What the Lord Jesus Christ is at once both God and man is one of the most profound secrets that God has been pleased to reveal to His own. “The mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh,” is one of the two mysteries of the Word of God called great. We cannot understand it, much less explain it; there it is, and we believe it! This truth is the very foundation of all that we are and have as the people of God (Matt. 16:16-18), and in these perilous times Satan is blasting at the Person of Christ as never before. “Every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist” (1 John 4:3). Multitudes of the leaders of Christendom today are the “many antichrists” we are warned against in 1 John 2:18, and they are paving the way for the coming and reception of the antichrist of 1 John 2:22 and his dreadful blasphemy. Why did God become man? Some suggested answers follow.
1. TO REVEAL GOD
In the Old Testament, God ascribes to Himself human attributes. We read of His face, mouth, eyes, ear, nose, arm, hand, finger, feet, etc. We know that “God is a Spirit” and that “a spirit hath not flesh and bones”; but the fact that God so spoke reveals Him as One who longed for His creatures to know Him. His speaking thus, humanly anticipates His incarnation in the person of His Son, the One who could say, “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” And so even a child can listen to the stories in the four Gospels and know what God is like! In Christ the Infinite becomes finite, the One who inhabits eternity comes into time, the Invisible becomes tangible, the One far off draws near.
2. TO BECOME OUR NEAR KINSMAN
In the Old Testament times, there was the possibility of an Israelite becoming so poverty-stricken that he would sell both his inheritance and himself to keep body and soul together. In Leviticus 25, we read of the Lord’s gracious provision for such a one whereby a near kinsman of his could redeem both the inheritance and the person. Through sin we lost our inheritance, were ourselves “sold under sin,” and doomed to eternal bondage in hell (Matt. 22:13). But because “None . . . can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him,” God Himself became our kinsman and thus qualified as the Redeemer of sinners!
3. TO BECOME THE RANSOM
In order for the poor Israelite to be liberated so that he could possess his inheritance, he must have a kinsman who was both able and willing to pay the ransom. In the book of Ruth, the poor Moabitess found her nearest kinsman able, but unwilling, to pay the price; he cared nothing for her and the cost was too much. But our blessed Boaz was both willing and able! God became a man in order to be able — in order to take upon Himself the capacity to suffer and to die for needy sinners. Our blessed “mighty man of wealth” became poor that we might be rich. He gave Himself a ransom for us.
4. TO BECOME THE ONE MEDIATOR
A mediator is one who interposes between parties at variance to reconcile them. An everyday example is the board of mediation appointed by the government to iron out the trouble between the employer and labor. The God-man, because He gave Himself a ransom, is able to reconcile the believing sinner. He is able to take hold of man with one hand, so to speak, and of God on the other and bring man back to God, annihilating the gulf that separated them.
5. TO BECOME THE LAST ADAM
It has been said that the Bible is the history of two men: the first Adam and the last Adam. These two are the representative heads of two races of people. By nature, we are “in Adam,” members of a ruined race; by grace we are “in Christ,” members of a redeemed race. Adam transmits natural life to his posterity; Christ gives spiritual life, eternal life. As natural men, we bear the image of Adam; as new creatures in Christ, we are renewed after His image and at His coming even our bodies will “bear the image of the heavenly.” We are “to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.”
6. TO BECOME OUR SYMPATHIZING HIGH PRIEST
There is a man in heaven, now glorified, who, in the very scene we find ourselves, “was in all points tempted like as we are.” In that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able to succor them that are tempted. God becoming a man added nothing to His perfect knowledge of “our frame,” nor to His compassion toward us, nor to His all-sufficient grace to help us; He changes not. But the God-man suffered in this world all that we will ever be called upon to endure, and infinitely more, thus enabling us to enter into His compassions, makes His sympathies real to us.
7. TO BECOME OUR EXAMPLE
In the Old Testament, the Lord gave detailed precepts to regulate every department of the Israelite’s life. There are precepts for the Christian too, setting even a higher standard; but we have something far more blessed in that Life portrayed in the four Gospels, those precepts practiced! It is far easier to learn by being shown how, than by merely being told how. So Christ left us an example, “that ye should follow His steps.” A Christ-like life is a powerful testimony to the world, a benediction to the saints and a delight to God. For the remaining “little while,” may we seek to follow His steps.