Series: Systematic Theology Part 2
Title: The Person of Christ, Pt 2/The Atonement, Pt.1
Purpose: To examine how Jesus is fully God and fully man, yet one person.
Date: April 6, 2025
- The incarnation: Deity and humanity in one person of Christ
- Three inadequate views
- Apollinarianism - human body but divine mind
- Nestorianism - two separate people in one body
- Monophysitism (Eutychianism) - only one nature - a third made by combining human and divine
- The solution to the controversy - Chalcedonian Definition
- Truly man, of a reasonable soul and body
- Indivisibly, inseparably concurring in one person
- Two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably
- Combining Specific Biblical texts
- One nature does some things that the other nature does not
- a) Humanly for 30 years but divinely eternal
- b) Humanly needed sleep but divinely kept holding the world together
- c) Humanly Jesus died but divinely He lives forever
- Anything either nature does, the person of Christ does
- Titles that remind us of one nature can be used of the person even when the action is done by the other nature
- a) Mary, the mother of my Lord
- b) Crucified the Lord of glory
- Brief summary sentence - “remaining what he was, he became what he was not”
- Communication of attributes
- a) From divine to human - gained worthiness to be worshipped and inability to sin
- b) From human to divine - gained ability to suffer and die; understand what we experience; be our substitute
- The cause of the atonement
- Love of God - John 3:16
- Justice of God - Romans 3:25-26
- Without love, He would never have done what He did but without justice, what He did would not have been necessary
- The necessity of the atonement
- Not necessary for God to save anyone
- 2 Peter 2:4 - did not spare the angels when they sinned
- Not necessary but was a consequence of His decision to save some human beings
- Matthew 26:39 - if it be possible let this cup pass but not my will but thine
