Power, the power of God, was in Christ. Was it the less bright because it shone through a life of absolute dependence on His Father and the sorrows of His unfathomable humiliation in pity to man, love to His own and devotedness to God’s glory? Look at that extreme point of it all, the cross, the foolishness and the weakness of God. Do they appreciate it who unwittingly slight the rights of God’s person? “I have power [not duvnami" merely, but ejxousiva, title or right as well as power] to lay it [My life] down, and I have power to take it again.” Yet was it exercised only in obedience, as He blessedly adds, “This commandment have I received of My Father” (John 10:1818No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father. (John 10:18)). The short time in which it pleased the Lord to die (so surprising to Pilate when reported), coupled with the loud voice with which He cried just before (so marvelous to the centurion who heard), points to the practical testimony of His power in death as in life, not to the total exhaustion of bodily vigor as the effect of previous sorrows. To say that when by an act of His will He had submitted to the death of the cross, it was not in the power of His soul to continue any longer vitality to the body (that is, that when He had voluntarily given Himself to die, He could no longer live) is true indeed but very like a truism. But that from the first He had in His nature the necessity of dying, or that at the last His vigor was so exhausted that He must therefore die, is to cloud the truth of divine glory in His person by assigning to it a dissolution necessarily inherent in His humanity. It indirectly touches atonement also, for how deeply is God’s grace in His death undermined, if He merely anticipated on the cross a death which must have been in some shape within a generation later? To me the scheme ominously symbolizes [coincides] with the taunts of some who surrounded the cross: “He saved others; Himself He cannot save.”
The life of fallen humanity is doomed, but our Lord goes infinitely farther than negating any such constitutional necessity in His human nature. He claims a power beyond Adam unfallen, or any other creature. None but the Holy One of God, and a divine person withal, could say, “I have power to lay down My life.”
Who but Jesus, Jehovah-Messiah, could be said to yield up or dismiss His spirit? Who but a divine person, the Word made flesh, could deliver up His spirit? Only He who had before asserted calmly His full authority: “I lay down My life, that I might take it again. No man [no one] taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.” From the conception Deity was never severed from the humanity of Christ, no, not even when His spirit was in Paradise and His body lay in the tomb.
The real starting-point in the passages of John is the Son (John 7:28-29; 6:57; 5:2628Then cried Jesus in the temple as he taught, saying, Ye both know me, and ye know whence I am: and I am not come of myself, but he that sent me is true, whom ye know not. 29But I know him: for I am from him, and he hath sent me. (John 7:28‑29)
57As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. (John 6:57)
26For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself; (John 5:26)), but viewed in the position He took here below: The Word, who was God, become flesh, who refused the very appearance of independence, was come down to do the will of Him that sent Him, did nothing of Himself but only whatsoever He saw the Father do or what the Father assigned Him only to do. So absolute was His dependence that He could say, “The living Father hath sent Me, and I live because of the Father.” Still less difficulty is there in the reference to John 7:2829. It is His mission, not subordination in the Godhead, which is in question. The perversion of these scriptures is gross and perilous to the highest degree. What can be worse than habitually applying to the intrinsic glory of Christ the language which He, in lowly love, uttered in His place of voluntary subjection on earth? The same John, who in the Gospel lets us hear the Saviour say that the Father has given to the Son to have life in Himself, in his first Epistle shows us “that eternal life, which was with [not, from] the Father, and was manifested unto us”: not a hint of the Father’s giving Him to have life in Himself save here below.
The Father is supreme God, Jehovah, but so is the Son and so is the Spirit (Rom. 9:55Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen. (Romans 9:5)). It is really true of the Godhead and of each person in it. (Compare Isaiah 6 with John 12 and Acts 28.) They are not three supreme, independent beings, but One Supreme with a threefold personality: all three persons supreme God, but none exclusively. But it is striking to see that, while the Creator in Romans 1:2525Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. (Romans 1:25) is said to be “blessed forever” (eujloghto;" eij" tou;" aijw÷na") , while the God and Father of our Lord Jesus is said to be the same in 2 Corinthians 11:31 (oJ w]n eujloghto;" eij" tou;" aijw÷na") , it is to Christ and to Christ alone that Romans 9:55Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen. (Romans 9:5) applies the still stronger terms, oJ w]n ejpi; pavntwn qeo;" eujloghto;" eij" tou;" aijw÷na". Indeed I am not aware that so forcible and explicit a statement of divine supremacy can be found elsewhere in the Bible. As we see, the very text (Rom. 9:55Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen. (Romans 9:5)) proves that the strictest and largest form of that title is reserved not for the Father but for Christ, not because the Father and the Holy Spirit are not equally with the Son supreme God, Jehovah, but because the Son, having stooped to become man and die, needed the plainest appropriation of it which Scripture gives to any person in the Godhead. The Father will have all to honor the Son even as they honor the Father. Faith sees it in the word and worships; unbelief stumbles at the word, but must bow perforce in the judgment. Can one but feel with Gregory of Nazianzus: “I am filled with indignation and grief (would that ye could sympathize with me!) for my Christ, when I see my Christ [surely it is not less, I would add, when the soul thinks of him as the Christ of God] dishonored for the very reason for which He should have been honored most. For, tell me, is He therefore without honor because for thee He was humbled?”
I return then with the firmest conviction that the death of our Lord was, in the fullest sense and up to the last, voluntary, though in obedience to His Father. He tasted death by no doom of fallen nature, but by the grace of God. And this is entirely borne out by Philippians 2:88And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. (Philippians 2:8), which clearly shows that in His case death was in no way through the common mortality of fallen flesh. For, “being found in fashion as a man,” He did not necessarily die, but because of the purposes of grace, He “humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” It was for our sins, and therefore, as far as He was concerned, on a wholly different principle and for ends transcendently divine. Adam, failing man, disobeyed and died; Christ became obedient up to that point of death, the death of the cross. He too was made sin for us; He was made a curse for us; He was crucified in weakness. It was from no necessity in His human nature, which libels Himself and would, if true, destroy our hope. It was the triumph of grace in the Son of Man, who was giving His life a ransom for many. God was thus glorified in Him, and “therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My life, that I might take it again.” I know not what of truth or love or obedience or atoning efficacy for others or of moral glorification of God in death is left standing by the fatal error that makes Christ, from the birth to the grave, necessarily subject to the laws of fallen humanity in His own person.
Again, the Authorized Version of Hebrews 2:1616For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham. (Hebrews 2:16) is unequivocally false. The passage says nothing about taking up a nature or not, which was just settled explicitly in verses 14-15. The real meaning is, “For of course (dhvpou) it is not angels He taketh up [that is, helps], but He taketh up Abraham’s seed.” It connects Christ specially with the line of promise as the objects of this special interest to the exclusion of angels.