The only Redeemer

This week's questions

Who is the Redeemer of God's elect? The only Redeemer of God's elect is the Lord Jesus Christ, who, being the eternal Son of God, became man and so was, and continueth to be, God and man in two distinct natures, and one person, forever.

Question 21

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, and born of her yet without sin.

Question 22

Question 20 said that God brings his elect into salvation "by a Redeemer" (last week). Question 21 asks who he is, and Question 22 how he became man; from next week, Questions 23 to 26 tell his work as prophet, priest and king.

The eternal Son became man

The first word of the answer is ‘only’. The first proof text says, "there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5), and Peter preached that salvation exists in no one else (Acts 4:12). The next proof text tells how that one Mediator came:

The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John 1:14

The order matters. A man did not become God; the Word who was with God in the beginning became flesh (John 1:1), and in him "all the fullness of the Deity dwells in bodily form" (Colossians 2:9). So the answer speaks of two distinct natures and one person: he became man without ceasing to be God. The Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant churches have confessed this together since the Council of Chalcedon in 451 acknowledged the one Christ in two natures "inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably" Definition of Chalcedon. The church calls this the hypostatic union.

‘Continueth to be’ means that he is man still. Another proof text says that Jesus lives forever and "always lives to intercede for them" (Hebrews 7:24-25). The one who rose and ascended in our flesh is in our flesh before the Father now.

Why must the Redeemer be both? The Heidelberg Catechism, long taught in the continental Reformed churches, answers that he must be a true and sinless man because the justice of God requires "that the same human nature which has sinned should make satisfaction for sin", and no sinner can satisfy for others Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 16; and true God, so "that by the power of his Godhead he might bear, in his manhood, the burden of God's wrath" Q. 17. Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, reached the same end in 1098: the satisfaction is one "which none but God can make and none but man ought to make", so "it is necessary for the God-man to make it" Anselm, Why God Became Man 2.6.

A true body and a reasonable soul

Question 22 says he did not merely look human. The first proof text says that since the children have flesh and blood, "He too shared in their humanity" (Hebrews 2:14). In Gethsemane he said, "My soul is consumed with sorrow to the point of death" (Matthew 26:38): a human soul that thinks, fears and grieves. Apart from sin, nothing that makes us human was left out of what he took.

In the next proof text the angel tells Mary that the Holy Spirit will come upon her and the power of the Most High overshadow her, so that the child will be holy (Luke 1:35). He is truly Mary's son, yet without the sin in which we are conceived:

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who was tempted in every way that we are, yet was without sin.

Hebrews 4:15

Another proof text calls him holy, innocent and undefiled (Hebrews 7:26). The Heidelberg Catechism names the benefit: he is our Mediator, and "with his innocence and perfect holiness covers, in the sight of God, my sin wherein I was conceived" Q. 36.

The virgin birth has been confessed by the historic churches in the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, and doubted by some modern theologians (Was Jesus really born of a virgin?). Chalcedon calls Mary "the Mother of God", and the Reformed receive the title Theotokos as a confession about Christ: the one she bore is God the Son. The Orthodox and Catholic churches honour Mary as ever-virgin. The Catholic Church also holds as dogma her Immaculate Conception (1854), that by the grace of Christ she was kept free of original sin from the moment she was conceived, and her Assumption (1950), that when her life on earth was over she was taken, body and soul, into the glory of heaven. The Reformed confessions do not teach these two, finding them nowhere in Scripture, and most are silent on her perpetual virginity, which Zwingli and Bullinger held. The Reformed honour Mary for what Elizabeth blessed in her, her faith in the Lord's word (Luke 1:45).

The history is told in The incarnation and Truly God and truly man, in the Christian Doctrine course, and Chalcedon: one person, two natures; see also Who is Jesus?, Is Jesus God?, Why did God become human? and Was Jesus really without sin?

To ponder this week

What comfort is it this week that the One who saves me is still truly man, and knows my weakness? Read Hebrews 4:15-16: see where the next verse invites us. When you feel weak this week, tell him so, even in a few words.

Practice