5. States
5. States
1. What is a state and what must be understood specifically by the states of the Mediator?
A state is the relationship to the judicial power within which one stands. One needs to grasp this concept precisely and to distinguish it clearly from every other concept. Without a relationship to a judge that determines a state, one could not speak of a state. A sinful condition can always be conceived of as an inherent quality, even if there were no God in the world—although, of course, sin as a condition would then assume a different character. But guilt is completely inconceivable without a God before whom one stands guilty. Guilt, then, is a state. In its original meaning, then, a state is nothing other than an imputed condition. The condition effects the state as it reflects back upon us in the judgment of God. When God takes note of our condition and accordingly determines our relationship to His justice, He assigns a state to us. So, when God created Adam pure, he was in a state of rectitude, and when he had sinned, he was moved by God’s judgment into a state of guilt. In both cases, the state was nothing other than the objectification of his condition.
Now, however, since guilt is a state—that is, an objective relationship—God, by grace, has been able to permit the transfer of the state of one person to another who becomes a Surety for him. Where this transfer takes place, then the situation occurs that the state is not only distinguished from the condition but also that they are not in accord. This was the case with Christ the Surety. His state—at least the state of humiliation, the state of being guilty by the effective imputation of God—was transferred to Him from those whose Surety He became. With regard to His condition, He was completely perfect and without sin; with regard to His state, He was completely guilty and cursed. And conversely, the state of righteousness into which He entered by the satisfaction He made is transferred from Him to believers, so that they, although being in a sinful condition, still, with regard to their state, stand before God as those who are fully justified.
However, we must go one step further. As state originates from condition, it also produces a condition. Whoever is in a state of guilt before God must, unless that state is removed from him, enter into a condition of misery. And whoever is in a state of justification before God must enter into a condition of salvation and glorification. Thus it is the case that state, although it is to be sharply distinguished from condition, is still sometimes used of a condition, but then only insofar as it is a direct consequence of the state that is reflected in it. Christ was not limited to the state of obligation for guilt or the state of righteousness. A corresponding condition was joined to both.
2. How then can we further describe “state” as specifically applied to the Mediator?
A state of the Mediator is the status in which He stands as Surety before the justice of God, along with its corresponding condition.
3. How do you define the state of humiliation?
The state of humiliation is the status of guilt of the Surety before the justice of God as that is manifest in the corresponding condition of misery.
4. How do you define the state of exaltation?
The state of exaltation is the status of righteousness of the Surety before the justice of God as that is manifested in the corresponding condition of glory.
5. Who is the subject of the state of humiliation?
This is none other than the person of the Mediator, the Son of God. His humiliation does not refer to a nature in the abstract but is something that applies to the person. Here, too, Scripture begins with the divine person (Phil 2:7–8).
6. By what is the state of humiliation brought about?
By the act of humiliation. Christ humbled Himself and freely entered into the state that He had taken upon Himself through His suretyship.
7. Which two parts are further distinguished in this act?
It is customary, on the basis of Philippians 2:7–8, to make a distinction between:
a) Κένωσις, “emptying.”
b) Ταπείνωσις, “humiliation.”
By emptying we understand the act of the person of the Mediator by which He submitted to the assumption of the human nature in the form of a servant, without this human nature being equipped with the glory befitting His divine Person.
By humiliation is understood the subjection of the so-assumed submissive human nature under the curse and the demand of the law.
8. What judgment is to be made about the question whether the incarnation of the Mediator in itself belongs to His humiliation?
Opinions diverge considerably on this point. Authorities may be produced for two views. On the one hand, one points to the language of Scripture. The apostle says Christ has emptied Himself (ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσεν) by assuming the form of a servant (μορφὴν δούλου λαβών). How this is to be understood is then further explained by the words, “being made in the likeness of men” (ἐν ὁμοιώματι ἀνθρώπων γενόμενος). So it seems to be established without question that the μορφὴ δούλου is nothing other than the human nature as such, and to assume it was, according to the apostle, an emptying of Him who was in the form of God. Accordingly, the incarnation is thus the first step in humiliation.
On the other hand, one has rightly pointed out that the Mediator never again puts off His human nature and now also possesses it in His exalted state. Now, if the possession of the human nature as such were a humiliation, then Christ would remain eternally humiliated. So it appears that the express witness of Scripture conflicts with its no-less-clear pronouncement of the exalted state of the Mediator.
9. In what way may these two truths be reconciled with each other?
First, we must distinguish properly between human nature in the abstract and human nature in a specific form. Although human nature, as Christ possesses it following His exaltation, is suffused fully by the radiance of His deity and is transformed into a suitable organ of revelation, still it was not in fact the human nature that He assumed in the incarnation. Now, from this one can certainly draw the conclusion that the assumption of human nature in itself or in the abstract need not include humiliation. But then one may never forget that abstract nature without specificity never exists. What Christ assumed was our nature in a specific form, the form of servanthood, yet not one as it has become weakened by sin. The act of assumption itself occurred with the purpose of making that nature an instrument of servanthood and was already a humiliation. Conversely, in His exalted state, the human nature of the Mediator is raised to a degree of glory that goes far beyond the glory of the first Adam and far exceeds that to be received by the redeemed.
10. To what extent did the divine nature share in this act of self-humiliation?
The deity assumed human nature in the unity of the person, so the latter is something that belongs to the divine person. Now, however, humiliation is included for a person who is God if He has something in Himself that is imperfect and subservient and in which His glory cannot shine through fully. Hence it appears further that humiliation is certainly possible without a change of condition, for in the blessed condition of deity no change can take place. It was a humiliation of relationship, originating through relationship to humble humanity.
11. Was not the Mediator’s appearance as Surety, prior to His incarnation, already a part of the state of His humiliation?
No, for the μορφὴ δούλου, “the form of a servant,” of which Philippians 2:7 speaks, was not associated with that appearance. Christ did not put Himself in the position of one guilty but only promised that He would be willing to assume this position. The effective imputation of guilt had not yet begun. And the activities that the Mediator carried out prior to His incarnation did not bear the character of humiliation; they were all anticipations of His prerogatives as Mediator to be obtained through His humiliation.
12. What is intended by μορφὴ δούλου in Philippians 2:7?
As demonstrated earlier, it means: (1) neither the essence of God nor (2) the state, the position, of God in Himself, but (3) certainly the form or mode of revelation for others—thus that in which the essence unfolds itself outwardly. Now, this text teaches that prior to His incarnation Christ possessed the form of God—that is, His likeness as a whole revealed His deity; essence and form agreed with each other fully. By the incarnation, however, He assumed the form of a servant, the μορφὴ δούλου. Δούλος here means nothing other than man as servant and forms a contrast to θεός, “God.” By also assuming human nature—as all men possess that as a subservient form—with His deity, the Logos acted such that one could no longer designate His form as entirely corresponding with the essence. There was now something in Him that was no longer in conformity with His divine essence, and that was His humiliation. Thus the expressions used by the apostle agree completely with the description above that we have given of the concept state.
13. What are the stages of the state of humiliation of the Mediator?
These are summed up differently by different persons, without there being an essential difference. It is otherwise with the difference that exists between Reformed and Lutherans on this point and to which we return below. We can sum up the stages of the state of humiliation in order as follows:
a) Incarnation, including birth
b) Subjection to the law
c) Suffering of death
d) Burial
e) Descent into hell
14. What may be noted concerning the incarnation in particular?
a) That it relates to the Logos and not to the triune God as such. Thus to express ourselves properly we must not say, “God has become human,” but, “the Logos has become flesh.” It is not the being of God as existing in the Father and the Holy Spirit that has assumed human nature but the being of God in the existence mode of the Son.
b) Nonetheless, the entire Trinity had something to do with this incarnation because it was an “external work.” The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit worked together here, and each of these three worked in His particular way, carrying out the task that was appropriate to His place in the Trinity.
c) The incarnation was not so much something to which the Logos was subjected and that was done to Him by another as it was something to which He subjected Himself and He did Himself. Thereby it received its value before God and made up a part of His passive as well as active obedience.
d) The incarnation takes place from the Virgin Mary. In ancient times, that had to be maintained against Docetism. In later times, it has become necessary to emphasize that in opposition to the Mennonites, who only grant that the Logos assumed flesh in Mary without there having been a real connection between His human nature and ours except for their similarity. We believe that the Mediator not only has a nature like ours (sin excepted) but also has taken a nature, derived from ours, from that nature.
e) It was an incarnation. As was touched on earlier, that includes two things:
1. Not only a body, but a reasonable soul, was assumed from Mary. The term flesh in Scripture, when it appears in a connection like this, never means the body in itself but body and soul in their organic union. This does not mean, however, that the human soul of the Mediator separated itself in a realistic mode from the soul of the Virgin Mother or in a traducianist mode was transplanted through an action of her soul. Rather, as in other cases the soul is organically united to the body, which develops from the body of the mother, so too that occurred with the incarnation of the Mediator. His human soul was created by God, not apart from the body in order to be united with it but rather in the closet union with the body.
2. From Mary the Mediator assumed a human nature, not a human person.
f) The incarnation occurred from the Virgin Mary—that is, without the participation of a male—through an immediate, immanent action of the Holy Spirit. And that is so for the following reasons: (1) Because all sin must be excluded down to the root in the origin of His human nature. Sexual intercourse between a man and a woman is tainted with sin. (2) Because what is personal in human nature, it would seem, is linked with the act of generation by the father, wherefore this act, where a human person did not need to originate, must be omitted. Whether Mary knew a man after the birth of the Savior from her and whether the brothers of the Lord, who appear in the Gospels, were really His brothers in the ordinary sense of the word, is a question about which there is a great deal of dispute and which, dogmatically as well as exegetically, does not appear to be susceptible to a solution and moreover is of secondary importance.
g) The incarnation is accompanied by a sanctification of the human nature received from Mary. Luke 1:35 teaches us this: “Therefore (that is, in accordance with the fact that the Holy Spirit will come upon you, inferring back from the result to the ground), that holy one who will be born to you will be called God’s Son.” That the Son of God must be born of Mary as a holy something (neuter: τὸ γεννώμενον ἅγιος) makes necessary a special action of the Spirit. If we now knew precisely how the stain of sin transfers to human souls at their origin, then we would also know how to identify precisely in what the specific work of the Holy Spirit consisted when He purified the human nature of the Mediator. Now, however, we know little concerning that and must limit ourselves to conjectures, and the present point remains in the dark. That the body must be kept pure from certain affects speaks for itself; for although no sin lurks in what is bodily considered apart from its enlivening, it nowhere exists outside of union with the soul, and something that is of physical or physiological origin can become sin for the soul. Consequently, there is a connection between soul and body by which the latter pollutes the former—not only by having something in itself for which the soul, as the seat of personhood, becomes responsible, but also by making the soul sinful in itself. Finally, the most generally accepted opinion is that the sinful condition of human souls, which already dates from conception and birth, takes its origin in the withholding of the Holy Spirit on account of original sin. In all three of these respects one may speak of a purifying activity of the Holy Spirit.
15. Where do Roman Catholics seek the basis for the sinlessness of the human nature of the Mediator?
In the “immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary.” The decree of Pope Pius IX (promulgated in 1854) says “that the doctrine that states that the Blessed Virgin Mary, from the first moment of her conception on, by a singular grace and privilege from Almighty God, in view of the merits of Christ Jesus … has been kept from every stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God, and therefore must be certainly and continuingly accepted by all believers.” One may note that here the stain of original sin is spoken of, but of course the absence of actual sin is also intended. The latter was in fact already taught by Augustine, although he had posited original sin in Mary.
Against this view are the following preponderant objections:
a) It contains a contradiction. Mary is freed from the stain of original sin because of the merits of Christ. The merits of Christ, however, are only for the guilty. So, then, Mary was guilty.
b) If it was necessary for the immaculate conception of Christ to assume an immaculate conception of Mary, then one can with equal right require an immaculate conception of Mary’s mother in order to maintain hers. And so one would regress infinitely. Conversely, if it is sufficient to curb the stain of sin in the conception of Mary, then it is equally sufficient to curb it in the conception of Christ, and one need not go back further.
c) In order to be thought through consistently, the immaculate conception of Mary would have to be an entirely miraculous conception as with Christ Himself—that is, without the participation of a male. The Roman Catholic church itself, however, does not yet teach this.
d) The roots of this doctrine do not lie where they lie according to Rome’s pretensions. It does not in the first place have to do with protecting the sinlessness of Christ. The interest that one has in this doctrine is concentrated in Mary herself. The place that she has come to occupy in the idolatrous veneration of the Church makes her sinlessness imperatively necessary. To posit her as sinful and still to venerate her as such would be an anomaly. In practice she stands above Christ and in theory is beneath Christ—what the Holy Spirit is, in fact, according the Scripture. The dogma elevates Mary above the natural connections of humanity, but it does so because she no longer occupies her place within humanity. She was taken up into the heavenly divine economy, deified.
16. With what is the assertion that the incarnation was not a humiliation for the Mediator usually connected?
With the pantheistic idea that God and man are not essentially different from each other but have an affinity for each other.
On the contrary, however, modern kenosis doctrine, itself pantheistic in origin, has explained the incarnation itself as a extinction or emptying of deity.
17. Do the poverty and the outwardly insignificant setting in which Christ was born also belong to His humiliation?
Certainly. One has wanted to deny this on the superficial ground that poverty is no shame. This, however, is a misunderstanding. For a person who only lives in this sinful and cursed world, it may not involve a particular reproach to be poor; in itself, poverty is a consequence of sin. Man is not disposed to suffer want and to make do with little. He has been created to rule and to possess. Especially for the king of the universe, it was a humiliation to be poor.
18. What does the subjection of Christ to the law mean?
That He, from the beginning of His incarnation on, has freely surrendered Himself to the curse as well as to the requirement of the law of God in order to fulfill all passive and active obedience. Subjection to the law does not begin later than the incarnation but coincides with it in the same point of time. What, however, is simultaneous in time is separated logically.
19. What follows from the fact that this subjection to the law already began with the incarnation?
That the suffering of the Mediator does not date from the end of His stay on earth. In fact, subjection to the law includes suffering, since its subjection is to the curse as well as the requirement of the law, and the two may not be separated. It appears from His circumcision that Christ, as concerns the requirement of the law, subjected Himself not only subsequently but from the beginning. And it is rightly observed that the blood of the Savior’s circumcision is as much atoning blood for us as is the blood shed on Golgotha. His entire life was a continual suffering. Accordingly, in enumerating stages we have made a distinction between subjection to the law and the suffering of death.
20. How, further, must the suffering of the Savior be distinguished?
a) The first distinction is that between the suffering that He bore His entire life and the suffering of death at the end of His life. This is a distinction in gravity. It was the purpose of Christ to bear fully the wrath of God against sin, to undergo both temporal and eternal death. But just as with man and in humanity the process of death takes a slow course, likewise the burden of the wrath that death brought upon Christ intensified by degrees. There was an increase of the power and the force of death upon Him, an increase that accelerated as He came closer to the end of His earthly life. Thus, shortly before His transfiguration on the mountain, He could say to His disciples, “I must depart in order to suffer,” as if only now was the suffering to begin. This, however, was not so. He suffered before that time as well.
b) One may distinguish between suffering of body and of soul. Here one must take care not to stress either one of the two one-sidedly but to retain them both in their indissoluble connection. Earlier, one has sometimes looked too much at the bodily suffering, while it is well established that not blind pain as experience but precisely pain accompanied by distress of spirit and consciousness of guilt as Surety that constitutes the essence of suffering. At present, many incline in the opposite direction and maintain the hyperethical demand that a spiritual thing, as sin is, must also be atoned for by exclusively spiritual suffering, that what is physical is by its nature not adequate to counter the ethical. This, too, is a half-truth that becomes an untruth. Our body is not merely an appendage but belongs to our being. So if there is to be punishment for sin, this organic connection of our being requires that it also affect the body. And this is all the more the case since it is always the soul that suffers in the body, since the body as bare matter, considered naturally, can feel no pain. It is thus necessary to hold to both—to the suffering of the body and to that of the soul.
c) One can distinguish according to the causes of suffering:
1. The suffering that flows from His servitude to the law. The contrast between the deity of His person and the servant-form of His human nature must be one of the causes of suffering.
2. The suffering that arose from the contact He had with the sinful, corrupt environment of mankind. For a holy soul, every expression of sin that it observes must be painful. For a soul that was conscious, as Surety, of bearing the guilt of men, every memory of the magnitude of their guilt must cause pain.
3. The suffering connected with the prospect of the bitterness of His final days for the Savior. He not only had a clear grasp of the immense extent of the guilt but also of the intensity of the punishment consequent on that guilt. In every sacrifice brought under Israel’s ceremonial worship, He could contemplate an image of that guilt and a prophecy of His own pains. Already from of old He saw Himself pictured with the most vivid characteristics as a man of sorrows, visited with illnesses, from whom everyone hid their faces, who must endure in anguish and judgment [Isa 53:3]. Accordingly, He spoke of a baptism with which He must be baptized and of a pressuring with which He must be pressured until it would be completed [Luke 11:50]. This suffering of death lay in the background of His consciousness throughout the entire time of His stay on earth.
d) One can make a distinction concerning the kind of suffering and then speak of an ordinary and an extraordinary suffering. Under the former, then, is understood the pain that came upon Christ mediately through the different causes of misery there are in the world. All that was just detailed under 3 can be called suffering in this ordinary sense—not as if it would not have to be distinguished in gravity from the suffering of others, for in this respect the suffering of the Mediator was always extraordinary, completely unique in kind, but insofar as it was brought about through ordinary causes.
Scripture teaches, however, that besides this ordinary suffering, there was an extraordinary suffering that assailed Him through the direct and immediate action of God. God specifically permitted our unrighteousnesses to be laid on Him with great violence. What took place in Christ was not at all a natural process of misery; it was not the unavoidable consequence of His participation in our nature. There was a positive element in it that may only be explained by a positive action of God. To this belongs, for example, the temptation by Satan in the wilderness, to which the Lord was led by the Spirit “to be tempted” [Matt 4:1]. As was the case for His suffering in Gethsemane, it is written that the angels came and ministered to Him. Later, too, the evil one appears to have been at work on Him, for we read that he left Him for a time (Luke 4:13).
Above all, however, the suffering in Gethsemane and on the cross belongs here. No natural causes are sufficient to explain the degree of suffering that was wrestled with by the Mediator in these two places. This is spoken of in the strongest expressions. He sweated drops of blood, felt Himself abandoned by God, was astonished and deeply alarmed. In Greek, the words used here are ἐκθαμβεῖσθαι and ἀδημονεῖν [Mark 14:33], which originally mean “terrified,” “driven wild.” It was for these reasons that we spoke earlier of an efficacious imputation of guilt to the Mediator. This latter suffering is completely incomprehensible to us because nothing like it falls within our consciousness. Parallels may be produced for ordinary suffering; any resemblance for this suffering is lacking (cf. Zech 13:7; Isa 53:5, 6, 10).
21. When we speak of the suffering of death, does that only mean the separation of the soul and body for the Mediator?
No. This expression must be understood to be not only about that temporal death but also eternal death. Christ must bear death fully insofar as it was threatened as punishment for sin and insofar as His sinlessness makes that possible. Now, as was noted earlier, the concept of death includes three things:
a) Separation of the source of life for the soul so that it becomes a spiritual death. There can be no thought of that with Christ, for the condition of spiritual death is a sinful condition.
b) Separation of the source of life for the body, because the soul can no longer retain it in its organic connection. This was also the case with Christ.
c) Separation for the consciousness from any favor and a full awareness of the infinitely severe wrath of God. This is eternal death, and we believe that this too befell Christ.
22. Can we state precisely in what this eternal death consisted for the Mediator and in what sensations it manifested itself?
This eternal death belongs to the extraordinary suffering that befell Christ and so is of course inexplicable. As human nature existed in Him in a completely singular manner, so this suffering must have also assumed a completely unique form that we cannot imagine for ourselves. We may only make the following observations:
a) This eternal death was certainly an exact equivalent of what the sinner himself will have to pay to God if he is personally punished, but in its nature it is not the same. If with Witsius we assume that there are four elements in the eternal punishment of the lost—(1) privation of divine love, (2) sense of the divine wrath, (3) the worm of conscience, and (4) despair—then it appears that at least the latter two cannot be attributed to Christ.
b) Eternal death also does not consist in the personal union between the Logos and His human nature being terminated. This union cannot be broken, and would, were it broken, have caused the entire work of redemption to fall to pieces.
c) Nor can eternal death consist in the deity of the Lord being abandoned by the Father. The bond among the three persons of the Divine Being is not susceptible to being broken or disrupted.
d) That also means that eternal death cannot lie in the love of the Father and His divine good pleasure being withdrawn from the person of the Mediator. Just when He drank in the bitterest aspect of this death in obedience and suffering, He was for that reason an object of greatest good pleasure to God, a sacrifice of sweet-smelling aroma to the Lord. Witsius says of this, “To be the beloved Son of God and at the same time to bear the wrath of God are not such contradictory things that they could not coincide. For as Son, as the Holy One, who obeyed the Father in all things, He was always the beloved—yes, more than ever when He was obedient unto the death of the cross, for this was so pleasing to the Father that He has therefore raised Him to the highest degree of honor (Phil 2:9). Although laden with our sins, He felt the wrath of God burn, not against Himself but against our sin, which He had taken upon Himself.” Expressed otherwise, even in the moment that He died an eternal death, His active obedience was not permitted to be separated from His passive obedience, and by the former He was still the object of the good favor of God.
e) Positively, it can be said that eternal death manifested itself for the human consciousness of Christ in the feeling of being forsaken by God. Since now, however, the person for the human nature was the Son of God, this consciousness could have no reality to it if the humanity had not momentarily lacked the conscious comfort that there was for it in this personal unity with God. Thus it momentarily missed an awareness of divine love, felt the full divine wrath, and cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” [Matt 27:46]. Still there was not an element of despair in this, for were that so, we could no longer explain the “my God.” One who is lost would call, “O God!” Also, the “why” may not be taken as indicating ignorance, for the worth of the suffering lay just in the fact that Christ knew why He was thus abandoned. Owen says: “These words express wonderment, not ignorance or unbelief or complaint. Christ knew very well why He was abandoned in this hour and had perfect faith and confidence in His Father.… But He was astonished and silenced in the experience of His unspeakable anguish.”
23. Was it necessary that the Mediator died a temporal death?
Yes, for this constitutes an essential part of the process of death, by which God’s righteousness is avenged on sin. If the concept of death is separation, dissolution, then this characteristic must come to light in the strongest possible way. Hence soul and body must be torn apart. Still, one may not view this temporal death as the end of the process, for in those lost a union will follow separation. Soul and body will be reunited, and only then will they experience in themselves the full working of eternal death. With Christ, too, eternal death acted on soul and body while these were not yet separated from each other. But the sequence with Him was different; first came eternal death, then temporal death.
24. Was the form in which this temporal death came upon the Mediator immaterial?
No, it must strike Him in such a form that the meaning of death would thereby come to light. If it had been a death by blindly operating secondary causes, one could have taken it for a calamity. Or if in the zeal for God that consumed Him, Christ had caused His own suffering and death, one could then have seen in that the ideal of a martyr’s glory. Both these ideas, however, are excluded, for:
a) He did not die by accident but was formally condemned and executed by both clerical and secular power. Whether or not this was a just action makes no difference here, for legitimate government speaks with God’s authority even when it passes sentence unjustly. Thus by its verdict the death of Christ was a legal death. It thereby came about that the sentence was pronounced by the highest power in the world of the day, by the Roman government. If now, finally, one bears in mind that the Romans were the people of law and justice par excellence, then one will understand that in no other way could the significance of the death of the Lord been shown so clearly than in the manner in which it happened.
b) He was not executed in a relatively reputable way by beheading or a similar execution, which would express a certain sparing of the condemned. Were this the case, then one could think that the punishment applied not so much to Himself as to the onlookers; it was then more a display than an execution that bears its meaning in itself. But He was crucified—that is, the curse and the God-forsakenness of His death have found expression in the mode of His death. For the Romans, crucifixion was the most despicable form of punishment, by which only slaves and the most heinous criminals were punished. A crucified person was an infamous person. Although punishment by crucifixion was not Jewish, the Jews still had something that corresponded with it in principle—namely, the hanging on a tree of one already condemned to death and executed. Regarding this, Deuteronomy 21:22–23 states, “And if someone has committed a sin worthy of death and is put to death and you hang him on a tree, then his body shall not remain on the tree overnight, but you shall by all means bury Him on the same day, for the one hung is cursed by God (כִּי־קִלְלַת אֱלֹהִים תָּלוּי), so that you do not defile your land which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance.” The thought contained here appears to us to be twofold:
1. By elevating and publicly displaying the body on a tree, most of the time in a naked condition and in the most shameful way, the criminality and heinousness of the transgression are displayed. Here the punishment is also in conformity with the essence of sin. As inwardly shameful as the latter is, the former is outwardly notorious.
2. The one hanged was, as it were, expelled from the earth and hung in the air as one cursed and disposed of from before the face of God. From ancient times, the land was holy to Jehovah. As a result, whoever highly offends Jehovah must not only be killed but also distanced from the holiness of the Lord. He was a personified curse, and even after he was elevated above the earth, such an odor of curse emanated from him that before the evening arrived he must be taken away in order that the land not be defiled.
We find both these strands in Christ. He suffered as one marked by infamy and as one forsaken by God, as one cast off. And it is on that ground that Paul says in Galatians 3:13: “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us, for it is written, ‘Cursed is anyone who hangs on a tree.’ ” The law expresses a curse on all transgressors. The law depicts the essence of this curse by the shame it assigns to the greatest criminals. This arrangement was a type and looked forward to the Mediator, who as Surety would suffer as one who is most guilty. This type has found its antitype in the cross of Christ. And inasmuch as in that cross, as in a single point, it is displayed the clearest, the cross of our Savior has become the meaning-laden symbol of His mediatorship and of all of Christianity.
Judaism has grasped that significance instinctively. The two principles—salvation through curse and suffering and salvation through the fulfillment of the law—are irreconcilable. The cross is the death of the law as a means of justification, the abrogation of the legalistic dispensation, the dissolution of the salvation-by-works [werkheilig] covenant between the sinner and the law. The crucifixion of the Mediator is therefore an offense to the Jews, and from this fact is already to be explained that the Apostle Paul gives the cross such a central place. He is brought to that by his polemic against salvation-by-works Judaism. This was not a conflict about a minor point but a conflict about the essence, the heart of religion, about the point of justification. Here, too, God has consequently used historical conditions in order, by way of antithesis, to place this central truth in the immediate foreground. In Jewish legalism, the sin of unbelief is brought to its deepest expression. In contrast, Paul must inevitably reach for the most pointed manifestation of the other principle, the utter helplessness of and curse upon man. And by doing that, he reached for what is true not just for that time but what is true for all times, the heart of the matter as long as there are sinners to be justified. And led by the Holy Spirit, he became the eloquent apostle of the cross.
One cannot better sense the antithesis between Judaism and the cross than when one recalls the Jewish exegesis of Deuteronomy 21:22–23. Their explanation is that the one hung is a curse before God—that is, a shame and one marked by infamy before God, something by which He is dishonored and blasphemed. The genitive אלהימ is thus taken as an objective genitive. And by that they think to have passed judgment on the cross of the Mediator. That is the typical expression for the offense of the cross (for what is developed here, cf. Gal 6:14; 5:11; 2:20–21; 1 Cor 1:23).
25. Does Scripture also present the cross of the Mediator to us under still other viewpoints?
Yes. Although what has been said is the main point, the cross appears here and there under one or another aspect.
a) The elevation on the cross was the symbol of elevation above the narrow limits of Jewish particularism. By the cross, an end is made to the dispensation of the ceremonial law. From now on, salvation comes to Jews and Gentiles alike. The ascension of the Lord had the same meaning, for, exalted above all, He is the savior of all believers. So in a most meaningful way, Holy Scripture links to each other the two—the crucifixion and the ascension—in order under this viewpoint to posit them as in principle the same exaltation; John 12:32–33, “And I, when I will be lifted up from the earth (on the cross and by the ascension), will draw all men to myself (that is, all sorts of men).” One should bear in mind that this statement was spoken on the occasion when certain Greeks wished to see the Lord (vv. 20–21). “He said this signifying the manner of death He would die” [v. 33]. A similar thought is present in Hebrews 13:12–13, “Wherefore Jesus too … has suffered outside the gate. Let us then go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His abuse.”
b) The elevation on the cross was also a public display, not only as a divine punishment (already pointed out above) but at the same time as a liberating act. Sin masks its true character. God displays it in all its terrible consequences. It begins its dominion with a lie. God begins His triumph over it by maintaining the truth. For this view of the cross, compare John 3:14–15; Romans 3:25 (“Whom God has displayed”); Colossians 2:15 (“Having disarmed the authorities and powers, He has openly put them on display and in doing that, triumphed over them”).
26. Did it emerge from the conduct of Christ Himself that His death must take place in such a way?
Yes, for He expressly explained that as long as all these circumstances were not yet a fact and suitable for sacraments, His hour had not yet come. Consequently, it was not irrelevant how and when He died. He had a time, a particular hour. The crucifixion was predicted along with what preceded and belonged with it. So the scourging (Isa 50:6; 53:5); the disrobing (Psa 22:18); the crucifixion with the piercing of hands and feet (cf. vv. 16–17).
27. Does the burial of Christ belong to the state of His humiliation?
Yes. This is shown from the following considerations:
a) Being laid in the ground as a return to dust is a punishment threatened for sin. On account of the unity of the person, everything that happens to the body must be seen as a humiliation of the soul. Soul and body are really separated by death and rent asunder, but nonetheless continue to belong to each other. The bond is not broken for eternity. It is the same body that will be raised that was first buried, however much flesh and blood may be changed. Now, if this humiliation of the body is a punishment for sin, then it also could not have been otherwise for Christ. One need only keep in mind what was said above concerning the concept of a state in order to see immediately that the burial belongs to the state of humiliation.
b) The state of exaltation begins with the resurrection, for according to the representation of Scripture it is the public justification of the Mediator by which He obtained acquittal from punishment and the right to eternal life. Now, however, acquittal and the awarding of rights as judgment necessarily precede actual release and the real communication of privileges. If we must now assume that the burial did not belong to the humiliation, then we would have to assume that it was either an intermediate state—neither humiliation nor exaltation—or that it belonged to His exaltation. The first view, however, is as little possible as the second, for if the work of the Mediator was in fact completed, then it was inappropriate that He must wait for exaltation. The justifying pronouncement must immediately follow satisfaction, for the righteousness of God does not tarry.
c) We have already come to recognize earlier, as a fixed general rule, that the facts of salvation as they follow each other in the Mediator find a sort of shadow and repetition in the order of salvation [ordo salutis], by which His benefits are appropriated by believers. If Christ is crucified for sins, the sinner is crucified to sin and the world; if Christ has risen for the justification for all His own, the sinner, too, rises out of his spiritual death in sin to walk in newness of life with Christ. There is a dying off of the old and an enlivening of the new man.
We have now only to ask whether the burial of the Mediator also has a similar shadowing and, if so, to which of the two series it belongs: to the doing away of the old or to the origin and development of the new. If it falls within the first series, it will then also have to be reckoned in Christ to the state of His humiliation, for the state of humiliation had just this purpose: to do away with the old, the guilt and the power of sin. The apostle teaches us in Romans 6:4 that we are buried with Christ through baptism, in death, so that as He is raised from death by the glory of the Father, so we too should walk in newness of life. That is to say, our old man is put to death and perishes completely in that death, and that is reflected in the symbolism of baptism. This, however, is in connection with the death and burial of Christ. This connection can lie in the fact that in the death and the burial of Christ the old man of the sinner is done away with legally. In this regard, the burial appears as the extreme realization of death. Accordingly, “Christ was buried” says: He has died completely, through and through, been taken away from among the living, removed from their midst. Only through the burial of a dead person does it become obvious that he is gone, that he is no longer numbered among the living. Christ, as the Surety taking on guilt, must be buried in order that the curse of God would come upon those who are guilty fully, and it, in their Surety, would be completely done away with from before the face of God. That this was less a suffering than a symbolic declaration is beside the point. What we maintain in the first place is not that the burial of the Savior belongs to His suffering as that it must certainly be reckoned to the state of His humiliation.
d) The separation of soul and body in the Mediator, and its continuing separation, was certainly something abnormal, an imperfection, and every imperfection had for Him the character of humiliation and so also belongs to the state of humiliation. From this viewpoint, one can even maintain that staying in the grave included a certain measure of suffering for the Savior. The soul was conscious that its body, which had to be viewed as belonging with it, was humiliated and certainly felt the dishonor of this humiliation. Although a state of dishonor is not in itself suffering, still the sensing of that state becomes a matter of suffering.
e) In prophecy, Christ is strikingly introduced as one who confidently expects His deliverance from the power of the state of death but nonetheless also perceives that He has come under the power of that state. Peter in Acts 2:25–31 and Paul in Acts 13:34–35 apply the passage in Psalm 16:10 to the Mediator. Both teach that the prophecy came true when Christ rose from the dead. Therefore, what constituted His deliverance and the object of His confidence was not that He would not die but that He could not be held by death. He was certainly given over to death but not abandoned or left in death. From this it also follows that being given over in death was the ultimate limit of humiliation—that is, that burial, descent into the grave, brought His humiliation as far as it could go. That Christ rose, not that He sank into the grave, was the beginning of His deliverance.
f) The word “humiliation” in itself already contains a powerful argument for the Reformed view. In its original sense, it means localiter [locally], “to go below.” Movement downward in Scripture, however, is always a symbol of dishonoring, as movement upward expresses being honored. This metaphor is hardly accidental. It rests on the order of creation that goes from above to below. God is said to dwell above us; the cursed spirits dwell in the depths. Man is drawn up out of the dust of the earth, and that is his honor. When the curse of sin smites him, he must go back below again into the dust. This order would have to be completely reversed if the burial may no longer be validly considered as humiliation.
28. How does this view comport with the Savior’s crying out from the cross, τετέλεσται, “It is finished”?
a) One has rightly noted that this cry may not be understood as if it strictly excluded all further suffering and all further humiliation. If this were so, one would arrive at the absurd position that giving up the spirit, actually dying, did not constitute part of His suffering. When the Savior cried out as He did, He had not yet died, for shortly before His death He still cried out with a loud voice. The cry is thus a cry of expectation. After He had given up His spirit and closed His mouth, He could no longer speak, and so He spoke beforehand, without desiring to exclude the suffering of temporal death and the dishonor of burial.
b) What was finished was not the full suffering of humiliation but the active bearing of pain. The word “finish” already includes that in itself. What occurred after this finishing was more something that happened to the Mediator than something that He did Himself. He gave His spirit over into the hands of the Father—that is, relinquished control of His body. Whatever happened now with the lifeless corpse, the soul no longer senses in and through the body.
29. By the death of the Savior, was a separation made between His divine person and His body?
No; His deity remains united both with the separated soul and the buried body. So, too, what occurred with His body in humiliation is attributed to the person of the Mediator.
30. Does Scripture itself also present to us the burial of the Savior in this light (as a humiliation)?
Yes. The Savior Himself has presented His resurrection after a stay of three days and three nights in the heart of the earth as a sign like to that of Jonah the prophet. Now, with Jonah there are two considerations:
a) A living sojourn in the fish. Although he was swallowed up, he did not thereby perish. Likewise, the Lord was surely swallowed up by death; He still did not perish from that. He saw no corruption in the grave [Acts 2:27].
b) At the same time, it was a deliverance for Jonah and for the Mediator when they were freed from their dungeon. If there were no deliverance here, there would be no sign.
It is true that as in many other cases, here, too, the type falls short of the antitype; for Jonah was not really dead but only as good as dead and buried, while for the Savior burial was in fact the seal on His death and its realization.
31. Is there unanimity concerning the last stage of the humiliation, “the descent into hell”?
No; opinions on this diverge greatly. The difference concerns the following two points:
a) Whether the descent into hell, of which the Apostles’ Creed speaks, is to be regarded as a real descent to the place of demons and the lost or to a similar place, or should be understood less realistically.
b) In connection with this, whether the descent into hell is to be reckoned to the state of humiliation, to that of exaltation, or to an intermediate state that follows the humiliation and precedes the exaltation.
32. How does the expression at issue here read in the creed?
In the received form, it reads in Latin, descendit ad inferna; in Greek, κατελθόντα εἰς τὰ κατώτατα. Some manuscripts have ad inferos (masculine plural). The Greek form sometimes has εἰς ᾅδου or εἰς τὸν ᾅδην.
33. What can be established concerning the antiquity of these words in the Creed?
They appear for the first time in the text of the creed given us by Rufinus (390) and in the text of the church of Aquileia, not in the old Roman form. Likewise communicated to us by Rufinus and dating from before the year 341, the old Roman form read, “was crucified under Pontius Pilate and buried; the third day He rose from the dead.” The form of the creed that we find in Marcellus of Ancyra, which is likewise earlier than the year 341, reads similarly. The Church of Hippo Regius in Africa, where Augustine was bishop, possessed the Apostles’ Creed without this article around the year 400. In addition to this, even in the churches of the province of Aquileia two other forms were used, perhaps of an older date than the form given by Rufinus, in which the article on the descent into hell is lacking. Rufinus himself says, “One should know that in the Creed of the Church of Rome, this addition, ‘decendit ad inferna,’ is not found.” Also, the churches of the East do not have these words. The force of the expression, however, appears to be the same as what is contained in the statement that He was buried.
34. What is apparent from this historical overview?
a) That the article “descended to the lowest places” is of relatively late origin. It is not found in the oldest forms of the creed accessible to us.
b) That also the explanation of the words was at the same time uncertain. Rufinus speaks of it with an “appears,” as if to him the sense was not entirely clear and indubitable.
c) That we can dismiss for ourselves the complicated historical question what the words originally meant in the Apostles’ Creed for the person who first inserted them. It is not even certain whether the one who did this attached a particular thought to the expression. In any case, this is not the place to speak of what is historically correct. When we acknowledge the Apostles’ Creed as a part of our confession, we do so with the understanding that it may have the sense that our other creeds give to it. Only what official view the Reformed Church has formed of the words needs to be considered here.
35. How many views are there concerning the meaning of this article of faith?
Five and still some:
a) The Roman Catholic view. When His soul was separated from the body, in this soul Christ went to the limbus patrum—that is, the border region of the Fathers, the place where souls who had died previously find themselves. The purpose of His appearance in this place was to bring these souls into heaven. The place of glory could not be open for them previously because the true Christian sacraments, which actually communicate grace, were lacking under the old order. There was at that time no genuine and perfect salvation, and that lack was supplied through the saving act of Christ.
b) The Lutheran view. In the Formula of Concord, this is described as follows (article IX):
“A dispute has arisen among those who have subscribed to the Augsburg Confession concerning this article: When and how did our Lord Jesus Christ, as our catholic faith teaches, descend to hell? Did this occur before or after His death? Further, one has asked whether He descended only according to His soul, or only according to His deity, or actually in body and soul, and whether this occurred spiritually or bodily. Also, it has been disputed whether this article should be reckoned to the suffering or to the glorious triumph of Christ. Now since this article, as also the preceding, can be comprehended neither by our senses nor by our reason, but must be accepted by faith alone, we have unanimously approved that there shall be no dispute concerning this point, but that one shall believe and teach it in all possible simplicity. Let us in this respect follow the godly teaching of Dr. Luther, who in his sermon at Torgau in 1533 has unfolded this article in a most godly manner, cutting off all curious questions and awakening all Christians to the godly simplicity of faith. For it should be enough for us to know that Christ descended into hell, destroyed hell for all believers, and that by Him we are snatched from the power of death and of the devil, from eternal condemnation and even from the jaws of hell. But in what way these things have come to pass, let us not ask about that curiously but rather await the knowledge of these things in another world, where not only that mystery but also many other things will be made clear—things that we must simply believe here, things that go beyond the reach of our blind reason.”
This still sounds very modest. In reality, however, what is intended is an “actual, real and supernatural movement” of Christ, “by which having wrestled Himself free from the shackles of death and having again become alive, He went with His entire person to the underworld in order that He might show Himself to the evil spirits and damned men as victor over death” (Hollaz). Christ also preached in hell, but it was not the preaching of the gospel of salvation but rather a legalistic preaching of damnation.
c) The view of Aepinus (1499–1553) and others. According to Aepinus, Christ had traveled to hell really and locally to endure hellish punishments there in our place. This descent had reference only to His soul, as also, for that matter then, the orthodox Lutherans do not appear to want to deny that Christ’s body remained in the grave. With Aepinus, the descent into hell in the strictest sense falls under the humiliation.
d) The view of Ebrard, Schenkel, and many recent theologians. They maintain that Christ went to Sheol to preach the gospel there, not in the Lutheran sense of a preaching of curse, but with the goal of converting the inhabitants of Sheol. Sheol (שׁאוֹל; Greek ᾅδης) is not hell as the place of final damnation but the realm of the dead in which Old Testament believers at one time were gathered with pagans and unbelievers from Israel after their death and in which dead pagans are now located with unbelievers who die among Christians. At present, the doctrine of the so-called probation after death is voiced in this explanation of the descensus.
e) The view among the Reformed that explains the descensus as the hellish anguish that Christ has suffered in His soul, especially in Gethsemane and on the cross, when He felt Himself forsaken by the Father. Thus our [Heidelberg] Catechism, question 44; Calvin, Institutes, 2:16, 8–12; Wollebius, Bucanus, Wendelin, Burman, Voetius, Picket, Polanus; more recently Dr. Kuyper, who also gives his own explanation of the order of the articles in the creed. That the descent into hell comes after the death and burial has its basis, according to Dr. Kuyper, in that eternal death follows temporal death and burial for the lost. What Christ has done for us is summed up here in the same sequence as would have taken place if we had had to bear it personally.
f) The view among the Reformed that explains the descent into hell as a forceful expression of the fact that both in body and soul Christ found Himself in the state of death. That He descended into hell simply means to say He entered fully into the state of death. The Westminster Larger Catechism, 50, asks, “Wherein consisted Christ’s humiliation after His death?,” and answers, “Christ’s humiliation after His death consisted in His being buried, and continuing in the state of the dead, and under the power of death till the third day; which hath been otherwise expressed in these words, He descended into hell.” Charles Hodge (Systematic Theology, 2:616–17) defends this view with an appeal to the derivation of the English word “hell” from the Greek ᾅδης, which means “what is invisible,” “what is covered,” as well as by explaining the insertion of this article in the creed from an attempt to illumine further the article on the burial. According to A. A. Hodge, the article intends to say nothing other than that Christ has really died: “Crucified, died, buried, dead-dead!”
g) With many Reformed theologians, one finds the fifth and sixth opinions combined. They allow for the descent into hell, which concerns the person of the Mediator, to apply partly to the body and partly to the soul. It means that in His body the Mediator remained in the Sheol of the earth and in His soul suffered hellish pains. So Olevianus, Witsius, Mastricht, and many others.
36. Does Scripture itself speak of a descent into hell?
No. The expression in Latin and Greek that is translated by these words reads, as we said above, “descendit ad inferna, κατελθόντα εἰς τὰ κατώτατα, descended to the lowest parts.” This expression appears to be derived from Ephesians 4:9, “This ‘He ascended,’ what is it other than that He had also descended to the lower parts of the earth (εἰς τὰ κατώτερα μέρη τῆς γῆς)?”
To understand what the apostle intends with these words in Ephesians 4, one must compare the immediately preceding citation from Psalm 68:18. This psalm pictures how Jehovah, after having undertaken a victorious expedition against His enemies, returns in triumph to His dwelling on the top of Zion. He has brought with Him booty from the war, which He, as kings are accustomed to do, distributes among His servants. This all has significance as a type, the apostle assures us. Jehovah’s going up to Zion was a type of the ascension of the Lord. His expedition coming down from Zion and His struggle with enemies found their antitype in the gigantic struggle of the Mediator with the power of sin death and darkness. The distribution of the spoils of war represented the giving of the gifts of the Spirit, from which everyone receives from the measure of the gift of Christ, by which some are equipped to be apostles, others prophets, etc.
From this, it is now apparent what the apostle will have understood by the words “descend to the lower parts of the earth.” It simply serves to show that Christ has not gone to heaven without the fruits of His glorious victory. He ascended, but not without something having preceded. He first went down for battle. The ἀνέβη may not be viewed as a stand-alone act but must be viewed in the light of the preceding κατέβη. This ἀνέβη, “what is it other than that He had first descended to the lower parts of the earth?” The one who descended is Himself also He “who ascended above all heavens so that He might fill all things.” The fullness of the gifts, then, which the Mediator has at His disposal following His ascension, is measured by the apostle according to the depth of His humiliation. Because He came down to the lower parts of the earth, therefore, having ascended above all heavens, He could fill all things, and as the identical person who had lived through all these things (καὶ αὑτὸς, v. 11) give apostles, prophets, etc.
One sees that for the apostle the expression εἰς τὰ κατώτερα μέρη τῆς γῆς is the measure of the humiliation of Christ. Given that, however, it becomes wholly unusable for Roman Catholic and Lutheran dogmatics. For in both, one is accustomed to view the descent into hell as a triumph belonging to His exaltation and not as a humiliation into the depths of the world of the spirits for a personal struggle with Satan within his very own domain. The triumphal exaltation here is the ascension—and not the ascension of Christ’s separated soul from hades to paradise, which one has imagined, but just that ascension on which the outpouring of the gifts of the Spirit followed, the ascension from the earth on the 40th day after the resurrection. This already provides us with the occasion to make the point from which the ascension begins as the endpoint of the descent, for both are commensurate in depth and height for the apostle. As deep as He has descended, so high has He ascended. The expression itself leads us to the same thought. It means “the lower part of the earth.” The earth has two halves: a visible side, on which the living walk, and an invisible side, in which the dead lie, namely, the grave. Christ has descended even to the invisible lower part of the earth. He was laid in the dust of death, not in parts under the earth, the underworld, but in the lower part of the earth itself.
That we are correct to understand the words in this way may be proven, finally, from their origin. They are derived from Psalm 139:15, where the poet says that he is wondrously wrought “in the lowest part of the earth” (בְּתַחְתִּיּוֹת אָרֶץ), that is, in his mother’s womb. This is designated as a hidden, invisible place. Therefore, one need not assume that here Paul, too, means a mother’s womb by the lower parts of the earth and so would have thought of the incarnation from Mary as the deepest humiliation. Psalm 139 is poetic, and the mother’s womb appears there not as something low but as something hidden. Here, on the other hand, where the comparison is between ascending and descending, a spatial image must be assumed. Thus Paul very appropriately chooses the burial of the Savior as the image of His deepest humiliation in order to place it over against the ascension as His greatest exaltation. Nothing is said of an actual descent to the place of the lost or the demons.
37. Is not a local descent into hell taught in 1 Peter 3:18–19?
In the Greek this passage reads: θανατωθεὶς μὲν σαρκὶ ζῳοποιηθεὶς δὲ πνεύματι, ἐν ῷ καὶ τοῖς ἐν φυλακῇ πνεύμασιν πορευθεὶς ἐκήρυξεν … [translated as Vos understands it: “being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which also He went and preached to the spirits in prison …”].
It is explained very differently, and without going into all the questions that can present themselves, we limit ourselves to two areas:
a) The conditions under which a local descensus would in fact be taught here would be:
1. That σάρξ here means “body,” and πνεῦμα, “soul.” Then the explanation would be: In His body Christ is dead, but in His soul is made alive, and He has preached to the spirits in Sheol.
2. That the datives in both parts of the sentence must have the same sense and each must be translated by “in which”: “in His body dead,” “in His spirit made alive.”
3. That the word ζῳοποιηθεὶς does not mean “made alive” but “kept alive,” for the proponents of the local descent must understand it this way. They cannot and will not assume that the soul of Christ also died and then was brought back to life again.
Now, it appears that none of these conditions are supported by the text. To begin with the last, ζῳοποιεῖν does not mean “to keep alive,” but always “to bring back to life.” So Christ is brought back to life. With that, the translation of πνεύματι by “in the spirit” falls, for Christ did not die according to the spirit in contrast to His body. We are compelled to translate, “by the spirit.” And this changed translation now necessitates that another sense than “body and soul” be given to the contrast “flesh and spirit.” It is a contrast between divine and human nature, as it appears in Romans 1:3–4, “who is born from the seed of David according to the flesh, but declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of sanctification”; Romans 9:5, “From which is Christ, as far as the flesh is concerned, who is God over all to be praised forever”; John 1:14, “The Word became flesh.” Here “flesh” always means the whole of human nature, inclusive of soul and body.
b) The explanation of the passage required by the context.
1. The point of departure is the admonition of the apostle that Christians must suffer patiently, witnessing by their proclamation of the faith, witnessing by their behavior, to those who oppress them. This is urged by the example of Christ. In Him it was apparent how much better it was to suffer than to oppress in an unrighteous way. His enemies could kill Him in His human nature; by the Spirit, by His divine nature, He was raised again to immortality. So it will also be with believers who suffer oppression for the sake of their faith.
2. This will happen among believers not only in following Christ but as a working out of Christ’s life in them. The deep thought that the likeness of the lot of believers to that of Christ rests on a fellowship in lot—that in Christ is not only the example but also the causation of what takes place with His members. This deep thought also appears here. Christ therefore goes with His members through oppression to the life of glory.
3. That this in fact is so the apostle proves in a most meaningful way, as follows: The flood was a symbol and type of baptism, and baptism signifies and seals the salvation of Christians through oppression of them leading to life. What took place at the flood? The Spirit, the deity of Christ, worked in Noah, “the preacher of righteousness,” and testified through him against the unbelieving world. The same water of the flood, through which Noah with his eight was saved, became destruction for unbelievers. This can be seen from the fact that those to whom the gospel was preached then are now spirits in prison. They were disobedient at that time, however long the patience of God waited, and have received the payment of their hardening.
Noah himself was saved by Christ, for the water of the flood from which he was saved pictured the death of Christ from which He arose. Taken all together, then, the same history that is already observed in the flood is now seen when Christians suffer oppression:
a) The suffering of Noah was an aftereffect of the oppression of Christ, or if one wishes, a prelude to it. Since Christ testified in him, he was ridiculed and reviled.
b) The suffering of Noah was, as such, the cause of the destruction of the world. Since Christ testified in him and was rejected in him, the unbelieving spirits were imprisoned.
c) The salvation of Noah was a result of the resurrection and glorification of Christ. Therefore he was saved through water (v. 21). God could have saved him in a different way, but it must be made known, as a type, that his deliverance resulted from the great deliverance of the Mediator from suffering and death, to which the water of baptism points.
All this is repeated in the same order in the present time:
a) The suffering of believers is an aftereffect of the suffering of Christ, since they witness for their Savior, sanctify Him in their hearts, always give account for the hope that is in them (v. 15), and are therefore ridiculed and reviled. So it transpired with the Savior Himself: Since He bore witness against the world, it nailed Him to the cross and killed Him.
b) The suffering of believers is, as such, the cause of the destruction of the world. Since the world fights against Christ and rejects Him in believers, it will imprison itself. The same end that struck the world in Noah’s days is to be expected for it. Nothing different already transpired with the Lord Jesus. When the world caused Him suffering, it sinned against Him most grievously and sealed its own doom.
c) The salvation of believers is a result of the resurrection of the Lord. For Him, the same death that brought judgment to the world was at the same time the passage to eternal life. It is the same with Christians. The oppression of the present produces an entirely surpassing gain of future glory, and that this is directly an effect of the glorification of the Mediator appears from their baptism. This baptism is, according to v. 21, “the appeal of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”
38. What explanation is required by the context of 1 Peter 4:6?
This passage reads: “For this reason the gospel was preached to the dead, in order that they would be judged according to man in the flesh but would live according to God in the spirit.” The apostle admonishes his readers to forgo all pagan wantonness, in which they had walked long enough previously. They may also not thereby allow themselves to be misled because the world speaks evil of them when they do not share in the same riotousness, for the world will one day have to give account for that before the Judge of the living and the dead. It will be punished for that as certainly as Noah’s contemporaries were punished for that. They also ate and drank and made merry and ridiculed the godly patriarch, whose modest life testified to the seriousness of judgment. God’s admonition came to them too. The gospel was preached to them, and its content was, “Be judged by men according to the flesh, accept the slander of the world, choose the reproach of the people of God (v. 6), in order that you might live according to God in the spirit.” They did not listen, and the result has been that they are now dead. Thus it will be with everyone who places the approval of the world above being scorned with God’s children.
39. If, then, there are no grounds for belief in a local descent, are there also weighty objections to it?
Yes.
a) All mediatorial acts are executed by Christ as God-man so that both natures work together, each in its own way, and then not a half nature, but the human nature according to body and soul. If we say that the burial of the Savior was an essential part of His humiliation, then we include both soul and body in the humiliation. They were separated from each other, and the dishonor and the abnormality of that condition clung to both. If we would maintain the contrary—that Christ went with His soul to hades while His body remained resting in the grave—then this would be a mediatorial act in which only half the human nature participates, something that would thus stand completely on its own without analogy. We need not go so far as to say with some Reformed theologians that in such a state of being separated, Christ was not man (Burman, Wendelin, et al.). We can certainly say, however, that in this state of being separate, the soul was not qualified to carry out the sort of mediatorial act that this descensus must be.
b) One has rightly noted that the time when Christ was still held by the bonds of death was not the appropriate time to celebrate a triumph over hell and the devil. The sting of death and the victory of hell were removed by the resurrection of the Mediator, and only someone who has completely triumphed holds His victory march. Scripture, then, also so presents it that the resurrection of the Lord was His victory over the powers of destruction. As long as He lay in the grave, it still appeared as if the evil one had really taken Him off to his dark place of residence. With the resurrection, the glory of God descended with the angels into the grave. Christ has led away captivity captive when He went up into the heights. When He arose from the dead, it was apparent that He could not be held by the grave.
c) Before His death, Christ commended His spirit into the hands of the Father. That is more than a way of saying that He died. It meant the condition of His [body and soul] being separated as a condition of relative passivity. Where previously there had been active suffering, now came more of a resting and resignation, in the hands of the Father, in what of the humiliation must still follow. The descent into hell does not accord with this passive character. The former presents us with the Mediator as active and working, triumphing over the depths of the universe and bringing His power to bear in the farthest abysses of the world. Christ promised the murderer that he would be with Him in paradise, and that indeed “today.” If the soul of Christ thus …
40. Is there sufficient ground to label the severest suffering endured by Christ with this designation, “descent into hell”?
Yes, the Scripture sometimes speaks of an extremely severe suffering as a suffering unto Sheol, to the state of the dead: Psalm 18:5, “The bands of hell were around me, the snares of death came over me”; Psalm 116:3, “The bands of death surrounded me and the pains of hell laid hold of me”; Psalm 88:6, “You have put me in the lowest pit, in the dark places, in the depths”; Psalm 30:3, “LORD, you have brought up my soul out of hell.” The word שְׁאול, here translated “hell,” can have two meanings in Hebrew: (1) The state of death in general with what belongs to it; (2) the place of torment. Now one could say that in the passages cited here, the word has the first sense, that thus there is no mention of “hell” in the usual meaning, and that from it we can only infer the right to speak of severe pains as a descent into death. However, one would then overlook that Scripture, by choosing one and the same word for these two concepts, has wrongly intended to teach that the grave for the sinner is a gate of hell. The state of death and that of torment stand in the closest connection with each other. Now since it is in fact said of Christ there that He was grieved unto death, we remain entirely within the limits of biblical usage if we describe the pains of eternal death as a descent into hell. And that, finally, is also what the apostle means when he speaks of the “lowest parts of the earth” (Eph 4:9). The “grave” is taken there as an image of the deepest humiliation. We concur with the opinion of the Reformed who understand the descent into hell as the anguish of eternal death. Still, we do not wish to maintain that the expression is originally so intended in the creed, for this cannot be proven.
41. Have all theologians among the Reformed reckoned the burial and being buried to the state of humiliation?
No, some have wavered on this point. Bucanus, for example, says that one can attribute being buried both to the exaltation and to the humiliation. The ground for this vacillation lies in an unclear conception of what the exaltation of the Mediator was. If one conceives of this entirely negatively as a removal of the misery that accompanied His humiliation, then there is in fact reason for saying that the grave was the entrance to His exaltation. As for believers, the state of separateness is a putting-off of the state of corruption that clings to them here, so for the Savior the burial of His body was a putting-off of the defective tabernacle in which He had dwelt here. We do not know whether the re-creation of the corruptible body into an incorruptible one first came into existence at the moment of the resurrection or already beforehand.
The analogy makes us expect the former. Still, on the basis of Psalm 16:10, one usually assumes that the body of Christ saw no corruption and was not given over to decomposition. Thus there must have been a miraculous power that preserved it from decomposition and thereby also prepared it for the glorification of the hour of resurrection. By this preparation it was in a certain sense freed from its natural inclination to decompose, and it is that thought that has compelled some to include the grave with the exaltation, or at least to place it between the two states. But removal of what is corruptible is not yet exaltation; liberation from weakness is not yet endowment with glory. Therefore, we draw the line between humiliation and exaltation with the resurrection of the Lord.
42. What distinguishes the Lutheran conception of the state of humiliation from that of the Reformed?
a) Concerning the subject, the Lutherans maintain that this is to be sought in the human nature. The divine attributes were communicated to it by the incarnation, and by the act of self-humiliation it has divested itself of their use (Chemnitz) or of their open use (the Zwabians).
The Reformed maintain that the subject of the act of humiliation is the divine person as the person of the Mediator, although humanity naturally was the means for that, the nature in which the humiliation took place. One must keep this clearly in view, for the Reformed also did not deny that the condition of misery connected with the state of humiliation could only occur in the human nature, because the divine nature is immutable. What the Reformed, on the contrary, do deny is (1) that humanity can divest itself of something that belongs to it as a communicated divine attribute; (2) that the incarnation in itself, because it would have been accompanied by the communication of the divine attributes to the human nature, would not have been a humiliation but an exaltation for the Mediator.
According to the Lutherans, there are two distinct acts, not only logically but also actually: the assumption of human nature, of which the subject is the Son of God and which does not include humiliation, and the divesting of the use or open use of the divine attributes, of which the human nature is the subject and in which the humiliation consists.
According to the Reformed, these are only two sides of one and the same act, although it is the case that one can logically distinguish them. For the Lutherans, the humiliation begins with the conception. Thus they distinguish further between assuming human nature and conception and come very close to teaching a preexistence of the human nature. The already incarnate Logos subjected Himself to conception in the womb of Mary. It goes without saying that “the conception of an already incarnate person” is a contradictio in adjecto [a contradiction in terms].
b) Lutherans also differ on the concept of humiliation itself. At least some Lutheran theologians teach that the humiliation was a concealment of use and not an abolition of use. Here the humiliation vanishes in a concealment. It consists of an appearance that does not agree with the reality.
c) The third point of difference concerns the duration of the humiliation. As already seen, for the Lutherans this extends only to the burial, since this in itself and the descent into hell, which occurred at the time of being buried, are included in the exaltation.
Many Lutheran theologians have affirmed the descent into hell in a figurative as well as the local sense.
43. What is the connection of the exaltation of the Mediator to His humiliation?
The connection of legal consequence. Christ is Mediator not as a private person but as an official person, as Head of His members. Hence He must receive the fruits of His merits in Himself. And as He did not suffer for Himself, so too He was not glorified for Himself.
44. What is the subject of the exaltation of the Mediator?
His person as Mediator, and that, again, according to both natures. As it was a state of humiliation for the deity to have something joined with it in which it could not reveal its full glory—namely, humble humanity—so it was a restoration in honor when this humanity was made a suitable instrument for the revelation of its glory.
45. In what does exaltation consist?
According to the definition of the concept “state” given above, in two things:
a) In coming out from under the curse and wrath of God, under which the Mediator had been in the state of His humiliation. This was followed by an entrance into the favor and full good pleasure of God that rested on Him as Mediator. The opposite of curse is blessing, and He is the Blessed of the Father.
b) In a change of condition coinciding with this exchange of legal position. Both in body and in soul it must be made clear that the curse had ceased and that the Mediator found Himself basking in the good pleasure of the Father. His exaltation is therefore at the same time glorification, just as the humiliation was also at the same time a shattering for Him.
46. Do these two elements accompany each other in all stages of the state of exaltation?
Yes; every stage has a significance that applies to the one element as well as the other. When Christ rose from the dead, this was both a fact that had judicial significance and an act of God that brought about a powerful reversal in His human nature. When He went to heaven, a declaration of God in the judicial sphere was also involved, and at the same time we must assume that the ascension of the Lord had a continuing change for His humanity as a consequence. Besides His judicial exaltation, a real glorification for the Mediator may not be assumed—only for His return for judgment and for taking His place at the right hand of God.
47. How manifold is the significance of the exaltation of Christ?
Threefold:
a) Declarative. This is true of all stages, as was just indicated.
b) Exemplary. This is true of the two first stages, the resurrection and the ascension. In both there is for the members of the body of the Lord an example of what will happen with them.
c) Instrumental. This is again true of all stages insofar as they are used as means for the complete glorification of the body of Christ.
48. What in particular is the significance of the resurrection of Christ?
a) Declarative. The death of the Mediator had been the open manifestation of the curse that He bore as Surety. From the inmost part of His being, the dissolution process of death had surged outward and had separated soul and body from each other. Now, if that death had thoroughly done its work throughout, then the visible restoration of that outward unity of soul and body will also have to be the initial proof. As long as the rupture continued, the power of death continued to be at work and ever further ruptured and dissolved. It is not by the initial tear but by the lengthening the tear once made that death manifests its power. If, therefore, a restoration of what death has ravaged also takes place at but one point, then this is sufficient proof of the undoing of death. The resurrection is the death of death. By letting it be exhausted in Himself, Christ destroyed the power of death. The Father, when He brought Christ again from the dead, derived the declaration that there was nothing more to bear and to die, that the passive obedience in all its parts had been perfectly provided.
However, this was still only one side of the matter. The resurrection also relates to the active obedience of the Mediator. It is a positive act. The power of death was contained so that it not only could not continue working further, but soul and body are brought together and reunited through a new outflow of life. There was a communication of life, and indeed a communication of eternal life—of that life that was promised upon the perfect keeping of the law. In the Surety, passive and active obedience had accompanied each other at every point, and so it was required that they both also be declared sufficient at one and the same point. This happened in the resurrection of the Lord. Had something been lacking in the suffering of Christ, then it would have been impossible that the violence of death had ceased even for a moment. Had there been something imperfect in the active obedience of the Mediator, then in no way could an enlivening have taken place in His soul and body. The resurrection must be viewed as God’s de facto declaration of the perfection of Christ’s work in both respects.
b) Exemplary. The resurrection of the Mediator shows by way of example what will occur with all the members of His body.
1. In their justification. As Christ is acquitted of guilt and has received the right to eternal life, so too those who are Christ’s, each in his order [1 Cor 15:23], will share in these same privileges.
2. In their spiritual resurrection or regeneration. Just as in Christ the old sinless nature, nevertheless ravaged by the consequences of sin in which death had hitherto reigned, is replaced by a nature in which immortal life reigns, so too for believers the law of sinful flesh will give way to a law of the life of the Spirit.
3. In their bodily resurrection. With the Mediator, the life that He received in His soul was at work organically; it received power to act upon the body and to enliven it anew. Likewise, too, the re-creation that first begins in the soul of believers will then reach its end when the corruption of the body will have put on incorruption.
c) In all these points, the resurrection of Christ at the same time works instrumentally. There is a causal connection between the justification of Christ and that of those who belong to Him, between the making alive of His soul and the regeneration of the children of God, between His resurrection and their resurrection.
1. The justification of Christ is a justification of the Head, and to that extent of all the members who are in this Head. By the resurrection, the judgment is pronounced that the body made up of the elect is righteous before God. Therefore it is said that Christ was given up for our sins and raised for our justification [Rom 4:25], and that were Christ not raised, we would still be in our sins [1 Cor 15:17]. What comes to pass with the individual believer in his justification is nothing other than the personal realization of this justification of the Surety. We hope to come back to this point in connection with the doctrine of justification.
2. The enlivening of Christ is an enlivening of the Head, and to that extent of all the members who are in the Head. In it resides not only the legal ground for the regeneration of the elect, but in a certain sense its active cause as well. It is not as if there had been no regeneration before the Mediator rose from the dead, for the saints of old also received the grace of regeneration on the basis of the merits of Christ. But since the exaltation of Christ has taken place and the outpouring of the Spirit has followed it, this regeneration must be seen as an implanting into the body of Christ. Earlier, the Spirit operated in a more separate manner in each individual and not directly from Christ as glorified Mediator. Now it is the Spirit of the one body who from the Head acts upon the members. Scripture in fact views the regeneration of believers as a consequence of the resurrection of Christ; Ephesians 2:4–5, “But God who is rich in mercy, through His great love with which He has loved us, even when we were dead through trespasses, has made us alive with Christ”; Romans 6:5, “For if we have become one plant with Him, planted in the likeness of His death, so will we also be in the likeness of His resurrection.” Baptism as the bath of regeneration points to the resurrection of Christ from the dead (Rom 6:4; 1 Pet 3:21).
3. In a similar way, the resurrection of Christ functions instrumentally for the resurrection of the body of believers. He has become the firstfruits of those who are asleep [1 Cor 15:20]. As death is through one man—namely, has been brought about for us causally by Adam—so the resurrection of the dead through one man [1 Cor 15:21]. The first man, Adam, has become a living soul, the last Adam a life-giving spirit. All these statements appear in 1 Cor 15 [vv. 20–21, 45], where the apostle speaks specifically of the resurrection of the flesh. And in Romans 8:10–11, he says, “If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, so will He who has raised Christ from the dead also make alive your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.” Finally, in John 5:25–26, the Savior Himself says, “Truly, truly I say to you, the hour comes and now is when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and they who have heard it will live; for as the Father has life in Himself, so He has also given to the Son to have life in Himself” (cf. vv. 28–29). The raising of the body of believers, therefore, stands in connection with the resurrection of the body of the Mediator, and it is the Spirit of Christ who effects this connection. One must, however, note that it is not the resurrection as a bare fact that is referred to here, for that occurs as well for those who have died outside Christ. They, too, will leave the grave at His voice. It is rather the resurrection as re-creation of the psychical [cf. 1 Cor 15:44] body of believers into a pneumatic body—the change from the corruptible into the incorruptible, from dishonor into glory, from weakness into power—that is to be viewed as a fruit and consequence of the resurrection of Christ.
49. Does the resurrection of the Mediator consist solely in the reunion of His soul and body?
No; that such is not the case may be shown from the following considerations:
The resurrection was the beginning of the exaltation. Now, the humiliation of the Mediator consisted not only in the fact that His soul and body were slowly torn apart, but at the same time dissolution manifested itself within the orbit of the life of soul and body itself. Whoever is of the opinion that the essence of death lies in the separation of soul and body makes an extremely superficial judgment. Death also works within the soul, and all the suffering and the weakness that were encountered in the life of Christ’s soul were phenomena of death. The same death was at work in His body long before it was separated from the soul, and all the imperfections of the body were the effects of death in Christ. Consequently, the abolition of death will have to consist of three things:
a) The restoration of the perfection of the human soul of the Savior. This nature had never possessed sinful weakness, and in this respect no change was required. Considered apart from sin, on the other hand, inherent in it were all natural, though no personal, weaknesses. It had to be made suitable by special official grace from the Holy Spirit for its work. In a certain sense, one can even say that in it there had been a split and dissonance of life as long as Christ bore the sin of the elect: He was at the same time the object of the wrath of God and the object of the good pleasure of the Father. His personal relationship to God as Son and that as Mediator did not coincide.
Now with the resurrection, all this was otherwise. First, all sinless weaknesses were removed from the soul of the Lord. Further, the split in life, which was inseparable from the work of satisfaction, gave way for undivided reception and drinking in of the love of God, which a feeling of wrath could no longer disrupt. What the apostle says in Romans 6:9–10 has this in view: “Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead no longer dies; death no longer rules over Him. For the death He died, He died to sin once for all, and the life He lives, He lives to God.” Only after the completed task of salvation can the soul of the Savior live to God in this fullest sense of the word. Prior to that, besides the attracting action of the love of God, proceeding from the righteousness of God there was also an unsettling action upon it, and that for it was death.
b) The restoration of the perfection of the human body of the Mediator. In bodily life as well as in the soul, the true unity of life was lacking; it existed during the state of humiliation in a continual disintegration, and above all during the anguish of eternal death was subject to violent shocks that must have disoriented and shattered Him physically. And apart from that, it was from the outset a body of death, just because it was our dying and corrupted flesh and blood that the Mediator assumed. With the resurrection there came, in principle, a perfect body in which everything worked harmoniously, in which nothing discordant or disturbing was left. The resurrection is more than a return to life of the one buried; it is simultaneously the re-creation and the transformation of that person. Christ, according to His human nature, came out of the grave as a new creature, for whom everything old is past and a new law of life has begun. It cannot be decided with complete certainty how much of this re-creation of both soul and body coincided with the resurrection and how much remained delayed for the ascension. In any case, what was imperfect was removed at the resurrection, even though the glory that had to replace it followed in stages.
c) The restoration of the organic bond between body and soul. The re-creation of the body must be taken in the closest connection with that bond. As spiritual death in general draws the body after itself, so too the spiritual resurrection will exerts its influence in the sphere of the bodily. The soul will draw the body to itself again and make it a living unity.
50. Are we taught further about the nature of the resurrection body of the Lord?
Yes. In general we can say that it has the nature of all resurrection bodies, which the apostle describes in 1 Cor 15:42–49. There it is taught of the resurrection body, in sequence, that it is incorruptible (ἐν ἀφθαρσίᾳ), glorious (ἐν δόξῃ), powerful (ἐν δυνάμει), spiritual (πνευματικόν). Here, in the first place, the resurrection body of believers is spoken of, but this will be like the glorified body of Christ (cf. Phil 3:21). The first three predicates refer to the antithesis to the body at burial. At that time, it is abandoned to dissolution (ἐν φθορᾷ); as a corpse it is unsightly (ἐν ἀτιμίᾳ); in being dead it is weak (ἐν ἀσθενείᾳ).
The fourth antithesis reaches back further into life prior to burial. In contrast to the σῶμα πνευματικόν stands the σῶμα ψυχικόν: “There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body.” To understand this antithesis correctly, we will have to take into consideration that here in opposition to “spiritual” Paul does not set “fleshly” but “natural.” A fleshly body is a body that becomes sin for its possessor; a natural body, then, is not a body of sin. A fleshly body bears the seed of death within itself; a natural body is in itself not yet mortal, so that it must die. In agreement with this is the fact that the natural body does not originate with the entrance of sin but has its origin in creation, “The first man Adam has become a living soul (εἰς ψυκὴν ζῶσαν), the last Adam a life-giving Spirit.” With that, reference is made to the creation account, Genesis 2:7, “and blew into His nostrils the breath of life, so the man became a living soul.” Apparently, then, three bodies are possible: a natural, a fleshly, and a spiritual body. The natural, psychical [psuchikov] body becomes a fleshly body as soon as man sins. The fleshly body becomes a spiritual body in the resurrection of the dead.
The question still remains to be answered why the apostle distinguished the body as Adam possessed it and the resurrection body of Christ specifically with the terms “natural” and “spiritual.” The psychical, natural body is such as it derives its organic life from the psuchē, from the soul of man, thus certainly possesses life, but still not immutable and irrevocable life, which ultimately always rests on the indwelling of the Spirit of God as the principle of eternal life. Now in the state of rectitude Adam possessed irrevocable, eternal life as little in his soul as in his body. In that consisted the psychical nature of his body. Prior to His resurrection, Christ possessed that same psychical body and in it, moreover, carried around the seed of death, by which it thus received a certain likeness with the fleshly body. In contrast, after His resurrection His human nature shared in the full enlivening of the Spirit, and that not as a bestowed benefit but as its own possession; the Spirit was given to Him fully and dwelt in Him. Related to that, His body too received an imperturbable, incorruptible life. It was suffused with the power of the Spirit, and thereby the material from which it consisted received a higher quality, so that it can not longer be called flesh and blood, while not ceasing to be material. An immaterial body is a contradictio in adjecto; a spiritual body is a possible concept. That the spiritual body is no longer flesh and blood follows in [1 Cor 15] verse 50: “But I say this, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, and the corruptible cannot inherit the incorruptible.” The flesh and blood of which Adam’s body consisted was vulnerable to corruption and dissolution, which is still something entirely different than saying it must undergo corruption. Corruptible here is a contradictory contrast to no-longer-corruptible, completely incorruptible. Further, it is a consequence of this spiritual existence of the body of Christ that He is “life-giving Spirit” (v. 45). Through the possession of the power of eternal life, Christ could also give life to others and guarantee the resurrection of the bodies of believers. Adam could only be called a living soul, but he could not communicate life to others; Christ does the latter and therefore He is life-giving Spirit.
That the explanation given here is correct appears from what the apostle adds as further explanation: “The spiritual is not first, but the natural, then the spiritual” (v. 46). In the order of God, the body that could still be corrupted comes first and then only secondly follows the body that is no longer vulnerable to corruption. Adam must not from the outset be placed in the state of immutability and of eternal life. Although created completely right, without there being anything wrong or any principle of death in him, he still awaited the confirmation and completion of His beatitude, which was attached to keeping the covenant of works as a condition. Had he sustained the test, he would have become the first and second Adam in one person. But the principle would still have been valid: “The natural first, then the spiritual.” Now that he falls, Christ enters as the second Adam—and besides restoring what Adam had ruined, He also carries out gloriously where Adam has failed. He became the progenitor, the covenant Head of the spiritual and highest order of things that must arise on the basis of the natural order. Christians bear His image in their re-creation as they bear the image of the first Adam in their creation. “The first man is from the earth, earthly (ἐκ γῆς χοϊκός); the second man is from heaven” [v. 47]. Inasmuch as Adam’s body was taken from the earth and had not yet been made into a spiritual body by the Holy Spirit, it also shared in the attributes of earthly materials. These would naturally be susceptible to change. Adam’s body was not such that external disturbing influences, if they were present, would have had no effect. It is otherwise with the body of the resurrected Savior, at least in His consummate glorification. It is incorruptible, and that certainly because a heavenly power, the power of the Spirit, has affected it. Therefore, the second man is ἐκ οὐρανοῦ, for heaven is the realm of immutable, immovable things, while here on earth everything moves and is mobile.
One must not interchange what is said here concerning the contrast between ψυχικός and πνευματικός with the ethical meaning that the word ψυχικός has in 1 Corinthians 2:14, “The natural man does not understand the things that are of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to Him.” There the concept of what is natural includes in itself the characteristic of sinfulness, something that did not appear to be the case in the pericope just explained.
51. Do the facts related to us in the Gospels agree with this?
They show in part that a total change had really taken place in the body of the Lord.
a) He was not immediately recognized by those with whom He had been intimately associated earlier (John 20:15; Luke 24:31; John 21:7).
b) In an inexplicable way He appeared and disappeared, covered distances, went through closed doors (John 20:19; Luke 24:36).
c) He did not resume an intimate association with His disciples again, but kept them at a reverential distance. A higher majesty lay over all His action, as if He lived in a higher sphere and was no longer suited for a stay within the common sensory perception of this world. This comes out so strongly in the Gospels that it has led some to the strange surmise that immediately after the resurrection of the Lord He dwelt in heaven and that each appearance must be held to be a descent, immediately followed by a new ascension.
On the other hand, the body that the Lord possessed did not completely coincide with the resurrection body as that is delineated for us by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15. Jesus declared it to be flesh and bone (Luke 24:39), while Paul expressly asserts that flesh and blood will not inherit the kingdom of God [1 Cor 15:50]. Consequently, we appear here to have to think of a middle state that formed the transition to His fully glorified humanity as He possesses it in heaven. During these 40 days He could eat, although it is not to be assumed that He had need of food. Augustine has said of this, “It is in one way that the thirsty earth absorbs water, in another way that the rays of the sun burn; the first through deficiency, the other through power.”
52. Is the body of Christ a material body that as such is bound to space?
Yes; it must be material if it will truly remain a body. And as material it must also be subject to the limitations of matter, circumscribed in space. The conditions for its movement through space will differ considerably from those that apply to us, but in principle the relationship is the same. We do not believe with Lutherans in a ubiquity of the human nature, neither of the soul nor of the body. Nor are we despisers of matter, as if in this in itself lurks a profane principle that must be eliminated and purged. Matter can be glorified so that divine glory permeates it at every point and the Spirit of God governs it completely. That is realized in the resurrection of Christ. That His body is truly matter appears from:
a) The analogy of sowing and harvesting elaborated by the apostle in 1 Corinthians 15. One does not sow the body that will become, but there is still an organic connection between what is sown and what is harvested. The new is present in principle in the old; there is a thread of identity that runs through the harvest. So, too, in the resurrection of the dead. It is a re-creation of the old, not a destruction of it. There would not be an organic connection between the buried body and the resurrected body if they were detached from each other as material and nonmaterial.
b) All the appearances of Christ were in the mode of space, however extraordinary they otherwise were. What is visible in the mode of space is material. And this applies not only to the time before His ascension; it also applies to the time afterward. He appeared to Stephen, Paul, and John as visible in space.
c) If one appeals to Matthew 22:30 to prove the immateriality of the body of the resurrection, one seeks the point of comparison where it does not lie. Those raised are compared with the angels because they will no longer marry and procreate and because they are immutably confirmed in their state forever.
53. Who was the acting cause in the resurrection of the Mediator?
Generally and preferably it is attributed to God as the one who fashions it: Romans 6:4, “Christ has been raised from the dead through the glory of the Father”; Acts 13:30, “God has raised Him from the dead.” According to Ephesians 1:19–20, sinners must be born again by the same strength of divine power that He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead. This agrees fully with the meaning of the concept. As a declarative justifying act, it must be an act of God the Father, who maintains the violated law and proclaims the restored law. Since, however, the human spirit of Christ, filled with new power of life, acted on His body to reassume it as His instrument, and since it was the power of His own life as Mediator that set the body in motion and caused it to rise, so the resurrection can just as well be viewed as a work of Christ. He said, “Tear this temple down and in three days I will build it up again” (John 2:19); “I have power to lay it down (namely, life) and to take it up again” (John 10:10).
Finally, if the Holy Spirit works life everywhere and calls it out, both in the sphere of creation as well as in that of re-creation, and insofar as He has poured out the fullness of eternal life into the human nature, the Third Person of the divine Trinity can also appear as the cause of the resurrection. Romans 8:11 includes, at least by implication, that the Father has brought about the resurrection of the Mediator through the Spirit.
In all their external works, the three persons act together. And the work of the resurrection finds a parallel in the act of the incarnation, in which the same conjoint working of the divine persons manifests itself.
54. Does the resurrection of the Mediator include a proof of His deity?
Yes. By raising Him from the dead the Father sets the seal on His mediatorship—and since this includes His deity, His seal on the latter itself. In this, He is powerfully shown to be the Son of God according to the Spirit of sanctification by the resurrection of the dead (Rom 1:4). Moreover, the fact that He could bear eternal death, without succumbing in that struggle, is in itself irrefutable proof of His divine nature. A mere creature would be swallowed up by that death and would never again be able to hold his head high. He, in contrast, could not be held by that death.
55. What is the second stage in the state of exaltation?
The ascension of the Mediator. It is to be defined as the local passage of the person of the Mediator, according to His human nature, from earth to heaven.
56. Our conviction that heaven is a place is supported on what grounds?
a) First, it follows from the fact that heaven is the dwelling place of created beings. The angels reside there. The human nature of the Mediator also resides there. All these are created natures. Again, all that is created stands in a certain relationship to space and time. Only God is elevated beyond these two modes of being. The residence of such beings that exist in relationship to space must bear a local character. It is quite possible that the laws that govern in heavenly space are not entirely the same as those that apply in our earthly space. But there must be similarity, just as surely as similarity existed between the body before and after the resurrection of the Lord. His body is marked by extension. Though we did not at all know an answer to give to the question where heaven is, still the knowledge that the Mediator has brought His exalted humanity into heaven would provide us a fixed point for the determination of heaven, and we could answer, “Heaven is the place where the humanity of the Lord dwells.”
b) The contrast, “heaven and earth,” which we already meet in the creation account, continues through the entire Scripture. In this contrast, the one member determines the meaning of the other. It is absurd to make mention of earth and heaven as the juxtaposition of a place and a condition.
c) Scripture teaches us to depict heaven in a local manner when it turns our gaze upward, as it suggests for us to think of hell as a place below. This would make no sense if something local did not cling to the conception of both heaven and hell.
d) Entrance into heaven is described as an ascending, thus again in local terms. For the ascension of the Lord, that comes out very clearly. He rises in the air, is intercepted by clouds, and vanishes from sight.
e) A distinction is made by the apostle between the third heaven and what lies beneath it [2 Cor 12:2]. This presupposes the application of the category of number in the sphere of heaven, and the means by which this application happens can only be distance.
f) All that is reported to us of heaven—may the description of it also be ever so figurative—still demands the presupposition that there are local relationships. The tabernacle was made after the pattern of heavenly things, a shadowing of the higher reality. What is said of heaven is not an image derived from the arrangement of the Jewish sanctuary. The reverse is the case: The Jewish sanctuary in its arrangement has been determined by holy things that are above.
57. What is the significance of this ascension of the Lord?
Again, like the resurrection, it has a threefold significance:
a) Declarative. Heaven is the place of God’s holy dwelling, where He reveals His glory more than elsewhere, while the earth is only a footstool for His feet. That Christ, after having completed His work as Mediator, went to heaven showed first of all that His work as Mediator concerned God, was a sacrifice brought to Him, which must be presented to Him.
Further, if entrance into heaven was granted to Christ, then this was all the more a declaration of God that His work was complete and acceptable. Man is driven from the blessedness of God by sin, which was symbolized by his expulsion from the earthly paradise. Had he retained the favor of God, he would have been transferred into heavenly regions. Now that he has lost the right to appear there and hell draws him below with the bonds of darkness, the thought of a future salvation involuntarily takes this form: “When will I, a sinful creature, again appear before God in Zion?” So it was necessary that the great High Priest, who alone can appear before God, also actually enter heaven and so as the Head of the redeemed come before God as righteous.
Finally, the ascension of the Mediator was the strongest possible expression of the depiction that His work is not limited to Israel but has a wider scope and significance. By not establishing His royal throne in the earthly Jerusalem but exalting that throne far above it to a height for which earthly boundaries are no longer visible, Christ showed that He was anointed over a spiritual Israel. His royal city is the Jerusalem that is above, the free, the mother of us all [Gal 4:26], in which Philistine, Tyrian, Moor are born. Had the Mediator remained on earth, Jewish messianic expectations would have come true. But now His Kingdom is not of this world (Eph 4:9–10).
b) Exemplary. The ascension of Christ is prophetic for the ascension of all the redeemed. They are seated with Christ in heaven (Eph 2:6). He prays and petitions that where He Himself is, they who are given to Him by the Father may also be. According to Hebrews 2:6–9, in Christ is fulfilled the prophecy that the psalmist had expressed concerning man.
c) Instrumental. He has entered heaven to prepare a place there for the members of His body. They all will come there not only as He is there, but also because He is there. The Head draws the members after Himself, for the body is the fullness of Him who fills all in all [Eph 1:23]. And because the Head is there, both in body and soul, the members have the assurance that their flesh too, which they must put off here, is not lost and will not become identified with the earth, but that it again will sprout and, like the plant that grows upward, will seek heaven.
58. Was there also associated with the ascension of Christ a further glorification that concerns His condition?
Yes; His human nature was now made fully suited for the heavenly environment in which He would live from now on. Here on earth it had already been exalted above the power of earthly elements but had still not yet received its heavenly glory. The apostles to whom He appeared did not see Him as, later, Stephen, Paul, and John saw Him in His glory. In what further this change consisted is not revealed to us.
59. What do the Lutherans teach in distinction from the Reformed concerning the ascension of the Mediator?
For them the ascension is the point at which the communicated divine attributes, which the human nature possesses, break through into full revelation. Christ is ubiquitous, not by a pulling apart or diffusion of the material particles of His human body but in an entirely unique way. The Logos is not outside the flesh, and the flesh is not outside the Logos. The realistic impulse to have the humanity of Christ present of itself is also at work here in the Lutheran system.
Apart from this change in condition, Lutherans clearly cannot grant a local ascension. The human nature was in heaven since the incarnation by virtue of the communicatio idiomatum [communication of attributes]. Nevertheless, local movement from earth to heaven is taught. The contradiction at this point is no greater than with respect to every local movement that Christ made during His stay on earth. There are also Lutherans, however, who are consistent in teaching that Christ has brought about the end to His visible presence here on earth and that His ascension consists in that.
60. Is Christ still on earth with His human nature after His ascension?
No, we reject, in sequence: (a) the just-outlined opinion of the Lutherans, who make both body and soul ubiquitous; (b) the opinion of some who make at least the soul ubiquitous.
The Mediator’s person is certainly on earth according to His divine nature. This divine person also possesses human nature. A person is therefore with us who at the same time is human, but He is not with us according to His humanity. Another question is whether there cannot be a powerful action of the humanity of the Mediator, even where that human nature itself is not present. As one knows, Calvin assumed something like that for the Lord’s Supper. Polanus, a Reformed theologian of good name, says, “Christ is present with His church not only according to His divine but also according to His human nature, but then in a spiritual manner, as a head is with the members, with which it is united, and who makes them alive.” And the form for our Lord’s Supper says, “[I]n order that we through the same Spirit, who dwells in Christ as the Head and in us as His members, would have true communion with Him and partake of all His benefits, of eternal life, of righteousness and glory.” Such a dynamic action of the humanity of the Lord, however, is not intended as immediate but is expressly ascribed to the mediation of the ubiquitous Spirit.
61. What is the third stage in Christ’s exaltation?
His being seated at the right hand of God—or, expressed actively, taking His place at the right hand.
62. Is the human nature alone the subject of this exaltation?
No, the person of the Mediator, and that surely: (a) according to His deity, insofar as in the new dominion that Christ receives, it can assert its omnipotence and can reveal all its glory; (b) according to His humanity, insofar as it received power and glory that it had not previously possessed.
63. Is this exaltation a work that God executes, or does the Mediator exalt Himself?
One can properly say both. It was naturally of the Father that He occupied this place. The fullness of power that devolved to Him was official (cf. Acts 5:31, “God has exalted Him to His right hand as Prince”; Heb 2:7). The Mediator also actively assumed that power and honor, sat, has taken a seat at the right hand of God. Christ could ex pacto, by virtue of the covenant, also claim this exaltation: Psalm 2:8, “Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your heritage, the ends of the earth your possession”; Isaiah 53:12, “Therefore I will give Him share among the many because He has poured out His soul in death.”
64. What distinguishes sitting at the right hand of God as a stage of the exaltation from the ascension?
The ascension had a twofold significance. In part, it had an independent significance as the transition of the Mediator from the sphere of the earth into the sphere of heaven according to His human nature, and concurrent with that, the change of this nature. In part, it was preparatory for sitting at God’s right hand. The lordship and majesty associated with the latter could only be exercised in heaven. For these reasons, it is impossible to speak of the ascension and to highlight its significance without bringing in the kingdom of power with it. Nonetheless, as a distinct stage of exaltation the ascension must be sharply separated from the reception of kingdom power, and the latter reserved for sitting at the right hand.
65. How is the expression “sitting at the right hand of God” intended?
a) First, we must note that it is to be taken figuratively and not literally. It is a total misconception when Lutherans, under the appearance of excluding a local “there,” nevertheless drag it in again by saying “Dextra Dei ubique est,” “The right hand of God is everywhere.” The expression has nothing to do with what is local. Nor does it teach that Christ is ubiquitous as He is that in one particular place. One can derive the former only by deduction, and then only with regard to the deity.
b) The metaphorical speech of God, however, also has a deeper sense here than one usually thinks. It is here as little as elsewhere derived only afterward from the relationships of creaturely things but rests on an eternal reality of which created things, in their turn, are the image. There is something in God, insofar as man is the image of God; in Him is the same as ectype, and of this likeness with God there is an imprint in His material nature.
c) The right hand is the seat of power. God has willed that for man it would be the instrument of the most natural and noble exercise of power. It is extended to command, holds the scepter for rulers, is a direct reflection in man of both the might and power that God possesses.
Thus to sit at God’s right hand is for all things to be in the closest communion with His divine power and might. Whoever sits at someone’s right hand is connected with that of which the right hand is the symbol. Thus divine authority and divine power flow over, as it were, into Christ. For this significance of the right hand, one may compare passages like Isaiah 41:10, “I also support you with the right hand of my righteousness,” and 45:1, “Cyrus, whose right hand I hold.”
d) Inasmuch as the preeminence of a king lies in his power, or in general power is something excellent, so the right hand is a symbol of honor, of virtue as well, and connection with the right hand, the sign of glory and high esteem (cf. Psa 80:17, “Your hand be upon the man of your right hand”—that is, upon Him who is in great honor with you—Eccl 10:2, “The heart of the wise is toward his right hand, but the heart of a fool is toward His left hand”). The blessing communicated by the right hand is viewed as the most excellent, for which reason Joseph placed his son Manasseh at the right hand of Jacob [Gen 48:13]. The elect will be placed at the right hand of the Mediator in the day of judgment [Matt 25:34]. This is the sense to be understood when Bathsheba is set at the right hand of Solomon (1 Kgs 2:19), when the mother of the sons of Zebedee requested that her two sons might sit, the one at His right hand and the other at His left hand, in the kingdom of the Lord [Matt 20:20–21]. For Christ, there is not only authority and power but also honor. The apostle includes both when he says, “has set Him at His right hand in heaven … above every name that is named … and has subjected all things under His feet” [Eph 1:20–22]. Honor is referred to separately in Hebrews 1:3–4, “at the right hand of majesty in the highest heaven, having become so much more superior than the angels as He has inherited a more excellent name above theirs.”
e) The sitting at the right hand of God has distinctive significance. Sitting is something other than standing. Someone who serves stands in the presence of the one he serves (1 Kgs 10:8, “Blessed are these your servants who continually stand in your presence”). The angels are always presented as standing (Isa 6:2; 1 Kgs 22:19). In Hebrews 1:3, it is apparently in contrast to the standing posture of the angels that it is said of Christ, “He has sat down.” The Hebrew word for priest, כֹהֵן, is derived from standing before God to serve (Heb 10:11, “And every priest stood daily serving”). So Christ, too, stood during the bringing of His satisfaction. Now, however, He has sat, as the sign of His efficacious exercise of the priestly office and kingly rule (Zech 6:13, “And He will sit and rule on His throne”). Of the man of sin, who arrogates to himself the rights and honor of God, it is prophesied that “he will sit in the temple of God as a God, displaying himself that he is God” (2 Thess 2:4).
f) From what has just been noted, it appears that sitting at the right hand of God is not exclusively related to the kingdom of power but also indicates the point at which His glorious intercession begins. Or, expressed more accurately, it indicates that stage of exaltation in which the kingdom of power and the priestly intercession begin to interpenetrate one another. It is described prophetically from this point of view in Psalm 110. The emphasis there falls on the fact that Melchizedek was king and priest at the same time. In Israel, the two positions of dignity were separated. David, the head of his people, could not provide the gift of atonement for his people. The priest, the one atoning for the people, could not rescue Israel with kingly power. In the awareness of this imperfection, David rises prophetically to the ideal mediatorial office of his Lord, who will unite priesthood and kingship in Himself, and to whom the Lord says, “Sit at my right hand until I will have put your enemies as a footstool for your feet” [v. 1], whose scepter of strength will be sent from Zion (v. 2), at whose right hand is the Lord Himself (v. 5), who does justice among the nations [v. 6], who is priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek [v. 4].
g) The sitting, finally, also has judicial significance: Psalm 9:4, “You have sat on the throne, O Judge of righteousness”; Joel 3:12, “But there I will sit to judge all the surrounding nations” (cf. Matt 19:28).
66. What does it mean that Stephen saw Christ standing at the right hand of God [Acts 7:55–56]?
This in no way conflicts with sitting at the right hand, since this is only a figurative expression for what has just been described. We can on no account imagine the humanity of the Lord as immovable and unchangeable in one place. Standing expresses readiness to help and to protect and to receive into the eternal dwelling places: Micah 5:3, “And He will stand and shepherd the flock in the power of the Lord”; Psalm 94:16, “Who will stand for me against the evildoers?”; Genesis 19:1, “And when Lot saw them, he stood up to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground.”
67. Is there an essential glorification of the human nature that also accompanies taking His place at the right hand of God?
Insofar as this coincides with the entrance into heaven, yes. Or one could even divide the question and say that the comprehensive transformation of the humanity of the Lord from an earthly to a heavenly accompanied the ascension, and that now this heavenly humanity received a special investiture with glory by which it was raised to the zenith of honor. If we take into consideration that Paul and John on Patmos received an overwhelming impression of the glory in which Christ appeared, so that repeatedly they were trembling, astounded, and left as dead, then we are certainly forced to consider something that far surpasses all our imaginings and exceeds the glory that believers as members of the body of the glorified Christ will themselves one day receive. They will, it is certainly true, become conformed to the image of the Son as His firstborn brothers (Rom 8:29), but there is, nonetheless, a glory of the sun and of the moon and of the stars, and the mediatorial glory of Christ must be as much greater than that of His own, as the head is greater than the members.
68. Has the exaltation of the Mediator ended with His session at the right hand of God?
No. Its highest stage is not reached during this dispensation, but only at the end of the ages. So Paul says that Christ is seated far above every name that is named, not only in this but also in the coming world—that is, at the end of this dispensation [Eph 1:20–21]. Still to follow session at the right hand and is return for judgment.
69. Does Scripture reckon this return for judgment as a great turning point along with the remaining steps of exaltation?
Yes; Hebrews 6:1–2 reads, “[N]ot laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works … of the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment (κρίματος αἰωνίου).” Here the doctrine of the final judgment is reckoned among the fundamental articles of faith.
70. With what words does Scripture indicate this final exaltation of Christ?
a) It calls it a παρουσία, from παρεῖναι, “to be present.” Parousia, however, means not only “presence,” but “appearance to remain present from now on.” An absence and distancing that now still exists will then cease. Now, according to His divine nature Christ has never been absent from His church but is with her to the end of the world. In contrast, according to His humanity, He has indeed departed. As long as this dispensation lasts, there is a split between the militant and triumphant church, and only of the latter can it be said that they have Christ present with them in the full sense. Believers on earth dwell apart from the Lord and long to dwell with Him. Christ is in them and yet they still look for His coming. The work of their salvation awaits its completion. They have the firstfruits of the Spirit and still sigh in themselves, looking for the adoption as children, the redemption of their bodies (Rom 8:23). This suffusion of their bodies now with the Spirit of Christ so that they will be with the Lord according to their material nature coincides with the bodily appearance of Christ Himself. Therefore, Paul says quite strikingly (Phil 3:20–21), “But our conduct is in heaven from which we also await the Savior, namely, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will change our humble body in order that it will be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He can subject all things to Himself.” The body that rests in the earth is an essential part of the believer, and yet it is always separated from the Lord as long as He has not come. Having returned to dust, it lies on the periphery, on the outermost circumference of the circle of re-creating action that proceeds from the Mediator. It is the last in its turn to be renewed. But the power of Christ reaches out into ever wider circles, and when finally all believers are gathered, the working by which Christ can subject all things to Himself is complete. This final act, however, must be viewed here not in its significance for believers but in its significance for the Mediator Himself. It makes His body complete, sets the crown on His saving work, positions Him as victor over the last bulwark of sin, brings death under His feet. Paul says very clearly, “The last enemy that is destroyed is death” [1 Cor 15:24].
So it is certainly wrong to limit the significance of this last stage of exaltation to the judgment. It is equally wrong to eliminate the local and the bodily from this conception of the return of the Lord. The most important part of its significance lies precisely in glorifying the material nature by eliminating local separation.
b) Another term for this stage of the exaltation is φανερωσθεῖναι, “to appear, be manifested”; ἀποκαλυπτέσθαι, “to be disclosed, revealed”: 1 John 2:28, “so that when He appears, we will have confidence and not be made ashamed of Him at His future coming.” Here “being revealed” and “the future coming” of the Lord stand as parallel concepts beside each other: 2 Thessalonians 1:6–7, “Therefore, it is just for God to repay oppression to those who oppress you, relief with us at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with the angels of His power,” and verse 10, “when He will have come to be glorified in His saints and to be marveled at in all who believe” (cf. 1 Pet 1:7). Finally, the term ἡμέρα τοῦ κυρίου, “day of the Lord,” has the same significance. This is a day, then, that will be completely given over to the Lord, whose significance will be concentrated entirely in Him, the day in which His justice will appear and His glory will break through as never before (2 Thess 2:1–2).
With these three terms, the return for judgment is indicated as a glorious vindication of Christ and His own in the sight of their enemies. Despite His unlimited kingly power, until that day a segment of creatures will be permitted to oppose Him and fail to appreciate Him. Many will deny that He is glorified and exalted as the militant church believes Him to be glorified and exalted. But in the end, His glory will be revealed in a visible form on earth, in the same sphere in which He endured His humiliation and shame. At His name will bow every knee of those who are in heaven and on the earth and under the earth, to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2:10–11). He, at one time condemned by the world, will in His turn judge the world—and, as is evident from 2 Thessalonians 1:6–7, this appearance will comprise in itself, both for Himself and believers, a satisfying of their deepest sense of justice.
71. Does this final exaltation of the Mediator apply to both His natures?
Here, too, both natures work together. According to the human nature, He appears openly and makes that appearance perceptible to creatures. According to His divine nature, He pronounces sentence with omniscience and omnipotence. Only a Mediator who is Himself truly God can execute such a judgment. Still, this highest and most glorious act also remains an official mediatorial act executed on behalf of the Father: John 5:27, “And He has given Him power also to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man”; Acts 17:31, “Because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the earth righteously by a man whom He has ordained to that end.”