— Sabbath, 9th of Ziv, 180 JE —
I think many of us have had too general a view of both the divinity and the humanity of the MESSIAH; I know that I have. He is not divine in a general way, or as a second God; He is GOD essentially (John 1:1); He is the FATHER, for there is but one true GOD, the FATHER (1 Cor. 8:6). Sr. White says that He is not only “part of Himself [the FATHER]” (Letter 36a, 1890) but that “CHRIST is our HEAVENLY FATHER” (Manuscript 141, 1908)! He is IMMANUEL—’GOD with us’ (Matt. 1:23).
The MESSIAH is not the personality of GOD, but is personally the SON OF GOD; but this should not take away from the fact that He is GOD (the FATHER) essentially. He and the FATHER, though not the same person, are one; and this drove the Jews to kill Him, because they did not like who GOD was—one that would dwell among us, revealing the perfection of His character.
Any three-person-God view destroys this pure divinity of the SON OF GOD, especially a view that does away with any real begetting—which is beyond any human begetting. If I had a son, I could not say that He is me. But that is how it is with GOD and His SON. There is a divine oneness there that we can never understand, for our nature is not Godhood.
But mystery does not end there. The MESSIAH is not just the SON OF GOD but the SON OF MAN. This does not merely mean that He was the Son of Mary. No, no. He is called the “last Adam”:
The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a life-giving Spirit.
1 Corinthians 15:45
For such a HIGH PRIEST became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.
Hebrews 7:26
He was not merely another human; He is the SON OF MAN. He represents every man to GOD as the perfect Man. But how can He do this? As the life-giving Spirit, giving/offering Himself at the Cross, He created/lived out a perfect life for every one of us; this was in addition to bearing/experiencing the guilt of each and every sin in our individual lives. Can we understand this mystery? Never. We are living souls, but we are not the life-giving Spirit, which can experience millions of lives at once, which is how He can also hear millions of prayers at once.
We can understand the mystery of the incarnation no better than the mystery of divinity; but we can still believe. We must believe that what the MESSIAH did on the Cross was not a mere corporate or legal transaction, but that it was individual, personal. He suffered for each and every one of our personal sins, such that every new sin we commit is to Him a new reality of suffering, substitutionally dying/experiencing our future hell that we will also experience, ending in annihilation, unless we accept this sacrifice on our behalf each time we repent from sin. He is our offering we must present to GOD.
But why does this work? Why does GOD accept this sacrifice on our behalf? Because, again, on the Cross He lived each and every human life perfectly—in every moral decision we must make in our daily lives—and this is what He provides for us. We were all naturally, genetically created in the first Adam, but this is how we are re-created in the Last Adam, who is the Omega of every man/adam in perfection. We cannot add to that perfection, just as we have not created one righteous act. That is why Sabbath followed; it was finished.
But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as menstruous rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. And there is none that calleth upon Thy Name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of Thee: for Thou hast hid Thy face from us, and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities.”
Isaiah 64:6-7
Thus describes our sinful experience that we had in the MESSIAH on the Cross. We all died in Him. He was we. Our actual lives were brought to the Cross. This is what the atheist and many an other soul does not realize. This substitutionary sacrifice involved our actual lives, only substitutionary in the sense of not involving us personally; for just as He as the SON OF GOD is GOD essentially (and not personally), He as the SON OF MAN is every man essentially (and not personally), by His infinite Spirit.
Why does GOD accept His sacrifice of bearing all our sins on our behalf? Because in that sacrifice He not only lived all our failures in shame but lived every moral decision of ours in victory! We personally have not done one righteous act, but each one we have done has been brought to us by the victorious LAMB OF LIFE. Every good thing we do was already done in Him, just as everything we must suffer has already been suffered by Him, so that what we must experience are called “His sufferings” (Phil. 3:10). What He physically suffered was only a revelation to our mortal senses the real meritorious suffering resulting from sin. He first experienced it all, which should not only comfort us but encourage a close “fellowship” with Him. Every new suffering should bring us to the cross.
The good news (gospel) is that because He suffered our suffering, His victory is our victory—experienced on the cross on Pesach but revealed in His resurrection on the morrow after the Sabbath. Because He lived my life and your life perfectly, His suffering, including in hell, was meritorious and effectual for us. We do not need to experience hell and vanish from the universe. There is only one you and one me, irreplaceable. Let us today and every day accept both His suffering and His perfection—not only lived for us but to be lived in us! He is GOD and He is we, perfectly uniting the two.
Let us be exceedingly thankful that when we sin, when we fail, even time after time, it is not the end for us. All sin will be destroyed in hell and forgotten. In fact, hell has already been fulfilled to GOD, whose Spirit, shared with His SON, is not bound to time. That is how He can regard us—as if we have never sinned—so that all men may enjoy a time of life, and the partakers of righteousness enjoy, even in this age, eternal/righteous life. Because the hell has already come to pass on the Cross, GOD forgives; and we need to also forgive. He forgives us personally.
Let us always make the Cross a personal reality, as it is. It, being on the Pesach, is the foundation of all true religion, and really everything. Some, including in Nigeria, are celebrating the second month Pesach next week; but we can all review the Pesach, and every Sabbath we can remember the perfection. The MESSIAH suffered all suffering. It is finished. We are in the reality of time, but there is a greater reality to believe in—the reality of the Spirit of GOD. There is a completed victory! This is what GOD can see. Let His vision for humanity be our faith. And let us continually have a vision of the MESSIAH, keeping Him ever before us, saying with the awestruck, freshly believing Thomas, “My LORD, and my GOD!” (John 20:28).
Behold the LAMB OF GOD!
For a full study on mystery of the incarnation as it relates to the Cross and suffering, please read “The Mystery of the Mirror: The Secret to All Suffering.”
