THE HUMANITY OF CHRIST

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 cannot 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 20I.
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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."Ibid, 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." E. G. White, in Signs of the Times, Oct, I7 I900. 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
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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." The Bible declares that the wages of sin is death. Independently of any declaration in God's word, this is an actual fact. Sin is a condition- unrighteousness - the opposite of the character of God, and therefore must sometime cease to exist; as all things contrary to, God' and His government must sooner or later be brought to an end, else God's throne would be imperilled. Sin, therefore, can, not be perpetuated, nor can God maintain eternally aught that has been contaminated with sin. Everything in the natural, physical, and spiritual worlds that has been polluted with sin is to be destroyed. Even the heavens encircling the earth will be dissolved. Nothing that has been defiled with sin can have a part or place in the kingdom to come. Sin and therefore as a matter of course, the sinner must disappear so completely that no remembrance of it will remain, except the marks the person of the Saviour, received upon the cross.
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As nothing contrary to God can continue to exist beyond the probationary period granted for the development of sin, it follows that there is no way by which a sinner, as such, can possibly be saved. Nothing out of harmony with God can enter heaven; and as the carnal heart is not subject to God, neither indeed can be, belonging to a world tainted with sin, it must perish with that world; for the wages due - death - is eternal separation from God. Nothing can alter this conclusion, nothing can save a creature tainted with sin; yet while the Lord cannot, in justice, save a sinner, as such, it is possible for a sinner to obtain eternal life-a seeming paradox. How can it be? God could have destroyed Adam, and created another being to take his place; but man was very dear to Him, and the great heart of God could not be reconciled to his loss. Satan sinned wilfully and deliberately, knowing the consequences, and was expelled from heaven after a lengthy probation. Man sinned ignorantly and in his innocence, and should he be cut off in his sins without being granted an opportunity to repent? "Man is very dear to God, because he was formed in His own image .... In order to understand the value which God places upon man, we need to comprehend the plan of redemption, the costly sacrifice which our Saviour made to save the human race from eternal ruin." - Mrs. E. G. White, in Review and Herald, June I8, I895

Yet the problem was how to allow the man - the sinner to have an eternal existence. The result of sin is death, and die the sinner must no alternative is possible. If the sinner suffered the penalty of death, God could grant another life, bringing into heaven a new creature, raised from the dead that had never been subject to the law of sin. "But God cannot let sin, unrepented of, go unpunished. He cannot welcome any sinner into the courts of heaven. This would introduce woe and misery there." - Mrs. E. G. White. in Review and Herald, Oct. I7, I899. Aside from the plan of salvation, even repentance could not save the sinner, and so, of a necessity, Christ had to die in order to make repentance effective. He was to take the place of the sinner, and accept the wages of sin, deaththat the sinner might be freed from the consequences of sin. But this brought another problem into prominence. Christ, as the Son of God, was God, immortal, having, eternal life inherent in Him, and so could not die; yet He was the only being under the dominion of God that could be an acceptable sacrifice. It became necessary to make Him subject to death, but this involved another mighty problem. Death is the result and consequence of sin and of that alone, and could have no power over a sinless being; therefore Christ had to be made sin (2 Cor. 21) in order to die. In other words, it was necessary to give Him a mortal, or sinful, body, which should be subject to death; so God prepared one for Him. (Heb. IO: 5.)

With this mortal, sinful flesh, Jesus took the place of Adam, and began where he failed. This body, with Adam's sin in it, died on the cross (I Peter 3: 18) for Adam's redemption. Unless it did contain the sins of the world, it could 'not have been subject to death nor have been killed. The death of this body of sin released Jesus from His weakness; and He rose, by the power of God, with an immortal body, to live again and fore ever "without sin"; (Heb.9:28); just as Paul describes the death and resurrection of the saints (I Corinthians 15) - God preparing bodies which have never been under the dominion of sin, and which He can, in justice, receive into heaven. It is not necessary that mortification and decay should in all cases; attack the mortal body, to enable God to grant a new one. Those who will be translated will be renewed in every way, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye; and the new creatures will be not only free from sin, but they will be of material not contaminated with sin. Christ waited until "the end of the world before accepting a mortal body for the sacrifice in order that it should contain all the elements of fully developed sin, so that the sins of the world (John I: 29) could all be atoned for at once. Heb. 9; 26. Thus the expiation on Calvary is so broad that it takes in the sin and the sinner of every age; and man is forever freed from the curse of Adam's sin. He" put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." The sinner who will perish with the world is he alone who, rejects the
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work of Christ, and wilfully, like his master, Satan, chooses to continue in a life of sin, rather than yield to God, and be transformed into the image of Christ, that he might have a part and place with the saints in heaven. It follows, therefore, that the sins of every creature were represented in the body of Christ (Heb. 2: 9), and that every mortal traces his lineage, through Christ, back to Adam. If it were otherwise, then he whose sins Christ did not carry to the tree could not participate in the redemption He brought to the world. But every soul was represented. The sins of the whole world were atonedfor, and man is free, conditionally. Wilful sin alone remains unatoned for. "The work of Jesus is to forgive the sins of the past. . . . In His sufferings and death Jesus has made atonement for all sins of ignorance, but there is no provision made for wilful blindness." -Mrs. E. G. White, in Review and Herald, April 25, 1893. God has pardoned, and will cleanse from, all else. The world is reconciled to God, and accepted in the Beloved. God will grant repentance to all sinners who will receive it, and call upon Him (John 6: 37), transforming and renewing the mind, through Christ (Rom. I2: I) and at last granting the finishing touch of immortality, which will make every saint a spirit, in body as well as in mind (Rom. 8: 23), and fit him for association with angels, when all shall be caught up to meet the blessed One in the air, evermore to be with Him.
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This blessed release is prefigured in the ordinance of baptism, the believer leaving in the watery grave, in figure, as he will someday leave in fact, the old man of sin, and rising, a new creature in Christ Jesus, to serve God here, and eventually to be translated to the mansion pared for him.

Published in; Advent Review and Sabbath Herald 5th January 1901