A PUBLISHED paragraph lately arrested my attention. It reads thus: “No proxy-death permitted. Even so Christ was graciously obliged to become one of His people to take their place. He did not become one with them by taking their place—the union was before death as well as after.” I may misunderstand the writer, but an ordinary English reader would take that to mean that incarnation brought the Lord Jesus Christ into union with man in his sinful state, which most certainly Scripture does not teach.
Man’s union with Christ by His incarnation is a totally false idea. Many believe and teach if, but Scripture does not. The essence of the error lies in the assumption that the Lord Jesus in becoming man thereby assumed manhood in its fallen condition, and then, because of what He was in His own Person, raised it to His own status before God; and all this without death. This simply reduces Christ to man’s level before and moral distance from God, as the result of Adam’s sin.
Were such the case He could not by any possibility be man’s Saviour, as He Himself would be in the very condition out of which man needs to be extricated. His own words as to this are very simple and very plain— “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit” (John 12:2424Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. (John 12:24)). Thus, though incarnate, He was alone, nor could there be any fruit till He had died. There was and could be no union with Him till He had died and risen. Were I writing I should have said, Union with Him was not in His life, but in resurrection, after death, for He has not become “bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh,” but He has made us—all true believers in Him— “bone of His bone, and flesh of His flesh,” after He rose from the dead.
It is important to see that Adam did not become the head of a family till he was himself fallen, and an exile from Paradise; whereas the Lord Jesus Christ did not become the Head of a family until He was risen from the dead, and then He could say, and did say to Mary, “Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.”
If the writer merely means that Christ became a man in order to meet our case, it is what Hebrews 2:1414Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; (Hebrews 2:14) distinctly states, but even though He took flesh and blood, He did not take it in the condition in which man as such was, that is, fallen—but holy, sinless, and therefore He was not one with anybody at that moment. Having affected atonement, and really ended the history of the first man in death, He could and did become the Head of a totally new race in resurrection. Hence our union with Him is not by incarnation, but by the Holy Ghost, and must be consequent upon death and resurrection, and not prior to it. W. T. P. W.