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Philippians 2:9–11
“Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
The relationship between Christ’s natures and His person is among the hardest topics to consider in theology. It is also among the most necessary, for if we get our doctrine of Christ wrong, we will get our doctrine of salvation wrong. For many centuries, the church has searched the Scriptures to understand the hypostatic union—the union of Christ’s human and divine natures in His one divine person—producing statements to assist us in knowing what God’s Word teaches. One such statement is the Definition of Chalcedon, which says that the two natures of Christ exist in His person “unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the difference of the natures being in no way removed because of the union.”
This statement makes clear that in the hypostatic union, the divine nature of Jesus remains truly divine and the human nature of Jesus remains truly human; nevertheless, we cannot divide the one person or separate the two natures. Jesus is not two subjects, the divine Jesus doing one thing and the human Jesus doing another in some sort of loose cooperation. Instead, Jesus is one person, one subject, who acts. He is “Lord,” as it says in today’s passage (Phil. 2:9–11). Only personal subjects have titles; natures do not. In context, that title reflects two realities: He is God and He is the messianic King who has been given reign over the nations. He is truly God and He is truly man. The two natures cannot be separated or divided; otherwise, we would have a very different Christ. Nevertheless, we must distinguish between these natures. We will continue to develop these ideas over the next few studies.
Today we will conclude by considering a ramification of the hypostatic union. When the incarnate Christ acts, is He exercising the capacities of His divine nature or His human nature? The answer is “both.” Westminster Confession of Faith 8.7 states that “Christ, in the work of mediation, acts according to both natures, by each nature doing that which is proper to itself.” The idea is not that a nature itself can act but that Christ’s mediatorial actions involve both natures. As an example, consider our Lord’s healing miracles. When Jesus laid His hands on people and healed them, both natures were involved in the miracle. The power for the work manifests His divine nature, but it was mediated through His human nature as He touched people. But the healing was one activity performed by one person, not two different works performed by two different persons.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
If we separate the two natures of Christ or divide them in such a way that each acts on its own, then we end up with two persons and not the one Mediator necessary to save us through the exercise of both His deity and humanity. We avoid doing this by distinguishing the attributes of each nature while also making sure that we talk in such a way that the single person of Jesus the Son is the One who acts when any attributes of either nature are manifested.
For further study
- Isaiah 7:14
- Acts 20:28
- Romans 14:9
- Hebrews 13:12
The bible in a year
- Psalms 33–35
- Acts 22