Comfortable in His Skin

Sometimes Jesus said what He didn’t know. Like the time of His Second Coming: But concerning that day  or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Mark 13:32.

Jesus had no problem understanding and articulating the distinctions between Himself and the Father. He was not defensive when He said there were things He did not know and the Father did know.

If ever a man was secure in His own skin, it was Jesus. Surely that is a great miracle.

We might expect an awkward accommodation, a strange coexistence of His divine and human natures. Or if the Incarnation was as it has been misconceived by some, would there not be a weird tension in Christ, as if His divine nature were always trying to break through? As if His human nature were necessary but unfortunate baggage that His divinity had to lug around.

Instead Christ is comfortable as a Man but infinitely more than a man.

This is a great mystery, and Christians have puzzled over it for many centuries. In 451 A.D. a large church council was convened in the city of Chalcedon to forge a statement that could summarize the Scriptural truth and settle the questions and controversies about Jesus’ two natures.

• Some taught that Jesus had a human body but not a human mind or spirit (Apollinarianism).
• Others said that Christ was two separate persons, human and divine (Nestorianism).
• And yet others said Christ had only one nature, a sort of hybrid of human and divine (Monophysitism).

In the face of these heresies, here's what the Council came up with. It's a mouthful, but it summarizes well the truth about our Lord Jesus Christ: One divine Person, with two natures - perfect deity, perfect humanity.

Therefore, following the holy fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin; as regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the creed of the fathers has handed down to us.

 Notice it teaches, as does Scripture, that Christ is truly and completely God and truly and completely man, and that His two natures are "without confusion, without change, without division, without separation."

I admire Christ for being who He is, perfect God and perfect Man. Comfortable in His own perfect, human skin.