Conference yukon::christian_v7

474.0. "True God and True Man" by COVERT::COVERT (John R. Covert) Sun May 15 1994 23:35

                          True God and True Man
                      by Father Christopher Phillips

		I believe ... in Jesus Christ, his only Son,
		our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
		born of the Virgin Mary ...

There are three statements about Jesus Christ that are asserted by the
Church, and from which all other theological statements about Him must
flow; first, that Jesus Christ is truly God; second, that Jesus Christ is
truly man; and third, that Jesus Christ is one Person in Whom the divine
and human natures are united in an unchangeable, unconfused, indivisible,
and inseparable way.  Unless these three statements are true, then there is
no historic Christian Faith; and because they are true, we can know that
Jesus was not simply a human teacher and prophet but that He is truly the
God-Man Whose coming opens the way for us (and, indeed, for all of creation)
to be "at one" with God, as all things were before the fall of Adam.

The Christian Faith teaches us to worship the one true God Who has revealed
Himself in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  This teaching has
come to us from Jesus Himself, Who is the unique Son of God and Whose
relationship with the Father is unlike anyone else's.  As we read in the
Gospel accounts, He taught his disciples, when they prayed, to say "Our
Father," but when Christ prayed to His Father, He went to places by
Himself.  When He appeared to Mary Magdalene after His resurrection, He
told her to go to His apostles and "tell them, `I am going to my Father and
your Father, to my God and your God'" (John 20:17).  The Sonship of Jesus,
then, has no equal, and it is qualitatively different from our own
relationship to God as His children.  But it is through Christ's Sonship
that all those who belong to Him are "children of God, and if children,
then heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ ..." (Romans 8:16-17).

Throughout the New Testament, Jesus is called "Lord."  This was a title
that had been used by the Jews to refer to God, as it had also been used by
the Gentiles when speaking of their various deities, and its incorporation
into the Creed shows that from the earliest days of God's revelation of
Himself in Jesus, Christians knew that it was necessary to apply the
highest terms possible in describing Christ.

It was He "Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality
with God something to be grasped.  Rather, he emptied himself, taking the
form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance,
he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. 
Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that
is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of
those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Phil 2:6-11).
From the very beginning of the Church, then, Christians have spoken of
Jesus as "Lord," for Christ Himself said, "All power in heaven and on
earth has been given to me" (Matt. 28:18).

It was this Son of God, this Lord -- pre-existent with the Father and the
Holy Spirit -- who took upon Himself human flesh from the womb of the
Virgin Mary.  He was not conceived as we were conceived, from the natural
union of a man and a woman, but rather in a way that transcended the
natural order of things.  He is eternally the same Person.  Yet at the
moment in which the Blessed Virgin Mary pronounced her words of assent to
the archangel Gabriel -- "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord.  May it
be done unto me according to your word" (Luke 1:38) -- the human body of
Christ was instantly formed and united to a rational soul; and at that
exact moment, by the power of the Holy Spirit, true God and true man
dwelled in the womb of Mary.

The Gospel of St. John tells us, "In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.
All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be"
(John 1:1-3).  This Word is Jesus Christ, of Whom it was written that His
mother "gave birth to her firstborn son.  She wrapped him in swaddling
clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in
the inn" (Luke 2:7).

This was He Who came, and it is a fact at which we may well wonder for all
time, as we think of our God coming down among us -- leaving His throne on
high, leaving the courts of heaven and the songs of the angels and the
brightness of His Father's face -- to be with us.  When we think of this
little child born of the Virgin Mary, we must also remember that He is the
very God Who made the world, and Who set the stars in their places.  When
we think of the child Jesus -- presented in the Temple, circumcised
according to the Law, in danger of death because of the jealousy of Herod,
taking flight into Egypt to find a refuge -- we must also remember that He
is, as Revelation 22:13 says, the "Alpha and Omega, the first and the last,
the beginning and the end,"  Who is, and Who was, and Who is to come, the
Almighty God.  When we think of the boy Jesus -- coming into the Temple and
asking questions of the teachers, or of His going down to Nazareth with His
parents and being subject to them -- we must also remember that He Who was
veiled under the likeness of a humble and obedient child is the Holy One
Who shall come to be our Judge on the last day.

If the Son of God had chosen another way of coming, other than having been
born in humility of the Blessed Virgin Mary, it would have taken nothing
away from the greatness of His condescension and love, for it would have
been equally a humbling of the everlasting God if He had shown Himself in
flesh with a majesty such as no one had ever before seen, and upon which no
one could look without tremendous fear and awe.  Certainly, it would have
not been sorprising if the God of the universe had chosen to show Himself
to us in greater glory and brightness than the angels, but it id not please
Him to come in that way.  Rather, He came by the way in which He chose in
order to show us how little we understand the greatness and glory of God. 
He was born in obscurity of the Virgin Mary to show us that what we
consider to be poor and despised and humble counts for little with Him.
He came in that way so that we could know that there is nothing in our own
condition that He did not choose also to endure from the very first; that
there is nothing so mean and rough and dangerous in what even the poorest
men in this world sometimes have to endure that was not part of Christ's
life when He came among us.

So that He would not be above any of us, He chose to be in a state poorer
than most of us.  He asked for no privilege as the Son of God.  He did not
desire to be excused from any weight of mortality -- and surely, this was
the more heavenly way, the way more worthy of God, than any way of earthly
pomp and greatness which would have allowed Him to escape from men's common
condition.  He had no wealth, but what would the wealth of the world have
been to Him Who was the Maker of all things?  By the world's standards, He
was unknown and despised, but what would the honors and accolades of the
world be to Him, Who was worshiped by the very angels of heaven?

Jesus Christ is truly God.  He is truly man.  He is one Person in Whom the
divine and human natures are united.  And yet, when He came, it was
sufficient for Him to be Jesus of Nazareth and to be called the son of the
carpenter, unknown as God, despised and unhonored as man.  But the angels
broke out into His praises in the midst of the midnight sky, and the Magi
of the East followed His star across rivers and deserts until they found
Him and fell down before Him as the Light of the world which had dawned on
mankind.

This Son of God, Jesus Christ our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy
Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem, is no less than God's
glory, even though wrapped in rags.  Because God has come to us in this
way, it means that the Christian Faith is no mere system of ethics,
although it does require us to live in an ethical way.  Nor does it consist
simply of wise sayings, even though the teaching of Jesus reveals the
wisdom of the ages.  Our Lord Jesus Christ was not just another man,
however good; rather, He was God come as man so that men might come to God.

-----------

Father Christopher Phillips is a pastor in the Archdiocese of San Antonio.
He was ordained to the Roman Catholic priesthood on August 15, 1983.  He
was formerly an Episcopal priest.  He is married and has five children.

    That is really wonderful, thanks loads for taking the time to type it
    all in for us.
    
    Ben