Does Christ have two natures?

C.C. — There are two natures combined in one Person, yet distinct.

The opposite error to saying that He is two persons is to say that His two natures have combined into one. It was an ancient heresy that the two natures, Manhood and Deity, merged together. For this reason the writer does not like the expression the “God-man”. It implies to him (though not to many orthodox Christians) that He is half man and half God. Such an idea must be resisted. He is wholly Man and wholly God. He possesses all the attributes and properties of real, unfallen, holy Manhood, and at the same time possesses all the infinite attributes and properties of Deity. The unity consists, not in the amalgamation of essence, but in the Oneness of His Person.

This is a great mystery, and all the historic fundamental errors concerning His Person have been attempts to explain it in some measure. It is inexplicable. He is a real Man and true God in One Person. The two natures, manhood and Deity, are not joined together to form one nature, but are united in One Person. They ever remain distinct but are never separated. Their union is personal, not consubstantial.

It is so with every truth of God. If I look at the person of Christ there are two great sides to it. There is His deity and His humanity. If I confound them, or use one to neutralise the other, I have lost the truth about Christ. It is not true that He is God only, nor that He is man only. Nor is it true that it is a confusion of the Godhead with the humanity of the Lord. There is His person, but most assuredly there is a Divine nature and there is a human.

We must believe that He is very God, for this is clearly taught in the Word; we must believe that He is very Man, for this is clearly taught in the Word—very God and very Man, yet one blessed Person, Godhead and humanity united indissolubly and indivisibly and forever. Blessed Mystery, before which faith falls with adoring worship.

It is His full person that is before us in all four Gospels, though from the standpoint of incarnation. Thus, the truth as to the person of the Lord somewhat resembles what we have been seeing as to the attributes of God. They can be distinguished, but must not be separated. The two natures in our Lord are evidently there, but in His humanity we will find His deity shining, and in His Godhead we will see His humanity. Thus all is preciously blended together; and when we think of His miracles, of His teachings, it is God who is working, but the dependent Man as well. It is One who is giving us the words of God, and yet who spake as never man spake. This truth applies to His entire life and work — all has the stamp of His entire person upon it. This apprehension of the person of Christ is most precious. We commend it to the constant and prayerful study of the children of God.

Here, then, we are confronted with the unfathomable mystery of the person and being of the Lord Jesus Christ as uniting in Himself both Godhead and humanity. As God, life is as essentially His own—as eternal and self-existent in Him, as in the Father Himself (John 1:4); but as to His humanity, born in time, the privilege of having life in Himself as it is in the Father, is a derived result of that mysterious union into which the humanity of the Lord has been taken with His divinity. That life which is proper to God dwells as fully in the incarnate Son as in the Godhead itself, according to that other Scripture (Col. 2:9), which declares that "in Him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily."

Each member of the Blessed Trinity speaks of our Lord as uniting in Himself both the Divine and Human natures. The Old Testament anticipated this and the New is full of it. "Thy throne, O God, is forever," is said by the Father to the One He speaks of as "the Man who is My Fellow" (Ps. 45:6-7; Heb. 1:8; Zech. 13:7). The blessed Lord says "I am" and yet "the Son of Man who had no where to lay "His head." The Spirit speaks of "the Man Christ Jesus as "Who is over all, God blessed for ever" (John 8:58); Matt. 8:20; 1 Tim. 2:5; Rom. 9:5).

Deity and humanity are united on one blessed Person, yet whilst not separating the one from the other in our thoughts, we can surely distinguish between the two, and see how both Deity, though veiled, and humanity expressed themselves, as presented in Scripture.

The instances just given are examples. “Crucified through weakness,” (2 Cor. 13:4) could only be affirmed of manhood when in the position that the Lord in lowly grace took upon the cross. “Upholding all things by the word of His power,” (Heb. 1:3) could only be affirmed of Deity. And yet the two statements are affirmed of one and the same blessed Person.

There are, then, two sides to the person of Christ. He was God manifest in flesh. "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth" (John 1:14). The Word was the Eternal Son, and the Eternal Son became man. He was thus God and man — a union of extremes which was not possible in any other, and rendering His person so unfathomable, so incomprehensible, that He Himself said, "No man knows the Son but the Father" (Matt. 11:27). But it is essential that we hold fast both His true Divinity and His as equally true humanity. For had He not been true man, He could not have been a sacrifice for sin, and had He not been God, His sacrifice could not have been available for all. Satan knows this, and hence, in every age, he has sought to undermine the one or the other of these truths, insinuating doubts sometimes concerning His humanity and sometimes concerning His Divinity. But it is the glory of the person of Christ that He is both Divine and human, that He is, in His one person, both God and man. This truth lies at the foundation of, and, indeed, gives its character to, redemption.