The Work of Christ in His Mortal Life

“Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people” (Matt 4:23). 

Why didn’t Jesus go straight to the cross? What was the point in his hanging around for 30 years before even starting his ministry? What was he doing in that time? Because the Apostles’ Creed jumps from “born of the Virgin” to “suffered under Pontius Pilate” we “might be tempted to draw the false inference that what happened in between these two terminal events in the life of Jesus is unimportant for Christian belief.”¹ The truth is this period is very important for Christian faith and practice, so I want to look at two things Jesus did during his mortal life. 

The first and most important thing Jesus did in his earthly life was to live perfectly. Jesus literally dared his challengers to prove he had ever sinned (John 8:46). That would be insane for any other human being to do. We know, even if we don’t like to admit, “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” But Jesus never sinned. The apostles maintain that he was without sin (eg, 1Pet 2:22, 2Cor 5:21, Heb 4:15), something that was never claimed for Abraham, Moses, David, or any other revered figure. 

This means that Jesus always did what he was supposed to and never did what he wasn’t supposed to. He loved God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength. He loved his neighbor as himself. He never lied or stole, never lusted or hated. He fulfilled every letter of the Law of Moses, and he also lived out the spirit of it. Had he sinned, he would not have been an acceptable sacrifice (cf, 1Pet 1:19). 

But he was certainly tempted to sin. We have the story of the wilderness temptation by Satan (eg, Matt 4:1-11), but he was tempted more than that. Hebrews says, “We do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin” (4:15). 

People may say, “But he didn’t sin, so he doesn’t really understand temptation.” CS Lewis replies, “Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. ... A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means....”² 

Another common response is that Jesus didn’t sin only because he had the power of God. But he “emptied himself.” He had given up independent usage of his divine nature. So how did he refrain from sinning? By depending on the Holy Spirit. Jesus resisted temptation via the same means that is available to all Christians. The God who said, “Be holy for I am holy” (1Pet 1:16), showed us how it’s done. He desires that we follow his example, knowing that God “will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it” (1Cor 10:13). Of course, we will fail often. He knows we are wedded to a fallen nature; he “remembers that we are dust” (Psalm 103:14). The same grace that took him to the cross is with us when we sin now: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9), but he desires to see us growing in holiness for his name’s sake. 

The second thing I want to discuss about Jesus’ earthly life was his proclaiming, and living, the inauguration of the Kingdom of God. The “Kingdom of God” is, very briefly, God setting everything right — including a broken creation, rebellious humans, and a world in which wickedness rules. Jesus came to say and to show that God was bringing an end to all of it. NT Wright says Jesus “was not a teacher who also healed; he was a prophet of the kingdom, first enacting and then explaining that kingdom. ... When Jesus announced the kingdom, the stories he told functioned like dramatic plays in search of actors.”³ Our Lord wants us to be those actors. He wants us to live out those teachings about the Kingdom of God. 

“But everything hasn’t been put right!” True. But the process has started. It will be completed. We live in what theologians call the “already but not yet.” The kingdom is already here, but it is not what it will be. Right now Christ wants to show the world what the kingdom looks like through his Church. So he taught us to forgive, to take care of the poor, to defend the weak, and to speak the truth in love to a world that does not know God. 

One day the process will be complete. Everything will be made new. “There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Rev 21:4). But in that day, it will be too late for the lost to join in the Kingdom of God. So we are to live it out now, to show them what could be and to call them to repentance and to trust in Jesus. 

For more on Christ and the Kingdom of God, see NT Wright’s The Challenge of Jesus. 

1 I. Howard Marshall, A Guide to Christian Beliefs 

2 CS Lewis, Mere Christianity 

3 NT Wright, The Challenge of Jesus

The Incarnation

“Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men” (Phil 2:5-7 NASB).

What was the most amazing event in history? The creation of the universe? Alexander conquering the world? The resurrection of Christ? Putting a man on the moon? No.

The most amazing event in history is this: God became a man. The infinite wrapped himself in the finite. The eternal was born. It’s one of the most controversial aspects of Christian theology, but it’s clear that it had to be this way.

The image of God had broken itself. God’s representatives abandoned and turned on him. That could not be allowed to stand. Athanasius likens it to a king “who has founded a city, so far from neglecting it when through the carelessness of the inhabitants it is attacked by robbers, avenges it and saves it from destruction, having regard rather to his own honour than to the people’s neglect.”¹

And how is God to fix this situation? Human rebellion required recompense that humans could not pay, because the wages of sin is death — paying our debt would destroy us. According to Anselm, “no one can pay except God, and no one ought to pay except man: [so] it is necessary that a God-Man should pay it.”² The only way this would work is if God and humanity merged somehow.

But how? We don’t really know. All we can say on the authority of scripture is that the Son “emptied himself” (Phil 2:7). This is called the “kenosis.” Of what did he empty himself? Of his divinity? Not hardly. Even if it were possible, it would ruin the equation. Theologians speculate that he gave up the independent use of his divine power; that is, he depended on the Holy Spirit for every miracle. And he temporarily gave up (or perhaps "veiled" is a better term) his glory (cf, John 17:5, 17:24).

But the Son never ceased to be God. Instead, he added human nature to his divine nature. The two natures coexist in perfect harmony. It is not a divine nature with a little taste of humanity thrown in. It is not a human nature with a little bit of the divine on top. We say that Jesus is 100% God and 100% man. “But that’s 200%!” Yes, but it gets the message across that in Christ the complete divine Son was united to a complete human nature. And these two natures are “perfectly united with no mixture, confusion, separation, or division”³ with, as the Chalcedonian Creed says, “each nature retaining its own attributes.”

Erickson offers an analogy: Picture the world's fastest sprinter entering a three-legged race. His physical capacity is not diminished, but his performance is limited by his decision to restrict himself.⁴ Christ's divine and human natures worked together to achieve one goal, but the divine nature was voluntarily bound to human limitations.

What does it mean to say God became man? This God-man had the complete human experience. He was born. He got tired. He got lonely. He saw people he loved die. He felt fear. He experienced rejection. He was tempted. He died. He went through everything that humans go through.

What does it mean to say Christ was God in the flesh? It’s important to address a common error. From ancient times to the present day, false teachers have tried to say that Christ was only the exemplar of what we all can be. Sometimes it’s the idea that we all can become christs. More often today it’s that Christ only expressed the spark of the divine that exists in all of us. However it’s stated, it’s wrong. Christ was the unique God-man. The incarnation was a once for all event that will never be repeated.

Christ was not a man who was special. He was and is God made flesh. “The Bible from Genesis to Revelation presents a stupendous view of God, and then it tells us that Jesus Christ is all that God is.”⁵

The glory of the incarnation is that we do not serve an aloof God who watches from on high. We serve a God who came down and got in the muck with us. He knows what it means to be a human being, so he understands us, sympathizes with us, and advocates for us. That is a God who deserves our adoration.


For more on this topic, the classic text is Athanasius’ On the Incarnation. Be sure to get an edition with the introduction by CS Lewis which is worth the price of the book on its own. The works by Anselm and Machen (both quite short) are also very much worth your time.

1 Athanasius, On the Incarnation
2 Anselm, Cur Deus Homo (or Why God Became Man)
3 RC Sproul, Everyone’s a Theologian, emphasis in original
4 Millard Erickson, Introducing Christian Doctrine
5 J Gresham Machen, The Person of Jesus 

Image credit: Rollstein via Pixabay

The Virgin Birth

“Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly” (Matt 1:18-19).

A virginal conception is impossible. A woman cannot get pregnant without the involvement of a man. Everyone knows this. Joseph certainly knew this — that’s why he assumed Mary was unfaithful. Virgin births don’t happen. And yet one did.

It’s hard to say that the virgin birth of Christ is an essential doctrine. People can be saved without ever having heard of it. They can be saved without believing it. Two of the gospels don’t mention it. Millard Erickson points out that the evangelistic sermons in Acts never mention it.¹ Yet I will maintain that it is still a primary doctrine. The creeds insist that all Christians everywhere must believe it. Why?

Before we get into why it’s important, we should be clear about what we mean. Muslims distort our teaching that Jesus is the Son of God as meaning we believe that God the Father and Mary had a physical union, like something out of a Greek myth. When Mary was told, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (Luke 1:35), what was meant was that the Spirit would make something in her body that was not previously there. No one “entered” Mary by the conventional meaning of the term. But God created. Some skeptics will try to equate the conception by the Holy Spirit as something akin to rape, but this was not forced upon Mary as an unwilling victim. Her response to the angel was: “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled” (Luke 1:38). She was a willing participant in a supernatural, not physical, event.

So why is the virgin birth important? In telling us how the incarnation came about, the scriptures assure us of Christ’s full humanity. He did not just appear; he was born of a woman. He was not only a spirit — Mary gave birth in quite the usual way, so docetism is untrue. JI Packer says, “The Fathers appealed to the virgin birth as proof, not that Jesus was truly divine as distinct from being merely human, but that he was truly human as distinct from merely looking human as ghosts and angels might do.”²

But it also tells us his conception was special, so he was not a mere man who became the Christ as various heresies such as adoptionism have suggested. Moreover, since his beginning was unique, he is unique. We cannot become christs like the Ebionites taught.³

So the virginal conception of Christ puts boundaries on our theology. It keeps us from wandering onto the wrong path, so we have to hold onto it.

We also have to hold onto it because it’s true. The gospels tell us that Jesus was conceived by a virgin, so we believe it.

The only reason people reject the virgin birth is that they’ve allowed naturalism to creep into their theology. They simply cannot accept this miracle. Why do they doubt it? Because it’s impossible? Many things in the Bible are “impossible.” That’s pretty much the definition of a miracle. Which is the problem.

Rarely does it stop with the virgin birth. People who reject this teaching typically soon reject every other miracle in the scriptures. If the other miracles are untrue, then the Bible is full of lies. And if miracles don’t happen, Christ was not raised from the dead. “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins” (1Cor 15:17).

As Packer points out, “The Bible says that the Son of God entered and left this world by acts of supernatural power.”² The supernatural forms the bookends of Christ’s earthly life and fills much in between. What do we do with that? We own it. We embrace it. If Genesis 1:1 is true, if God created the universe out of nothing, any other miracle in the Bible is a parlor trick. We shouldn’t be ashamed of a miraculous birth because “miraculous” is what God does. And the same power that formed Jesus in the womb of a virgin, the same power that raised him from the dead, lives in us. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

As for the virgin birth, J Gresham Machen said it well: “Even if the belief in the virgin birth is not necessary to every Christian, it is certainly necessary to Christianity.”³


For a detailed defense of the virgin birth, see J Gresham Machen’s The Virgin Birth of Christ.

1 Millard Erickson, Introducing Christian Doctrine
2 JI Packer, Growing in Christ
3 J Greshem Machen, The Virgin Birth of Christ

image credit: Christopher Cook