Christ and His Brethren
By Editor
Two readers of the REVIEW have written to us concerning our recent editorial, “Like unto His Brethren.” One says:— In an editorial in the REVIEW of November 9 are these words: “Into the world . . . ‘God permitted his Son to come, . . . at the risk of failure and eternal loss.’” I hope I am not a skeptic as regards divine revelation, but in this instance I can not harmonize your statement with the results of my reasoning. God permitted his Son to come, and of course he knew what the result would be. I therefore conclude that he knew the result would not be failure or loss, else he would not have permitted him to come. Christ before coming must also have known these facts, either of himself or through faith founded on the knowledge of his Father’s omniscience. I also have the Bible statement that “He shall not fail.” This reasoning does not controvert the truth that while here in the flesh Christ must and did gather his knowledge from the Bible. Our correspondent practically raises the old question of free will and foreordination. His position is that God knew before he sent his Son into the world that he would not fail, and therefore there was no risk of failure. In the same way Christ must have known the outcome of his mission to this earth, either through his own divine foreknowledge or through his faith in the foreknowledge of his Father, and therefore there could not have been on his part any risk of failure and loss. In coming to these conclusions our correspondent looks at the question from the standpoint of the divinity of Christ, and does not give due weight to the considerations which arise from the humanity of Christ. God sent his Son into the world as a man, subject to the conditions and experiences of humanity. As a man Jesus sustained the same relation to the foreknowledge of God as is sustained by every man. The foreknowledge of God did not limit his freedom as a man. His freedom as a man did not interfere with the foreknowledge of God. As a man endowed with the freedom of will, the second Adam, there was the same possibility of failure4as there was with the first Adam in his sinless state. Otherwise there would be neither force nor comfort in the statement that he was “in all points tempted like as we are.” Otherwise the agony and the bloody sweat, and the cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” would have been merely the acting of a part, and Christ’s experience on this earth would have been the same sort of an example of trust in God as is that of the villain in the play who knows that the revolver is loaded with blank cartridges, and that he will be all right again as soon as the curtain falls. As a man Christ knew, through faith in God’s word, that his Father was able to keep him from falling, just as any man may know it who will believe God. In the fulness of this faith Christ committed himself to his Father’s keeping power, and was not disappointed. The same privilege is offered to every man. Human reasoning fails in the effort to explain the union of divinity and humanity in the person of Jesus, Son of God and Son of man. This is the mystery which only God can understand. Therefore we can not explain how it is that the eternal Son of the infinite God, equal with the Father, could take upon himself the weakness of our nature without laying aside his divinity. This is the wonderful thing into which angels desire to look. It will be the wonder of the redeemed to all eternity. It is true that through the prophet Isaiah the success of Christ’s mission is foretold, and so it was in the promise made to our first parents in the garden, and in many other places in the Scriptures, but these blessed assurances did not make of the Son of man a mere machine to register certain decrees concerning himself. His faith in these very promises gave him the victory in the hour of temptation, but faith’s victories prove the possibility of failure. Our other correspondent urges that our experience and Christ’s could not be wholly parallel, inasmuch as he existed in another form before he took the flesh, and was therefore able to commit himself to God before he entered upon his new stage of existence as a child, while “our existence only begins at birth, and we could not share in the trusting of ourselves to God.” A more careful reading of the editorial under consideration will show that we pointed out that the parallel between Christ’s experience and ours begins when we are born of the Spirit, as he was. It may be many years after being born of the flesh before we are born of the Spirit, but by virtue of this birth we become children of God, entering upon a new stage of existence just as Christ did when he was born of the Spirit. Jesus enjoyed no advantages over any member of the human family who has been born of the Spirit. The provision for one is the provision for the other. It is quite possible that these two letters express thoughts which have arisen in many minds, and for this reason we have considered them in these columns. We venture to hope that this further study of the subject may make it clearer to all our readers.