A. History. The great Christological controversies were fought in the early church.
1. There were first of all the Docetists who appeared in the church and denied the human nature of Christ. They said that Christ possessed no real human nature, but only appeared in a human nature for a time.
2. The Arians under the leadership of Arius were the forerunners of modernism. They denied the divine nature of Christ insisting that Christ was the best man that ever lived, but He was nevertheless a man. This error was condemned by the council of Nicea in 325.
3. In close connection with the error of Arius arose a group known as semi-Arians. They taught that Christ did not have the same nature as God, but a nature that was like God’s in every respect. This error was condemned at Constantinople along with a reaffirmation of the church’s position against Arianism in 381.
4. About this same time a man by the name of Appolinaris, bishop of the church of Laodicea taught that Christ did not have a complete human nature, but that the divine “logos” took the place of the human soul. This error was also condemned at Constantinople in 381 A.D.
5. There was also the error of Nestorius. This man denied the unity of the two natures and almost fell into the error of teaching that Christ possessed two persons.
6. There were finally the Eutychians who denied the distinction between the two natures of Christ and spoke of them as fused together. Condemned at Ephesus 431.
7. All these errors were referred to when the church finally adopted at the great Council of Chalcedon in 451 that the two natures of Christ were united in one divine person, without confusion, without change, without division and without separation.
B. The article refers in the words “by this conception” to the last phrase of the foregoing article “…so that in truth he is our Immanuel, that is to say, God with us.” Thus the articla contains a most beautiful confession concerning this truth.
1. It emphasizes first of all that Christ is personally the Son of God Who is “inseparably united and connected with the human nature; so that there are not two Sons of God, nor two persons, but two natures united in one single person.”
a. A person may be defined in general as an individual subsistence in a rational, moral nature which is the subject of all of the actions of the nature. The person is that which says “I” and which is subject of all the activity of the nature in which it subsists. As often and as much as the nature may change through birth, life and death, the nature remains always the same.
b. The person of Christ was the Second Person of the trinity, the Son of God Who assumed a human nature, grew up in it, lived in it, suffered and died in it, finally took it out of the grave and with Him into the glory of heaven.
2. The article emphasizes mostly the relation between the two natures within the one divine person. Concerning the distinction between the two natures, it says that they always retained their own individual properties.
a. The divine nature always “remained uncreated, without beginning of days or end of life, filling heaven and earth:” And although the divine nature was always present, “it did not so clearly manifest itself for a while” while Christ was on earth.
b. “So also the human nature hath not lost its properties, but remained a creature, having beginning of days, being a finite nature, and retaining all the properties of a real body.” Besides, although through the resurrection from the dead, the human nature became immortal, “nevertheless, he hath not changed the reality of his human nature; forasmuch as our salvation and resurrection also depend upon the reality of his body.”
c. Thus the two natures of Christ always remain distinct and separate with respect to their properties. This is denied by Lutheranism which teaches in connection with the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, the ubiquity of the human nature.
1. The article also refers to the relation between the two natures as far as they are inseparably united.
a. The two natures were so inseparably united that they were not even separated by His death.
1) Therefore Christ commended into the hands of his Father, when dying, a real human spirit.
2) Therefore also the divine nature of Christ was present with His human nature even when it lay in the grave. “And His Godhead did not cease to be in him, any more than it did when he was an infant.”
b. Nevertheless, we must not forget that this is a great mystery. For part of the human nature was already in heaven, while part of it rested in the grave for three days.
c. Besides, while on earth, the human nature of Christ only partially revealed the divine nature, this is not the case in heaven. In glory, the human nature of Christ is the perfect instrument of the revelation of the divine nature. We cannot, of course, see the divine of nature either of God or of Christ. Yet when Christ is in heaven in all His exalted glory, the divine nature is fully and completely revealed to us, for Christ is “the brightness of his (God’s) glory, and the express image of his person”, and He is the “image of the invisible God… for it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell;” Heb. 1:2, Col. 1:15, 19. It can truly be said that when we see Christ, we see God.
C. This perfect union between the two natures of Christ in the divine person is necessary according to the article:
1. It is necessary for Christ to be very God in order that he might conouer death. Only God Himself could come in perfect obedience and suffer the full penalty against sin in order that the elect of God could be delivered from it.
2. It is necessary for Christ to be very man in order that he might die for us according to the infirmity of His flesh.
D. The practical significance of all this.
1. The perfect union between the divine nature and the human nature in the eternal person of the Son of God is the only possibility of our salvation. When we understand this truth, then we can also understand that our salvation is fully and perfectedly accomplished by our God on our behalf; and that we need not doubt but that all that is necessary for our final salvation and glory is merited for us by Jesus Christ.
2. This doctrine is basic for the whole doctrine of the covenant. In Jesus Christ is the closest possible union between God and man. And it is because Jesus Christ is both God and man, that when the elect are engrafted into Christ by faith and become members of His body, that they can also dwell in perfect and most intimate fellowship and communion with God in the everlasting covenant of grace. It is in Christ that God tabernacles with His people. It is in Christ in the highest possible sense of the word that God dwells with His people in fellowship and friendship; that He becomes their God, and they His people, and that they enjoy the blessings of His presence and communion forever and ever. Christ is the body, the temple of the living God in Whom dwells both God and the elect by a living and indestructible faith.