Jesus Christ: The Only Mediator Between God and Man

In this foundational episode of The Reformed Brotherhood's systematic theology series, Tony and Jesse explore the doctrine of Christology—the study of who Jesus Christ is. Building on their previous discussions of the Trinity, they unpack the Chalcedonian Definition and the hypostatic union, explaining how Jesus can be fully God and fully man without confusion or division between His two natures. This episode addresses common misconceptions, tackles early Christological heresies, and demonstrates why getting Christ's identity right is essential for understanding Scripture, salvation, and the Christian life. Whether you're new to theology or deepening your knowledge, this conversation will ground you in the most important question of all: "Who do you say that I am?"

Key Takeaways

• The Hypostatic Union is Central: Jesus Christ is one person possessing two complete, distinct natures—fully divine and fully human—without confusion, change, division, or separation.
• The Incarnation is Addition, Not Subtraction: Christ did not give up any divine attributes (like omniscience or omnipresence) when He became man; He added a human nature to His divine nature.
• Christ Acts According to Each Nature: Jesus knows all things according to His divine nature but experienced genuine human limitations (including not knowing certain things) according to His human nature.
• The Chalcedonian Definition Protects Orthodoxy: The four key negations—without confusion, without change, without division, without separation—guard against heresy and preserve the biblical portrait of Christ.
• Christ's Humanity is Essential for Our Salvation: Only a true human could obey the law on our behalf and die in our place; only God could make that obedience and sacrifice of infinite worth.
• Systematic Theology Flows from Scripture: The technical language of Christology isn't philosophical overlay—it's the church's faithful attempt to systematize what the Bible reveals about Jesus.
• Proper Christology Impacts Everything: Getting Jesus' identity wrong creates theological errors that spread throughout your entire system—affecting how you read Scripture, understand salvation, and live the Christian life.

Expanded Explanation of Key Concepts Why the Hypostatic Union Matters for Daily Faith

The doctrine of the hypostatic union—that Jesus is one person with two natures—isn't academic abstraction. It's the key to reading the Gospels coherently. When Jesus says He doesn't know the day or hour of His return (Mark 13:32), we're not forced to choose between calling Him a liar or denying His deity. Instead, we understand that Jesus, as one person, knows all things according to His divine nature but experienced genuine human limitation according to His human nature. This distinction preserves both His truthfulness and His full divinity. Similarly, when we see Jesus praying, learning, growing, and suffering, we're witnessing the real humanity necessary for Him to be our representative and substitute. The hypostatic union isn't a puzzle to solve but a truth to worship: God became what we are (without ceasing to be God) so that we might become what He is (without ceasing to be human).

The Incarnation as Addition, Not Subtraction

One of the most dangerous errors in Christology is thinking that Jesus had to "give up" divine attributes to become human—a heresy known as kenotic theology. The Reformed response is clear: the incarnation involved addition, not subtraction. The eternal Son of God, who possessed all divine attributes from eternity, took on a complete human nature at a specific point in time. He didn't stop being omniscient; He added a human mind that learned and grew. He didn't stop being omnipresent; He added a human body located in space and time. This is critical because if the Son changed—if He became less than fully God—then He was never truly immutable, and therefore never truly God at all. The Chalcedonian Definition's phrase "without change" guards this truth. In the incarnation, the divine nature remained fully divine, the human nature became fully human, and the one person of Christ possessed both completely.

Christ as the Only Mediator

The book of Hebrews repeatedly emphasizes that Jesus is the perfect mediator between God and humanity precisely because He fully participates in both. As the eternal Son, He shares the divine nature with the Father and Spirit; as the incarnate Word made flesh, He shares our human nature (apart from sin). This is why no angel, no mere human, and no demigod could accomplish our salvation. Only someone who is fully God could render to God an obedience and sacrifice of infinite value; only someone who is fully human could obey the law in our place and die the death we deserved. Job's ancient cry—"If only there were someone to mediate between us, someone to bring us together" (Job 9:33)—finds its answer in Jesus Christ, who puts one hand on the shoulder of God and the other on the shoulder of humanity, reconciling the two. This isn't poetic imagery—it's the theological necessity that drove the Son to the incarnation "for us and for our salvation."

Memorable Quotes

If the Son changes in the incarnation, if the divine nature of the Son is no longer omniscient, then He was never God in the first place because He never was unchanging—because He changed.

That which is not assumed cannot be healed. Christ takes on our nature in order to heal and restore our nature.

The disclosure of Christ is always a self-disclosure. You can't book-learn your way into the kingdom. You can't book-learn your way into understanding theology correctly either. There's gotta be an element of prayer associated with the two.

Full Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Tony Arsenal: Welcome to the Reform Brotherhood. I'm Tony.

[00:00:03] Jesse Schwamb: And I'm Jesse,

[00:00:04] Tony Arsenal: Hey brother.

[00:00:04] Jesse Schwamb: Hey brother. Happy New Year, Tony.

[00:00:08] Tony Arsenal: Happy New Year. It's crazy. Last time we recorded, we were together in, uh, Enfield, New Hampshire,

[00:00:15] Jesse Schwamb: the motherland, if you will,

[00:00:16] Tony Arsenal: the motherland.

Yes.

[00:00:18] Jesse Schwamb: And now it's 2017.

[00:00:19] Exciting Plans for 2017

[00:00:19] Jesse Schwamb: So what I want to know right off the top is what one thing are you looking forward to in 2017?

[00:00:26] Tony Arsenal: Oh, man. Uh, well, this is like a super, uh, immediate news release, but we may be interviewing Mike Horton sometime in 2017 so that there's that

[00:00:36] Jesse Schwamb: best year ever.

[00:00:38] Tony Arsenal: I know it's not for like, another couple months.

Uh, he's got a new book coming out and we are hoping that we may be able to do some interviews with him, which would be pretty epic.

[00:00:46] Jesse Schwamb: I'm pretty excited about that. I'm not gonna lie.

[00:00:48] Tony Arsenal: Yes. But I suppose a more real answer is the first, uh, Schwam Baby, which we talked about, uh, a couple weeks ago with mom. The, the new little one coming along should be pretty exciting.

[00:00:59] Jesse Schwamb: It's big news,

[00:01:00] Tony Arsenal: big news.

It's like we forgot how to podcast guys. It's weird.

[00:01:09] Jesse Schwamb: It's been so, so what's

[00:01:10] Tony Arsenal: what's going on in your world, Jesse?

[00:01:12] Jesse Schwamb: So I'm looking forward to, in 2017, this is something we also kind of talked about before, but I'm just gonna throw back out there. I'm looking forward to becoming more like John Stamos, which is basically your answer.

[00:01:25] Tony Arsenal: Yes.

[00:01:25] Jesse Schwamb: It's like the same

[00:01:26] Tony Arsenal: answer

[00:01:26] Jesse Schwamb: every time.

[00:01:28] Full House Nostalgia

[00:01:28] Jesse Schwamb: Honestly, every time I say to somebody casually, like an acquaintance or a coworker that I'm gonna have a nephew, and this is like the first grandchild in my family, they, that person inevitably after like two seconds of consideration, gets really excited and everybody always says, you know who you're gonna be, right?

And I'm always like, yeah, I, I know. And at first I was a little bit kind of like, I'm not really digging this, the Uncle Jesse association with full house. But then I've just embraced it, like I'm, I'm down with it. He was like the cool uncle. And he

[00:01:58] Tony Arsenal: was,

[00:01:58] Jesse Schwamb: then I happened to catch like a couple of episodes just last night actually with my wife of Fuller House and I was like, yeah, I guess I can be down with this.

Like, there are worse things to be like associated with.

[00:02:08] Tony Arsenal: Did did you um, did you watch any of the new show? I mean, I know you said you caught a couple episodes, but did you watch any of the new show yet?

[00:02:14] Jesse Schwamb: Not besides those, not really. So like, I was totally confused 'cause my wife is in season two and I was also admittedly reading a book about, um, like behavioral economics at the same time that this was on.

So I wasn't like totally devoted to it, but I was like, why are they in the same house? And like, I don't understand who these all these other extra people are. So I, I don't have like the full context. Am I missing like a lot?

[00:02:39] Tony Arsenal: Um, n no. I mean, I, I think it was really just more of an excuse to be nostalgic is really what that show's all about.

Um, but what's weird though is like when it came out there was all this like controversy about. How like dirty it was, but it's not like really dirty. But there was like all this controversy about, well, I'm really nostalgic for like the good old days with full house and how, just, how wholesome it was. But it, it really wasn't that wholesome.

I think people just don't remember it clearly. But there's a lot of episodes where like, it, it's implied that Uncle Jesse is bringing women home at night, right? And they're like there in the morning. They're like, there's like women who are there at breakfast and stuff. So there's a lot of that stuff that's like under the surface that I think either maybe because when I was watching it, I was like a young kid, like maybe like 11 or 12 years old and so I didn't catch that stuff.

Um, or just like the background culture was obviously not like holy, but it was less sexualized than our culture is now. So compared to. Um, the general culture Fuller House is pretty tame still. Um, and full House was pretty tame compared to the general culture, but the culture is degraded so much by then.

Since then,

[00:03:51] Jesse Schwamb: what Full House was not confessional.

[00:03:54] Tony Arsenal: I know. Crazy. They were like doing catechism questions on the episode.

[00:04:00] Jesse Schwamb: Oh, how awesome would that be? Like all those quintessential scenes where like they're all getting tuck in at night, they're just like question 1 92.

[00:04:09] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Uh, Danny Tanner tucks in little Michelle and is like, alright Michelle, what's the chief end of man?

Michelle's like the chief end of man is to enjoy God and to glorify him forever. Dude,

[00:04:21] Jesse Schwamb: I was so waiting for your Michelle impression. That was what I was waiting for as I saw that happen.

[00:04:25] Tony Arsenal: I wasn't gonna try. Michelle's voice really dropped pretty early in her career.

[00:04:30] Jesse Schwamb: Uh, child actors. It's

[00:04:31] Tony Arsenal: so I think the real question.

With the new, the new baby coming along, uh, is which, which full house character catchphrase are we gonna try to teach the baby?

[00:04:42] Jesse Schwamb: Oh, man, that's a good question. I'm trying to think.

[00:04:44] Tony Arsenal: I'm thinking how rude is probably the way to go.

[00:04:47] Jesse Schwamb: That's probably like some of the most iconic, right? Like, what are the other one ones?

Like cut it out,

[00:04:53] Tony Arsenal: cut it out, or like, Hey dude,

[00:04:55] Jesse Schwamb: people

[00:04:55] Tony Arsenal: are just, we can't teach him any of Uncle Jesse's because those are gonna have to go to you. But

[00:04:59] Jesse Schwamb: yeah, like, what is that? It's like sweet mercy and

[00:05:02] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Have mercy. And

[00:05:03] Jesse Schwamb: have mercy. That kind of stuff. Yeah. I, I feel like I do, so there is part of me that feels like I need to do the research and pick those up.

Now at least need to be like cognizant of them.

[00:05:12] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. We'll have to pick a catchphrase for the, the little baby to learn and we'll have to work on that every time we see him.

[00:05:18] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. The, I have sense, a really great burning burden now to like fully develop the character in my own way. Yeah. So I, I'll just have to get on that.

I need some help with that. Whole me account.

[00:05:29] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, we can work on that.

[00:05:30] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, that would, that would be

[00:05:31] Tony Arsenal: great. Maybe we'll put up a poll in the group so people can vote on what the best full house catchphrase was and what we should teach to our new, uh, incoming nephew.

[00:05:39] Jesse Schwamb: Honestly, when we were talking about what I look forward to in 2017, I was just gonna say, Jesus, just to like Jesus Duke, the whole situation.

Yeah. And also because like all of my Sunday school training was leading me in that direction, uh, and especially because we're gonna do some Christology action tonight.

[00:05:56] Tony Arsenal: We are gonna do some Christology action tonight.

[00:05:58] Jesse Schwamb: Systematic Theology in the house, in the podcast. Yes.

[00:06:03] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.

[00:06:03] Systematic Theology Series Overview

[00:06:03] Tony Arsenal: So if this is your first time tuning in, um, you should go back to, um, I don't remember the episode numbers off the top of my head, but the first one is, uh, called Creator of Heaven and Earth and Truffles.

Uh, and the next one is called Your Least Heretical Life Now. So this is part three of our systematic theology, um, sessions. So you should go back and listen to those 'cause um, we haven't really talked a lot about what systematic Theology is, but, um, just like Jesse was a little confused coming into the second season of Fuller House, um, you might be a little bit off pace if you come into the third episode of Systematic Theology and haven't talked about the other stuff.

'cause we're gonna be relying and referring to some of the terms that we developed in the last episode, especially on this one.

[00:06:46] Jesse Schwamb: Plus we just want you to download more podcasts.

[00:06:49] Tony Arsenal: Yes, yes. We also have new tracking software that, uh, we would love to inflate the numbers artificially.

[00:06:54] Jesse Schwamb: We're watching it.

[00:06:54] Tony Arsenal: Not that that helps us with anything, but,

[00:06:57] Jesse Schwamb: so what's the deal with Christology?

[00:06:58] Introduction to Christology

[00:06:58] Jesse Schwamb: Like, why is that something that you wanted to bring up tonight?

[00:07:03] Tony Arsenal: Sure. So, so a little bit of, um, preface is, is Christology traditionally in, at least in reform circles, um, is usually kind of a two-part affair. There's a discussion of sort of the metaphysics, um, of the incarnation. We talk about the hypostatic union.

We'll talk about what that is, um, tonight. And then there is a section called The Work of Christ. Um, and that usually centers around, um, kind of the specifics of what is accomplished in the atonement. And, um, in, in that discussion usually is covered the different kind of atonement theories. So, um, as we've said before, this is an hour long show, um, usually, and we don't have time to do an extensive course on the whole thing.

So, um, we probably will loop back to some of the atonement discussions when we get to soteriology or the doctrine of Salvation. But for tonight, I think we're gonna focus kind of on the, um, the metaphysics of who, uh, who Jesus is and what, how the incarnation actually functions as far as we can tell from scripture.

Does that make sense, Jesse?

[00:08:01] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, that's perfect. Because as we discussed, this is such a huge topic, so, and there's all these wonderful nuances to it. So, um, it's a bit like saying like, define God and give two examples. It, it would just be impossible to absolutely encapsulate it. So I liked the idea of narrowing it down and Yeah, absolutely.

I, I like that focus because we need to, or at least I need to sometimes remind myself that the Bible in its entirety is a book about Jesus. So in the Old Testament. We have Jesus being predicted when we get to the New Testament gospels, we see Jesus is revealed. When we read acts or the apostles, we're discovering that Jesus is being preached.

And of course, when we get to the epistles, we're seeing that Jesus is being explained. And then of course we get to all the way to the end, to revelation. We find that Jesus is expected. So Jesus is absolutely central. So I really love diving into all the different pieces of Christology because I find it to be like so warming, so full, so rich, and it's really the center of our faith.

There's everything else, or a lot about, everything else is, is the spokes which emanate from Jesus himself, the the Godhead in flesh.

[00:09:04] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, absolutely. And um, you know, we talked about, when we talked about the Trinity, that, that, that's a doctrine that's really at the center of our faith, but unfortunately a lot of Christians don't, um, they don't really have the understanding of what that doctrine actually teaches.

Um, and I don't mean like a, a full orbs technical understanding, but even just a basic, um.

[00:09:27] The Hypostatic Union Explained

[00:09:27] Tony Arsenal: You know, conversant understanding of the doctrine and the doctrine of the incarnation or the hypostatic union, um, in many ways is kind of the flip side of the trinity. So in the Trinity we talk about one singular, indivisible nature that shared among three persons, right?

But when we get to the incarnation, we're actually talking about two natures that, um, a single person possesses. Um, so a lot of the things that we talked about, the questions that we have to answer in the Trinity, we have to kind of answer the opposite question in the incarnation. Um, and so the two doctrines are so interwoven.

Um, I almost feel like sometimes they should be taught as kind of one complex of doctrines. Um, but it really becomes such a huge task to do that, that they, they kind of necessarily get split up a little bit.

[00:10:13] Jesse Schwamb: It's like two sides of the same coin in, in a way. And

[00:10:17] Tony Arsenal: Absolutely.

[00:10:17] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. I like that saying, like, you're, you're kind of confronting, not necessarily the opposite problem, but just the opposite hurdle.

So, right. We spoke so much about like, the simplicity of God, but then we get to the hypothetic union fully God, fully man. We have to really try to understand how can we articulate these in such a way so that there's, there's no confusion between the two. There's no co-mingling. Um, or, you know, they're complete.

[00:10:40] Tony Arsenal: Gee, Jesse, where did you get those words from?

[00:10:44] Jesse Schwamb: It's almost like we love theology.

[00:10:47] Tony Arsenal: It's almost like there's a historic definition, which was written by the Council of Chason in 4 51.

[00:10:53] Jesse Schwamb: Was there.

[00:10:54] Tony Arsenal: There was, let me read it. So, um, we talked about when we did the Trinity um, section, we read the INE creed and the Ian Creed, which was originally drafted in, uh, 4 25 at the, or sorry, 3 25 at the, uh, first council of ea, um, was then sort of modified and ratified, um, adjusted and expanded in certain sections at the Council of Constantinople in, uh, four or in, uh, 3 81.

And then, uh, in 4 31 there was another council, was the council of Ephesus, which really, um, tried to talk, we'll talk a little bit about, um, the different heresies that are present. We're not gonna spend a lot of time on 'em, but we'll talk about the different christological heresies. And in 4 31, they were dealing with a heresy called utic.

Um, and then, then 20 years later in 4 51, there was a fourth council was the Council of Caldon. And at Caldon they added what in a lot of ways was kind of an amendment or an addendum to the Ian Creed. Um, they kind of considered it, um, sort of a, an add-on or an expansion to the Creed. Um, and I'm just gonna read it here, and I, I'm not sure exactly what this translation is.

Um, but like the Nicene Creed, and actually even more so than the Nicene Creed, the caledonian definition has been relatively untouched, um, for the, what is that now? The almost, uh, 1500 years since it was drafted, a little bit more than 1500 years. So I'm just gonna read it and then I'll unpack a couple specific clauses that we need to always keep in mind.

So, um, it says, therefore following the Holy Fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same son are Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood. Truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood.

Like us in all respects, apart from sin as regards his godhead, begotten of the father before all ages, but as yet regards his manhood begotten for us and for our salvation of the Virgin Mary, the God bearer, one in the same Christ, son, Lord, only begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, and without separation.

The distinction of nature's being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one in the same sun. The only begotten word, uh, only begotten God, the word Lord Jesus Christ.

Even as the prophets from the earliest times spoke of him and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us. And the creed of the Fathers was handed down to us. So, um, I'll put a, a link in there 'cause there's a lot to unpack, but there's two, um, two kinds of, um. Points that we need to tether ourselves to in this confession.

Um, or in this definition, it's not really accurate to call it a creed, but, um, you'll see, uh, a couple places where it talks about one in the same son, one in the same Lord, um, one in the same person. That phrase one in the same is really central and we'll, we'll get to why that is. The other, uh, is a section that I think, um, gets more focus in the, uh, treatments of the definition, but I actually think is not the central thrust of the definition, but it's that section in there where it says, without confusion, without change, without division, and without separation.

So what we have is these two points that we need to maintain. The first is that Jesus, um, in the incarnation is one person. Um, and we'll talk about the different errors that came about that, that that was responding to on the kind of the other side of the spectrum. It's not really a spectrum, but on the other side of the question, um, that the two natures that are that one person or that that one person is, um, do not mix or mingle.

So we we're not talking about a fusion of natures that creates a new, um, nature. Sometimes you'll see, uh, the technical language is terim quid, which is just Latin for the third thing. Um, little hint, if you, if you wanna sound smarter, just say whatever you're saying in, in Latin, um, and it makes you sound smarter.

But that third thing, um, is an error that was called tism, which is what they were trying to refute at the Council of Ephesus. So we're trying to maintain this balance between two natures. One person. Um, and, and like we said with the Trinity, we don't have any analogy for that in nature. We don't, we don't have any experience, um, directly with, um, uh, a single person who has two natures.

You know, we kind of casually talk about like my sin nature and my, my kind of my new nature or my old nature, my new nature, or we talk about me being physical and me being spiritual. And so those are two natures. But that's, that's kind of just a sloppy way to talk about natures. If you remember when we talked about the Trinity, the, um, the usia is kind of the underlying fundamental substance, metaphysical substance that determines what kind of person a person is.

So in the case of, um, the Trinity, there's a single. Concrete substance that the three persons share and are in the, um, the incarnation. We have a single one of those persons, the second person of the trinity has that first nature, but then in the incarnation, he takes on a second nature. So it's really important for us to remember that the incarnation is about addition, not subtraction.

So that's a question we'll get to later. We'll talk a little bit about kenosis and, and what that means. Um, but sometimes people want to say like, well, in the incarnation, um, Christ gave up his omnipresence. He was no longer omnipresent. Um, and that's, that's not a viable way to talk about it. Um, we have to maintain that what, what Jesus was according to his godhood.

He always remained and always will, because one of those divine attributes we talked about was, um, immutability or unchangeable ness. And if Jesus Christ could change, if the sun could change, then he was never God in the first place, right? So that's something we have to maintain. So that's kind of a good starting point for us, um, to kind of go from, is that we have to maintain this, this distinction between, um, Christ as one person, but that one person possessing two complete natures.

Um, it's a little bit sloppy sometimes when we talk about being fully God and fully man. We sometimes think of like two 100 percents or something like that. Um, you know, it's probably better to talk about truly God and truly man, that what of Christ was God was truly, and really, and completely God.

There's nothing that's required to be God that was missing from, uh, the son's nature. Um, and then the same in the human nature. Nothing that is required to be human was missing from the human nature that the sun took on. Are you tracking with me?

[00:17:40] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, I'm with you. And it's really important that we be, as you said, bookended by those two things, because though it may seem like we're drawing trivial distinctions, it really has tremendous outworkings for how we understand not just the person of who Jesus is, but his ministry to us and his current work that he's accomplished and the work that he's doing right now.

Right? And when we start to blur those two lines, then our theology gets really funky situationally when we start to kind of process what it is that Jesus has accomplished and then what he's doing for the church right now and how we relate to him. So if you don't keep those things like they're wonderful guideposts.

So if you move too far one direction or the other, those should be a kind of a source. Uh, to say you're cl you're in error.

[00:18:23] The Importance of Proper Doctrine

[00:18:23] Jesse Schwamb: And while it may seem like that's totally innocuous to be in error, to be outside those bounds, you're gonna find that if you're slightly off at the center there, the further you, you walk away from that point, of course you're gonna be way out and it's gonna cause I mean, I know I've known lots of people where those distinctions haven't been as well defined, and they've really kind of sense a whole new way of freedom when they understand it's been corrected in such a way that, um, you know, the work of Jesus makes a lot more sense into their lives, that the Bible is more cohesive when they understand those things properly.

And giving names to them is, is important. And bringing those distinctions out to light is also tremendously important.

[00:19:02] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. And so, um, what I found in my walk, um, you know, I think we all. As Christians, just like when we talked about the Trinity there, most Christians have sort of a general vague awareness of the Threeness of God and, and the oneness of God.

And that somehow those two things interact with each other and they adhere. Um, but they don't really understand what that means. And I, I think the same thing happens with Christology is that we have sort of this vague awareness that, that Christ is a person. Um, and at the same time we have this vague awareness that he's got this dual nature thing going on, right?

But we don't really have any idea what that means. And so when we come to scripture, um, we look at scripture and we get really confused at, in a lot of places, especially with the hypostatic union. So, um, you know, like the question of, well, how can, how can the son say he doesn't know the hour of his return?

[00:19:51] Jesse Schwamb: Exactly

[00:19:52] Tony Arsenal: right. How, how can the son walking through a crowd say that he, um, he doesn't know who touched him. He felt the power went out, but he doesn't know who touched him, so he has to ask who touched him. And so, you know, Christians throughout the ages come up with all these, all these answers. Um, anything from, um, downright heretical answers like, um, well, the, the son gave up his, his, um.

You know, his omniscience, he legitimately had no way to know who those persons were. And like I said, if the sun changes in the incarnation, if the divine nature of the sun, um, if the, the, if the sun, according to his divine nature is no longer omnisci, then he was never got in the first place because he, he never was unchanging because he changed, um, or, you know, sort of slightly more innocent, but I think still problematic answers.

Like, well, the son did know, but he was kind of, um, he said he didn't know because he was trying to teach a lesson or he is trying to make a point. Well, right there we've got the sun lying and then we're all lost in our sins because you're no longer the perfect sacrifice. So in a lot of ways, um, you know, these distinctions, like we said before, you can be wrong, um, and, and be wrong in an innocent fashion, and it's not gonna cost you your salvation, right?

We're not saved because we have proper doctrine. But at the same time, um, our doctrine, and as I hope you'll see as we unfold through the systematic theology sessions, is your doctrine is like a spider web. And when you pull out one, one thread or you get the thread in the wrong place, the integrity of the whole thing is less strong.

So when we pull out, we pull on this hypothet Union thread, you know, which is like a, a central thread. If you pull that out, or you place it wrong, it's gonna leave all these errors and, and problems in the rest of your theological system, um, that sometimes you don't expect. You, you end up finding them in weird spots later on, and then you have to correct.

And it's, you know, it's like, um, it's like when you're, you're working on a project and you make a mistake in the project early on, and rather than scrapping it and starting over, you start, you know, you keep going. Well, you get to the end of the project and you finally reach a point where you. Um, you can't really keep compensating and you realize you should have started over in the first place.

That happened to me when we were decorating the Christmas tree this last year. Um, Ashley and I are responsible for the, the Christmas tree decorations in the church, and I did the beads that wrap around the, um, the tree, and I got to the bottom of it and I, I had way too much, way too many beans, beans left over.

And so I was like, you know, I'll just, um, you know, I'll just like adjust up a little bit. I'll just move everything up. And it finally got to the point where I was like, I can't, this isn't working. And I had to unwrap the whole thing and I had to start over. Um, and the same thing happens in our theology with our systematics.

So it's really, really important if, if you are on the verge of checking out, 'cause this feels like some sort of arcane technical discussion. Um, please don't please give it a shot because I, I want people to understand, especially with. The incarnation that it is so central to not only what we believe, but how salvation functions, um, for the Christian that we really have to nail this, um, in order to protect ourselves from kind of going off course in a later, a later part of our theology.

[00:23:01] Jesse Schwamb: Right? This is like driving a car on an icy road such that it goes from like zero to 60, like from normal to accident, like before you could even see it. And I love your example 'cause I've actually had conversations about that very thing where somebody might bring up the point. Well, did Jesus kind of tell a white lie or did he lie by withholding information?

Because surely he's God and he's omniscient. But there's certain occasions where he's saying, I just don't know. And you can see how, if you can even posit that there is some degree of untruthfulness there, then like you said, dead and sin like, like it just goes that quickly. Yeah. And it, it's really something that's important to correct.

And we should probably also say like, just in passing, that when we talk about systematics or systematic theology, which sounds like very grandiose, what we're not saying is we're trying to take some philosophical worldview and impose it, or ICG it, like put it a square peg into a round hole of scripture and say, this is how we wanna interpret things.

What we're doing instead is we're asking a question like, who is Jesus? And we are systematizing the answers from the full counsel of God's word. So we're trying to go through and collect all this information, process it in a cogent and consistent way through the scriptures to bring us meaning so that we have this theology of study of God that ultimately results in doxology or worship to God.

So learning all the terms is nice, and trying to articulate it in really profound ways is great, but all the technical details are just absolutely worthless if it doesn't result in us saying, appreciating God more, who he is, the work he's accomplished, claiming him, worshiping him, leading us to our needs so that we can just fall down in admiration for all the stuff we've acquired in our minds.

So if we don't do that, I like, I'm with you. Like, this is so important. I hope that, uh, everybody can kinda stick with it and kind of push through, take, go, go over some of those hurdles, um, because at the end of it is just this wonderful worship of God, a more glorious reflection of who he is and what he's done.

[00:24:57] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. So let, let's get into a little bit of the meat of this because, um, you know, for me, um, the two big. Sort of epiphanies I had, um, I'm, I avoid the word revelation just by using a different languages version of it. But the two big, um, epiphanies I had in seminary was getting my head as much as possible around the doctrine of the Trinity and getting my head around the doctrine of the incarnation because I, I think, um, and I'm, I don't think I'm on terribly shaky ground, but I think that the, the trinity and the incarnation are really the keys that unlock Christian theology in a way that makes it coherent and in a way that, um, allows you to put, put, you know, feet to pavement and actually live this stuff out.

For sure. So, um, just just to, to kind of get started is we think about thinking about, um, penal substitution, right? We haven't done the atonement, and, and this is another thing that's hard about systematic theology, is everything is so integrated with anything else that you have to kind of start with some assumptions.

So thinking about penal substitution. Right. Um, in the, um, the 12 hundreds, I think in the, the Middle Ages, um, Saint Ann, some of Canterbury writes a book called Why The God Man. And his, um, approach I think was wrong. But his, his desire was to write, um, a treatise that would basically explain using logic, um, almost exclusively, but using logic alone, um, to explain why it would be that there needed to be an incarnation.

Why did God have to become man? And his answer, roughly speaking is that only, um, the, the debt that was owed to God and he talked in terms of honor. So it's not exactly the same as, as penal substitution, which is in terms of penalty, but the debt that was owed to God. I see we're talking about atonement, which we weren't gonna do, but the, the debt that was owed to God, um, could only be paid by a human because it was humans that incurred that debt.

So an angel couldn't do it. Um, God in abstract, kind of, in, in as God couldn't do it. Um, the sacrifices of the Old Testament pointed to what God would do, but they weren't sufficient 'cause a, an animal couldn't pay for that. And so God had to become man in order to make that payment. But on the flip side, a man couldn't make that payment on his own because even if he lived a perfect life, that's just what he owed to God.

So he was never accumulating any excess merit or excess honor in order to, um, to be able to pay for other people's sins. And so God himself had to take on, uh, humanity and become man in order to make an infinite, a, a payment of infinite worth to be able to pay for the sins of humanity. So we start with that question of why the God man and.

What we don't realize though is that beyond just the fact that it had to be a man that made that payment, the relationship that Christ has with the Father, according to his humanity, um, is a model and an image that we can look at to understand our relationship with the Father as well. So not only did Christ have to become man in order to accomplish salvation, but in order for us to understand and be able to act out and live out our salvation, we also had to see Jesus interacting with the Father.

And so we can, we can kind of talk about natures as ways of existing or ways of doing things right? So Jesus has a divine nature and he has a set of capacities and abilities and attributes that he as a person has from that. Uh, from that nature. But then he takes on a second nature. And that second nature also comes with a set of capacities and abilities and attributes.

And in the case of his humanity, it comes with a set of limitations as well. And so that answers a lot of the questions we, we come up against in the scripture. And these are questions that the church wrestled with in the early church. That's why we ended up where we are, because they were asking questions like, um, how is it that the impassable, uh, uns suffering, God could suffer and die on the cross?

How can we, how can we hold those two things to be true? And the answer was, because he doesn't suffer as God. He doesn't suffer according to his divine nature. He suffers as man according to his human nature. And so, you know, sometimes we answer those questions in a way that practically leads out to be historian.

And Nestorianism was the era that, roughly speaking, the era that Christ was two persons. And so, you know, someone asks, well, how is it that, how is it that, um, Jesus could say he didn't know? And the, you know, there was the heretical answer of, well, he, he just got rid of his amination in the incarnation.

Then there was the kind of misguided answer of, well, he, he just kind of was telling a white lie or he was illustrating a purpose. And then there's the heretical answer that results in him being two persons. And we say, well, Jesus's divine nature knew, but Jesus's human nature didn't. And what we've done subtly there without realizing is we've started to treat those natures as though they were persons.

Right? So instead of saying, and, and it may seem, um, nitpicky and pedantic to, to talk this way, to insist on talking this way, but instead of saying that Jesus' divine nature, new and his human nature, didn't, we should say Jesus as a single person knew according to his divine nature, and didn't know according to his human nature.

And because those are two different things and two different ways of knowing. We're not saying there's a contradiction that, you know, there are. Jesus has a, a way of knowing things. That's a divine way of knowing things. Right? We talked about in the first episode that God's knowledge is not just quantitatively greater, but it's an different, an entirely different type of knowledge.

He knows things in a completely different way than we know things. So Jesus knows the day and the hour. He knows who touched him. He knew all those things. He knows all things according to his divine nature, in that way, in a divine way. But when we come to his humanity, he knows he doesn't know things and he doesn know things in a different way.

So Jesus isn't omniscient according to his human nature, right? Um, to, to kind of think about the ridiculousness of what that would be. Jesus, at one point, according to his humanity, was two cells in his mother's womb, right? As far as we can tell his development. The, the beginning of his development, his conception was supernatural.

But from that point forward, everything progressed the way it normally would. So at some point, Jesus was two cells in his mother's womb. Now are we gonna say that, that those two cells, which don't have a brain somehow knew according to humanity, all things that just, the, the logic of that just doesn't work.

It's just nonsense. Um, so we have to, we have to really think through the implications of this,

[00:31:31] Jesse Schwamb: right? And this is why we usually fall back on saying things like fully God and fully human 'cause we're not being trite. It's that this is like a whole nother realm of logic that in a sense, just like when we discuss the Trinity, that we have nothing to compare it to.

So we go on, we're on shaky ground. We try to start to parse out the pieces because we understand that we are separate and distinct beings or have separate and distinct or lines, clear lines of demarcation with our knowledge. And that's just not the case here.

[00:31:59] Tony Arsenal: Right? Right. And so, um, you know, that brings us to another area of, um.

[00:32:05] Covenant Theology and Christ's Role

[00:32:05] Tony Arsenal: You know, we, we talk about, we, again, we haven't talked about covenant theology yet, but in reformed theology, um, and, and I think more so in sort of Presbyterian lines of reformed theology than in, um, Baptist lines of theology. Um, the, the idea of covenant is really the center of how salvation functions.

And so, broadly speaking, there's a covenant of, um, works in the garden, which is gonna sound strange to Protestant ears, and we'll talk a little bit about it in a different episode. But there's a covenant of works, which Adam was under, and Adam, um, he. He is given this promise that if he, um, works the garden and accomplishes in his obedient to what God has, then he will be given access to the tree of life and will, um, confirm his original state of righteousness, which was mutable, which could change.

He'll confirm it into an unchanging state and that will be his reward. He fails. And so Christ comes and we have now what's called the covenant of grace. And the covenant of grace is that Christ will fulfill the terms of the covenant of works on our behalf, and then will give us the blessings of that covenant of works.

So Christ comes as the second Adam. That's another way to talk about Christol. Christology is to kind of go through the different titles of Christ. Um, Christ comes as the second Adam. And what that means is he comes as a human to earn the righteousness that Adam should have earned for his progeny. He earns that righteousness as a man.

Right. He doesn't, he doesn't, um, he's not Superman, right? It's not Clark Kent in high school playing football and using his superpowers kind of covertly to win the game without anybody knowing it. Right? This is Christ coming and suffering and struggling and fighting and working hard as a man to be obedient to the law.

He has to learn the law right the way you and I would by reading the scriptures. He accomplishes that perfectly. 'cause the only thing that's different in terms of our nature is between me and Christ, human nature is that Christ's human nature is not affected by sin. He doesn't have original sin to deal with.

He's not totally depraved like I am. So he accomplishes that as man, and then he goes before his father and he claims that righteous reward. And then he says, I did this on behalf of my people. Right where Adam would've gone before the father had he completed his task and said, I've done this on, on my behalf and on behalf of my people, and all of us would've enjoyed the benefits of Adam's obedience the same way we, um, we suffer the consequences of his disobedience.

Right? So even, even something that seems as disconnected as kind of this abstract covenant theology really is grounded and rooted in the fact that Christ has these two natures and that he interacts with the father on two different levels, right? He has the permanent, unchanging, perfect, harmonious union with the father that he's always had because of his divine nature, that Peric union, that retic union that we talked about last time.

[00:34:53] The Righteousness of Christ

[00:34:53] Tony Arsenal: And he also has this earned righteousness, this merited righteousness that he has before the father as a man. And that's the same righteousness we have before the father because the, the son gives that to us. The father looks on us, and he sees Christ's human righteousness instead of our own filthy.

[00:35:10] Jesse Schwamb: And if you, if the Lord opens your eyes to, to consider some of this, what I've noticed in my own life is just how brilliant it is, not just in terms of the conception of bringing this plan into effect, but thinking that this is, in fact, if we understand our theology appropriately as you've been defining.

This is the only way, and I really like the way that, uh, John Owen said this. This is from the glory of Christ.

[00:35:37] The Mediator's Role

[00:35:37] Jesse Schwamb: He writes, the mediator could not be God Himself as God only for a mediator, does not mediate for only one. But if he was God, then he could be said to be biased for there's only one God and man is not God.

Man needs a mediator to represent him just as God needs a mediator to represent him. So whatever God might do in the work of reconciliation yet as God, he could not do it as mediator. And he's saying exactly what you just said, that there need to be a true mediator representing both sides. I, I really, like I said this before, but how Job and his suffering kind of calls out to his really unfortunate friends by saying if, if only there was somebody that could come and put their arm around my shoulder and around God's shoulder as if to reconcile, to help bridge this gap.

And that's exactly what Jesus does, but he can only do that if he's, as you've been saying, fully got and fully man in every conceivable way and in ways that we can't conceive as well.

[00:36:37] Tony Arsenal: Right. And so sometimes the, the accusation is leveled. Um, that this is kind of like an abstract, philosophical concept that gets overlaid on the scriptures.

So I just wanna read something.

[00:36:47] Theological Insights from Hebrews

[00:36:47] Tony Arsenal: Um, the, the book of Hebrews, um, I, I know everybody loves Romans and I love Romans. Um, and we shouldn't pit scripture against scripture, and that's not what I'm trying to do. But the book of Romans is usually seen as like the, the central theological treatise of the New Testament.

And I really actually think the book of Hebrews is more of a theological treatise than that. Um, I think that the book of Hebrews has more, um, packed into it in terms of sort of raw doctrine than Romans even does. Um, and they're real similar in length. Um, so just reading out of, um, Hebrews chapter five, um, starting in verse seven, it says, in the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death.

And he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered and being made perfect. He b