The Christadelphian, December 1958, C.C. Walker

Reprinted from The Christadelphian, September 1926

“Christ and Alienation”

F.G.C. writes: I believe that our Lord Jesus Christ was “Son of Man”, “took part of flesh” and blood, and thus inherited mortality from Adam. But I do not think that this involves the idea (which has been reprinted lately from some controversial writings of thirty years ago) that he inherited “alienation”. The particular statement to which I refer runs as follows: “Now if Christ was not born in the state of alienation Adam brought upon the race, then he was an exception by begettal and birth, and was at birth in a state of reconciliation and therefore not under condemnation. In that case Christ’s escape from Adamic alienation was not a matter of merit at all, and instead of starting where Adam left us all and becoming the way (all the way) out—for himself and all in him—he started where Adam started, so far as alienation is concerned, and therefore, as Turney claimed, with an ‘unforfeited life’.” What do you think of this?

Answer: “Alienation” is a most improper term to apply to Christ. It is not a Bible word at all, let alone a Bible word applied to Christ. The related verb “alienated” is indeed found twice in the New Testament, but not in relation to Christ—far from it. The two passages are these: Eph. 4:18; Col. 1:21. In the first of these we read: “This I say . . . and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance (marg., hardness) of their heart: who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.” In Col. 1:21 we read: “You, that were sometimes alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he (Christ) reconciled.” This is all that the New Testament has to say about being “alienated”. The noun “alien” is likewise found but twice in the New Testament: Eph. 2:12; Heb. 11:34. In the first place Paul reminds the brethren that in time past they were “without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world”. In Heb. 11:34 we read of those who by faith “turned to flight the armies of the aliens”. It is obvious that the only “alienation” contemplated in these texts is mental and moral “ignorance”, “wickedness” and hostility from which of course Christ is far removed. It is foolish to talk about “alienation” and “reconciliation” at birth. At birth there is neither the one thing nor the other. A babe is under the reign of death (Rom. 5:14), though not yet personally a sinner “after the similitude of Adam’s transgression”, simply because he is of flesh and blood begotten. Our Lord in infancy was in this condition; but he was Immanuel, God with us, who “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man” (Luke 2:52). God’s favour never left him. He was never “alienated” and an enemy to God in his mind by wicked works; but “reconciled” many who once were such, but who repented and were baptized into his name for the remission of their sins. The deceased brother who wrote the remarks you quote, and which have now unhappily been reprinted, did not “speak as the oracles of God” in this matter, and consequently there was “no light in him” on the subject (1 Peter 4:11; Isa. 8:20). No enlightened person talks of Christ being “alienated” at birth or at any other time. The radical idea of the word is estrangement, hostility, literally a being on the other side. Compare the Greek concordance under the words allotrios and apallotrioō. Christ is God come down from heaven and manifested in the flesh to reconcile the world to God—to turn enemies of God into friends of God, and foreigners into citizens of the New Jerusalem (compare Eph. 2:10–22). These unfortunate expressions of the deceased have provoked equally unfortunate expressions in the opposite direction. Some would make Christ a sinner, others would make him an angel, that is in the days of his flesh. The truth lies in the mean between the two extremes, as defined in the New Testament, concerning which we should be “swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath”, remembering that the confessedly “great mystery of godliness” is a thing to be saved by, and not to wrangle over.

C. C. Walker.