"Made like unto His brethren" - Hebrews 2:17
Out of purest love for God and men, the Christ of the Pre-existence became,
in the fulness of time, the Christ of the Ministry. He veiled His eternal majesty
in the frailties of our human flesh.
It is true that St John never forgets, or suffers us to forget, the unearthliness
of his Lord. "The Johannine picture of Christ,' says Dr Hugh Mackintosh, makes
on the readers mind an impression of harmonious and sublime transcendence"
This is plain and evident God who lives and moves among us, we feel as we read.
Yet He is plain and evident and very Man, our Brother, one of ourselves.
He is wearied at Jacob's well: He weeps beside the grave of Lazarus; He looks
forward to the cross now with instinctive shrinking and now with passionate desire;
He is thirsty on Calvary, He bears in His hands and feet and side, after His resurrection
tha marks of the spear and the nails. If, as Thomas Aquinas expresses it enigmatically
and finely, "He came forth from but did not leave the Bosom of God', he is always
and everywhere the Kinsman of the children, wayward and prodigal although
they are.
There were Stoics in the first century, too self-contained, too loftily detached from the
world's unrest and pain and yearning and tenderness to appreciate a Lord who stooped
to carry the sickness and infirmity of men.
There were Docetists to whom the humanity of Jesus, the Son of God, was unbelivable
an abasement and degradation of the divine nature. But John has not a shred of sympathy
with Docetists and Stoics. He counters their errors with his great affirmation of a
Jesus Christ who is not a phantom or an idea, but a Man come in the flesh - a Jesus
Christ like unto His brethren in everything except their sins, bone of our bone
and soul of our soul.
Out of purest love for God and men, the Christ of the Pre-existence became,
in the fulness of time, the Christ of the Ministry. He veiled His eternal majesty
in the frailties of our human flesh.
It is true that St John never forgets, or suffers us to forget, the unearthliness
of his Lord. "The Johannine picture of Christ,' says Dr Hugh Mackintosh, makes
on the readers mind an impression of harmonious and sublime transcendence"
This is plain and evident God who lives and moves among us, we feel as we read.
Yet He is plain and evident and very Man, our Brother, one of ourselves.
He is wearied at Jacob's well: He weeps beside the grave of Lazarus; He looks
forward to the cross now with instinctive shrinking and now with passionate desire;
He is thirsty on Calvary, He bears in His hands and feet and side, after His resurrection
tha marks of the spear and the nails. If, as Thomas Aquinas expresses it enigmatically
and finely, "He came forth from but did not leave the Bosom of God', he is always
and everywhere the Kinsman of the children, wayward and prodigal although
they are.
There were Stoics in the first century, too self-contained, too loftily detached from the
world's unrest and pain and yearning and tenderness to appreciate a Lord who stooped
to carry the sickness and infirmity of men.
There were Docetists to whom the humanity of Jesus, the Son of God, was unbelivable
an abasement and degradation of the divine nature. But John has not a shred of sympathy
with Docetists and Stoics. He counters their errors with his great affirmation of a
Jesus Christ who is not a phantom or an idea, but a Man come in the flesh - a Jesus
Christ like unto His brethren in everything except their sins, bone of our bone
and soul of our soul.
