God With Us
“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel, which means, God with us.” Matthew 1:23
Christ has divine relations with the Father and Holy Spirit as part of the eternal Trinity. In taking on a human nature, he took on a new set of unique relations for the sake of the world. Theologians call these Christ’s three mediatorial relations.
Christ’s relation to the Father was one of perfect sinless obedience. Because of the virgin birth, Jesus was born without the guilt of original sin. But was it possible that Jesus might sin during his life? According to his human nature, he was capable of sinning. He experienced temptations and the non-sinful emotions that we experience. He was tempted to use his divine powers to avoid pain and suffering, as when the devil tempted him to turn stones into bread. Being in the presence of sinful humanity certainly vexed his righteous soul, an indication being when he said, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?” (Matthew 17:17).
Christ’s divine nature, however, was unable to sin. It would have been inconceivable for God, who is pure and holy, to sin. It was not possible for the Son to sin against the Father or against the Spirit. In his divine nature, Jesus was committed to always doing the will of his Father. He said, “I always do the things that are pleasing to him” (John 8:29). How Jesus could be fully human but not sin is a great mystery that we cannot fully explain, but this is what Christ did. For that reason, we say that his relation to the Father was one of perfect sinless obedience.
What was his relation to the Spirit? It was fullness. The New Testament says that God gave the Holy Spirit to Jesus “without measure” (John 3:34). This was because the Father knew that the Son would not abuse the power at his disposal. The Father adorned the life of the incarnate Son with the full power of the Spirit so that he could heal diseases, feed the multitude, cast out demons, proclaim the word, raise the dead, teach the faith, and exercise power over nature. In no other human life have the gifts and fruits of the Spirit been so extraordinarily displayed. When Christ was exalted to the right hand of the Father at his ascension, he was given an even greater bestowing of the Spirit so that he might pour it out onto the church. The Holy Spirit now fills the church as it filled Christ during his earthly ministry, and it is through the Spirit that we are indwelt by Christ and experience his living presence.
The final mediatorial relation of the incarnate Christ is to the church as his family. He is now our brother. He has now been exalted into heaven in order to “bring many sons to glory” (Hebrews 2:10). In the incarnation, the Son of God became one of us. He took on human nature in order to become the avenue of our salvation. That he became flesh and blood means that he experienced the various emotions that we experience. Jesus was born among us and lived through the various stages of life as we do, from birth to adulthood. In heaven he has not simply shed his humanity but retains it as our Mediator. He still “remembers” what it is like to be human. For that reason, he is able to help us when we are tempted. The incarnation makes our connection to Christ, our brother, the deepest and most intimate possible.
The incarnation is a wonder before which we stand in awe. In Christ, God has done a marvelous thing for us.