In the first chapter of Romans, there is a verse which some translations render, “declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection,” and which another renders, “by the resurrection, appointed to be the Son of God with power.”
I am not here interested in which is the more faithful translation of the Greek, for both emphasize different truths (if they are, indeed, different truths). The resurrection is the greatest proof of Jesus’ deity; it is the greatest proof that He is indeed, who He claimed to be, one with the Almighty and the Almighty Himself; the Son of God who will come on the clouds of heaven at the right hand of the Majesty; the one whose acknowledgement is eternal life and whose disregard and condemnation is everlasting death. When God raised Jesus from the dead, He proved to the whole world that Jesus is His beloved Son and said to humanity with a voice louder than that with which He spoke at Jesus’ baptism in the river Jordan and on the mountain of transfiguration, “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased: listen to Him!
(For, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, which is Jesus Christ, for, in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.) He said, “I have raised this Man, Jesus of Nazareth, from the dead. His miracles were My power. His words were My words, as He told you. He died by My will, as a sacrifice for sins, and I have raised Him from the dead, that all creation may know that He has triumphed over sin and death and I have accepted the sacrifice of His blood, and that you may look to Him and have life. He is My Son and My Anointed One. Kiss the Son with trembling, lest you perish from the way, for His wrath may flare up in a moment. How blessed are all who take refuge in Him!”
At the same time that the resurrection is the greatest declaration that Jesus, this same Jesus who was crucified, is the One and Only Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father, and for the same reasons, it is also the supreme glorification of His humanity.
In His resurrection and ascension (for, are they not the same eternal reality, breaking on this world of time in two different points?) Jesus was glorified as a Man who still bears the wounds of His crucifixion. He came in the likeness of sinful flesh, in the very same weak and frail flesh, subject to temptations and suffering, that is ours, with just this one difference: His flesh was sinless. Nonetheless, He came as, with regards to His humanity, not yet perfected, though there has never been and can be no change in His perfect, eternal Godhead. He was innocent; He knew no sin; indeed, He was perfect, but His flesh was not yet perfected. He came in the likeness of us all. He entered the virgin’s womb and was born, an infant needed to nurse, unable to talk or walk, and gradually, as every human being, His manhood matured and He grew in wisdom and in favor; He grew into a man. His humanity was made perfect by His growing and living, by His suffering and dying, and by His resurrection and glorification. In Him, God condemned sin in the flesh not only by means of His sacrificial death, in which sin was righteously judged and cast as far as the east is from the west and trampled underfoot, but, God also condemned sin in His flesh as He lived the perfect life, fulfilling the entire Law and all righteousness (note, it is all righteousness, not just some righteousness and no unrighteousness) in the same flesh in which are we ourselves; only, in us this flesh is sinful, and in His it knew no sin. God condemned sin by the righteousness of Jesus Christ in His life and by His death on the cross. As is the lot of all men, He suffered. “He was made perfect in that He suffered,” we read in Hebrews, for otherwise He could not be a perfect man, for men suffer; He suffered perfectly; He suffered all there is to suffer, so that no suffering is left which He has not tasted, and He suffered in perfect love and obedience. He was tempted; when He was born His humanity was innocent, but not perfected, not proven, not yet in the fullness of that which it was and was to be. He was perfected in temptation. He was tested and stood the test. He was tried, and in Him the fire of purging found no impurities to clean, but proved that He was purest gold; in Him there was no lack. All of this contributed to the perfection of His humanity. When He died for our sins, and in His flesh atoned for all our impurities, when all our sins were taken away, then, indeed, did He perfect humanity; He perfected the flesh that He took from a woman, the same flesh that is in all men.
However, His work went beyond that. The perfection which He completed was a perfection even Divine. Having condemned sin in the flesh, having been found innocent and made perfect in the flesh and having purged and perfected the flesh, He rose from the dead. This is both the proof that He was indeed perfect and perfected and yet greater glory and perfection. He said, “I am going back to the Father,” and by this He did not mean that His Godhead had left heaven, had left the Father, and that now He was returning. God the Son cannot leave heaven: “the Word was with God and the Word was God.” His Divinity is the same Divinity that is the Father’s, and He is in closest relationship to the Father, always, without change, for the Godhead is eternal and cannot change, as the Name, YHWH: I AM WHO I AM. No, His humanity was going to the Father, henceforth to share in the glory of His Deity. His humanity, and in Him humanity, was to be glorified with the glory that was His before the world began. This glory – this glory that was the same glory He has always had, and also a new and greater glory, as it says in Philippians, “So God also highly exalted Him,” that is, gave Him a new and greater glory, for the same glory of God was now also the glory of Man – would be through His suffering, through His sacrificial death, and in His resurrection and ascension, as He tells us, “For them I sanctify Myself, that they too may be sanctified in Truth,” and He said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” We also read in Hebrews, “but we do see Jesus, because of the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor.”
In His humanity, He was appointed the Son of God with power by the resurrection, because He is the Son of God and in His resurrection that humanity was raised into the glory and power of His Godhead. Having risen from the dead and ascended, He sat down at the right hand of the Father as the Son of Man. (Some have said that the term, “Son of Man,” appearing as it does in the Book of Daniel, does not emphasize or speak of the humanity of Jesus Christ, but I believe that is mistaken: throughout the Old Testament, human beings are referred to as “the sons of man,” and the prophets are called, “son of man,” – thus pointing us to Jesus, the ultimate Son of Man, for as in Adam all die, so in Christ all shall be made alive, yet the trespass is not to be compared with the gift, for as the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more abundantly, through the obedience of the one man the many shall be made alive, by the gift of grace in Christ Jesus. For the condemnation followed one trespass and brought condemnation to the many, but the gift came after many trespasses and brought justification to the many. Again, it says, “The first man, Adam, became a living soul. The second man, Jesus Christ, became a life-giving spirit.” As for the Son of Man in Daniel, specifically, I believe it points to the risen and glorified humanity of Jesus Christ – why else would the term be used? God lives in eternity, and the Son of Man who would be Divine that was shown to Daniel in the prophetic vision is the risen and glorified Jesus Christ. He was showing Daniel that there would be a Man who was God Himself.) Jesus Christ, in His very humanity that was crucified as a sin offering, has been raised again and the very humanity that suffered for our sins reigns over all the kings of the earth and knows all things. In the resurrection, His humanity was glorified with the glory of the Son of God, and in the flesh He was glorified with the glory of which He emptied Himself in taking on that flesh. The very flesh that was nailed to the cross is present with us and dwells in us everywhere. Just as God, and all of God, is present everywhere, so all Jesus’ humanity is present everywhere. In the same flesh that was pierced with a spear, every eye will see Him and He will judge the nations. In that same flesh, He is with us now. It is not only in His Deity, but in His perfected and glorified flesh, the very same flesh in which He was tempted and crucified, that Jesus Christ is everywhere and dwells within believers – and we in Him. In fact, it is through dwelling in His humanity that we dwell in His Deity, for the Deity and the humanity are of one person: the Son of God. It is in Him – in His humanity, in His resurrection – that we are perfected and glorified. His death is our justification, but His resurrection is our salvation.
Even so it is, that He promises in Revelations, “Just as I have overcome and sat down with My Father upon His throne, so to the one who overcomes will sit down with Me on My throne,” and we overcome because He was overcome! We share in His victory! “In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.” “Take heart! I have overcome the world.” “Apart from Me, you can do nothing.”
Copyright 2018 Raina Nightingale
