A Sermon by William Trail
1 Timothy 3:16. And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh.
A mystery is either something which would never have been known unless God had revealed had it, or something which, even when revealed, the human mind cannot fully comprehend. While it is still hidden among the deep things of God, we cannot know the mystery even as a bare fact. It might be likened to those remotest stars which the telescope has not yet brought within the range of our vision: they are illuminating their distant regions, but we do not know about them. And when the mystery is at length divulged, though it then becomes known to us as a fact, still as a doctrine it may be shrouded in an obscurity which our feeble reason cannot pierce. It might then be compared to one of those remotest stars which more powerful telescopes have now made visible, but what we see is a mere point of light. All we know is that the star shines, but we do not know its magnitude or its physical conditions.
Now, the incarnation is a mystery in this double sense, seeing it was an unknown fact for long ages; and even now man can only understand it imperfectly. But whatever we really need to know about this great mystery, in order to our salvation, has been made plain to us. There are dark shadows over the manger at Bethlehem, but also sunlight. And this sunshine falls on the great practical question, How can a sinner be saved through the Child who was born there?
Here, where knowledge is really necessary, there is no mystery; but revelation shines with unclouded clearness up to the very limit of our necessities. Are we then to quarrel because God has left in a measure of obscurity what we do not need to understand? Are we to find fault with God for giving us finite understandings? And are we to refuse the clear revelation of His will about our salvation, because He has not brought the mysteries of the infinite Godhead down to the level of our finite understandings? Surely it is far more becoming in us to follow the light as far as we can bear it than presumptuously to complain that we lack the light which we neither require nor could endure.
Thus we would repel an infidel’s objections to the doctrine of the incarnation, as a mystery. But we glory in the fact that revelation contains mysteries. We would ask the enemies of the Bible, What would they have said if it had contained none? If man could comprehend everything in it, the infidel would
1Reprinted, with editing, from Trail’s book of sermons: The Christian Graces. Trail (1819-1874) was then minister of the Free Tron Church in Glasgow. This sermon was preached at the first communion season after Trail was inducted there.
have been the first to maintain that the book might have been written by man. And he would have been right, for the mysteries in the Bible show it is divine. But we also glory in these mysteries because they make it a suitable book for man. His reason, having been blunted by sin, needs to be quickened, and what is so fitted to stimulate devout, sober inquiry as mysteries? But his reason also needs to be humbled, and when is the spirit of the worshipper prostrated in deepest reverence but when Jehovah’s footstool is seen to be shrouded in mysteries? Moreover, man has to be taught that he not only needs a revelation, but he also needs illumination from on high, and when will he look for light from the Father of lights, but when he sits under the solemn shadows of divine mysteries?
The mystery of the incarnation is presented in the text as a historical fact, not as a mere doctrine. In the verse, Paul sums up its amazing history in half a dozen points, proceeding from the manifestation of the Son of God in the flesh to His reception into glory. It is a succinct but comprehensive narrative.
1. It was God – true Deity; the living, personal Jehovah – who was thus manifested. The divine perfections, the attributes of God, it might be said, were already manifested in the works of creation. His purposes had already been manifested in the operation of His providence. And His voice had already been heard in the inspired utterances of His prophets. But what was now made manifest was much greater than this. God Himself – His very essence, His very Godhead – became incarnate and stood revealed in the flesh. For He who assumed our nature, and in that nature tabernacled among men, was the Son of God – in substance the same as the Father, and in glory and perfections His equal. So when He spoke, it was God speaking; when He worked, it was God working; when He walked the earth, it was God walking on it.
Is it not an amazing thought: God Himself living, moving, working, speaking among men? It is He who is the eternal, invisible, infinite One, He who dwells in light that is inaccessible, whom seraphim and cherubim approach with veiled faces, the great Jehovah who in august majesty sits upon the throne of the universe, before whom the nations of the earth are as grasshoppers; the omnipresent, immense One whom the heavens of heavens cannot contain; the incomprehensible and almighty One whom none by searching can find out unto perfection.
Assuredly there is mystery here. But how sublime the mystery! There is lowness in that manger at Bethlehem. My soul forgets it in the sublime conception that the Son of God lies there. To my eyes that infant brow is majestic with Incarnate Deity. Those infant lips are far more glorious than the lips of the wisest man, for though now sealed up in childhood slumber, before long they shall speak as never man spake. Yes, the lowly, cradled Child will yet
startle the world with wondrous words and mighty deeds. He will not indeed lay aside His humble, human form; His lips will be a man’s lips, His hands a man’s hands. Men will call Him brother, for, like them, He is born of woman; yet in His presence, they will feel they are in the presence of God. He will speak to the wild waves of sea, and they shall obey; to the dead, and they shall hear. Stony hearts shall soften at His touch. Iniquity, while raging for His blood, shall blush before His frown. And in His smile, anguish shall forget its sorrows and grief dry up its tears.
Yes, there is mystery here, but what precious truth is wrapped up in it! How my soul clings to the thought of Godhead revealed in humanity! God is a Spirit; to what then shall I liken Him? A pure Spirit; how then is my human soul to conceive of Him as a personal being? Without eyes, yet seeing; without ears, yet hearing; without hands, yet working. That angels can behold Him and rejoice in Him, how does this help me; for they are spirits, whereas I am a creature of sense? Sometimes, when I try to think of Him who is a Spirit – a pure, infinite, eternal, omnipresent Spirit – I feel as if my reason itself were exhausted by the vain attempt. At other times I start back, rebuked for having yielded to the instincts of my nature in clothing Him with bodily attributes which I know cannot belong to Him.
It is then, how gladly and gratefully, I take hold of the doctrine of God in the flesh – the eternal, invisible Spirit manifested in my own humanity. For here in the God-man – besides the divine, there is also a nature of which I can form more accurate conceptions, and with which I can have closer sympathy, since it is my own. In the person of Immanuel, I can now realise Him as a personal being. In the human nature of His Son, who has become my brother, I can now commune with Him as my Father. Yes, in the God-man, I can now think of God as coming near to me, as speaking to me, as revealing Himself to me, as admitting me to participate in His own ineffable blessedness and to be a fellow worker with Him in His own divine works.
Beholding God in the face of Christ, I am not now looking on the unclouded blaze of glory which would dazzle and consume me; I am not now approaching a Being whose spiritual immensity seems to mock my weak efforts to comprehend Him; I am not now listening to the awful utterances which would only confound and silence me; but I am gazing through the human nature, as through a veil which softens but does not obscure the divine. In the well-known accents of my own humanity I hear the very voice of the Eternal; and by getting near to one who has a heart touched with emotions and sympathies like my own, I feel that I can now cast myself, as a repentant child, upon the very bosom of God as my Father.
- Here was a manifestation of God which might be perceived by the senses.
“God was manifest in the flesh”, or did openly show Himself – did make Himself conspicuous to the very eyes of men. Suppose (to use a well-known illustration) I strike my foot against a watch on a piece of open ground; I do not know who made it, but I feel certain that it had a maker, and just as certain that he was a skilled workman. In a sense I see the maker of the watch – that is, he rises up before my mind’s eye as a person who had the knowledge and skill necessary to make this piece of work. Even so, from the traces of wisdom, power, greatness and benevolence we find in the world, we infer that its Maker must be a wise, powerful, great and benevolent Being. We did not see the world made, but we are sure it had a Maker, and just as sure that He has wisdom, power and skill, sufficient for the works He has made. Thus, through nature, we rise up to nature’s God. And though He is invisible, yet in a sense we can say that we see Him – that is, He stands out before our mind’s eye as a Being who is infinitely wise and great and good.
Now in this way God had already manifested Himself to His intelligent creatures. For He had never at any time, since the beginning of His works of old, left Himself without a witness. And the invisible things of Him from the creation were clearly to be seen – even His eternal power and Godhead. So those who were not mentally blind or morally depraved could not fail to behold Him, in their inward vision, a Being wonderful in counsel and excellent in working. And if the world by wisdom knew Him not, it was not because He had hid himself from its view, but because its foolish mind was darkened. But the Maker of the world presented Himself to men on earth. Who had made the eye of man but He who by a touch could give sight to blind eyes? Who was the Author of life but He who could restore it to those who had died? And who was the great Food-giver that was causing, by His rain and sunshine, the bare grains dropped from the sower’s hand to spring up into plentiful harvests but He who could multiply a few loaves and fishes to feed five thousand?
Here then was the Maker of the world manifested to the very senses of men. He now stood forth, not merely as He did before to the eyes of their reason, but to their bodily eyes. And why did He do so? Was it merely to prove to men that He was the Maker of the world? No, but because God had a greater work to accomplish: to reveal Himself as the Saviour of the world.
Why this twofold manifestation – first as Creator and then as Redeemer? It was in order that men might know, by the evidence of their eyes, that they were to owe their deliverance from sin and misery to the self-same Being to whom they already owed their existence and their preservation – to that very Being against whom, as their Creator, they had so wickedly rebelled, and whom for so long they had provoked by their sins.
And how great must that work be which the Creator came in person to accomplish! When the world had to be created, a word was enough – the word of power spoken by the Creator seated on His far-off throne. But when that world has to be redeemed, though its Creator is the Redeemer, a word is not enough. The Redeemer must come down to the scene of His labours; the Son of the Highest must appear in the lowly form of a servant. The Redeemer has not only to speak, but His voice – the very voice that called the universe into existence – must be heard pleading and praying and weeping. To make the tree from which the beam came which was reared on Calvary, Jehovah-Jesus had but to speak the word, and from a little seed it grew; but when He would redeem fallen man, He must be nailed to that tree and He must hang on it a spectacle to men and angels – thirsting, groaning, bleeding, suffering – till He dies.
- Here was a real incarnation: “God was manifest in the flesh”; or as another apostle expresses it, “The Word was made flesh”. You have here to consider both the medium and the manner of this divine manifestation.
(1.) The medium: it was “the flesh”; in other words, an actual human body, identical with our own in all respects save one. Apart from sin, that one attribute which invariably attaches to the flesh in man, Christ’s body did not differ from that of other men. It was truly flesh – composed of the same elements, nourished by the same food, and subject to the same infirmities. It was the same flesh – being born of woman, and thus drawing its descent from the same original ancestry as our own.
There were those, however, even in the Paul’s day, who denied that Jesus had come in the flesh. Carried away by certain notions concerning matter – that it is inherently imperfect and impure – they could not persuade themselves that the Son of God, the Sinless One, would assume an actual, material body. In their view, this would have been to clothe His divine purity with a polluted garment. But such a notion of matter is decidedly erroneous. It is not inherently impure; nor is it an unfit covering for a sinless being. Adam, in his state of innocence, wore it; and so also might the Second Adam, though the Holy One, wear it.
Further, this notion of Christ assuming only the semblance of a body struck at the very foundation of the scheme of redemption. Hence the reason why the Apostle John so strenuously opposed it. “Every spirit”, he says, “that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist.” It was only if He had a real body that Christ, as substitute, could suffer for sinners. It was not a phantom body that could hunger and thirst and undergo fatigue for them. It was not simulated lips that could groan in the last agonies of a cruel death for them. It was not the mere image of a
corpse which in its graveclothes could lie in the grave for them. No, there had to be a real body whose limbs could truly feel weariness, and its lips truly suffer thirst, and its flesh truly bleed. And therefore it was a real body that Jesus assumed, a body of bone and flesh and nerves like our own.
But there was more than a body here. Not less erroneous is that other notion which would represent the Son of God as having taken to Himself a true body but not a rational soul. While this admits the reality of the incarnation, it denies its completeness. If Christ had a body – flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone – but had been without a human soul, He would not have been fully man, whereas it behoved Him to be entirely, comprehensively, literally a man, in His soul as well as in His body.
Suppose He had only offered up a body in sacrifice for sinners, this would merely have repeated, in a slightly altered form, the old sacrifices under the law? These were irrational animals without reasonable souls. And if the blood of calves and of goats could not take away sin, neither could the blood of a man, not even of the man Christ Jesus, if all He had to offer was a body without a soul. No, human flesh alone could never have been an appropriate sacrifice for man who has a soul. Hence the explicitness with which the prophet foretold concerning Him: “When Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand”. Hence too the emphasis with which Christ Himself, as if He had His eye on this very prediction, exclaimed, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death”.
Here then was not a partial but a complete incarnation. Having to redeem human bodies from the power of death and the grave, Christ took to Himself a human body, that He might offer it in ransom for them. Having also human souls to redeem from the curse of the law, He likewise took to Himself a human soul, that He might have a full equivalent to give to justice in their place. He was truly, comprehensively, literally a man; and therefore for men He could present a true and a full atonement.
(2.) Now observe the manner of this manifestation: it was “in the flesh”. As early as the creation of the first man, God was manifest by the flesh; but now He is made manifest in the flesh – a distinction which I wish to make obvious to you. You see an unshapen block of marble taken from a quarry – an uneven, unsightly mass. But by and by, under the hand of genius, that mass assumes a shape; at length it seems to breathe with the similitude of life. The sculptor has immortalised himself by that statue, for he has succeeded in transferring to it his fine conceptions of the beautiful. So long as they floated only before his own eye, no one else could see them, but now that he has fixed them in marble, they will continue to delight future generations.
Thus might God be said to have manifested Himself, when out of the dust of the ground He formed a statue which the sculptor only tries to imitate, and breathed into that statue a life which the sculptor can only hope to simulate. The body of man was a monument of what in the artist we call genius, but in God we have no name for it. Further, God made man in His own image, and God was manifested in this intellectual and moral resemblance to his Maker, far more than in the statue-like beauty of his body.
But this divine image was short-lived. Even the marble of the statue, we might say, was broken, while the inner and true likeness was entirely defaced – by sin. Could this image be restored? Yes, and more than restored.
First, we see it restored in the Second Adam: in His body, miraculously conceived, free from all sinful taint, fair in its form, and perfect in all its members – and in His human soul, with its faculties and its emotions all in purest harmony, we behold once again a specimen of a perfect man. The old image is in Him repeated. In Him humanity was recast, so to speak, in the original mould. The man Jesus is such another image of God as was the man Adam. Thus the lost likeness is restored.
Second, we have here more than a mere restoration. There is in Christ a new image – a likeness or similitude of an altogether different kind. In the first Adam the image of God was impressed as when a die is let fall on the metal which, when the die is lifted, is found to be its counterpart. Or we might say that, in making the first man in His own likeness, God wrought upon the substance, whether material or mental, which was to manifest His likeness, even as the modeller works on the wax, or the sculptor on the marble. But in Christ there was the likeness of God, which did not have to be impressed, but was inherent. Here Godhead was seen in the flesh, not radiating upon it from without, but raying out through it from within. Here was not a mere impress of divine glory, but the glory itself. Not the image, but the very substance itself was here. Not merely its similitude, but Godhead’s self was here, shining effulgent not upon, but in, the flesh.
I wish, if possible, to raise your thoughts to a clear conception of what is implied by the difference between God being manifested in the flesh and by the flesh. When we say that God shines in Christ and that in Him the image of the Father is to be seen, the light is not material, nor is the likeness only in one’s mind, nor is either of them merely external. It is the glory itself that is shining through, not given back in its mere reflections, but coming forth its very self an unborrowed, a self-luminous, an uncreated glory.
When I reflect on the humble origin of our humanity, how man’s body, exquisite piece of workmanship as it was, sprang from the dust – and when I think, moreover, what man brought that humanity to be, and to what vile
uses he put it – I sometimes feel as if it was not worth being redeemed. But when I see how God could restore it, and to what uses He could put it in the person of Christ, then I cease to wonder that He should have thought it worthy of being redeemed. But that He should have redeemed it at such a cost – here I am lost in mystery. But I bless God – with my whole soul I bless Him – for such a mystery. For it is the mystery of His own love to my fallen race – a love so lofty that, when I look up, I lose it in its eternal source, in His own eternal heart; and when I look down, I lose it in the depths of that misery and guilt to which it descended. Lose it, did I say? Rather let me say that there I find it; for in these depths I lay by nature, and in that heart, by grace, I would now rest my pardoned soul.
Now in conclusion: the God whom I proclaim to you this day is God manifest in the flesh; the God of nature, yet more than nature’s God; the God of creation, yet more than creation’s God; the God of providence, yet more than the God of providence; the God of Sinai, yet more than Sinai’s God. For the God of grace and of redemption is here. The God whom, as sinners, you need, is here. The God who is rich in mercy, who has found out a ransom, who is ready to receive you back to His forgiving arms if you will but come, and who, if you have already come and been received by Him, will never leave you nor forsake you: the God and Father of Christ, and therefore your God and Father, if you are in Christ – this God is here. And it is this God, fellow sinners and fellow saints, whom I have proclaimed to you this day.
May those of us then who are about to sit at the sacramental feast behold Christ’s glory by the eye of faith, through the veil of symbols! It is the glory of Him who, that He might redeem us from the curse, assumed our nature, and, that He may bestow upon us the blessings of redemption, still wears our nature on the throne. May we see Him as He was on earth, and as He is now in heaven – then and now and evermore – God manifest in the flesh.