Spanning the distance

Christmas with Charnock Day 4

The Nativity painted by Italian artist Federico Baroccio in 1597. Signs of the zodiac are engraved on a metal ring at the bottom of the painting below Jesus and Mary. These are thought to indicate the cosmological importance of Jesus’ birth.

Welcome to the fourth in a series of reflections from Stephen Charnock on the incarnation. As a way of expressing my gratitude for the support people have shown as I have set out on my PhD, I’m sending out a short excerpt each morning up to and including Christmas Day.

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Stephen Charnock breaks his discussion of the incarnation into two parts. In my first three posts we surveyed his explanation of Jesus’ miraculous conception. Now we come to Charnock’s reflections on the union of Christ’s divine and human natures.

It’s fair to say that some people approach this topic with a fair bit of trepidation, and many others try not approach it at all. Along with doctrines like the Trinity, the hypostatic union is a subject that Christians can struggle to know what to do with. Like the spleen that sits under their left set of ribs, most Christians are pleased to know it’s there but are happy not to think too much about it.

But for all of its intimidating reputation, Charnock starts his analysis of the doctrine in a familiar place. He writes

The designing indeed of this was an act of wisdom, but the accomplishing it was an act of power.

If we ever find ourselves a little lost as we ponder the mysteries of Christ’s two natures, this is where Charnock wants us to return. The union of the divine and the human in the incarnate Christ reveals to us the glory of God’s attributes, not least his wisdom and his power.

Bible data

Charnock then demonstrates from the Scriptures the basic point that the incarnate Christ has both a divine and human nature.

For instance, quoting Romans 1:3-4, he says that

Humanity and divinity are ascribed to him . . . He was ‘of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead.’

Charnock also points out that

The divinity and humanity are both prophetically joined in Zechariah 12:10, ‘I will pour out my Spirit,’—the pouring forth the Spirit is an act only of divine grace and power,—‘and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced;’ the same person pours forth the Spirit as God and is pierced as man.

And then there are the words of the Apostle John near the beginning of his gospel.

‘The Word was made flesh,’ John 1:14; Word from eternity was made flesh in time, Word and flesh in one person; a great God and a little infant.

From these and other passages, Charnock shows that the Scriptures - both Old and New Testaments - teach that in the incarnation there was a union of two natures.

Spanning the distance

Having provided some of the biblical evidence for the doctrine, Charnock then begins to reflect on how remarkable it is. And the aspect that he chooses to dwell on first is how distant these two natures were from each other originally. Charnock asks,

What greater distance can there be than between the Deity and humanity, between the Creator and a creature? Can you imagine the distance between eternity and time, infinite power and miserable infirmity, an immortal Spirit and dying flesh, the highest being and nothing?

Yet, says Charnock, in the incarnation these two natures were ‘espoused’. Or, as we would say today, they were married. He continues

A God of unmixed blessedness is linked personally with a man of perpetual sorrows, life incapable to die joined to a body in that economy incapable to live without dying first, infinite purity and a reputed sinner, eternal blessedness with a cursed nature, almightiness and weakness, omniscience and ignorance, immutability and changeableness, incomprehensibleness and comprehensibility, that which cannot be comprehended and that which can be comprehended, that which is entirely independent and that which is totally dependent, the Creator forming all things and the creature made met together to a personal union . . .

You get the idea.

Proper perspective

It’s at this point that we see how naturally contemplation of the incarnation spills over into worship. Indeed, for Charnock, it seems that he is unable to contemplate God becoming man without worshiping the God who became man. For having elaborated on the infinite distance between the two natures, we can almost hear Charnock’s heart racing in his chest as he pens the next few lines.

What more miraculous than for God to become man, and man to become God! That a person possessed of all the perfections of the Godhead should inherit all the imperfections of the manhood in one person, sin only excepted; a holiness incapable of sinning to be made sin; God blessed for ever taking the properties of human nature, and human nature admitted to a union with the properties of the Creator . . .

And this leads Charnock to return to where he started at the beginning of this post, with God’s wisdom and power.

. . . was there not need of an infinite power to bring together terms so far asunder, to elevate the humanity to be capable of, and disposed for, a conjunction with the Deity? If a clod of earth should be advanced to, and united with, the body of the son, such an advance would evidence itself to be a work of almighty power; the clod hath nothing in its own nature to render it so glorious, no power to climb up to so high a dignity. How little would such a union be to that we are speaking of! Nothing less than an incomprehensible power could effect what an incomprehensible wisdom did project in this affair.

I don’t know what is upper most in your mind as Christmas Day approaches. But, as Charnock has shown us here, the union of Christ’s divine and human natures in the incarnation tends to put the food, the presents and the board games into a more proper place.

See you tomorrow . . .