XXI THE INCARNATION THE truth as it is in Jesus Christ consists in the fact, and our apprehension of it is measured by our appreciation of the fact, that it is expressible equally in terms of man and of God. On the human side our Lord is the very fact and the very act and the very truth of humanity itself. We think most truly of Him when we see in Him the most exact truth of ourselves, and consequently when we express Him in most exact terms of ourselves. Whatever He was or did in the name or in behalf of humanity, humanity itself did and became in His person. If He was our atonement with God, it is because humanity in Him at-one-d itself with God by the one possible act, and in the one possible way, of self-reconciliation and reunion. If He was our redemption from sin, it is because humanity in Him, by the one possible attitude toward it and the one possible victory over it, put away sin from it and took to it the holiness of God. If He was our resurrection and our eternal life, it is because humanity subject in itself to the law of sin and death arose in Him from the death of sin into the life of holiness and God. That is to say, the earthly life of Jesus Christ viewed as a single and complete act must be interpreted not merely as an act of humanity, but as the one act by which humanity could and did bring itself to God, make itself one with Him, redeem itself from sin, and raise itself from death. Only through that one act can humanity be saved, because that is the one act the performing of which is the holiness, righteousness, and life, in which its salvation consists. He was our atonement through the actual making us at one with God in an act which was per se the accomplishing of just that thing. He was our redemption by the actual breaking of the bonds of the slavery to sin from which we could not liberate ourselves. He was our resurrection and our life through a life-long act in which our own life in Him, having overcome sin, actually raised itself also from death. But the more perfectly we interpret the life of Jesus Christ in terms of human action and human attainment, the more certain does it appear that it must be only a one-sided and half-way interpretation. As surely as that life was, from beginning to end and through and through, an act wrought by humanity in God, just so surely and so completely was it an act wrought by God in humanity. Just so truly as Jesus Christ was humanity in God so truly also was he God in humanity. The perfection of each half of the truth depends upon the perfection of the other half. When we get up to the truth at this height we see more clearly than ever the impossibility of limiting the humanity which is one side of the nature of our Lord to that of an individual man, instead of recognizing in it the common and universal nature of us all; of see ing in Him one man instead of all men made one with God, set free from sin, and raised up from death. But the very universality as well as the very completeness and perfection of our Lord's humanity is the incontestable and conclusive proof to us of His coequal deity. The incarnation was not for the purpose of exhibiting Godhead but of redeeming and completing manhood, and the perfection of humanity in Jesus Christ was the best and truest manifestation of deity in Him. While, however, it is primarily in the interest of our Lord's humanity that we are compelled at last to recognize equally His divinity, it is no less in the interest too of our highest conception and knowledge of God Himself that we should do so. It shall be the object of this chapter to do two things. The first shall be to affirm as strongly as is possible the whole phenomenon of Jesus Christ in the most absolute terms of His Godhead. God was in Christ, doing in humanity all that Christ did, being in humanity all that Christ was - so that, for the time being, we shall wholly abstract our thought from any consideration of the human activity and concentrate it upon the divine activity that wrought in Him for the salvation of men. The second thing we propose is to prove that the completion and perfection of the conception and appreciation of God Himself is dependent upon the truth of His most real and actual incarnation in Jesus Christ. With regard to the first point we have only to recall the recent course of our argument. He who is revealed and expressed to us in the person of Jesus Christ is He who is eternally first and final cause of all things, and especially of humanity as that in whose final destiny all things shall come back into God Himself, for whom as well as from whom they are. But more immediately and definitely than that, just what we see in the humanity itself of our Lord is not what nature is in it, nor what it is itself in its nature, through the reason and the freedom by which it is the agent of itself; but what God is in it, in the eternity of His love, the infinitude of His grace, and the perfection of His fellowship and communion. Man in Christ is what God makes him, by imparting to Him His Spirit, conforming him to His Thought or Will or Word, making him partaker of His nature and liver of His life. In Christ, God Himself is our holiness, our righteousness, our eternal life. In these and many other representations. to the same effect, our humanity and our whole human activity as manifested both in its ideal and in its actual perfection in our Lord is expressed so absolutely in terms of God and not of ourselves, that it becomes difficult to human apprehension to see anything but God or anything of ourselves in Him at all. It is unnecessary to go further on this line, or longer to insist upon the (only seeming) paradox that the one truth of God's absolute self-realization in humanity through Christ in no wise contradicts, but only explains, man's absolute self-realization in God through Christ. In other words, the perfect deity of our Lord and His complete humanity, so far from mutually excluding, on the contrary mutually confirm and establish each other. Our second position is, that Christianity will always hold, as essential to its life, to the truth at its highest, of the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, not alone for the completeness of our own salvation, or in the interest of our human redemption and completion in Christ, but no less in the interest of our adequate and perfect conception of God. To put the case briefly, and afterwards justify it at length, as true as it is to us that man would never be man without the full truth of God's self-realization in him, even so true is it that God would never be God to us without the very fullest reality of His incarnation in us. To put the truth in yet plainer and stronger form, - so far as God is in the world of our experience and is our God, the supreme fact which we call the Incarnation, and the supreme act in incarnation which we call the Atonement, the Redemption, or the Resurrection, were no more necessary to make man man, than they were necessary to make God God. I repeat that as in the evolution of nature and of humanity, man became man, in the highest, through the act and in the person of Jesus Christ, so relatively to us, in the world and in relation to mankind as heir and interpreter of the world -- God became God to us through the act and in the person of Jesus Christ. We saw how Jesus Christ was Logos of creation and of humanity, both of which come to their truth and meaning in Him in the end, as He was the truth and meaning of them in the beginning. We have now to see how He is Logos not only of creation, natural and spiritual, but of God Himself as expressed through these. That is to say, it is only |