In our generation, a battle often rages regarding Christ’s Deity. In the first century, the fact that Jesus was God was a concept often assumed. Due to the widespread influence of the Gnostics, the battle ground in terms of theological ideas was not regarding Christ’s Deity but His humanity. The first Epistle of John is clear evidence of this. “Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.”

In the video below, Dane Ortlund interviews Dr. Bruce Ware concerning his new book, “The Man Christ Jesus: Theological Reflections on the Humanity of Christ.” Jesus faced all the challenges that we face as humans, and yet he remained faithful to his Father through the power of the Holy Spirit. Dr. Ware helps us to explore Christ’s nature and to learn, through the same Spirit, to follow in His steps.

The questions posed are as follows (with time references):

00:30: What drove you (Bruce Ware) to write this book?

01:50: You start the book with a discussion of Philippians 2. Why did you choose to reference Philippians? Help us especially understand what it means when Paul says that Jesus “emptied himself” and became a servant.

03:57: When I (Dane Ortlund) think about the supernatural things Jesus did, my default mode is to think that Jesus is “falling back on his deity.” Help us understand the way you deconstruct and provide a corrective to that logic.

06:23: You have a chapter in the book that discusses Christ’s impeccability. What does it mean that Jesus was impeccable and how does that connect to his humanity? What does that mean for believers today?

09:25: Why did Jesus have to come as a man and not a woman?

11:43: What would you say to a woman who says to you, “Ok Dr. Ware, Jesus came as a male. Is it not true then that Jesus doesn’t really understand me as a woman?”

14:00: Why did Jesus have to come and be a man to save us? I can understand why only God could save me, but why did the second person of the trinity also need to become fully human and, it seems, do what Psalm 49 says can’t be done?

18:13: Is Jesus still a man today?

20:08: Why is knowing that Jesus’s incarnation is not a “parenthesis” cause for worship?

Dr. Bruce Ware introduces his forthcoming book, “The Man Christ Jesus” from Crossway on Vimeo.

HT: JT

Arguments for and against Images of the Incarnate Christ

From lecture outlines that were expanded into The Doctrine of the Christian Life, Dr. John Frame identifies five arguments against picturing Jesus:

1. Since God may not be pictured, and Jesus is God, Jesus may not be pictured either.
2. Iconoclasts in the Eastern Church argued that those who venerated images of Christ were circumscribing Jesus’ divine nature. To worship the picture would involve the assumption that his divine nature is limited, circumscribed by the human nature and is therefore picturable. Or it would imply that the human nature alone is pictured and thus is separable from the divine nature.
3. Some have argued that since we don’t know what Jesus looked like, any picture will be a lie.
4. Some take the second commandment to exclude any representations of deity.
5. The danger of idolatry, at least, is always present when pictures of Jesus are used for any purpose.

Frame’s response to argument 1:

1. As we have seen, Scripture does not teach purely and simply that God cannot be pictured.

2. But even if God in himself were in every sense unpicturable, it is clear that Christ, God incarnate, was picturable. He could be seen, felt, touched, as well as heard. His face could be held in memory (and there is surely no suggestion in Scripture that such mental images were sinful! On the contrary, recall the emphasis upon the eyewitness character of the apostolic testimony.) To deny this is docetism, pure and simple. In this respect, clearly, the Old and New Covenants are sharply different. At the establishment of the Old Covenant, there was emphatically no form (Deuteronomy 4:15). At the establishment of the New, there emphatically was (I John 1:1ff., etc.).

Response to argument 2:

The relation between the two natures of Christ is, of course, a difficult matter at any point in theology. I would argue, however, that Jesus himself is, in both natures, in his person, image of God. In him, deity was in one sense “circumscribed,” for all its fullness dwelt in him; though in another sense, God was active beyond the body of Jesus. To picture Jesus is to picture a divine person, not one “nature” or other. To venerate such a picture, I believe, would be wrong for reasons already adduced. I do not, however, think that an adequate argument has been given against pedagogical use of such pictures.

Response to argument 3:

As we’ve said earlier, a picture does not become a “lie” simply by being non-exhaustive. And, in fact, we do know something about Jesus’ looks: He was male, Semitic, in middle life, was known to wear a robe, etc. . . .

Response to argument 4:

As we have seen, the second commandment doesn’t forbid all images of God, only those intended for use in worship, as we earlier discussed it.

Reply to argument 5:
True.

HT: JT

“Christ is the very essence of all delights and pleasures, the very soul and substance of them. As all the rivers are gathered into the ocean, which is the meeting-place of all the waters in the world, so Christ is that ocean in which all true delights and pleasures meet.” – John Flavel