The Fundamental Doctrines of the Christian faith

by R. A. Torrey

same; that through death he might bring to naught him that had the power of death, that is, the devil." Words could not make it plainer that our Lord Jesus had a real human body, a real human physical nature. Indeed, the Apostle John teaches us in 1 John 4:2, 3, that not to believe in the actuality of His human body, is a mark of the Anti-Christ. He says, "Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: and every spirit that confesseth not Jesus is not of God: and this is the spirit of the anti-Christ, whereof ye have heard that it cometh; and now it is in the world already." There were those in John's day who denied the reality of Jesus' human nature, who asserted that His body was only a seeming or apparent body, that it was an illusion, or as the Christian Scientists now put it, "mortal thought," and John, speaking in the wisdom and power of the Holy Ghost, asserts that this doctrine is a mark of the Anti-Christ. It is the one supreme mark to-day, that "Christian Science" is of the Anti-Christ.

Jesus Christ not only had a human body during His life here upon earth, but after His resurrection He still had a human body. The Millennial Dawnists (Pastor-Russellites) teach us that this is not so; that, whereas before His incarnation He was wholly a spiritual being, that at His incarnation He became wholly a human being, and that since His death and resurrection He is wholly a

divine being: all of which is not Scriptural, and therefore is not true. He himself said after His resurrection, "See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye behold me have. And when he said this, he showed them his hands and his feet" (Luke 24:39, 40). And to Thomas in John 20:27, after Thomas had doubted the reality of His resurrection, He said, "Reach hither thy finger, and see my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and put it into my side: and be not faithless but believing." Not only after His resurrection while still here on earth did He have a real human body, but He still has a human body in the glory. In that wonderful view into heaven that was given to Stephen at the time he was stoned and killed we read in Acts 7:55, 56, "But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, and said, Behold I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God." And when He comes again to take His rightful authority on this earth, He shall come with a human body, coming as "the Son of Man." He Himself said to the High Priest when He stood before him on trial, in Matt. 26:64, "Nevertheless I say unto you, henceforth ye shall see the son of man standing at the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven." In this utterance of our Lord we have a declaration of His Deity, but an equally clear

declaration that He was a real man, and that He will come again as a man with a human, though glorified body. Indeed, we are told in Phil. 1:20, 21 that when He does thus come, He is going to transform these our present human bodies, the bodies of our present humiliation, into the likeness of His own glorious body, His glorified human body.

III. SUBJECT TO HUMAN LIMITATIONS

But the reality and completeness of our Lord's human nature comes out not only in the fact that He had a human parentage and a human body: we are also clearly taught that, while as God he possessed all the attributes and exercised all the offices of Deity, as a man He was subject to human limitations.

1. He was subject to the physical limitations which are essential to humanity. In John 4:6 we read that Jesus Christ was weary. The words are "Jesus, therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well: and it was about the sixth hour." But God is never weary. We read explicitly in Isa. 40:28 "Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard? The everlasting God, Jehovah, the creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary."

We are told in Matt. 8:24 that Jesus Christ slept. But God never sleeps. We read in Ps. 121:4, 5, "Behold he that keepeth Israel shall

neither slumber nor sleep. Jehovah is thy keeper: Jehovah is thy shade upon thy right hand." By comparison of these two verses, we see distinctly that Jehovah never sleeps. Yet Jesus did sleep, so while He was Jehovah, He was not Jehovah only. He was man as truly as He was God.

In Matt. 21:18 we read that Jesus Christ hungered; in John 19:28 we read that Jesus Christ thirsted; in Luke 22:44 we read that Jesus Christ suffered physical agony, His agony was so great that He was on the point of dying with agony; and in 1 Cor. 15:3 we read that "Christ died," that His death is an essential part of the Gospel. Paul says in this passage, "For I delivered unto you first of all that which I received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures." It was no merely apparent death, it was a real death. It was no "illusion." Our salvation depends on the reality of His death. "Christian Science" cuts the very heart out of the Gospel. We are oftentimes asked was it the human nature of Jesus Christ that died or was it the divine nature that died. It was neither the one nor the other, natures do not die, a person dies. It was Jesus who died, the Person who was at once God and man. We are told in so many words in 1 Cor. 2:8, that they "Crucified the Lord of glory," and we saw in the last chapter that the "Lord of Glory" is unquestionably a divine title. It was the one Person Jesus who was at once human and divine, who died upon the cross of Calvary.