The Origins of Christ by Glen Burch

Of all the themes found running through the Scriptures there is none greater than that of the person of Christ. To search out this greatest of themes, one must turn to the Gospel accounts for the richest source of truth.

The diverse harmony of the four Gospels may feed the scepticism of those seeking to prove some preexistent, parent document or oral tradition. But we take God at His word, that He breathed forth the Scriptures for those seeking Him (2 Tim 3:15-17), and we rejoice and bless Him for preserving in His Word this fourfold face of His Son.

The Four Gospels

The reader who is in possession of The Companion Bible should be no stranger to the four faces of Christ, which Dr. Bullinger has linked with four Old Testament texts. These would be:—
 

Matthew: “Behold thy King”
(Zech. 9:9)
Mark: “Behold thy Servant” (Isa. 42:1)
Luke: “Behold the Man”
(Zech. 6:12)
John: “Behold your God” (Isa. 40:9)

Of the significance of all that Jesus did, so much could be written that the world itself could not contain the books (John 21:25). Each of the Gospels is a very selective account, tailored to limitations of theme and space, each bringing forth its own special emphasis.

In comparing the spiritual things (1 Cor. 2:13) of the four Gospels, one is struck by the similarity of events recounted in Matthew, Mark and Luke (the Synoptic Gospels) and the dissimilarity of John's record. This may be seen also in the four roles of Christ outlined above: King, Servant and Man, all human, as distinguished from God.

The fourth Gospel deals with the inter-relations of the three persons of the Trinity more comprehensively than all the rest of Scripture combined. The matter of the Deity of Christ is offered without proof as yet in this article, and sadly not all who hold with Biblical inerrancy are able to accept it. It is hoped that these writings will be able to point out some of the dangers of not thoroughly searching the Scriptures in order to get the whole report.

The Synoptic Gospels

 Above all, these Gospel chronicles, are books of origins of the Christ. Indeed the first verse of the New Testament demonstrates this by beginning with, "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ." This completes the other thirteen books of generations found in the Old Testament, most of them in Genesis. Their purpose is to demonstrate the pure genealogical descent of the Seed of the Woman. In the Gospels the issue of Christ's sonship is further elaborated: whose Son is He?Matthew emphasizes Christ as “son of David, son of Abraham” (Mat 1:1); these are the royal covenant lines.

In his genealogy, Luke traces the sonship of Christ all the way back to Adam (Luke 3:23-38); this is the legal line of the son of Man, (literally: "the Son of the man", Adam) through Jesus' legal father, Joseph. The Seed promised (Gen. 3:15) to all the sons of Adam is Luke's Christ. Matthew and Luke speak with one voice of Christ as the firstborn of Mary (Mat. 1:2; Luke 2:7).

Mark's Gospel offers us no genealogy, and this is rather to be expected in the Gospel of Christ as Servant. The slave had no right to an inheritance and therefore his lineage was of no account.

The Fourth Gospel

 The emphasis of John's Gospel is on Christ as the Son of God. John provides no genealogy and describes the Saviour, not as the firstborn of Mary, but as the Only-begotten of the Father. Among its burdens, John's witness aims to demonstrate the heavenly origin of the God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Indeed the account abounds with references to His pre-existence with the Father (16 statements), His descent to the earth (80), His ascent back to heaven (40), and His second coming (8).

Neither does John neglect the humanity of Christ. On comparing the usage of the titles Son of God and Son of Man in the four Gospels, John is found to exhibit the greatest balance between the two.

Matthew, Mark and Luke are less concerned with Christ's divine origin and their comparative use of the two titles demonstrates this.

There are some Bible students who, in their zeal to lay hold of preconceptions about a non-divine Jesus, are disregarding Scriptural subtleties and failing to admit the whole span of the Book into their theologies. The result is lopsided doctrine; for instance reckoning a heavenly origin but an angelic nature and person to the Son of God. Let us take an example that will demonstrate more clearly why this is lopsided.

From God

Of the eighty statements that I have found in John's Gospel on the descent of Christ "into the world", there are six of particular interest. They provide, in a nutshell, the fundamental truth about the relationship between the Father and the Son. These six can be further reduced to three categories, all relating to Christ having come forth (exerchomai) from the Father. It is necessary here to discriminate among the Greek words translated from:

An understanding of the connotations of these three words can be derived from a geometric illustration, using a circle and three lines.

1. APO — a line from a point on the circumference

Apo signifies motion "away from before" an object, and in this sense Christ came forth from the Father as the great Sent One and The Apostle, Whose Father was greater than He (John 14:28). Thus He came to do His Father's Will, rather than His own (John 6:38).

Those who would deny the deity of Christ have seized upon this one-third of truth, while ignoring the remaining two-thirds. However, the unashamed workman after he has rightly divided the word of truth (2 Tim. 2:15), puts each part severally in its own place, not discarding what he does not understand.

2. PARA — a tangent, a line drawn from beside a circle

The remaining truth is this: that the Son also came forth "from beside" (para) and "from within" (ek) the Father. As One Who stood beside (para) the Father before His descent to the earth to take up the body prepared for Him (Heb. 10:5), the Son was every bit the equal of the Father (Phil. 2:5-8). In the works that He performed, the Son worked side by side with the Father (John 5:16-18).

3. EK — a line drawn from within the circle

The third element in this Father-Son relationship is the essential identity of the two persons in the One God. The Son came forth "from within" (or "out of") the Father, with Whom He was one (John 10:30-33), in order that He might reveal the Father more fully to men. So knit together are the Son and the Father that to know the One is to know the Other (John 14:8-11).

Apo, Para, Ek

The threads of the Father-Son relationship run throughout the testimony of John's Gospel. And those passages more heavily textured with this doctrine lend themselves to being divided up three ways, according to the role of Christ as:

This can be illustrated by surveying verses 8 to 11 of chapter 17.

The diligent student will find many more portions of the Gospel amenable to this sort of analysis.
 

Father and Son

All that we are as believers is thanks to the finished work of Christ. His work has been effective not just to make atonement for sins, or to give an example how to live righteously, but through divine dynamics to create more sons like Himself (Rom. 6:5-16; Eph. 4:23-24; 1 Pet. 1:3; 2 Pet. 1:3-4).

This is not a work that God would delegate to some lieutenant of His hosts, for the work has magnified the glory and love of both the Father and the Son (John 17:4-5; 3:16; 15:9-13). Jehovah of old has stated, "I will not give My glory to another" (Isa. 48:11), so Jesus Christ must be identified with the person of Jehovah.
If our loving Father had sent a created being as the Christ, to suffer and die for us, what kind of love would that be? If this were the case, then the selfless love of the Christ would far outshine the love of God. But rather, God came Himself in the person of a Son to bear our stripes and, in part (i.e. the human part), to die for us. The Most High God in gracious condescension stooped this low to save us from sin and death. Difficult as this truth may be for some to comprehend, it is a necessary foundation upon which to grow spiritually.

Copyright © 2011 by Glen Burch.