The Messiah in Moses and the Prophets

by Eleazar Lord

Of the official Person and Relations of the Messiah.

The term Jehovah, though employed interchangeably with the other Divine designations, is in one respect peculiar. It is never used with reference to any other than the Divine Being. Hence it is by many regarded as a proper name. It is however replaced in the New Testament by an appellative.

Gesenius, who regards this as a proper name, and the word Elohim as an appellative, refers to the “Seventy” as uniformly prefixing the definite article to the word which they substitute for Jehovah; making the version, as in the English, The Lord. He considers the formulas, “I shall be what I am,” and “which is, and which was, and which is to come,” as expressing the meaning of this name, by which the being designated was to be distinctively recognized, remembered, and acknowledged for ever, according to the declarations: “This is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations;” and “this is my name for ever: so shall ye name me throughout all generations.”

But, as has been shown, this name is employed both separately and conjointly, with strictly official designations, to identify the second Person of the Trinity in his delegated character and work; who in the New Testament is announced as Jehovah, Immanu-El, Jesus, the Christ.

The subsistence of three distinct coëqual Persons in the Godhead is eternal. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are, as persons, coëternal, coëqual, and alike infinitely removed from all possibility of change. Whatever change has taken place with respect to them must therefore be merely relative, and have reference to their respective agencies, and to the works of creation, providence, and grace. They are accordingly revealed to us in connection with those works, and in the relations which they sustain to them, and to each other in connection with them; and pursuant to the economy or covenant in which those relations and works are founded, the designations by which they are respectively made known are official designations, or employed with a personal and official reference. The Father is first, the fountain of authority, and delegates the Son. The Son is second, and is subordinate to the Father. The Holy Spirit is third, and is subordinate to the Father and the Son. The Father sends the Son to accomplish the works assigned to him. The Son reveals the Father, and executes his will. The Holy Spirit does the will of the Father and the Son. It is in these relations that the respective Persons are worshipped, and not jointly or in unity. The Father is worshipped through the Son as the medium of access and homage. The Father and Son respectively are worshipped through the gracious indwelling influence of the Holy Spirit.

These relations of the respective Persons are therefore official, and must be referred to as originating in the covenant, in which the whole scheme of agency and manifestation in the works of creation, providence, and redemption, was founded. No such relations are to be conceived of as existing eternally; for in their nature the respective Persons are coëqual. Subordination must have been voluntarily assumed for special purposes and agencies which required it. When creatures were to be brought into existence, relations not previously existing were requisite; and as those relations to creatures required various agencies of the respective Persons, new relations between them were requisite; and these, being founded in compact, are properly termed official. Accordingly, all Divine acts towards creatures are personal acts of the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit. They act not as a unity in respect to creatures.

Hence all the acts of the Son in the works of creation, providence, and redemption, are ascribed to him in one and the same official Person and delegated character, by whatever designations he may, in relation to those works, be referred to; and it was accordingly in that character that he appeared personally and visibly in the ancient dispensations; assumed the human form, walked, conversed, and performed various actions proper only to one in that form. The nature of his delegated undertaking, and the objects of those dispensations, required such local manifestations of his person and visible agency, and also that he should speak to and of himself in the different aspects in which he then appeared, and in which he exercised his prophetic office, in relation to his future coming and his sacerdotal work. Thus he speaks of himself as the Seed of the Woman, the Son of David, the King, the Saviour, the Anointed, the Messenger, the Redeemer, the Holy One, the Branch, the Shepherd, Immanuel.

This may be illustrated by referring to the New Testament, and considering that the Divine and human natures being united in the Person of the incarnate Word, whatever is true of either of those natures in that union, is affirmed of him as a Person; and for aught that appears, whatever is affirmed of his Divine nature in that Person is affirmed of him in his official character, whether with reference to his preëxistent or to his incarnate state. Many things are said of him which are predicable of his human nature only, but which nevertheless could not be said if he was not both God and man in one Person. Thus it is said, that he died for our sins—and that he rose for our justification. Other things are said of the same Person, which are predicable only of his Divine Nature; as that he came down from heaven, that he came forth from God, and that he was in the beginning. Hence the propriety with which in both the Old and New Testaments the various Divine names and titles are applied to him, to designate the One Anointed, delegated—Person.

Since writing this work, the author has read the treatise of Dr. Isaac Watts, entitled, “The Glory of Christ as God-Man,” in which he describes the visible appearances of Christ before his incarnation, inquires into the extensive powers of his human nature in its present glorified state, and endeavors to explain and illustrate the Scriptures which relate to those appearances, and to the Person who under various divine names and official designations visibly appeared, by supposing that the human soul of Christ was created prior to the creation of the world, and thenceforth, being united to the Second Person of the Godhead, appeared and acted, visibly and otherwise, in all that related to this world. There being no question but that the mediatorial Person created the world, appeared visibly, and conducted the administration of the Old Testament dispensations, there is, as might be anticipated, a degree of plausibility in the reasonings and illustrations of this venerated author. But many grave and unanswerable objections to his peculiar views present themselves. It is not perceived that the supposition of the preëxistence of the human soul of Christ is either sustained by the Scriptures, or has in any respect, as a means of explanation, any advantage as compared with the view taken in this work, viz: that, pursuant to a covenant between the Persons of the Godhead, the Second Person assumed the official character and relations which are peculiar to him as Mediator; those, viz: in which he executed the works of creation and providence, and manifested himself under various Divine names and official designations, as Jehovah, Elohim, the Messenger, the Messiah; the official personal actor and revealer. To his Person in this official character and agency the human nature was in due time united, so as to include two natures in his one Person. But since the delegated official Person, into union with which the human nature was taken, preëxisted, and as a Person was the same before as after the incarnation, the acts of that Person in the delegated official character and relations above referred to, were to the same effect, and involved essentially the same conditions before as after the advent. Since he undoubtedly acted as Mediator in the ancient dispensations, we must, in reference to his agency then, ascribe to him what peculiarly constituted and ever preëminently distinguishes that character, viz: its being the delegated official character of a Divine Person. Regarded in that light, there seems no more difficulty in ascribing visible appearances and other acts suitable to his office in his relations to men, prior to the assumption of human nature into union with his Person, than after that union. The relations of his Person, in his delegated official character, to creatures and material things, were the result, not of the incarnation, nor of any occurrence after the commencement of his delegated, subordinate, mediatorial work, but of his appointment to that work, and must be regarded as coëval with that appointment. They were the relations of the official, mediatorial Person; and for aught that appears or is conceivable, rendered visible personal appearances in the likeness of man, and the performance of acts, utterance of words, &c., like those of man, as practicable before as after the addition of human nature to that Person.

The views advanced by Dr. Watts proceed upon the assumption that two distinct persons were united; whereas it was two distinct natures that were united in one Person. That Person existed before the human nature was added to it. The nature added had no separate or distinct personality. It became part of the preëxisting Person. “He took it to be his own nature, ... causing it to subsist in his own Person,” says Owen. The Logos, the personal Word or Revealer, the delegated Official Person or Mediator, who “was in the beginning and was God, was made flesh and dwelt among us.” John i. “He took not on him the nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham.” Heb. ii. 16. “He did not assume a nature from angels, but he assumed a nature from the seed of Abraham.” Syriac Text. “The Lord Jesus Christ is God and man in one person. For there is supposed in these words (Heb. i. 16) his preëxistence in another nature than that which he is said here to assume. He subsisted before, else he could not have taken on him what he had not before. Gal. iv. 4; John i. 14; Tim. iii. 16; Phil. ii. 6, 7. That is, ... the Word of God ... became incarnate. He took to himself another nature, of the seed of Abraham according to the promise; so, continuing what he was, he became what he was not; for he took this to be his own nature ... by taking that nature into personal subsistence with himself, in the hypostasis [substance or subsistence] of the Son of God; seeing the nature he assumed could no otherwise become his. For if he had by any ways or means taken the person of a man in the strictest union that two persons are capable of, in that case the nature had still been the nature of that other person, and not his own. But he took it to be his own nature, which, therefore, must be by a personal union, causing it to subsist in his own person.... This is done without a multiplication of persons in him; for the human nature can have no personality of its own, because it was taken to be the nature of another person who was preëxistent to it, and by assuming it, prevented its proper personality.” (Owen on the Epistle to the Hebrews, chap. ii. 16.)