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Redeemer Bible Church

Unreserved Accountability to Christ. Undeserved Acceptance from Christ.

Who Is This Jesus?

Selected Scriptures

For many years of my Christian life, I had heard that the incarnation was
important. Jesus becoming man is one of those absolutely essential doctrines of the
Christian faith. First John 4:2-3 says, “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit
that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that
does not confess Jesus is not from God; and this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which
you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.” Needless to say,
then, the incarnation is a crucial Christian truth.

Now, I’m sure that this doesn’t strike you as problematic. You believe that Jesus
was a real human being. What I think you didn’t quite understand was why this is so
important. Why is it that Jesus’ humanity is so important?

The synoptic gospels are especially interested in conveying the importance of

this teaching. The reason we know this is because they portray Jesus as the one who
inaugurates the kingdom of God. What I am saying by this is that the humanity of Jesus
and the kingdom of God are integrally related to one another. So if we are going to
understand the importance of Jesus’ humanity, we must understand the nature of the
kingdom of God.

The Kingdom of God

Turn to Mark 1:15. Notice how Jesus’ preaching is summarized: “The time is
fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” So Jesus
preached that the kingdom of God was at hand. This kingdom is not a geographical
territory that can be located on a map, like the next town over from Hackensack. In
Luke 17:20-21 Jesus says, “’The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be
observed; nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or, “There it is!” For behold, the kingdom
of God is in your midst.’” The kingdom of God is the rule or dynamic reign of God, the
earthly exercise of his sovereignty. It is not a realm. So then, if the kingdom refers to
the fact that God is ruling over the earth, in what sense may it be said by Jesus to be “at
hand”? In what sense may Jesus say that it is “in [their] midst”?

These are very good questions. After all, the OT is clear that God is already
ruling: first, over Israel. Psa 59:13, for instance, teaches that “God rules in Jacob.” And
in Judg 8:23, Gideon tells the men of Israel that “the LORD shall rule over them,” not
him or his son. Second, God is already ruling over the whole earth. Listen to Ps 22:28:
“For the kingdom is the LORD’s, And He rules over the nations”; and Ps 103:19: “The
LORD has established His throne in the heavens; And His sovereignty rules over all.”

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At the same time, there is an expectation in the OT of a future reign of God.

Obad 21 says, “The deliverers will ascend Mount Zion To judge the mountain of Esau,
And the kingdom will be the LORD’s.” And the prediction is given in Dan 2:44 that “the
God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom
will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but
it will itself endure forever.”

With both of these truths held in tension in the OT, how can God’s rule be said to
be both ‘already’ and ‘not yet’? An even more pertinent question for our purposes is
this: How can Jesus say that the kingdom of God has arrived and thus imply that it
previously was not near or present? The answer that is usually given is that when
God’s reign comes, God exerts his sovereign rule to subdue the powers of evil. The
cross, resurrection, and the sending of the Spirit have brought OT promises to
fulfillment, yet evil still proliferates. This makes the question about Jesus even more
pressing; it doesn’t really answer it. In other words, if Jesus brought the kingdom, how
is it that there is still evil in the world? Why is it that oppression and injustice continue?
In what sense is the sovereign rule of God exercised now in a way that it was not
exercised before the coming of Jesus?

The solution to this question is found in Jesus’ own sovereignty. In this regard,
the Bible teaches that in Jesus’ resurrection and ascension Jesus receives sovereignty,
which, of course, assumes that in some sense he did not have it previously. Christ is
seated at the right hand of the Father now.

Turn to Acts 2:29-36.

NAS Acts 2:29 "Brethren, I may confidently say to you regarding the
patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this
day. 30 "And so, because he was a prophet, and knew that GOD HAD
SWORN TO HIM WITH AN OATH TO SEAT one OF HIS DESCENDANTS
UPON HIS THRONE, 31 he looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of
the Christ, that HE WAS NEITHER ABANDONED TO HADES, NOR DID His
flesh SUFFER DECAY . 32 "This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all
witnesses. 33 "Therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God, and
having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured
forth this which you both see and hear. 34 "For it was not David who ascended
into heaven, but he himself says: 'THE LORD SAID TO MY LORD," SIT AT MY
RIGHT HAND, 35 UNTIL I MAKE THINE ENEMIES A FOOTSTOOL FOR THY
FEET. "' 36 "Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God
has made Him both Lord and Christ—this Jesus whom you crucified.”

By the resurrection and ascension, Jesus receives sovereignty from God (note
especially verses 30-31, 33, 36 above). In Phil 2:9-11, the Apostle Paul teaches that
after having suffered the horror of the cross in absolute shame, “God [also] highly
exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the
name of Jesus EVERY KNEE SHOULD BOW, of those who are in heaven, and on
earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is

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Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Jesus’ received his sovereignty as a reward for
his abasement through the resurrection.

So in some sense, Jesus was not sovereign previously. You may be thinking, “In
what was he not sovereign earlier? Does this mean that Jesus was never sovereign
before, as if to say that in his pre-incarnate state he was not sovereign from the
beginning of time?” Of course not. He was the eternal sovereign with the other
members of the Godhead.

The difference between the eternal son before the incarnation and Jesus after
the incarnation is just that—he is now a human being. Jesus, then, received the
kingdom as a human being. Before the incarnation, the eternal son was not a man, so
he could not rule as a man. In Phil 2 (the very context of Paul’s proclamation of Jesus’
name above all names), the apostle says in verse 6 that the pre-incarnate Christ
possessed “equality with God.” But Christ received the name and the homage of every
knee and tongue only after his incarnation, death, burial, and resurrection. In Rom 1:3-
4, Paul put it this way: he said that Jesus, God’s “Son,…was born of a descendant of
David according to the flesh…[and] was declared the Son of God with power by the
resurrection from the dead.” This is not a statement of Jesus’ eternal position as the
Son, but to his being instated as a man to a position of sovereignty.

So, then, what does this do to our understanding of the kingdom of God? How
does Jesus’ sovereignty as a human being impact how we define what it means that
God’s rule has come? Well, we know that the kingdom of God has come because a
human being has been invested with divine authority to rule the earth. This then is the
first part of the answer to the question that goes to the importance of Jesus’ incarnation.
The presence of the kingdom of God means that a man has been given divine authority
to rule the earth—that man is Jesus of Nazareth. But a human being ruling with God’s
authority as his vicegerent means something more. It means that the fall is being
reversed.

Creation and Fall

Turn to Gen 1:26 and read the text: “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our
image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the
birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing
that creeps on the earth.’”

When God created man he created him in his image to have dominion; to have
authority over all the creation. That man was given this authority is manifested also in
the fact that he was to name the animals, showing forth his authority over them (see
Gen 2:19).

As we move to Gen 5:3, we see that this notion of image is connected with
sonship: “When Adam had lived one hundred and thirty years, he became the father of
a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth.” Man as the
image bearer of God means man as son. And since God’s son Adam was given

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dominion, he is also a king. What this all means is that before the fall, God’s rule was
exercised through the agency of a human being. This was order of unspoiled creation.

What happened when man fell? Read Gen 3:17-19.

Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your
wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You
shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it
All the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you
will eat the plants of the field; By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till
you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And
to dust you shall return.”

When man fell, he spoiled his vicegerency; he marred his rule. Instead of
exercising dominion such that the rest of creation would comply with his authority, the
earth was no longer compliant: it would yield “thorns and thistles.”

The rest of the Bible is the story of how God would bring about the restoration of
fallen Creation. This restoration would entail the reinstatement of man as God’s
vicegerent. The restoration of this vicegerency is picked up throughout the OT, and
nowhere more clearly than in the reign of David and the promises made to him. Second
Samuel 7 contains one of the most significant promises in the OT. Read 2 Sam 7:12-
13: “When your days are complete and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up
your descendant after you, who will come forth from you, and I will establish his
kingdom. He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his
kingdom forever.”

This text teaches that there would be a greater son of David whose throne would
be established forever. In spite of the imperfection of Israel’s kingship, it pointed toward
a future state of affairs when David’s greater son would rule a perfect kingdom as God’s
vicegerent. Listen to Ps 80:17: “Let Thy hand be upon the man of Thy right hand, Upon
the son of man whom Thou didst make strong for Thyself.” When the son of David
rules, the reign of God is properly upon the earth; a human being is exercising the
authority that Adam spoiled by his fall in the Garden and he is exercising that authority
in fulfillment of God’s promise to do so. So the OT connects the future reign of God with
the reinstatement of man to his position as God’s vicegerent.

Since God intended to reign through the agency of man, the kingdom or reign of
God may be said to be that state of affairs when man would be ruling as God’s
vicegerent. This, then, is the key to understanding what Jesus’ humanity is all about.
Jesus can say that the kingdom of God is at hand or in their midst because he is the
human being whom the Father has chosen to be his vicegerent. In order for the rule of
God to come as God designed, the ruler of all creation needed to be a human being.

Let me show you this idea from a passage in the NT. Turn to Heb 2:6-9.

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But one has testified somewhere, saying, “WHAT IS MAN, THAT YOU
REMEMBER HIM? OR THE SON OF MAN, THAT YOU ARE CONCERNED
ABOUT HIM? YOU HAVE MADE HIM FOR A LITTLE WHILE LOWER THAN
THE ANGELS; YOU HAVE CROWNED HIM WITH GLORY AND HONOR, AND
HAVE APPOINTED HIM OVER THE WORKS OF YOUR HANDS; YOU HAVE
PUT ALL THINGS IN SUBJECTION UNDER HIS FEET.” For in subjecting all
things to him, He left nothing that is not subject to him. But now we do not yet
see all things subjected to him. But we do see Him who was made for a little
while lower than the angels, namely, Jesus, because of the suffering of death
crowned with glory and honor, so that by the grace of God He might taste death
for everyone.

This passage is a kind of exposition of Ps 8. This psalm begins with praise to

God as creator and sovereign, and expresses complete astonishment that God would
be mindful of him (verses 1, 4). The psalmist goes on to say that God not only pays
attention to man, but even crowns him and gives him dominion over the creation (verse
5). In verses 6-9, notice what the author is doing: he is saying that even though every
human being is not ruling now, one human being, through his death and resurrection,
is—the Lord Jesus Christ.

So when Jesus proclaims that the kingdom of God is at hand it is a proclamation

of God’s reinstatement of his originally intended order for the earth with man properly
situated as God’s vicegerent, or deputy ruler. In order to fulfill God’s promise of
redemption, the eternal son had to become man. Without the incarnation, we have no
salvation; for salvation is the regeneration, the restoration to the proper order of things.
And this return to the proper order of things entails man ruling with God. This is why
Rev 22:1-5 takes up the language of Eden (turn to Rev 22):

Revelation 22:1 And he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as

crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb, 2 in the middle of its
street. And on either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of
fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing
of the nations. 3 And there shall no longer be any curse; and the throne of God
and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His bond-servants shall serve Him; 4 and they
shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads. 5 And there shall
no longer be any night; and they shall not have need of the light of a lamp nor the
light of the sun, because the Lord God shall illumine them; and they shall reign
forever and ever.

What we have, then, in the person and work of Jesus is the encroachment of
man’s vicegerency (ruling with God) into this present age. Jesus brings this future time
with him. Allow me to borrow an illustration from C S Lewis. Since the fall of man,
winter has come. Yet God promised that spring would come. And he promised that the
spring would be at hand, when a man would be ruling as God’s deputy ruler. Jesus is
that man. Jesus thus brings the spring with him. His presence melts the snow and
warms the air and liberates life from the barrenness of winter.

The Gospels and Vicegerency

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This is precisely what we see happening in the gospels. We see this human rule
coming to fulfillment, manifested in Jesus’ life and ministry. In Mark, we have already
seen it in his teaching and preaching: “And after John had been taken into custody,
Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled,
and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel’” (1:14-15).

Jesus’ announcement of the arrival of God’s rule is also his claim to inaugurate it
as God’s vicegerent. He can announce that the kingdom is at hand because he is the
one who fulfills its promise to reinstate man as God’s deputy ruler over creation. The
rule of God is encroaching on this present age in Jesus’ proclamation.

Not only does it encroach in Jesus’ preaching, but it also encroaches through his
works as well. As Albert Wolters has rightly said, “Jesus’ miracles provide us with a
sample of the meaning of redemption: a freeing of creation from the shackles of sin and
a reinstatement of creaturely living as intended by God.”1

We see this in Jesus power over nature. Since God alone is sovereign over the
created order, when Jesus the man speaks to the wind and the sea and they obey him
immediately, he wields this authority as God’s deputy, or vicegerent—the one to whom
the Father has delegated his power by the Spirit. This is why in Matt 8:27 the disciples
ask, “What kind of a man is this?” Even though they can see perfectly well that Jesus is
a human being (they had to wake him up), Jesus also exercises divine authority over
the elements in the same way that the Lord is said to do so throughout the OT. So the
emphasis is not on Jesus’ deity but on his ability to have dominion over nature as a
human being. Jesus’ power over nature means that humanity is being reinstated to its
position as God’s vicegerent.

We also see human dominion coming to fulfillment in Jesus’ powerful exorcism of

Mark 5:1-20. In the synoptic gospels, Jesus is said to cast out demons by the Spirit of
God. This is expressed in a more veiled form in Mark 3:27 with the illustration of the
strong man vs. the stronger man, i.e. the one who possesses the Spirit. Matthew 12:28
and its parallel in Luke are more explicit: “But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God
[‘finger of God’ (Luke 11:20)], then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” This is
one of the clearest statements that the kingdom has already arrived. When Jesus, as a
man, exercises authority over the demons, the proper vicegerency of man under God is
restored. Jesus did what Adam should have done and cast the serpent out of the
Garden.

We see the reign of God through human agency in Jesus’ healing of the
hemorrhaging woman and especially in his raising of Jarius’ daughter. Disease, like
demon possession is a disruption in the proper order of creation. And if sickness may
be seen as a disruption of the proper order of creation, how much more may death be
seen as such a disruption? The restoration of all things is encroaching into this present
age by what Jesus says and does. And that restoration entails man ruling with God as
his vicegerent.
1
Albert M Wolters, Creation Regained (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985) 62.

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So what Jesus is doing when he heals is much more than healing for
compassion’s sake (though it is that). It is a concrete demonstration that all things are
becoming new, that man is being restored to his proper place as God’s deputy ruler.
For Jesus of Nazareth, a human being, is the agent through whom God is exercising his
sovereignty.

That the emphasis is on Jesus’ humanity in this context is abundantly clear from
the final passage of the section: Mark 6:1-6a. For those on the outside, Jesus humanity
becomes the stumbling block to their acceptance of the truth that God is exercising his
rule through a human agent in fulfillment of his OT promises. This is why, by the way,
Jesus cannot do miracles in a context of astonishing unbelief (6:6a). Jesus miracles are
a manifestation of the kingdom of God’s immediacy. The mystery of the kingdom of
God is given only to the insiders. Therefore Jesus cannot perform a miracle where
there are only outsiders.

The irony of all this is that it is Jesus’ full humanity that is absolutely essential to
redemption. For redemption means that man is being restored to his proper place as
God’s vicegerent. Jesus receives the kingdom as a man in fulfillment of God’s promise
to restore man to a position of rule. And so when Jesus performs mighty deeds like
those recorded in Mark 4:35-5:43, the kingdom of God encroaches on this present age.

Conclusion
What kind of man is able to command nature such that it obeys? What kind of
man can powerfully exorcise a profoundly demon-possessed man? What kind of man
can heal a woman that no other physician had been able to cure? What kind of man
can raise the dead? The answer is God’s son, a son uniquely bearing his image (Heb
1) and his authority to rule. To quote Pontus Pilate: “Behold, the man!”

Redeemer Bible Church

16205 Highway 7
Minnetonka, MN 55345
Office: 952.935.2425
Fax: 952.938.8299
info@redeemerbiblechurch.com
www.redeemerbiblechurch.com

Who Is This Jesus? © 2002 by R W Glenn