This week's "thought"
comes from a book entitled, "A Hope Deferred -- Adoption and The
Fatherhood of God." It's by a man named, J. Stephen Yuille, a pastor
living in Texas. He confesses to always having believed, and preached, on
the doctrine of "adoption" from Romans 8:15-17. But says he
never fully understood all that was implied in that one word adoption,
until he and his wife were unable to have children and adopted a baby girl from
China.In summarizing the book Joel Beeke calls it, "a precious mosaic of personal stories and biblical teaching that go straight to the heart." Through their failed struggle to have children, and then in adopting, he says: "God granted them a deeper knowledge of His fatherly love." The books appeal is also aided by the fact that its a quick read (150 pages) and the author is a gifted writer! Enjoy.
"Here's a precious (and often neglected) truth: Christ is a man. We confess that he's fully God and fully man in one person. And we confess that his two natures remain distinct. In other words, the properties of his humanity aren't transferred to his deity, and conversely, the properties of his deity aren't transferred to his humanity. His deity is never hungry or thirsty. Likewise, his humanity is never omniscient, omnipresent, or omnipotent.
During the incarnation, Christ's deity is veiled. To fulfill his mission, he lives in complete submission to the Father and in complete dependence on the Holy Spirit. This is how we understand his "growth in wisdom" (Luke 2:52). This is how we understand his prayer life. This is how we understand his ascribing his miracles to the power of the Holy Spirit. This is how we explain his ignorance concerning the time of his return (Matthew 24:36). And this is how we explain his anguish in the garden: "Remove this cup from me" (Mark 14:36).
Now,
you might be wondering why I'm belaboring this. In a word, its extremely
important. If our only view of Christ is his deity, we're missing something.
Christ is a man who lived in submission to the Father and dependence upon the
Holy Spirit. As a man, he knows all about sorrow and suffering. He knows
what it's like to be hungry. He knows what it's like to be weary. He knows what
it's like to face temptation. He knows what it's like to experience
betrayal. He knows what it's like to encounter injustice. He knows what it's
like to suffer abandonment. He knows what it's like to lose a loved one. As
Mary stands at the tomb, weeping over her dead brother, Christ also weeps (John
11:35). That reminds us of his compassion. He empathizes with our frailties and
sympathizes with our sorrows. He's, "a man of sorrows and acquainted
with grief" (Isaiah 53:3). When we draw near to him, we find refuge
from sorrow and suffering in the shadow of God's wings.
That
reality is made abundantly clear in Hebrews 4:14-16. There we read:
"We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our
weaknesses, but one who in every way has been tempted as we are, yet without
sin. Let us then draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy
and find grace to help us in our time of need"...
Christ
carries all our burdens. When a woman marries a man (or visa-versa), her
burdens become his. Similarly when we marry Christ (become one with him),
our burdens become his burdens. Paul says, "For while we are still in this
tent (this body), we groan, being burdened" (II Corinthians 5:4). We
have lots of burdens. We bear the burden of wayward children, the burden
of lost loved ones, the burden of discouragement, and the burden of illness.
But Christ takes all those burdens upon himself. He empathizes with us better
than our friends, siblings, spouses, pastors, or any other person we know. Do
we realize that? He has a better understanding of our burdens than we do.
And as we draw near to him by faith, he imparts his grace to us, whereby we are
strengthened. When we're in the midst of affliction, we can be certain
that God will help us in one of two ways: either he will remove us from
trouble, or he will support us in trouble. Now the following point is crucial:
God doesn't always do the first, but he always does the second. He always
supports us in trouble...
Many
of us struggle with affliction and accompanying sorrow. We feel like the
mythical figure, Atlas, with the weight of the world on his shoulders. Often
times, affliction is beyond our control. We are powerless to do anything
about it. And our sense of helplessness is increased by our limited view of
what God is doing. At times like these, we want answers to the question
"why?" Yet we must hold to what we know. We know God governs
all things according to the pleasure of his will (Ephesians 1:11). We
know his goodness dictates his providence [the way he orders the affairs of
this world], meaning he designs affliction for our benefit (Job 5:18, Isaiah
30:26, Hosea 6:1). We know his wisdom governs his providence, meaning
he's in ultimate control (Job 42:2). There's no pain he can't remove, no
danger he can't prevent, no misery he can't comfort, no enemy he can't
vanquish, and no need he can't supply (Jeremiah 32:17 and 27, Matthew 19:26,
Luke 1:37, Luke 18:27, Phil. 4:13). Finally, we know we can take refuge
in the shadow of his wings, where we find "a man of sorrows and acquainted
with grief."
Our failure to
remember the full humanity of Christ often deprives us of the needed ability to
remember that Christ sympathizes with us (rather than frowning at us) in our
struggles and weaknesses. To forget that robs us of the comfort and consolation
God meant for us to receive by reflecting on the struggles that Jesus
encountered because of his humanity.
He wasn't just acting when he wept at Lazarus death. He wasn't
simply pretending when he said he was thirsty from the cross. When he was
pierced on the cross, "blood
and water flowed out," showing us he was fully human. These were expressions of
the truth of his incarnate humanity -- something we can often forget if we
stumble into the heresy of "Docetism" which is so common in some
evangelical circles.
Docetism is a word we get from the Greek word "dokein" which means,
"to seem." A "docetist" is a person who
claims Jesus only "seemed"
to be human. They believe he was just a ghost or phantom
figure. "He was able to
walk on water," as one man once told me, "because
he didn't weigh anything."
That's the error of so over-emphasizing Jesus' deity. We forget, or virtually
nullify, his humanity. And in doing so we create a faith that is
quite different from the one given to us in the New Testament (I John
4:1-2)."
We gain strength and
confidence from the knowledge of Jesus' deity; we gain comfort, hope and
consolation from the knowledge that he "was tempted in EVERY way
just as we are... yet without sin." The sin, then, is not
in being tempted, but in giving in to the temptation, and the comfort is that
He understands. The fact that he sympathizes with me in my sorrows brings me
closer to him relationally. What is true in human friendships is true of Him --
we gravitate toward those who we feel will understand us, and listen
with both an empathetic ear and heart to the struggles that confront us.
Take a minute and
think on Jesus humanity. It helps us, says the author of Hebrews, to "draw
near to the thine of grace" and find grace to helps us in our times of
need.
Blessings, Pastor
Jeff
