In this sermon on Christology, Robert Bosley discusses the person and nature of Christ, focusing on his incarnation and the hypostatic union of his divine and human natures. He emphasizes that Christ is fully God and fully man, and highlights the biblical support for this doctrine. Bosley addresses various heresies and theological controversies surrounding the nature of Christ, such as Nestorianism and Canonic Christology. He also explores the implications of understanding Christ's true identity for our worship and salvation.

Amen. Well, good afternoon, church. What a joy as always to be here before you. And What a marvelous song to begin our time together. We're going to look not so much at the story per se, but the person that this story centers around.

I've been doing this theological foundations series, and we're continuing that this afternoon. We're moving our emphasis a little bit. We've been, the last two sessions, talking specifically about the doctrine of the Trinity. And today we're gonna narrow in a little bit, and we're going to discuss the person and the nature of Christ in particular. So this subject this afternoon will be on, as the theologians would say, Christology, the doctrine of Christ, the study of Christ.

And while there is obviously much that can and ought to be said about who Christ is, I'm going to focus specifically on his person today, particularly the issues regarding his incarnation and his two natures, the divine and human natures united in this one glorious person. And I'm going to be talking a little bit faster this afternoon because I've got a lot of ground to cover and not a whole lot of time to do it in. So if you would, let's begin with prayer and then we will turn to John chapter one. Father, we come before you in the name of your son we thank you for this time that we can be together and we pray God that you would be glorified in our time may all this be done to the praise and glory of your son and in his name we pray amen. While you're opening up to the gospel according to John chapter one, I did want to read from our confession that we hold to here as our church, the Second London Baptist Confession of 1689.

Chapter eight of the confession is on, of Christ the mediator. In paragraph two, it's a little lengthy bear with me but all of it is helpful for us. Paragraph 2 says the Son of God the second person in the Holy Trinity, being very an eternal God, the brightness of the Father's glory, of one substance, and equal with Him who made the world, who upholds and governs all things He has made, did, when the fullness of time was complete, take upon him man's nature, with all the essential properties and common infirmities of it, yet without sin. Being conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, the Holy Spirit coming down upon her and the power of the Most High overshadowing her. And so was made of a woman of the tribe of Judah, of the seed of Abraham and David, according to the scriptures, so that two whole, perfect and distinct natures were inseparably joined together in one person without conversion composition or confusion which person is very God and very man, yet one Christ, the only mediator between God and man." This paragraph, as I said, is a little bit lengthy and it's packed with deep truth for us, deep and necessary truth.

And if nothing else, these studies through the doctrine of God has helped me appreciate just how good our confession is, how helpful It is. But the end of that paragraph, it talks about these two whole, perfect, yet distinct natures being united in one person without conversion, without any change of the natures, without any composition or confusion, so no inner mixture of the natures. What is this all about? What is that getting to? This is a doctrine known as the hypostatic union.

The hypostatic union. You would say, well, what does that even mean? Well, that term, hypostatic union, it comes from the Greek word, huppostasis, which underlies the ancient confessions and the word for person. A huppostasis is a person. And so, in the person of Jesus, there is a union of two natures.

That's what the hypostatic union means. And over the course of time in the early church much debate and many councils were had and this union of these two natures into this one person was really fully, maybe fully is not the right word, but officially defined in the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD. I would encourage you to go and read what's known as the definition of Chalcedon. But the men at Chalcedon created the Chalcedonian definition which states more or less what the 1689 summarizes at the end of that paragraph that in the one person of Christ there are two whole perfect and distinct natures that are inseparably joined together in one person without conversion composition or confusion so that's what our confession says that reflects what the ancient fathers said and what their councils said. Great but is it biblical?

Is it what the Bible says? Do we see this in Scripture? And I would say yes absolutely we do. So we're gonna look at a few different passages. We're gonna go through them rather quickly.

So if you are a note-taking person, I encourage taking some notes here. John chapter one, verses one and two, and then skip down to verse 14. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. Verse 14, And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." I referenced the beginning of John's gospel when we talked about the Trinity, specifically the deity of Christ, which we see clearly proclaimed in the first two verses.

In the beginning was the word, the word, the second person of the Godhead. He was with God, being understood as the Father, and the word was God. John is very careful with his language. He's showing that there is a multiplicity or a plurality of persons sharing a nature. The word was with God.

They were together. They were face to face. They were in communion with one another, and the word was God, not that he was the same person, but that he shares the same nature. Very clearly, John is explaining the pre-creation, union, and harmony within the Godhead between Father and Son. But this eternal Word who always existed as God did something new.

Verse 14, the word became flesh and dwelt among us. This is the incarnation, the taking on of flesh. He became a man and was born into this world. And note again, the carefulness of what John says, the word became flesh. He doesn't say God became flesh, even though he's already identified that the word shares the divine nature.

Because it's specifically the person of the word who takes on flesh. It's that specific divine person, not the entirety of the divine essence. So the incarnation is the work of a particular divine person, the second person of the Godhead. The Son alone took on flesh, not the Father, neither the Spirit, nor the Godhead as a whole. And yet in taking on flesh, He never ceased to be the perfect Son of the Father.

Look at what it says, He dwelt among us and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. He remained full of grace and truth. What He always was, He remained. He lacked nothing. He divested Himself of nothing.

He remained what He had always been, yet assumed a new nature. And I'm using the word assumed particularly. Oftentimes people use the word he added a new nature and rightly understood, we can affirm that. But we have to be careful when we say added because we're not saying that there was something that the deity lacked or that there was a change in the deity. The person of the sun assumed or in some form, and this is where the confessions and the creeds will usually deny what they're saying rather than explicitly say how it worked because this is probably the greatest mystery in all of theology.

How did this happen? I don't know. What I do know is what didn't happen. The deity did not change, but the person took on a new nature. As our Confession says that there is no conversion, composition, or confusion of the natures.

He assumed to himself a new nature without the change of his divine nature. And this would run counter to an ancient heresy called eutichianism. You may have heard of that before, probably not, but Eutychianism, a false teacher in the early church, Eutychians, he proclaimed that in Christ the two natures blended and created something new. And You will often hear this today among particularly charismatic circles, that there was some sort of blending or mixture of the natures so that Christ was something totally different. He was in a sense a demi-god.

But if that were the case, how could he save men? He needs a perfect and whole human nature to save those who have a human nature. Also This section, this passage shows us that his incarnation was real. He really took on flesh. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

And we see throughout John's Gospel, Jesus eats with his disciples. He suffers. He becomes tired. He takes on a real human nature. He didn't merely appear to have a body.

It was real, the incarnation was real. Again another ancient heresy that is clearly rejected here, Docetism. This is a, that word Docetism comes from the Greek word dachain meaning to seem and this was a Gnostic heresy that said Jesus wasn't truly a man he only looked like he had a body and so there there was a story among the Gnostics of Jesus and one of the disciples walking along the beach. They turn back and there's only one set of footprints, not because Jesus carried him, but because Jesus didn't actually have a body. We say, no, the incarnation was real because the Son of God to save men needed to be a man.

Turn with me to Galatians 4. Galatians chapter 4, verse 4. Galatians chapter 4 verse 4, but when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive adoption as sons. At the right time, God sent his son. There was the incarnation at a particular point in time.

It was at exactly the right time. According to God's sovereign decree and plan, the Son took to Himself a nature that He had not previously possessed. This divine person, the second person of the Godhead was born into the world at the right time. And how was he born? He was born of a woman.

And the language is very interesting. He doesn't say he came into the world through a woman or by a woman, but he was born from a woman, gynecose. He came from Mary. This indicates that Mary was not merely a channel or a route for the sun to come into the world, but he actually receives the human nature from his human mother. Therefore his humanity is just as real as any other man's humanity that he receives from his mother.

His humanity was real. And so his human nature is a real and complete and full human nature. Just as the Chalcedonian definition says that he was born of a reasonable soul and body. He had everything in his human nature that one requires to be a human being. This would be contrary to another ancient heresy, Apollinarianism, a heretic name, Apollius, I believe it was.

This doctrine, this false teaching said that the nature of Christ was not a true complete human nature but essentially that Jesus was merely God in a man suit. That the body was not a full human nature, it was merely a body. And the divine nature filled it and moved it so that Jesus was mainly God and just wearing flesh like a suit. Contrary to that, no, we say the human nature was real. It was a truly human nature.

Turn with me to Philippians chapter two. Philippians chapter two, six through eight. A few years ago I had the marvelous privilege of preaching on this entire section and went into much greater depth then than I have time to now. This is one of the most essential texts regarding the nature of Christ. I'm going to read verses 6-8 of Philippians chapter 2.

Who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bond-servant and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death even the death of the cross. Christ from all eternity existed in the form or the nature of God. He had the full divine nature and the full use of all divine attributes because as we saw in John 1 1 he was God. He had this full divine nature before the Incarnation but he humbled himself it says.

He made himself of no reputation. The ESV says, I believe he emptied himself. Well, how did he humble himself? How did he empty himself? How did he make himself of no reputation?

By taking the form of a bond servant. So his humbling was not a removing of something he had, it was a bringing on of something new. It was not a divestment of his divine nature, which again, often we will hear among Charismatics, it's called Canonic Christology. It's essentially that Jesus stopped being God when he became man. Or a less serious form of Canodicism where he merely laid aside his divine attributes.

I would say no, that's not what happened either. We see in the scriptures Jesus knowing the hearts of men. He still had all the divine attributes even in his incarnate state. Rather what we see is that those open expression of those attributes are veiled in the incarnation. But he did not divest himself of his deity or his attributes.

He took the form of a servant and was born in the likeness of men. He took on flesh. And even there it says he found in appearance as man that I think doesn't really do justice to the Greek. It's the same as the form of God. It's the same language here.

He then was found in the form of a man, not merely appearance, but nature. He became obedient to death. This one person who was eternally in his nature divine, eternally God is the one who took on the form of a servant and died on a cross. The divine took on flesh and died. And we see Paul in his writing here he doesn't split hairs so to speak and say well only the humanity died.

He says the one who was in nature God took on flesh and he as a person died. This is a principle called the communication of attributes. We can say rightly Because Christ is one person with two natures, we can refer to one nature and have that, by implication, refer to the whole person. We see this when the apostle Paul says that God bought the church with his own blood in Acts 20. God doesn't have blood, God is a spirit, but Christ, the God-man, the one person with two natures who is truly God, bought the church with his blood.

And so God bought the church with his own blood. And we can say here looking at the cross and seeing what Paul is saying, in a sense God died because the one who died was truly God. And this would refute a heresy known as Nestorianism, that the natures constituting the persons of Christ were actually two persons existing simultaneously in one body, so that you could make a hard distinction between the God and the man. I would also love to flip over to Hebrews chapter 2, 14 to 17, but I simply don't have time. I would encourage you to read Hebrews 2, 14 to 17 and see what the writer to the Hebrews says about Christ.

He took on flesh and blood. He was like us and he continues to be like us so that he would save his people from their sins. So what does all this mean for us? I know that's been very fast a bit of a crash course in Christology. Hopefully it's been clear but what What does all this mean?

If this is truly who Jesus is, the divine person, the second person of the Godhead who came to this world and assumed to himself a human nature so that there's one person with a human nature and a divine nature, united but not mixed, not confused, what does this mean for us? And I have several points of applications. The first two are a little, In broader evangelical circles, my first two points are going to be on the little bit of the spicier side for some people. The second one, I think, even for some of us, maybe. Firstly, images of Jesus.

The second commandment. What is the second commandment for a bid. It forbids images of God. We just discussed Jesus is the second person of the Godhead, fully divine, fully human. The communication of attributes of the natures means that to make an image of one nature is to make an image of the whole person.

And therefore in a picture, purporting to be a picture of Jesus is a violation of the second commandment because you are making an image of God. You cannot justify images of Jesus by appealing to, I'm only drawing his human nature, or it's only a painting of his human nature, or it's only a movie or a TV show showing his human nature. He is one person with two natures. You cannot distinguish or you cannot divide the natures in such a way. We are not Nestorians.

The whole person is human and divine. And so to try to image one is to make an image of the other and therefore violates the second commandment prohibition against images of God. Similarly, secondly, another conclusion. And this one I'm going to use some words and we'll get through it trying to throw anything at me. If we are affirming that Jesus is truly God, In his person there's the two natures, truly God.

We should not get heartburn when someone calls Mary the mother of God." It got really quiet. We must affirm with our brothers throughout history that Mary is the autichos, the bearer, that's better translated, the bearer of God, but also often translated the Mother of God. Because what is that statement saying? It's not a statement about Mary. It's a statement that the one she bore was truly God.

Even in the womb. Eternal God. Now, I understand not a lot of people are going to want to use that language because of centuries of abuse by our papist neighbors. I understand that. I'm not saying you have to now put that on Facebook every day, that Mary is the Altikos, okay?

But we have to understand that there is a true sense in which we must affirm it, because the one she bore was truly God. Third, we must be careful in our language in how we speak about God and about Jesus. We confess that Jesus is fully God and fully man. And there are times when it is appropriate to use one nature to refer to the whole person, as we already mentioned in Acts 20-28 where Paul says that God bought the church with his own blood. He's referring to the divine nature and referencing the crucifixion.

What is Paul saying there in Acts 20-28? The human nature of Christ, believing on the cross, was in effect the blood of God that bought the church. And so we see here an example of where one, where you can say one thing about the nature or about one nature and it's true of the whole person. However, there are times when this kind of language would not be appropriate. Acts 20, 28, he's specifically talking about a work of Christ in the incarnate state, in his ministry on the earth.

However, when we then step outside of the realm of the incarnation and then speak about the relationships of the Godhead itself, that kind of language, I believe, is no longer proper. Particularly I have in mind a song that we sing here, His Robe's for mine. Most of you probably know that song, and we've sung it many times, and many of you have noticed that we changed a line. The chorus that we sing says, Jesus forsaken and estranged from God, But the original lyrics are Jesus forsaken, God estranged from God. And I get what the authors of the song are trying to say.

And I agree with what they're trying to say, but I don't agree with how they said it. We made that change for good reasons, necessary reasons. It was necessary to change that because the persons of the Godhead were never estranged from one another. When you say God estranged from God, you're now moving from talking about the relationship of the incarnate man with his father to the inner relations of the divine persons. And it's no longer proper to use that language because even on the cross bearing the sin of his people and suffering the wrath of God, the Son of God never ceased to be the spotless lamb.

He never ceased being perfect and in full fellowship with his father. The Trinity was not broken in the crucifixion. And so we do not sing that line. Fourth conclusion, we must reject any attempt to over-divinize or over-humanize the Lord Jesus Christ. He is one person with two inseparable but distinct natures.

We cannot overemphasize one to the exclusion of the other. Consider this, as a child, the second person of the Godhead had to learn to walk. The one who spoke the worlds into existence after assuming a human nature to himself had to learn how to speak. He grew in wisdom. We read in Luke's Gospel.

As a little boy, Jesus would have had skinned knees. If you struggle with or even reject, I've seen people reject the idea that the God-man as a child, if you struggle with the idea that he would have tripped over his own feet in a bout of childish clumsiness, then your Christology, I would say, is underdeveloped at best. His humanity was real, even as an infant. Likewise, we cannot overemphasize the humanity to the exclusion of the deity. Contrary to many popular teachers today, Jesus did not merely live his life as a Spirit-filled man.

He was, but he was more. He was fully God. He did not lay aside the divine attributes. That's a complete misunderstanding of Philippians 2.7. Rather, he lived as the God-man with all his divine attributes, though usually veiled, yet still fully participating in the divine nature and divine power as the eternal Word of his Father.

And lastly, and most importantly, in all of this discussion and all this theological terminology, and I understand if you're new to this, this has been hard, but this is most important. Focus on this. Do not let your reflections on who Christ is become mere theological exercises. It is not merely intellectual Jargon. The greatest application of this glorious doctrine of who Christ is, is that we have such a savior as this.

This is the one that God gave for us. As the Nicene Creed reads, the Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God. Listen, for us and for our salvation, He came down from heaven. By the power of the Holy Spirit, He became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man. This is the biggest point.

This is the greatest conclusion. For us and for our salvation, He did this. It's not just a matter of dotting your theological I's and crossing T's. This is the Savior that's offered you in the gospel. The Lord of glory and the man of sorrows simultaneously.

The one who lived and died and lives again and lives forever as the God man to be your Redeemer, your Mediator and your King. So when you consider these things, marvel at what God has done for you. Stand amazed at what has been done on your behalf. The humiliation, the humbling, the condescension of God in order to save those he loves. So be amazed, be mystified by this great mystery of the Incarnation.

Stand in awe of it. Adore Him for taking on your nature yet without sin so that He could become your elder brother and bring you to his Father. The greatest conclusion of this doctrine of who Christ is, is that you repent of your sin and put your trust once and for all in the God-man who perfectly satisfies divine justice on your behalf. Let's pray. Oh Father, we thank you for sending your Son.

God, we are amazed. How could you love us in such a way? How could you love your people so much that you would give your son? God we thank you. We are amazed and dumbfounded and stand in awe of what you have done.

And Lord, we thank you for it because we know without it there could be no hope for any of us. Thank you Lord for sending your Son. Thank you Lord Jesus for for bearing our nature and then bearing our sin. Oh God, thank you for the great gospel by which we are saved. And as we continue to think on these things, May you help us think about them rightly.

May we be careful. But God may it all lead to greater love and adoration and worship of you, our great King. In Jesus name we pray, Amen. We are dismissed.