).
Sad to say, many have the gospel so backwards that they make it bad news. Of these two conflicting motivations, almost everybody thinks the sinful-nature motivation is the stronger. They expect to be defeated by temptation, assuming that sin is stronger than the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome it. But this very assumption is itself the heart of sin, for it discloses an inner antagonism against the righteousness of God. Such a conviction is rooted in a heart-leaning toward the idea that God deserves defeat in the great controversy with Satan (this conviction may all the while be unconscious). We suppose our sin is too strong for God, and so we demonstrate this conviction by thinking that it's impossible for "poor me" in my circumstances to obey the law of God; so we give in and yield to temptation. This is how sin functions.
Now it's a simple step further to declare that it would have been impossible for even Christ in His incarnation to obey the law of God if He had "taken" our same sinful nature and been tempted in our identical circumstances. If we can't overcome, then of course He can't—unless He is given that special "exemption."
Here is the fulcrum of defeat, disclosing why the nature of Christ is a spiritual life-or-death matter. This is the root of our deep beneath-the-surface sympathy with Satan's charges, for if sin is really stronger than the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome it and condemn it in our fallen, sinful flesh, then Satan has to be right in his campaign against the government of God. Then that government must crash. A vote in Satan's favor is itself the essence of sin. We can't be neutral; we will "vote" one way or the other by our faith or by our unbelief.
A Scripture principle may help us settle this issue. It may give us some very Good News. Paul insists that the Holy Spirit is the stronger of the two conflicting motivations that we all experience. Christ had to experience them as well. In the following passage please note carefully what it is that "ye cannot do." Is it good things or bad things? You can't sit on the fence; it's not both. Your answer is important:
This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth [strives] against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would (Gal. 5:16, 17).
If one takes the position that "ye cannot do" the good things that "ye would" even when we choose to "walk in the Spirit," then he has a most discouraging kind of religion! In that case he might just as well give up and resign himself to defeat. Many reason that way and yield to Satan because they have picked up Bad News.
Surely Paul doesn't support such defeatism! He says that what we "cannot do" is the evil "things that ye would" that are prompted or motivated by our inherited sinful nature and our own cultivated evil propensities. And he tells us why: the Holy Spirit "strives against the flesh" and He is stronger. Stronger even than our own cultivated tendencies to evil, the result of years of our own bad habit! If this isn't true, then there is no Good News.
No one questions that we cannot do the good things "ye would" if we walk "in the flesh." But Paul is talking here about "walking in the Spirit." Then he guarantees that we "shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh." The flesh will "lust," but in vain. It will knock on our door, yes, but we will say No. In the end, we are the boss!
The person who "walks in the Spirit" can of course choose to sin; but the beautiful truth is that if he exercises faith, he simply cannot do the evil things his carnal nature "would" prompt him to do. The victory was won in our flesh, which is the flesh of Christ in His incarnation. That battle in His flesh was fought in the corporate flesh of all humanity. Your flesh is Christ's flesh. This is why Ellen White says that "the humanity of the Son of God is everything to us."
The Holy Spirit imparted to Christ the same higher and stronger motivation at His conception that He imparts to us when we learn to believe. None of us is born believing; but Christ was. And before we hastily conclude that His "advantage" excuses our continued participation in sin, let's remember that if we will "walk in the Spirit" the same higher motivation will cancel within us our captivity to those "desires of the flesh and of the mind" which are both addictions and propensities to evil. We'll still have to face them in temptation, but now we face them only as triumphant victors.
What Christ "took" or "assumed" is this:
In all things it behooved Him to be made like unto His brethren. … For in that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able to succour them that are tempted (Heb. 2:14-18).
Christ did not make-believe take human nature; He did verily take it. He did in reality possess human nature. (Hebrews 2:14 quoted) He was the Son of Mary; He was of the seed of David according to human descent. He is declared to be a man, even the man Christ Jesus (idem).
He took upon His sinless nature our sinful nature, that He might know how to succor those that are tempted (MM 181).
Note the constant repetition of the verb "took." Our full battle is from both within and without. "The Christian is to realize that... his strongest temptations will come from within; for he must battle against the inclinations of the natural heart. The Lord knows our weaknesses" (Christ Tempted As We Are, 11).
But how could an infant, even a Holy Infant, "battle against the inclinations of the natural heart"? How could He resist the impulses of the flesh? How could He know "the desires of the flesh" and yet not fulfill them? "Christ was not like all children. … He was God in human flesh" (5BC 116, 1117).
The passage cited goes on to say that His divine paternity gave Him an instant insight into the nature of the temptation He was experiencing. Though He was a "free moral agent with liberty to work at cross purposes with God," the point is that Christ "refused decidedly" to do so. Note again:
It is not correct to say, as many writers have said, that Christ was like all children. He was not like all children. Many children are misguided and mismanaged. … His inclination to right was a constant gratification to His parents. …
No one, looking upon the childlike countenance, shining with animation, could say that Christ was just like other children. He was God in human flesh. When urged by His companions to do wrong, divinity flashed through humanity, and He refused decidedly. In a moment He distinguished between right and wrong, and placed sin in the light of God's command, holding up the law as a mirror which reflected light upon wrong. It was this keen discrimination between right and wrong that often provoked Christ's brothers to anger (idem).
What this does not say is important: It does not say that His divine paternity excused Christ from the full force of our temptations. Rather, "in a moment He distinguished between right and wrong." It does not say that Christ felt no motivation, no allurement, toward wrong; but it says that He had "keen discrimination between right and wrong" and chose the right immediately. It does not say that He did not take our sinful fallen nature, or that He did not know the "desires of the flesh;" it says that when He was tempted "He refused decidedly" to give in to them.
Who will dare say that an infant cannot "refuse decidedly" in any capacity that an infant can experience? We all know babies that "refuse decidedly" to eat this or that, or to go to sleep, or to be quiet; why can't this Holy Infant "refuse decidedly" to yield to the impatient, rebellious, and therefore sinful feeling or spirit that all we as babies give in to? Why can't He with an infantile "sanctified will" refuse to indulge the impulse to a temper tantrum? If there are human temptations we know, are there not infantile temptations? The fact that such are beyond our conscious recall does not mean they do not exist.
If "that holy thing" that was born of the Virgin Mary was holy in His most mature moment as He hung upon His cross, why can't He be holy in His infancy? And if we concede that at any time in His earthly life He was "sent in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh," why can't He begin that glorious work at His conception when he "began life"? If not, when did He begin that work?
We speak often of what we term "the age of accountability." We assume that children can be excused for selfish sin up to some period of age level; but could this be another legacy from Babylon that does not have divine authority? Ellen White seems to believe that there is no age too early for our children to become a Christian:
An eminent divine was once asked how old a child must be before there was reasonable hope of his being a Christian. "Age has nothing to do with it," was the answer.
"Love to Jesus, trust, repose, confidence, are all qualities that agree with the child's nature. As soon as a child can love and trust his mother, then can he love and trust Jesus as the Friend of his mother. Jesus will be his friend, loved and honored."
In view of the foregoing truthful statement, can parents be too careful in presenting precept and example before those watchful little eyes and sharp senses? (CG 486).
When did Jesus begin to have "watchful little eyes and sharp senses"? If it is a "truthful statement" that "age has nothing to do with it," both prenatal and postnatal influences are important. The world owes much to Mary and Joseph, for they, and "especially Mary, kept before them the remembrance of their child's divine Fatherhood" (5BC 1116).
It must be true that Mary did not involve her unborn Infant in violent, hateful, passionate, evil propensities. Although we have not had the advantage of a divine paternity and an ideal prenatal environment for nine months, praise God that faith in Christ will this moment deliver us from captivity to "the law of sin which is in my members" (Rom. 7:23). The victory was won in Christ's human flesh in both His entire life and in His death upon the cross. That means that no addict can ever have as severe a struggle as He had, "who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree" (1 Pet. 2:24, emphasis mine). What did He bear? Your addiction. Your sin. Your bad habits. Don't say the victory is not for you; it's yours for believing the truth because it was won in your flesh. Ellen White gets to the heart of the problem:
Jesus Christ is our example in all things. He began life, passed through its experiences, and ended its record, with a sanctified human will. He was tempted in all points like as we are and yet because He kept His will surrendered and sanctified, He never bent in the slightest degree toward the doing of evil, or toward manifesting rebellion against God. … Those who have a sanctified will, that is in unison with the will of Christ, will day by day have their wills bound to the will of Christ. … The one absorbing aim of the life of Christ was to do the will of His heavenly Father. He did not become offended with God; for He lived not to please himself. The human will of Christ would not have led Him … to endure humiliation, scorn, reproach, suffering, and death. His human nature shrank from all these things as decidedly as ours shrinks from them (ST, Oct. 29, 1894).
This tells us something important:
(a) Christ had a will of His own that "shrank" from sacrificial obediences to the Father "as decidedly as ours shrinks from them." That's something significant!
(b) He denied His "own will," for He lived not to please Himself.
(c) He kept His own will surrendered and sanctified through a choice to self-denial.
(d) Thus "He never bent in the slightest degree toward the doing of evil, or toward manifesting rebellion against God" because He refused to be "offended with" Him, even though He had every human reason to believe God had "forsaken" Him unjustly (see Matt 27:46; Ps. 22:1-6).
(e) This "example" of surrendering His own will and "cherishing a holy will" had to begin with His earliest moment of Incarnation. That's when He "began life."
How He could do so as a fetus or an infant is of course a "mystery," but with deep reverence we must confess that it is true—He did. Being conceived of the Holy Spirit, the holy motivation of agape prevailed over the evil motivations that have swept us all into sin. That same holy motivation will prevail over our evil ones as we "walk in the Spirit" living a life of faith before them.
Whatever conflict or "striving" there was in Christ's pre-natal experience or in His infancy was of course infantile. The holiness of His Father was reproduced in Him through His infantile faith at that earliest moment when He "began life." The following well summarizes our findings thus far:
As through Christ every human being has life, so also through Him every soul receives some ray of divine light. Not only intellectual but spiritual power, a perception of right, a desire for goodness, exists in every heart. But against these principles there is struggling an antagonistic power. The result of the eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is manifest in every man's experience. There is in his nature a bent to evil, a force which, unaided, he cannot resist. To withstand this force, to attain that ideal which in his inmost soul he accepts as alone worthy, he can find help in but one power. That power is Christ (ED 29).
Did Christ come to succor us w here our problem lies? Or did He merely do some "paper work" millions of light years away from us wholly unrelated to the real problem of the inner conflict we face?
Unless He demonstrates here within the hearts of those who believe in Him a "power" to "withstand this force" of inner temptation, the problem of sin will never be solved through all eternity, and the "government" of God will fail. Apart from Him, humans have no solution. But this victory which He accomplished "in His flesh" will be reproduced in His people in their flesh. The following vividly discloses the reality of His conflict:
In behalf of the race, with the weaknesses of fallen man upon Him, He [Christ] was to stand the temptations of Satan upon all points wherewith man would be assailed. …
In order to elevate fallen man, Christ must reach him where he was. He took human nature, and bore the infirmities and degeneracy of the race. He, who knew no sin, became sin for us. He humiliated Himself to the lowest depths of human woe, that He might be qualified to reach man, and bring him up from the degradation in which sin had plunged him (5BC 1081).
Temptation is resisted when man is powerfully influenced to do a wrong action and, knowing that he can do it, resists, by faith, with a firm hold upon divine power. This was the ordeal through which Christ passed. … In His closing hours, while hanging upon the cross, He experienced to the fullest extent what man must experience when striving against sin. He realized how bad a man may become by yielding to sin.... The iniquity of the whole world was upon Him (ibid., p. 1082).
Christ knew a temptation, felt a force within, that unfallen Adam never could have felt:
Adam was tempted by the enemy, and he fell. It was not indwelling sin which caused him to yield; for God made him pure and upright in His own image. He was as faultless as the angels before the throne. There was in him no corrupt principles, no tendencies to evil. But when Christ came to meet the temptation of Satan, He bore "the likeness of sinful flesh" (ST, Oct. 17, 1900).
It cannot be blasphemy to confess that He "condemned sin in the flesh." But if we "exempt" Him from struggling with the same "antagonistic power" that our fallen flesh struggles with, and if we claim only a sham victory for Him, we come terribly close.
This truth of Christ's victory in "the likeness of sinful flesh" is wonderful Good News for us who are battling with sin in our sinful flesh.