As some of you know, the boys and I have been training in jiu-jitsu recently for the last, I don't know, since October or so. And one of the things, particularly at my age, that we find is necessary is a sufficient period of warmup. Some good stretching, especially stretch the spine out, shoulders, back, neck, those kinds of things before someone else twists you up. I wish I knew, spiritually speaking, something equivalent. I wish, based on today's lesson, that I could have you stand and stretch to your left, stretch to your right, do some different things to sort of work your brain up and limber your brain up so that you don't pull something. But I don't know exactly how to do that, other than just simply to give you some warning ahead of time. We're looking this morning, over the last couple of weeks, you'll recall, we looked at some arguments from Dr. Dolezal, but actually originally from Francis Turretin, on arguments demonstrating from the Old and New Testaments that Jesus is not only God, but true God, very God, God of God, light of light. And we spent a couple of weeks looking through those arguments. We're going to begin to turn now, this week and next, and look at the union of that true God, very God, divine nature with a human nature. What happens in the incarnation is something that the Bible stories about the incarnation we're well familiar with. The announcement of the angel to Mary, to Joseph, On the night of his birth, the announcement of the angels to the shepherds, that unto you a child is born, a king lays in a manger in Bethlehem. And so we're familiar with the story of the incarnation. But sometimes we don't give sufficient thought to what that incarnation produces. What we know theologically is the hypostatic union. And so we're going to begin today looking at this hypostatic union. There is an entire language and grammar that undergirds this, and for the sake of brevity and for the sake of condensing a lot of material, I'm going to skip past some of the more technical grammar and move to some of the substance, somewhat of a pun there, the substance of the matter. So let's pray and ask for the Lord's help. We always need the help of the Holy Spirit as we are looking at the Word of God, as we are considering the doctrines that the Scriptures give to us. But it is on subjects like this that we are even more keenly aware of the weakness and inability that we have in and of ourselves to wrestle with the truth of the Scriptures. And quite literally, to try as best we can to confess that which is incomprehensible. How do we confess what is incomprehensible? How do we articulate what is indescribable? But from the Scriptures and with the help of those who have gone before us in our faith, we are able to do that in some measure. at least so far as we are able to avoid the errors and the heresies of, I started to say earlier times in the church, and that was certainly true historically, but they are not only old errors. Old errors are often new again. Let's pray and seek the Lord's help as we consider the hypostatic union. Our Father and our God, we give you thanks that you have indeed made yourself known to us. You have declared from of old, that you are our maker, that you are the one who spoke into being all that is out of nothing. You are the Almighty, the holy, holy, holy eternal God, Father, Son, and Spirit, one in three and three in one. You've revealed Yourself at various times, in various ways, through prophets, through visions, through revelation, through the heavens themselves declaring Your glory and Your majesty and Your dominion and even Your invisible attributes. But Your Word tells us that in these last days You've made Yourself known in Your Son. We give You thanks for the Lord Jesus Christ in whom we We have our life and our being. And we pray that as we consider our divine mediator, our human mediator, the God of man, divine and human, truly God, truly man, we pray that you would give us understanding. And we pray that you will help us to plumb the depths of your word. and at the same time to trust when we are not able to comprehend that we will have all of eternity to delight and explore and find your mercies renewed every morning to us. We pray and we ask this in Christ's name, amen. Let's begin by looking at John's gospel in chapter one. John's gospel, chapter one. I'm going to read the first paragraph, then I'll skip down to verse 14. This is the Word of God. The apostle declares, 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 were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." You may recall that one of We looked at four criteria or four arguments by which we can demonstrate from the Scriptures that Jesus is truly God, God of God. And one of those was that his works, including the work of creation, which was only ascribed to Yahweh, is in fact ascribed to the Lord Jesus Christ. And one of the inescapable conclusions is that he is God, truly God. Well, if we skip down to verse 14, we find this, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness about Him and cried out, This was He of whom I said, He who comes after me ranks before me because He was before me. For from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace, for the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, the only God, who is at the Father's side. He has made him known. Something that seems a fairly simple word, and the word became flesh. How do we understand this, biblically, theologically, that the word, the eternal logos, the eternal son of God, the second person of the Trinity, in what manner does he become man? In what way does he become flesh? And if this was the only verse we had given to us from God, this is the only verse in our Bible, the Word became flesh, we might be tempted to think that that which was eternal, or him who was eternal, transformed or became a new entity. That he went from one state of being to another state of being. If, in our ordinary language, when we think of something becoming, we think of maybe the famous example of a caterpillar. Caterpillar spins its cocoon, and after a period of time, what happens? It becomes something which it was not. It becomes, what does a caterpillar become, kids, after it's been in the cocoon for a while? A butterfly, or it might become a moth, but it becomes something with wings, and it flies around. It didn't do that before. So it loses its caterpillar-ness, and it becomes butterfly-ness, right? Is that what happens in the incarnation? Does Jesus become in the sense of metamorphosis, changing into something which he was not before and losing that which he once was. We have to say, no, that's not what happens. That's not what becoming means. The language that we use is that he assumed a human nature. Or we could say he took to himself human nature. Those are some of the words and the phrases that are used in our Bibles to describe what happens. John here says he becomes, but again we have to think about all the scriptures together to understand what becoming means. The word becomes flesh and dwells among us. Dr. Dolezal makes this statement, he says, assumption per se is not the same as the hypostatic union. Assumption is only of one nature, the human, while the union involves both natures in the person. Now this is only the warm-up, okay? If you're already kind of feeling a little tight, we're just warming up. But here's what he's saying. Assumption and the hypostatic, we say that Christ assumed to himself a human nature. We can't make that directly equivalent to the hypostatic union. The hypostatic union involves more. It is true that the only begotten, uncreated, second person of the Trinity assumes to himself a human nature. But with respect to what the hypostatic union is, involves more than just that assumption. The assumption is only of one nature, meaning the divine assumes the human nature. But the union has to say something about both natures, both human and divine. One of the things that's helpful in theology, whether we are speaking of theology proper and trying to describe from the scriptures who God is, or even what God is, one of the tools that we use is negation. Negation. And one of the things that we say about God, we say things like, if we turn to our confession, I'll just give you an example. If we turn to our confession of faith in chapter one, chapter two, I'm sorry, chapter two, of God and the Holy Trinity. I'm not going to read the entire paragraph. I just want to give you an illustration of what I mean by negation. The Lord our God is but one only living and true God whose subsistence is in and of himself. And the very next word, infinite, is a negation. Do you know what I mean by negation? It means it's not something. So the word infinite, what does it mean? What is it negating? He's not finite, that's exactly right. He is not finite. How do you describe the infinite? One of the things you have to say is, well, that means it's not finite. It's not limited. He is not limited. We understand finite, but we don't have a way of comprehending infinite. He is infinite in being and perfection, whose essence cannot be comprehended. So here again with the negation. He cannot be comprehended, meaning he is incomprehensible. He is not comprehensible. A most pure, invisible, here is without. body, parts, or passion. So we say by negation, he does not have a body. Now, we can relate to a body. We know what a body is, and we have to say, well, God is not like us. He does not have a body. We know what parts are. As a human being, we are composed, generally speaking, of two main parts, body and soul. You know, Paul's categories, the inner man and the outer man, that which is material and that which is immaterial. But then even with the physical component of us, our body, it's composed of parts, isn't it? I mean, every little kid learns the song about the knee bone and the ankle bone and how they're connected together. We are composed of parts, some of which we see, some of which we don't. Paul makes much of this by way of illustration as he writes about spiritual gifts of the church, and he says we all have different parts, but we are one body. And he speaks of honorable parts and dishonorable parts. So we want to think about negation. So we come to the subject of the hypostatic union, one of the things that is helpful for us at the outset is to think about negation. What does this not mean? If we think about the divine nature, infinite, eternal, assuming to himself a human nature, which is finite, which is limited. We have to think in terms of what does that mean when two, the infinite and the eternal and divine, are joined. What does that mean? Here again, Francis Turretin, I'm quoting from Dolezal, who's quoting from Turretin. In his Institutes, he lists six negations with respect to the hypostatic union. The first one is that the physical and essential union of two things does not constitute a third, such as the soul united to the body constitutes a man. So here's the first negation. We don't add the divine logos and the human nature and create a third entity. Just as we said the body and the soul creates one man. So the first thing we say about the hypostatic unit is it's not that. It doesn't create a third thing. Secondly, a relative union consisting in the union of souls and consent of wills, such as the union of friends. We could call this, Dolezal referred to this as a moral union. A moral union. When we stand, when I conduct a wedding, and I stand before God's people, before witnesses, and I pronounce upon a couple, you have become one flesh. Now hopefully everyone knows that something's not about to happen where they just sort of meld together and cease to be two different wills. Now you married people know you don't cease having two wills, right? You don't cease having two different opinions. It's on a rotating basis. She has the will today, yeah, yes, yes, yes. So we don't say, with respect to the hypostatic union, we can say it's not that. It's not that. It's not a moral union. It's not merely the union of souls or the consent of wills. Thirdly, it is not a peristatic union. And here's what he means by that. By mere standing by, such as that of angels with bodies assumed. So in basic terms, what we understand about angels is that they don't have bodies. They're angelic beings. They're spirit beings. And yet, we find times in the scriptures where an angel appears in bodily form. But that angel has not actually assumed or been at union with a physical nature. It's making the appearance. And one of the tests, Dr. Dolezal says, one of the tests is whether angels can metabolize food into human matter. I don't think I have to explain that to you too deeply, but we metabolize food. And that food doesn't become immaterial, does it? That's why we have bathrooms. It doesn't become immaterial. And an angel, because it doesn't actually assume to himself that human body, is not able to do that. So it's basically, it's a flesh suit. We call it a flesh suit. So our third negation is that Jesus didn't merely take the appearance of a man. He didn't merely take on a flesh suit. There's a true union of the human and the divine nature. The fourth negation is that it is not an efficient union. as to general efficacy and sustenance by which all things are in God and we move, live, and have our being in Him. And one of the references is in Acts chapter 17. You remember the scene where Paul stands before the Areopagus. He stands there before Mars Hill and all of these alerted men and all of their fancy robes and their fancy building. And Paul says to these men who have a statue, a monument to a God whose name they do not even know, And Paul stands before them and he declares that there is a God in whom we live and breathe and have our being. See, Paul's saying that there is a sense in which every human being has a kind of union with God. But it is what we might call an efficient union. It's a union in which we are all participating in God in so much as we receive from Him our life and breath and being. So by way of negation, it is not that the human nature of the God-man, of our mediator, just simply is in union with the divine in that way, as if the divine simply gives animation to the body. Fifthly, and it's similar, it's related to the last one, but this is a negation that this is more than just the mystical union that every true believer has in Christ. You know, Paul's most frequent description of the Christian in the New Testament in his letters is that we are in Christ. In Christ. And he speaks there of a mystical union that every true child of God shares. because he is our head and we are his body. And so in that way we are united with him. But that is not a hypostatic union. We're making kind of a series of layers of things that the hypostatic union is not before we can attempt well to describe what it is. Lastly, number six, again, Turretin's negations with respect to what the hypostatic union does not entail or does not concern. It is not the substantial or essential union of the persons of the Trinity in one essence. See, we can say that God is triune, that God is Father, Son, and Spirit. And we can say that the Father, Son, and Spirit are God. But we do not say, with respect to the hypostatic union, that the divine person is the human person, or that the human person is the divine person. We can say the Holy Spirit is God. We can say that Jesus is God. But we can't say that the divine person of the mediator is the man, or that the human person of the mediator is God. So again, we have to make these negations to begin. Turrenton writes, this hypostatic union is concerned with the assumption of human nature into the unity of the person of the logos. This is so called both in respect of form, because it is the person of the logos, and in respect of the term, because it is terminated upon it. Thus the union is personal, but not of persons, as the union of natures, but not natural. So we have a union that is personal, but it is not of persons. The assumption of the human nature adds no perfection to the Son of God. So as we think about the hypostatic union, we think about the eternal person, the eternal second person of the Trinity, assuming to himself humanity. This is not adding in any way to who the divine second person is. The assumption of the human nature adds no perfection to the Son of God. It does not supply being that was lacking in Him. It does not outfit Him with powers He was lacking. Moreover, there was no change in the divine Son on account of the assumption of human nature to Himself. You ever wondered about that? If Jesus in eternity exists as a most pure spirit, and at a point in time, he assumes to himself a human nature, he develops in the womb of Mary, and is born and lives according to his humanity. Is that a change in God? A number of heresies throughout the church history have argued that yes, in fact, that constitutes a change. And this is where it gets difficult. As I've said before, this can be the theological equivalent of the brain freeze, right? But it's an important distinction to make. The assumption of the human nature does not add anything to the divine person. It does not constitute a change in any way in God. It does not supply anything that was lacking in him. So says Dr. Dolezal, it does not outfit him with powers he was lacking. Moreover, there was no change in the divine son on account of the assumption of human nature to himself. what we describe as assumptive communication, grants personality to the human nature by relating that nature to the eternal divine logos, but not changing the eternal divine logos. Now, at some risk here, I'm gonna read a quote from Thomas Aquinas. And when I say at some risk, not because it's Aquinas, but because it's, shall we say, difficult to understand some of his phrasing. I'm going to read through it. It's not a long quote, but I think it's helpful if we'll spend the time to digest this a little bit. Thomas Aquinas says, whatever is predicated relatively can be newly predicated of anything without its change. as a man may be made to be on the right side without being changed and merely by the change of him on whose left side he was. Now, he's talking about here a positional change. He's using this as an illustration. That if someone is on my right-hand side and they move over to my left-hand side, I haven't changed. But relative to one another, we have changed. Hence, in such cases, not all that is said to be made is changed, since it may happen by the change of something else. And it is thus we say of God, Lord, thou art made our refuge, Psalm 89.1. God has made our refuge, and nothing in God changes in making him, or him making himself, our refuge. Now, to be man belongs to God by reason of the union, which is a relation. And hence, to be man is newly predicated of God without any change of him by a change in the human nature, which is assumed to a divine person. And hence, when it is said, God was made man, we understand no change on the part of God, but only on the part of the human nature. So when the apostle declares, that the Word became flesh. The eternal, divine Word became flesh. We must not hear that as the Word changed into flesh, or the Word changed in any way in the becoming. But instead, we understand that any change is assigned to the human nature. not to the divine nature. You following? Limping a little bit, but following? I know this is something that perplexed me at many points, particularly as a new believer, and hearing about the Trinity, hearing about the Incarnation, and hearing what the Bible says. I mean, just reading it on my own and thinking, but how does, I know on one hand that God can't change. And yet, he took to himself human flesh. So doesn't that constitute a change in God? And the answer is not only no, but absolutely not. There is no change. There will never be a change in God. God cannot change. And we cannot say to ourselves, well, maybe only the second person of God was maybe just tweaked a little bit. If there's any change in any person of God, it's a change to God. Because God is not composed of parts. God is simple. Nothing in God can change and Him still be God. So it doesn't mean that we fully understand or comprehend it, does it? But it does mean we must confess this, both affirmatively and negatively. Negatively, we say that God does not change, and no change took place in the Godhead or in the second person of the Godhead as he assumed to himself human nature. Those all quotes another scholar in this way. He says, the hypostatic union is the assumption of the human nature into the created subsistence. I'm sorry, let me say that again. And let me read it correctly this time. The assumption of the human nature into the in-created subsistence of the second person of the Trinity is the personal union. So here's the personal union between the divine and the human, is that the assumption of a human nature into the in-created or un-created subsistence of the second person of the Trinity. So these are those beginning negations that we have to wrestle with. We have to have this settled in our minds even if We don't fully comprehend this. In fact, we will not, in this age, fully comprehend this. But these are things that we need to say, we need to be willing to say. That when... The Lord Jesus Christ assumed to himself a human nature that constituted no change in the Godhead, nor is there some additional entity created. This is not like the mergers and acquisitions in the corporate world, where you have company A and company B, and they somehow merge, and now you've got a new entity sometimes created. It's not any of those. But what is it instead? The first thing we need to say is that the mode of the hypostatic union is positively unspeakable. Well, maybe we should just finish class then. Maybe we should never have the class. Positively unspeakable, and it's true. How can you articulate that which is incomprehensible? And yet the Bible does give to us doctrines that require human language to describe them while acknowledging the limits of both our finite understanding and the finite ability of our language to carry the freight of that which is incomprehensible. We have to acknowledge both of those. The mode of the hypostatic union is positively unspeakable nevertheless. We find some help in the twofold denial that the incarnation one does not divide the person and it does not confuse the natures. And if you're interested in looking at these from a historical standpoint, the first one that the person is divided is the ancient heresy of Nestorianism. A confusing of the natures, human and divine, would be Eudaceanism. I want to look now at the symbol of Chalcedon. An ancient creed of the church formulated in the fifth century, AD 451. And this statement was laboriously, technically crafted in such a way that it rules out many of these heresies, including Arianism and Apollinarianism. It doesn't give us everything that we could know or even ought to know about the God-man, about the union of the divine nature and the human nature into one person. But it is, as Dr. Dolezal describes this, is it's a baseline formulation to which all Orthodox theologians must subscribe. So to deny these things would be to make one not a Christian. So we may have some debates within some doctrines, practices from household to household or Christian to Christian. We would certainly consider our Presbyterian brothers and sisters truly to be brothers and sisters, even though we think they are in error for their practice of infant baptism and not requiring true faith and repentance as a prior condition of baptism. But we don't look at that and say, well, they're not Christian, you see. We look at our dispensational brothers and say, we think they're wrong about the way they approach the scriptures. Their hermeneutic is wrong. Some of their conclusions about eschatology and other things are wrong. But we don't deny that they're brothers. But that which is contained in the symbol of Chalcedon to deny these things would be to make someone less than, meaning they are not a Christian. Here is the statement, We then, following the Holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same God, I'm sorry, one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood, truly God and truly man, of a reasonable, rational soul and body, that means truly human, consubstantial or coessential with the Father according to the Godhead. So that means truly God. And consubstantial with us according to the manhood. That means truly man. So according to His divinity, there's not one thing lacking. According to His humanity, there's not one thing lacking. in all things like unto us without sin, begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the mother of God, according to the manhood, one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably. You see how all those are negations? Inconfusedly means not confused. Unchangeably, it means nothing changes in the Godhead. Nothing changes in the second person of the Trinity. Indivisibly, meaning these two natures, human and divine, are joined inseparably. Indivisibly. The distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union. In other words, they don't The God-man doesn't cease to be divine because he took to himself a human nature. He doesn't cease to be human because he possesses a divine nature. But rather, the proper character of each nature being preserved and concurring in one person and one subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son and only begotten. God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the prophets from the beginning have declared concerning him, and the Lord Jesus Christ himself has taught us, and the creed of the Holy Fathers has handed down to us. Our mediator, the God-man, is one person, one mediator. two natures, human and divine. One person, two natures. Thomas Wynandi, who is a contemporary, a modern Catholic scholar, makes this observation. He says, at the ecumenical council of Chalcedon, which is what I've just read to you. In its one creed, all three incarnational truths are unambiguously present. The council fathers did not simply endorse, but actually doctrinally articulated and definitely defined them. Listen to this, for Chalcedon, it is truly the Son of God who is man. It is truly man that is the Son of God. Or, it is truly man that the Son of God is. And it is the Son of God who truly is man. Read that last part again. It is truly the Son of God who is man. It is truly man that the Son of God is. And it is the Son of God who truly is man. Saints, there's a great mystery here, isn't there? And yet, as we begin to work through the consequences of this, and we'll look at this more next week, some of the consequences of this, this is a glorious truth to hold. Not only because it's necessary for us to be a Christian, but because it is a tremendous blessing to us to know that our mediator, the one who lives to make intercession for us, so says the scripture. is truly God, truly man, inseparable, indivisible, without confusion. The God-man is not a gumbo where all the ingredients have joined together. And yet we have one mediator, one person who intercedes for us eternally. eternally existing in two natures. So next week, we'll begin to look at some of the consequences of this. We're also going to trace through in our confession to show how these doctrines are articulated very plainly in our confession of faith. Our Baptist fathers in no way saw this as insignificant. In no way did they disagree with the classic formulations of the hypostatic union. I hesitate to ask if there are any questions. All right, we will stop there for today. We pray and let's prepare ourselves to worship the true and living God. Oh God, our Father, we thank you. In the name of your Son, our blessed mediator, the God-man, Thank you that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both Father and Son to give us help, to give us understanding, to give us truth, to give us clarity, to convince us and testify in our own hearts that this truly is the Word of God. Holy Spirit, will you give to us the grace to call out Abba, Father, Let's trust that you will lead us into understanding that you will grant to us the grace that we need to be held fast to Christ by his strength, by his power, and according to eternal divine mercy. We ask this in Christ's name, amen.