The Crucifixion of Ministry by Purves Andrew;

Author:Purves, Andrew; [Purves, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2009-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Vicarious Humanity

Second, we must notice Athanasius’s argument that Jesus Christ not only is God’s Word to and for us, but also as a man, he hears and receives God’s Word on our behalf. With this point, and more fully in the next, we turn to what has become known as the vicarious humanity of Christ, a doctrine that is critical for my argument.

This point that Jesus is both God’s Word spoken in our flesh and received and heard as a man is a truly radical theological insight. It moves Athanasius toward his goal to show that salvation is 100 percent God’s work. What is at stake here? Athanasius regarded us as not having a free mind but as a people under sentence of death. Furthermore, we could not become sons and daughters of God other than by receiving the Spirit of the true Son.

The argument presupposes that even were God to speak, outside of the Spirit of the Son hearing on our behalf, we would not hear and receive that Word, for only the Son can hear the Word of the Father. So Christ is not only the One who spoke forth the Word of God, but also the One who received the Word of God when he took flesh, not for his own sake, but for our sakes.

To make clear what this means, Athanasius insists that in so receiving, Christ as the Word of God received nothing that he did not possess before. It is in the flesh, as the man for us, that the one who is the Word of God received that Word in his humanity for us. Jesus Christ then is both speaking God and a hearing man, and this for us.

Third, we now consider the saving work of Christ in his human agency, in which he ministers the things of humankind to God as the high priest of our confession. This aspect of Christology is quite neglected by many theologians, with catastrophic consequences. What, or rather who Christ offers is himself, and his offering of himself to the Father is an offering of his life on our behalf.

The ministry of Christ to the Father takes us into the heart of the atonement as a work of grace that belongs within the very being of Jesus Christ. By humbling himself and taking “the body of our humiliation” (Philippians 3:21), putting on the flesh that was enslaved to sin, becoming a servant, Christ has become Adam for us, rendering the flesh now capable of the Word, making us walk no longer according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. Jesus Christ in the flesh of his humanity offers himself to the Father, ministering among us and praying for us, then giving up his life as a ransom that pays the debt left by sin.

We were unable to minister these things to God for ourselves, but through the Word that was united to us we come to share by faith in his self-offering and exaltation. That which always was and is Christ’s is now imparted to us.

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