Matthew had already presented the birth of the Lord suitably to the design of his Gospel. When his mother Mary was “espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins. Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.” He was thus Messiah-Jehovah, called Jesus consequently (for He should save His people from their sins), the virgin's Son, Emmanuel, according to prophecy. His humiliation, His rejection by His own people, follows; but, first of all, there is the clearest statement that what was begotten in Mary, what was born of His mother, was of the Holy Ghost. It is wretchedly low and even dangerous ground to say, with divines of repute, that Jesus was born holy because born of a virgin. He was indeed so born of the virgin; but the holiness of His humanity, though of the very substance of His mother, turned upon the miraculous conception by the Holy Ghost.
Jesus then was not only Son of God from all eternity in virtue of His divine nature, but He was so called also because of the divine energy manifest in His generation as man, and therefore the unparalleled blessedness of His conception and His birth, immeasurable though the self-emptying was for Him to take manhood at all. The Babe of Bethlehem, the virgin's Son, was not born, we may surely say, of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God in the highest sense. It was not merely as we are said to be born again to see God's kingdom, which Christ is never—could never be—said to be. In His case it would be altogether derogatory, and a denial of His holy humanity, to say nothing of His Deity. If we may so express it, He, the man Christ Jesus, was generated holy. “The Word was made flesh “; “God (or He who) was manifest in flesh.” But even the process by which He came into the world, though “by the woman,” was the fruit of God's power; it was a miracle of the highest rank, differing not in degree merely but in kind from the birth of Isaac, wondrous as this was; or from that of John the Baptist, filled though he was with the Holy Ghost from his mother's womb.
There is another most serious consideration which ought not to be forgotten. Fallen humanity calls not for amelioration but redemption, and needed it wherever it might be. Were the notion true that the Word was united to fallen human nature here below, He must have died to redeem it, that is, to redeem Himself! –overthrowing, not only His work of atonement for others, but His own person. In every point of view, the idea is as false as it is destructive—an intellectual trifling with the great mystery of godliness.
There was therefore no admixture of the minutest trace of that sad heirloom of inward evil which Adam had handed down to his posterity. Human nature now there was in His person, as surely as He was and is God; but, by God's will and power, it was unsullied and holy. There was secured the absolute exclusion of the poison which sin had instilled into man's nature in every other instance. Hence the Lord Jesus was born of the woman, not of the man, being in quite a peculiar sense the woman's Seed. For thus it was the Holy Ghost was pleased to set aside for the humanity of Jesus every taint of sin inherent in fallen human nature (of course, in His mother herself, as in all others of the race). Being so born, even the humanity of our Lord was “holy,” as we have seen. Accordingly, in His person there was the most perfect suitability for the work on account of which He came, sent of the Father. On the divine side He could not but be perfect, for He was the true God and eternal life; on the human side there was miraculously effected the complete disappearance of all evil for the body which God prepared Him. The power of the Highest overshadowed His mother from the outset, and thus only was “The holy thing” born of her in due time. “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one,” says Job (14.). This, and far more than this, was “That Holy thing” which was born of the virgin. With God nothing is impossible. Thus, long afterward, the angel disclosed what baffled Job of old and satisfied Mary on the spot. Christ alone is, in every sense, the power of God and the wisdom of God.
With this agree the types of the Old Testament. Take that most conspicuous one in Lev. 2 In Lev. 1 Christ is represented as the burnt-offering; in chapter ii. it is Christ as the meat or rather cake offering. This (the minchah, gift or oblation) had nothing to do with what we call “meat;” it was essentially bloodless. In the burnt-offering there was the giving up of life; but in this there was no question of sacrificing animals, or of anything that involved the shedding of blood. It was of fine flour, and thus aptly set forth what the Lord's state was as connected with the earth (that is, in His body derived from His mother). There was, of course, no leaven or corrupt nature allowed, nor even honey or the mere sweetness of natural affection, pleasant as it is, but unfit for an offering to God. Frankincense was there, and the salt of the covenant of God; and, what is much to be noted in contrast with leaven, there was oil mingled with the flour in forming the cake. This answers exactly to the passage in Luke 1. It was the well-known emblem of the Holy Spirit of God, Who shut out what otherwise must naturally have sprung from the virgin. Thus her child by His power was absolutely free from sin. Of necessity all the offerings of Israel belonged to the earth. The bullock, the sheep, the goats, the lambs, the pigeons, the turtle-doves, &c., were necessarily of this creation, if man had to offer them. But there could be nothing where there entered less suspicion of evil than in flour. It was expressly also “a thing most holy of the offerings of the Lord made by fire.” It was the growth of the earth, and set forth the Lord's human nature.
I employ the expression “human nature,” as I presume is ordinarily done, abstractly for humanity, without a question of the state in which it was created originally or into which it quickly fell. Just so the word “flesh” is used sometimes in scripture for man's nature simply, as in “the Word was made flesh,” “God was manifest in flesh,” Christ was “put to death in flash,” “Jesus Christ come in flesh,” &c. The special doctrinal sense of the term, as characterizing the moral condition of the race, particularly in the Epistles of Paul, looks at the principle of self-will in the heart. But what believer, thinking of our Lord, would contend for, who does not shudder at, such a meaning in His case? By the context we discern its proper bearing.
Thus, ordinarily, “human nature” is or may be used irrespectively of its actual evil state, unless morally contrasted with the new nature. Human nature was in unfallen Adam; it was in Christ; and we of course have it now. But however really in all, it evidently was in a totally different state in Adam before the fall, and in Adam as in us since the fall: in Christ alone scripture pronounces it “holy.” There are thus three distinct phases of humanity here below—innocent, fallen, holy. Christ's manhood was in the condition of Adam neither before nor after the fall.
Plainly therefore the state of human nature is altogether independent of its real existence. The fall altered the condition of Adam's humanity; but humanity remained as truly after that as before. In like manner the Son of God, the Word, could be made flesh, and did become man, though ever infinitely more than man, taking human nature into union with the divine, so as to form one person; but the condition of His humanity must be ascertained from the scriptures which treat of it. Thus in Luke 1 we have seen that, from His conception and all through, Christ's humanity was “holy” in a sense never said of any other; not merely that the Holy Ghost was poured out upon Him, but that He was “The holy thing,” born of His mother and called the Son of God.
Is it now asked, what was the object of the outpouring of the Spirit on Christ when He began to be thirty years of age? Assuredly it was in no wise for resisting inward liability to evil, or for any moral dealing with His human nature; for in Him was no sin. The Spirit was poured out for the testimony and display in man of God's power over Satan and his works. It was the Holy Ghost, not regenerating, nor cleansing (for there was nothing in Him, no, not in His human nature, that needed or even admitted of any such operation), but in power. Thus the Lord Jesus, going forth to be tempted of the devil or in the public service of God, was pleased to act in the might of the Holy Spirit. Enduring temptation, working miracles, preaching—all was done in that divine energy. We alas! may enter into temptation by the flesh, but in the Holy Ghost the Lord repelled evil, yet endured all trial. Hence the anointing with the Holy Ghost was a question of divine power, as it is said, “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power; who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.” Ignorant irreverence gathers from this that Christ had fallen human nature, and that, being liable to sin, the anointing of the Holy Ghost was given to keep Him from yielding! All who say this unwittingly blaspheme His person and moral glory. That Adam unfallen was peccable, the fact itself proved: that Christ ever was peccable, denies the truth of what He was and is, both in His Deity and in His holy humanity.
And here weigh the deeply instructive type of Lev. 8 Aaron alone is anointed first without blood (verse 12); when his sons came into question, he is with them, and then the blood of consecration is put on him and them (verses 23, 24), as the righteous ground for their being anointed with him (verse 30). So Jesus alone could be and was anointed (and as man, mark, it was) without blood-shedding. The Holy One of God, He needed no offering to receive the Holy Ghost thus. But if He would have us enjoying the fellowship of that unction from on high, blood there must be and was. So He, first anointed before His death, enters the holiest for us by virtue of His blood; and being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, He shed forth what was seen and heard at Pentecost and thereafter. What a testimony first to His holy manhood, next to the value of His blood for us!
The doctrine of Irving in its worst shape was, not that the Lord was ever guilty of sin, nor that He ever yielded to the overtures of Satan, but that, having all the frailties within that we have, His triumph over them by the Holy Ghost becomes the ensample to us, that we too should gain the victory over the same evil in our nature by the self-same Spirit dwelling in us. Irving insisted loudly on the holiness of Christ's person; not in the body prepared for Him, but in His practice. His heresy lay in imputing fallen humanity to Him; and Christ's holiness was simply therefore what any saint's might be in kind, if not degree, through the energy of the Holy Ghost, and not in the specialty of His person.
(To be continued, D.V.)