new church life: march / april 2014
falsity concerning the process of the Lord’s glorification. Because Jesus is
viewed as some sort of mediator between an angry God and His wayward
creation, people are prone to fall into the trap of viewing God as more than
one person.
The idea of how we view God brings us to the heart of our text – the
risen Lord. For our concept of the nature of the Lord’s resurrection has a
direct bearing on whether we are envisioning one God or more than one
God. If we view Jesus as a Divine intercessor or sacrificial lamb for the
Father, who rose from the grave, then we can have no other image in our
minds than of two Gods.
We can see no further than the literal sense of the Scriptures where it
says that after His resurrection, “the Son of Man will sit on the right hand of
the power of God.” (Luke 22:69) We can form no other picture than that of
two Gods sitting side by side on thrones, consulting about the state of affairs
in the world, and in heaven and hell.
However, if we view the trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as
the soul, body and activity of the Lord, then we truly have the image in our
minds of God as one person. The Writings plainly tell us that “the union of
the Father and Son, that is, of the Divine and the Human in the Lord, is like
the union of soul and body.” (True Christian Religion 98)
This concept is further clarified in the Doctrine of the Lord where we are
taught that the Lord was conceived of Jehovah or the Father. This means that
as to His soul He was Divine. But He was also born of the virgin Mary, so
that as to His body He was merely finite – full of all our human weaknesses
and tendencies toward evil.
During the course of His life in the world, the hells relentlessly attacked
these human weaknesses. However, by means of continual combats and
victories over the hells, the Lord gradually was able to put off everything
merely human from Mary, and free Himself from those finite limitations.
Then in the final stage of His glorification He “put on a Human that was
Divine” and rose from the grave. (Doctrine of the Lord 59) This glorified
Human is the risen Lord that we see, love and worship today.
Thus, when the Lord rose on the third day, He fulfilled the prophesy He
made to the Jews: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.
[For] He was speaking of the temple of His body.” (John 2:19,21)
And so when Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to the tomb,
the angel of the Lord said to them: “Do not be afr