Well, I had mentioned a couple weeks ago that we were going to spend some time in the Westminster Larger Catechism thinking about Christ's incarnation and the two natures of Christ. And we're gonna pick back up on that this evening. So we're gonna look at question and answer 36 and 37 of the Larger Catechism. You can find that in the back of your brown hymnal on page 943. 943. Question and answer 36 and 37. We'd already touched, you may remember a bit on question and answer 36. That's what we're gonna pick up this evening. Question 36. Who is the mediator of the covenant of grace? The only mediator of the covenant of grace is the Lord Jesus Christ, who being the eternal Son of God, of one substance and equal with the Father, in the fullness of time became man and so was and continues to be God and man in two entire distinct natures and one person forever. Question 37. How did Christ, being the Son of God, become man? Christ, the Son of God, became man by taking to himself a true body and a reasonable soul being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mary of her substance and born of her, yet without sin. Again, we looked at question 36 a couple weeks ago, and it teaches us that there is only one mediator of the covenant of grace, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. And again, this was over and against the idea that Mary or some other dead saint could function as our mediator. Excuse me. Question 36 also is very careful to safeguard the deity of Christ In this wonderful phrase, it tells us Christ is the eternal Son of God of one substance equal with the Father. Now, this reminds us that the Father-Son relationship is eternal. That is, He didn't become the Son at His incarnation or any other time. The relationship between the first person of the Trinity and the second person of the Trinity is eternal. And that phrase also tells us that the Son is of the same substance of the Father. That means the Son is as truly God as the Father is. And then one other thing that phrase teaches us is that Christ is equal with the Father. That is, in his essence or substance, or to use technical language, usia, his essence, he's not subordinate to the Father, in any way, but rather in the fullness of time, God's son, the one who's co-equal and co-eternal with the father, he became man. And listen again to the language used to describe his incarnation. He was and continues to be God and man in two entire distinct natures and one person forever. And what this is alluding to is what theologians call the hypostatic union. And I know that's one of those 50 cent theological terms that can make your head spin, but it's an important term. The idea, the term hypostatic union was used officially at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD to say that in the one person, Jesus, there are two distinct natures, divine and human, one person, two natures. And to understand this and really to understand the hypostatic union, it might be helpful if I give you just a tad of history. You may remember from a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned one of the early heresies that the church had to address was Arianism. And Arianism was a heresy that denied the full deity of Jesus. Now that issue was settled at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, where they made it clear that the son is of the same substance as the father, or same essence. But after the Council of Nicaea, Although they settled the issue of Christ's deity, there were still challenges and questions that emerged that had to do with the relationship between Christ's divine nature and his human nature. And there were basically two errors that popped up and were being promoted. Let me give them to you a broad brush. There were some who wanted to radically divide the divinity and humanity of Christ, so they believed that he was essentially two distinct persons, not natures, but persons in a single body. Again, that's a broad brush of what was being taught by a group called Nestorians, a one-body, two-person view of Christ. Then there was another group who taught that the incarnation brought about a kind of fusion where the divine nature essentially swallowed up the human nature when Jesus was born. This was taught by a group called the Eutychians. Christ had one nature where his divine and human natures were sort of just blended together or mixed together. So in 451 AD, the Council of Chalcedon met, and they declared both of those views to be dangerous heresies, and they provided the church an orthodox view that in the person of Christ, one person, there's a divine nature and a human nature. And the language of the Chalcedon formula wanted to emphasize that there's no mixture, confusion, separation, or division between those two natures, one person, two distinct natures. That's Chalcedonian orthodoxy and it helps explain the hypostatic union. And that's what the catechism is picking up on when it says after the incarnation, Christ continues to be God and man into entire distinct natures and one person forever. And then the final point that should be made here is that when Christ took a human nature to himself at his incarnation, he then became the God-man forever. In heaven now, Christ is the God-man, and that's who he'll be for all eternity. That's who he'll be who he will be for us. Of course, the next question then that comes to mind is how did Christ being the son of God become man? And that's what question 37 addresses. Well, first off, we need to know this. For Christ to be our perfect mediator, he had to be like us. And man has an inner and outer nature, right? A soul and a body. and to be our mediator and to be a high priest who can sympathize with us, Christ took to himself a true body and a reasonable soul. And once more, this addresses another error that existed in the early church that suggested that Christ didn't actually become a man. He only seemed to be a man. And that was a heresy called docetism. The Apostle John wrote against this error in several places in 1 John and 2 John and said very clearly that those who deny that Christ actually came in the flesh are of the Antichrist. So of course he took on flesh, but he didn't just take on a true flesh and blood nature. We're also told that Christ took upon himself a reasonable soul. That is, Jesus has an inner nature, like us, a rational mind, emotions, a will, all things that we have, he has, except his mind and emotions and will, are uncorrupted by sin. And this brings us to another important point, and that is one of the reasons he was miraculously conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost in the womb of Mary. This meant that he was of one substance with Mary, that is he was born with a human nature, but original sin was not translated to him because he was born from above. And it's worth pointing out that as we think about Christ being born of the Holy Spirit in that way, or excuse me, having been conceived by the Holy Spirit, that throughout Christ's ministry, his human nature was dependent on the power of the Holy Spirit, right? He was not only conceived by the Holy Spirit, he was anointed by the Spirit for ministry, Acts 10.38. He was empowered by the Holy Spirit to perform miracles and cast out demons, Matthew 12.28. He offered himself as our once for all sacrifice by the power of the eternal Spirit, Hebrews 9.14. The Spirit was even at work when the Lord rose from the grave. Romans 1.4, so the spirit was his constant companion throughout his ministry, and this reminds us just how human his human nature was, that even Jesus in his human nature was sustained by the spirit. Now I know that this really is some heady theology, but if you're tracking with me, then there might be some questions beginning to form in your mind. Why did our mediator have to be true man? Why did he have to be true God? And why did he have to be true man and true God in one person? Those are great questions. And they're the ones we'll begin to answer next week. Well, as you know, I always try to give you a couple minutes to ask any questions you might have about the passage, or if you want to make a comment. Any questions, comments? I'd like to go back to the catechism, but could you explain a little more fully what it talks about? Jesus was given a reasonable soul. One of the things they wanted, again, this incorporates a whole bunch of different errors that I didn't wanna go down to monotheism versus dilatheism. Does Christ have one will or is there two wills? Here's a question for you. Does Christ have one will or two wills? One, right? Not everybody gets that right. a discussion that was settled at the Council of Ephesus. And was that 432, Chris, the Council of Ephesus? 432. the rational soul in the humanity of Jesus was replaced by the divine, by the divine mind. And so I think that that language is directed against Apollinarius or his followers, Apollinarius. The way I laid it out is there are kind of two big issues. One that said, we're gonna split him up into two persons. The other is we're gonna kind of mix them all together. In terms of a reasonable soul, I did sort of touch on this, but this is the issue. To be our perfect high priest, he had to be made like us in every way. And we have an inner life, right? Our will, our emotions, our thoughts. Christ has all of those things. That's also what they were trying to capture, that he has a true human inner life, right? Does that... Do you say then that he has a human soul, or is there an error in saying that? No, no, yes, yes, yeah. That was their objection upon Arius, but his teaching suggested that Jesus didn't have a human soul. Again, you know what's interesting is, I've shared this before, In our circles, most evangelicals and Protestants are pretty good at defending the deity of Christ. One of the aspects we struggle most with is that he was truly human, that he had a nature that's just like us. He had a body like ours. Again, I've used this language before, and I've actually had people say they feel uncomfortable with this, but when he was little, You know, if he wet his pants, Mary had to change him. You know, if he scraped his knee, she kissed his boo-boo. I mean, he was like us. I mean, we don't like to think of him in that much of a human nature, but again, that's part of what makes him a perfect mediator. We'll come back to this next week. people have is we've all raised kids. And we realize that there's that, but there's also that. Human nature, sinful nature, that's the part he didn't have. Yeah, right. It is. And that is part of it, right? Because we know as adults we're sinful. He doesn't have a sin nature, no problem. But see, one of the problems we have is we look at our little precious ones and we're like, oh, they don't really have a sin nature. They're just being naughty. You know, we gotta go back to the language Vaughty Bockham uses, right? Vipers and diapers. I've said this before. What's the first two words a little one learns? Know and mine. Rebellion and selfishness. Right? So it's there. Yeah, Hebrews 2, verse 14 says, therefore the children, that would be us, We share in flesh and blood. He himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver us who through the fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery, right? And again, it's interesting, because then the writer of Hebrews goes on to say, he doesn't provide any kind of salvation for angels. In other words, he doesn't provide any kind of spiritual salvation for spiritual beings alone. We are a body and soul, we're a psychosomatic unity, that we have a body and soul, psychosomatic, that's what that means. And we needed a psychosomatic savior, a body, soul, savior in our man.