THE HUMANITY OF CHRIST
By W. S. Chapman
W. S. CHAPMAN
(Warsaw, Ind.) In Rom. 8:3 it is said that Christ came in the likeness of sinful flesh. To be like a thing is to have the very appearance of it. Christ, then, had the appearance of a sinner, as he was after a reign of four thousand years of sin. This can not mean that Christ appeared as a sinner to the eye of man, as humanity would see nothing unnatural in sin, but in the eye of God Christ presented the likeness of a sinner. His human nature, then, must have been dwarfed, physically, mentally, and spiritually, as completely as that of any sinner; for God waited until sin was fully developed before preparing His Son a body in the likeness of fully developed sin. Therefore Paul asserts (Phil. 2:8) that Christ was fashioned as a man; that is, formed and molded with flesh having all the inherited tendencies to sin that could, or ever would, assail any sinner, that He might be a perfect substitute, and so a Saviour for all mankind. “Taking human nature fitted Christ to understand man’s trials and sorrows, and all the temptations wherewith he is beset. Angels who were unacquainted with sin could not sympathize with man in his peculiar trials. Christ condescended to take man’s nature, and was tempted in all points like as we, that He might know how to succor all who should be tempted.”—“Testimonies for the Church,” Vol. II, page 201. If Christ’s body contained no tendencies to sin, He could not have understood the power of sin any better than could His angels, neither could He have been tempted. There would have been nothing in Him subject to temptation, nor could He have been a substitute for sinners; for He would have had no sin to overcome or to die for. But the record is that He was tempted in all points like as we are; hence, in order to become a perfect Saviour, He must have had every tendency to sin in His flesh that can possibly assail humanity. So long as Christ remained in heaven, unacquainted with sin from actual contact with and resistance of it, He, like His angels, could not understand the power required to overcome. It was necessary, therefore, that He should unite His divinity with the corruption in man, in order to know how to succor those whom He was to save. “He is a brother in our infirmities, but not in possessing like passions.”—Id., pages 201, 202. Let us examine this. Man is infirm—weak, unsound—because of sin, inherited and cultivated. “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 were in him no corrupt principles, no tendencies to evil.”—Mrs. E. G. White, in Signs of the Times, Oct. 17, 1900. The preceding quotation is the description of the human nature of Adam. Did Christ unite His divinity to a body that would answer such a description?—No, indeed! Let me present now the conclusion of the paragraph I have partly quoted: “But when Christ came to meet the temptations of Satan, He bore the likeness of sinful flesh.” The humanity of the first Adam was faultless, without taint, absolutely free from any tendency to sin. Not so the Saviour. His body was fashioned as the body of a sinner, weak (2 Cor. 13:4) because of “indwelling sin,” filled with “corrupt principles,” and “tendencies to evil.” But did He sin?—No. Why?—Because His mind was incorruptible. It was His humanity that contained sin, and this could not overcome His divinity; hence He was “without sin.”67 “As the sinless One, His nature recoiled from evil,”—“Testimonies for the Church,” Vol. II, page 202. What nature recoiled from sin? The answer must, of necessity, be His divine nature. Sin is mental, a product of the mind. The mind of Christ could not harbor an evil thought, because it was divine; therefore He did not sin. But that divine mind was connected with a human body, having incorporated in it indwelling sin and all tendencies to evil. By faith the Saviour kept His mind spiritualized (Rom. 8:6), with it serving the law of God (Rom. 7:25), thus overcoming indwelling sin (Verses 14-23), and was, therefore, absolutely free from all passion, His divinity remaining unsullied all through the trying ordeal. In His life, therefore, is shown a perfect pattern of an overcomer. As Christ, by uniting His divinity with sinful flesh, overcame, so the sinner, by uniting his humanity with divinity, can have his mind freed from all tendencies to evil, spiritualized and made holy, a perfect overcomer, freed forever from all passion, as was his Master. “Jesus came to the world as a human being, that He might become acquainted with human beings, and come close to them in their need. He was born a babe in Bethlehem. He grew up as other children grow. And from youth to manhood, during the whole of His earthly life, He was assailed with Satan’s fiercest temptations.” “The Majesty of heaven undertook the cause of man, and with the same facilities that man may obtain, withstood the temptations of Satan, as man must withstand them.”—Mrs. E. G. White, in Signs of the Times, June 9, 1898.