What do our “testimonies” profit us, even if we gain transformed lives, while losing our souls because we do not know who Jesus is? The Christian testimony is that, as Calvin put it, the sinless Son of God became the Son of man, so that the sinful sons of men might become the sons of God. Or as Augustine wrote, “By joining therefore to us the likeness of his humanity, he took away the unlikeness of our unrighteousness; and by being made partaker of our mortality, he made us partakers of his divinity.”6 Do we know the Son of God who became man? Do we rest on the works proper to His deity and to His humanity, united in the person of God the Son?
What is a Christian testimony? If you ask many believers to give their testimonies, they will tell you about their experiences regarding how they became Christians. Some tell how troubled their lives were, how they were addicted to drugs, how they were in prison, how they were destitute, how their marriages were falling apart, or how God rescued them from other personal disasters. Some people who grew up in Christian homes are embarrassed by such testimonies because they never knew a time when they did not trust in and love Christ. I even know of one case in which a teenager made up a dramatic testimony because he thought that the absence of such an experience meant that something was wrong with his faith. Yet, the Spirit’s work in the soul is like the wind: “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). Regardless of how we came to Christ, the only thing that matters is that we are born of the Spirit and that we are in Christ.
While all Christians have different experiences, in actuality, we all have the same testimony. Paul wrote, “For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Cor. 4:5). Our experiences differ widely, but our testimony to the Savior should be the same. However, whether their experiences are dramatic or mundane, many professing Christians can say little about who Jesus is. Yet, unless we know who He is, we cannot understand what He does. Questions 36–40 in the Westminster Larger Catechism establish the identity of the Mediator of the covenant of grace as the God-man, Jesus Christ, who alone can save His people from their sins. Before all else, to testify to Christ, we need to know who He is and why He needed to be God and man in one person in order to save us.
The Mediator of the Covenant of Grace is God the Son
The only Mediator of the covenant of grace is the Lord Jesus Christ, who, being the eternal Son of God, of one substance and equal with the Father, in the fullness of time became man, and so was and continues to be God and man, in two entire distinct natures, and one person forever (WLC 36).
Some say that they cannot make it a day without Jesus in their lives. Yet does this say enough? Who is Jesus? We must know Him: “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time” (1 Tim. 2:5–6).
The catechism tells us three fundamental things about who Jesus is. First, He is “the eternal Son of God, of one substance and equal with the Father” (WLC 36; see John 10:30; Phil. 2:6). He is the Word who was with God and who was God (Isa. 9:6; John 1:1). He has divine names (Isa. 9:6; Rom. 9:5; 1 John 5:20). He has divine attributes, including knowing what is in man (John 2:25) and being present with His people to the end of the world (Matt. 28:20). He does divine works, such as creating the world (John 1:3; Col. 1:16) and sustaining it (Heb. 1:3). He accepted divine worship (Matt. 14:33; 29:17; John 9:38; Rev. 5:8–14).1 In short, Jesus is the second person in the Trinity, equal with the Father and the Spirit. His fundamental identity is the person of the Son of God.
Second, “in the fullness of time,” the eternal Son of God became man (John 1:14; Gal. 4:4; 1 Tim. 3:16). He came at the time God appointed, which was the right time in God’s plan. Just as He has every divine attribute, so Jesus has every human attribute. He was born, He lived, He trusted and obeyed God, He was hungry and thirsty, He rejoiced, He grieved, He suffered, and He died. He took on “the likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom. 8:3) and He was tempted in all things as we are, “yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15). Some say that to err is human, but is it really? Because Jesus had no sin, He was more human than we are. His humanity was humanity as God designed it to be.
Do we testify that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matt. 16:16)? Do we confess that He is God the Son come in the flesh?
How did the Mediator of the Covenant of Grace 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, of her substance, and born of her, yet without sin (WLC 37).
How did the Son of God become man? He did not do so by subtracting from His divine nature, but by adding a human nature. He took “to himself a true body and a reasonable soul” (Westminster Shorter Catechism 22; see Heb. 2:14–17). He did not pretend to take a human body. Nor did He take a human body without a human soul. Just as the separation of body and spirit constitutes human death (James 2:26), so Jesus gave up His spirit when He died (John 19:30). His divine nature did not replace His human soul. He took on true human nature, including everything that it meant for Him to be human.
Jesus was also “conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost” (WSC 22; see Luke 1:27, 31, 35; Gal. 4:4). While He had no human father, the Spirit conceived Him “in the womb of the Virgin Mary.” He was born “of her substance,” just as every human baby is nurtured in the womb and born of the substance of its mother (Westminster Confession of Faith 8.2). Yet since He was the Son of God, Mary became the mother of God because she bore God in human flesh. We should not worship Mary or pray to her. Instead, we should believe in her Son like she did (Luke 1:47). Jesus became the Seed of the Woman (Gen. 3:15) without inheriting Adam’s original sin. Again, He was truly like us in every way, “yet without sin” (Rom. 8:3; Heb. 4:15).
Do you testify to Jesus as a true historical human person? “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God” (1 John 4:2–3).
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