The term hypostatic union is much easier than it sounds, but the concept is as profound as anything in the universe—the personal union of the eternal Son of God with our humanity.

The English adjective hypostatic comes from the Greek word hupostasis. The word only appears four times in the New Testament—maybe most memorably in Hebrews 1:3, where Jesus is said to be “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.” Here the author of Hebrews uses the word in reference to the oneness of God. Both the Father and the Son are of the same “nature.” Jesus is “the exact imprint of his nature.”

However, in early church discussions, as Greek speakers tried to find agreeable terms with those who spoke in Latin, the word hupostasis came to denote not the sameness in the Godhead (the one divine essence) but the distinctness (the three divine persons). So it began to be used to refer to something like the English word person.

The Personal Union of Jesus’ Two Natures

So “hypostatic union” may sound fancy in English, but it’s a pretty simple term. Hypostatic means personal. The hypostatic union is the personal joining of Jesus’ two natures in one person.

Jesus has two complete natures—one fully human and one fully divine. What the doctrine of the hypostatic union teaches is that these two natures are united in one person in the God-man. Jesus is not two persons. He is one person. The hypostatic union is the joining of the divine and the human in the one person of Jesus.

What Is the Significance?

Why bother with this seemingly fancy term? What good is it to know about this hypostatic union? At the end of the day, the term can go, but the concept behind the term is infinitely precious—and worshipfully mind-stretching.

It is immeasurably sweet—and awe-inspiring—to know that Jesus’ two natures are perfectly united in his one person. Jesus is not divided. He is not two people. He is one person. As the Chalcedonian Creed (451 A.D.) states, his two natures are without confusion, without change, without division, and without separation. Jesus is one.

This means Jesus is one focal point for our worship. And as Jonathan Edwards preached, in this one-person God-man we find “an admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies.” Because of this hypostatic, one-person union, Jesus exhibits an unparalleled magnificence. No one person satisfies the complex longings of the human heart like the God-man.

God has made the human heart in such a way that it will never be eternally content with that which is only human. Finitude can’t slake our thirst for the infinite. And yet, in our finite humanity, we are significantly helped by a point of correspondence with the divine. God was glorious long before he became man in Jesus. But we are human, and unincarnate deity doesn’t connect with us in the same way as the God who became human. The conception of a god who never became man will not satisfy the human soul like the God who did.

One Person, For Us

And beyond just gazing at the spectacular person of Jesus, there is also the amazing gospel-laced revelation that the reason Jesus became the God-man was for us. His fully human nature joined in personal union to his eternally divine nature is a permanent showcase that Jesus, in perfect harmony with his Father, is undeterrably for us. He has demonstrated his love for us in that while we were still sinners, he took our nature to his one person and died for us.

(For more on the permanence of the incarnation, see “The Permanence of Christmas” Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.)

~David Mathis

Http://blog.buddriver.us

Yesterday we summed up Jesus’ full divinity under the heading “Jesus Is Lord.” We said that the doctrine of the incarnation could be remembered with John 1:14, “The Word became flesh.” That “Word” is the divine second person of the Trinity, the eternal Word, who we know as Jesus.

Today we shift focus to Jesus’ full humanity. Not only did he remain fully divine when he took humanity to himself, but the humanity that he took was full humanity. And so Jesus has a fully human body, emotions, mind, and will—and this in no way compromises his deity.

Jesus’ Human Body

It is clear enough from the New Testament that Jesus had (and still has) a fully human body. Jesus was born (Luke 2:7). He grew (Luke 2:40, 52). He grew tired (John 4:6) and got thirsty (John 19:28). He got hungry (Matthew 4:2) and was physically weak (Matthew 4:11; Luke 23:26). He died (Luke 23:46). And he had a real human body after his resurrection (Luke 24:39; John 20:20, 27). Jesus’ full humanity even became one of the first tests of orthodoxy (1 John 4:2).

Jesus’ Human Emotions

Throughout the gospels, Jesus clearly manifests human emotions.

• When Jesus heard the centurion’s words of faith, “he marveled” (Matthew 8:10).
• He says in Matthew 26:38 that his “soul is very sorrowful, even to death.”
• In John 11:33-35, Jesus is “deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled” and even weeps.
• John 12:27 says, “Now is my soul troubled,”
• In John 13:21, he is “troubled in his spirit.”
• The author to the Hebrews writes that “Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears” (Hebrews 5:7).

John Calvin memorably summed it up: “Christ has put on our feelings along with our flesh.”

Jesus’ Human Mind

Jesus also has a fully human mind (in addition to his fully divine mind). Two key texts make this undeniable:

• Luke 2:52 - “Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.”
• Mark 13:32 - “Concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

The second text, of course, is striking. For those who clearly affirm Jesus’ deity, Mark 13:32 seems like trouble. But what looks difficult at first glance proves to be a glorious confirmation of Jesus’ humanity—and a very helpful piece in formulating our Christology.

If Jesus is God, and God knows everything, how can Jesus not know when his second coming will be?

Answer: In addition to being fully divine, Jesus is fully human. He has both an infinite, divine mind and a finite, human mind. He can be said not to know things because he is human and finite—human minds are not omniscient. And Jesus can be said to know all things (John 21:17) because he is divine and infinite in his knowledge.  There is a real sense in which the God-man is both omniscient (as God) and not omniscient (as man).

Paradoxical as it is, we affirm that Jesus both knows all things and doesn’t know all things. For the unique, two-natured person of Christ, this is no contradiction but a peculiar glory of the God-man.

Jesus’ Human Will

Now, trickiest of all, Jesus not only has a divine will but also a human will. That’s two wills—one divine and one human. Two key texts on Jesus’ human will:

• John 6:38 - “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.”
• Matthew 26:39 - “Not as I will, but as you will.”

Jesus has an infinite, divine will he shares with his Father, and he has a finite, human will that, while remaining an authentic human will, is moved in obedience into perfect sync with and submission to the divine will.

This Jesus is a spectacular person. He is utterly unique as fully God and fully man. And so there is only one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5).

Fully Divine, Fully Human

Jesus has a human body, heart, mind, and will. He is like us in every respect——except for sin (Hebrews 2:17; 4:15). How amazing that the divine Son of God would not just take on part of our humanity but all of it—and then take that true humanity all the way to the cross for us.

Jesus took a human body to save our bodies. And he took a human mind to save our minds. Without becoming man in his emotions, he could not have saved our emotions. And without taking a human will, he could not save our will. In the words of Gregory of Nazianzus, “That which he has not assumed he has not healed.”

He became man in full so that he might save us in full. Hallelujah, what a Savior!

Tomorrow, we’ll look at Jesus’ single personhood.

~David Mathis

Http://blog.buddriver.us

1. Jesus as Lord (fully divine)
2. Jesus as Savior (fully human)
3. Jesus as Treasure (one person)

So here’s part 1, with parts 2 and 3 on the way in the next couple days.

In this Christological triad (Lord-Savior-Treasure), Jesus’ Lordship is tied to his divinity and to him rightly being called Yahweh, the name surpassingly more excellent than angels (Heb. 1:4), the name above every name (Phil. 2:9). Here’s the connection between Lordship and the divine name.

Yahweh, the Lord

God’s personal name Yahweh, first revealed to Moses at the burning bush, was so sacred to the ancient Hebrews that they would not risk mispronouncing it by speaking it. So every time they came across the name while reading their Scriptures (our “Old Testament”), they would say Adonai, meaning Lord. So when the Greek translation of the Scriptures was produced, Yahweh was rendered Kurios (Greek for Lord), and so in “New Testament” times, Jesus being called Kurios had the effect of identifying him with the divine name Yahweh.

The divinity of Jesus is pervasive in the New Testament and so fundamental that it is usually assumed among first-century Christians, rather than argued for. But Jesus being called Lord may be the strongest way the New Testament ascribes divinity to Jesus. There are times where Jesus is called God, other times Son of Man has divine connotations, other times there are clear attributes of deity, but page after page Jesus is called Lord—and being so called, he is identified with God’s personal name.

The Incarnation

What we celebrate at Christmas is that Yahweh himself, the eternal God in the second person of the Trinity became man. We call this the incarnation, which refers literally to the in-fleshing of the Son of God—Jesus taking humanity to his person, being clothed, as it were, in human flesh. The doctrine of the incarnation teaches that the divine second person of the Trinity took on humanity in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, not by losing any of his divinity, but by adding humanity to himself. A helpful way to remember this heart of the incarnation—the divine adding the human—is John 1:14: “The Word became flesh.”

The Incarnation and the Cross

So the eternal Son of God, without ceasing to be God but remaining fully divine, took on full humanity. And what a magnificent doctrine and fuel for worship this is! Jesus didn’t just become man because he could. It wasn’t just a showoff move. He became man “for us and for our salvation” (in the words of Athanasius). The Word became flesh to save us from our sin and to free us to marvel at and enjoy the person in whom there is this unique union of divinity and humanity.

The incarnation is an eternal testimony that the fully divine Son and his Father are unswervingly for us.

Tomorrow we’ll look at Jesus’ full humanity.

~David Mathis

Http://blog.buddriver.us

First, fairy tales are fun and we enjoy them, but we don’t ask our children to believe them.

Second, we want our children to understand God as fully as they’re able at whatever age they are. So we try to avoid anything that would delay or distort that understanding. It seems to us that celebrating with a mixture of Santa and manger will postpone a child’s clear understanding of what the real truth of God is. It’s very difficult for a young child to pick through a marble cake of part-truth and part-imagination to find the crumbs of reality.

Third, we think about how confusing it must be to a straight-thinking, uncritically-minded preschooler because Santa is so much like what we’re trying all year to teach our children about God. Look, for example, at the “attributes” of Santa.

• He’s omniscient—he sees everything you do.
• He rewards you if you’re good.
• He’s omnipresent—at least, he can be everywhere in one night.
• He gives you good gifts.
• He’s the most famous “old man in the sky” figure.

But at the deeper level that young children haven’t reached yet in their understanding, he is not like God at all.

For example, does Santa really care if we’re bad or good? Think of the most awful kid you can remember. Did he or she ever not get gifts from Santa?

What about Santa’s spying and then rewarding you if you’re good enough? That’s not the way God operates. He gave us his gift—his Son—even though we weren’t good at all. “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). He gave his gift to us to make us good, not because we had proved ourselves good enough.

Helping our children understand God as much as they’re able at whatever age they are is our primary goal. But we’ve also seen some other encouraging effects of not including Santa in our celebration.

First, I think children are glad to realize that their parents, who live with them all year and know all the worst things about them, still show their love at Christmas. Isn’t that more significant than a funny, old, make-believe man who drops in just once a year?

Second, I think most children know their family’s usual giving patterns for birthday and special events. They tend to have an instinct about their family’s typical spending levels and abilities. Knowing that their Christmas gifts come from the people they love, rather than from a bottomless sack, can help diminish the “I-want-this, give-me-that” syndrome.

And finally, when children know that God’s generosity is reflected by God’s people, it tends to encourage a sense of responsibility about helping make Christmas good for others.

Karsten, for example, worked hard on one gift in 1975. On that Christmas morning, his daddy stepped around a large, loose-flapped cardboard box to get to his chair at the breakfast table. “Where’s Karsten?” he asked, expecting to see our excited three-year-old raring to leap into the day. Sitting down, I said, “He’ll be here in a minute.”

I nudged the box with my toe. From inside the carton, Karsten threw back the flaps and sprang to his full three-foot stature. “And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them . . .” He had memorized Luke 2:8-20 as a gift for his dad. Karsten knew the real story.

In fact, a few days later, he and I were walking down the hall at the church we attended then. One of the older ladies leaned down to squeeze his pink, round cheek and asked, “What did Santa bring you?” Karsten’s head jerked quickly toward me, and he whispered loudly, “Doesn’t she know?”

~Noel Piper 

Http://blog.buddriver.us

The death of Oral Roberts marks a significant milestone in the history of American Christianity. His life, spanning from 1918 to 2009, represents 91 years and almost a century of American religious history.

Granville Oral Roberts was born into the home of a preacher and he married the daughter of a preacher. Soon after reaching adulthood he entered the ministry himself, holding tent meetings in the style of the evangelists of his day. Roberts began as a traditional holiness preacher, but he would later transform his ministry into a worldwide enterprise utilizing electronic media and extending a global reach through television and an institutional empire that would include the university named for him.

Writing in 1985, biographer David Edwin Harrell would describe Oral Roberts as "one of the most influential religious leaders in the world in the twentieth century." In Oral Roberts: An American Life, Harrell, a professor of history at Auburn University, would lament the fact that mainstream academia had given so little attention to Roberts and to the Pentecostal and charismatic movements of which he was so famously a part. Harrell suggested three roles that led to Roberts' preeminence.

First, Harrell credits Roberts with bringing leadership and publicity to the Pentecostal and charismatic movements. Though these movements began their legendary growth early in the twentieth century, most of the significant charismatic figures lacked the organizational and media ability that Roberts brought to his ministry. Roberts understood the institutional instability of the Pentecostal and charismatic movements. His vision of mainstreaming the movement led him at various points in his ministry to do what other holiness preachers would never have considered. He sought and obtained ministerial credentials with the United Methodist Church, a denomination with deep roots in the Wesleyan tradition that represented the kind of middle-class America Roberts so desperately wanted to reach. The establishment of Oral Roberts University required an intense investment of time, money, and energy. Nevertheless, Roberts understood that the university platform would allow him to reach a generation of young charismatics and would serve as an institutional platform for his larger work.

Second, Roberts was a pioneer in the use of modern electronic media. Early on, Roberts recognized the power of television. He understood that radio could reach untold thousands, but he saw television as the way of reaching hypermodern America. His slick television specials, often featuring Hollywood celebrities and national figures, were virtually unprecedented in American Christian life. David Harrell goes so far as to credit Oral Roberts as the founder of what became known as the "electronic church." During the prime years of Oral Roberts' ministry, television was the major means of reaching a mass public, and Roberts had an intuitive feel for the medium.

Third, Harrell points to Roberts' emphasis on religious healing. "It was healing that launched his ministry in 1947, and it is healing that is the foundation of the controversial City of Faith complex rising high over the Tulsa skyline." Those words were written in 1985. The City of Faith complex was to include three major towers, one reaching to 60 stories. Roberts saw the City of Faith as a great medical center that would, he hoped, find a cure for cancer. The hospital was built, but it was not financially viable. The complex is no longer controlled by Oral Roberts University and is now office space known as CityPlex Towers.

In reality, most Americans probably know of Oral Roberts through a combination of his intended and unintended media exposure. Roberts frequently attracted controversy. Most famously, he became known for claiming to receive a vision of a 900 foot Jesus instructing them to build the City of Faith and, when hard times hit his empire, telling his followers that if a sufficient amount of gifts was not received within a specified amount of time, God would end his life. In 1987, Roberts became the focus of intense scrutiny in light of claims made by his ministry that a dead person had been brought to life.

In the end, however, Oral Roberts should be measured by his message. Though his claims of visions and healings drew deserved attention, along with both scrutiny and embarrassment, it was the core of his message that is most problematic. In his prime years, Roberts was the most significant agent for prosperity theology.

Prosperity theology teaches that God promises his people financial gain and bodily health. It is a false Gospel that turns the Gospel of Christ upside-down. The true Gospel offers forgiveness of sins and leads to a life of discipleship. Following Christ demands poverty more often than wealth, and we are not promised relief from physical ills, injury, sickness, or death. Christians die along with all other mortals, but we are promised the gift of eternal life in Christ.

There is tragedy in the sight of the City of Faith turned from a hospital into an office complex. In recent years scandal has erupted at Oral Roberts University, though stability may have been recently regained. Most Americans probably remember Oral Roberts, if at all, through his television ministry of decades past. Others will associate him only with the bizarre -- visions of a 900-ft Jesus and the rest.

But the greatest tragedy in all this is the perpetuation of prosperity theology, passed on by Oral Roberts to a new generation. I am thankful for every sinner who came to know the Gospel of Christ through the preaching of Oral Roberts, and I heard him preach about salvation in ways that were true and powerful. But I can only lament the prosperity theology that he leaves in his long shadow.

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~AlbertMohler

I am always glad to hear from readers and listeners. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

Http://blog.buddriver.us