THE PERSONALITY OF CHRIST.
By Samuel T. Spear, D.D.
1. THE personality of Christ, from his birth to his death, in the sense of a distinct and continuous individuality, is the central fact that links together all parts of his earthly history intermediate between these two points in time. The wonderful story begins at Bethlehem and ends on Calvary, leaving not a shadow of doubt as to the person to whom it refers, and whose record it describes. 2. The Christ of this history, having been crucified and buried, rose from the dead on the third day, and thereafter for forty days, at sundry times and in different places, showed himself to his apostles “alive after his passion by many infallible proofs,” and thus, in the body which had been crucified, identified himself to them as the real Jesus whom they had previously known. Acts 1:3. There was no such difference between the risen Jesus and Jesus before his death as to create any confusion in their minds on the question of identity. They saw him and talked with him, and recognized him as the same Jesus; and on this basis they were competent to testify to the fact of his resurrection. 3. This same Jesus, thus identified to the apostles, did, under their direct observation, ascend into heaven, in a manner that excluded all doubt as to the fact of the ascension, and as to the person ascending. He was, to their perceptions, the same person to the last moment of visibility; and, when he ceased to be visible, such he continued to be to their thoughts during the whole of their subsequent career. He did not, by passing out of their sight, become extinct, or another and different person. The central fact of his personality, not lost to their minds, remained with them722as a living and permanent force. The unseen Jesus was as real to them as ever the Jesus seen had been in the days of his flesh. 4. The personal titles and phrases by which this remarkable personality is designated in the New Testament, are numerous; and each one, though having primarily a special reason for its application, possesses, except when qualified in some particular use, the general character of proper names, and, as such, indicates the entire personality of Jesus, as made known in the Bible. Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, Christ, Jesus Christ, the Lord, the Lord Jesus, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of man, the man Christ Jesus, the Son of God, the Saviour, the Mediator, the Lamb, the Lamb of God, the High Priest of our profession, the only Begotten Son, the only Begotten of the Father, the Prince of life, the Lord of life and glory, the King of saints, the King of kings and the Lord of lords—these are the leading titles and phrases in biblical use for this adorable personality; and except when qualified by some limiting words, they mean the entirety of his whole being. Their number forcibly suggests the significance of the person to whom they are applied. When considered in reference to the particular reasons for their application to Jesus of Nazareth, they furnish an instructive theme for study. History and doctrine alike lie behind them. 5. This personality—contemplated simply in relation to one class of facts, and that, too, a very large class—is clearly human, in the sense of embodying the essential elements of human nature. Jesus when on earth had, and now has in heaven, these elements of one common humanity. This nature in him, when he was on earth, consisted in an organized human body, and a human soul, as real in him as in any man; and it now consists in a glorified human body, which Paul calls “his glorious body.” Phil. 3:21. . . . Humanity in both worlds is assigned to Christ. No one, if giving to the language of the Bible its proper force, can doubt the humanity of Jesus when on earth, any more than he can doubt that of Paul or Peter, or of any other man. He had a bodily and mental organization that was human, and was recognized as such by all who came in contact with him; and to this organization were attached the usual incidents and facts that mark human nature. Jesus was born of a woman, and was once an infant, then a child, and then a man. He grew in wisdom and stature. He slept and waked. He ate and drank. He saw and heard. He breathed and talked. He suffered and was tempted. He had human thoughts and human feelings. He wept. He prayed. He died. It is true that he was sinless in character; but this does not exclude his humanity, since sin is not essential to humanity. It is also true that his human nature was the result of a supernatural conception; yet this does not disprove his humanity against the facts that clearly prove it. The Bible often calls Jesus a man and the Son of man with reference to the fact that he was such. It says that “in all things it behooved him to be made like unto his brethren,” and that he was “in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” Heb. 2:17; 4:15. Any theory that denies or displaces the humanity of Jesus both corporeal and spiritual, is plainly contrary to the facts, and to the teaching of the Bible. We cannot too strongly emphasize the positive fact that Jesus Christ tabernacled on earth in human nature, and that this nature was not merely apparent, but real. 6. This same personality is also presented to us in the Bible as divine, not in any secondary sense, and not merely after his ascension into heaven, but in the absolute sense, and while he was on earth. The facts connected with this proposition, referring to Jesus when on earth, consist in assumptions and allegations of divinity on his part, repeated by his apostles, and in divine acts done by him. Nothing can be plainer than that the idea of his divinity was frequently on the lips of Jesus himself. He so spake as to imply it, and was so understood, and knew that he was so understood. A notable instance to this effect occurred when he stood before the Jewish Sanhedrim on the charge of blasphemy, because he had assumed to be divine. He there declared himself to be the Son of God, in a sense which, as he knew, would be construed into an assertion of his own divinity. Matt. 26:63, 64. He taught that “all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father.” John 5:23. No prophet before him, and no apostle after him, ever ventured to speak of himself as did Jesus speak of himself. . . . The divinity of Christ was not so vailed in the flesh, or by the flesh, or suspended, or dormant, or self-limited, as not to appear in the facts of his earthly history. It was a divinity in action as well as in doctrine. He not only spake the words of God, but also did the works of God. Take, as an illustration, the healing of the paralytic at Capernaum. Jesus said to the paralytic: “Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.” The scribes and Pharisees who heard this saying, at once in their thoughts imputed to him blasphemy, and in their hearts said, “Who can forgive sins but God only?” Jesus, knowing what was going on in their minds, and not disputing their logic about the forgiveness of sin by God only, but rather conceding it, wrought a miracle, and cured the paralytic, for the express purpose, as he declared, that they might know “that the Son of man hath power upon earth to forgive sin.” Matt. 9:2-6; Mark 2:1-12; Luke 5:17-26. Here is an act of divine power in the miracle wrought; here is an exercise of the divine prerogative in forgiving sin; and here is divine omniscience in reading the hearts of these scribes and Pharisees. Jesus, on this occasion, surely spake and acted as if he were God. He did what only God can do. Omniscience belongs to God and him only; and John virtually assigns this attribute to Jesus as in action when he says: “But Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man; for he knew what was in man.” John 2:24, 25. The same apostle tells us that Jesus knew from the beginning “who should betray him”—long before Judas had the purpose in his mind at all. John 6:64. When Nathanael was coming to him, with whom Jesus had never had any intercourse, he said of him: “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” And when Nathanael said, “Whence knowest thou me?” Jesus replied, “Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee.” John 1:47, 48. Here in Jesus was omniscience disclosing itself in facts. So, also, when Jesus told the Samaritan woman, whom he had before never met, to go and call her husband, and then told her that she had had five husbands, and further told her that the man with whom she was then living was not her husband, we have a similar exhibit of the divine attribute of omniscience on the lips of Jesus. John 4:16-18. The truth is that Jesus not only declared his divinity, but in specific instances set forth the fact by divine acts. He both spake and acted as if he were God. The idea, advanced by a distinguished clergyman in this country, that Jesus simply declared his divinity as a matter of his own faith, but did not, while on earth, show the fact by divine acts, and hence that this divinity, though taught by him in words, was, so to speak, held in a “dormant” and inactive state in Jesus, which is the theory of this clergyman, does not accord with the gospel narrative. A “dormant” divinity in Jesus, while rather a queer idea, and for the time being no divinity at all, would practically reduce him, while on earth, to the level of merely an inspired man, not essentially different from the position of Moses or Paul. This clearly is not the position assigned to him in the gospel narrative. Neither Moses nor Paul ever said, or could properly say, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Matt. 11:28. The words of Jesus, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work,” in which he asserted a parallel between himself and God the Father, would not fit their lips. John 5:17. When the Jews charged him with blasphemy in making himself God, he said to them: “If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works; that ye may know and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him.” John 10:37, 38. Here Christ assumed that his works were divine works; and this surely has no appearance of a “dormant” divinity, inactively reposing in the person of Jesus. The exact opposite of this idea is in the language used by him.—Samuel T. Spear, D.D., in Independent.