The Christadelphian, November 1873, Robert Roberts

“The Condemnation of Sin”

Strange extremes meet in Christ. “Flesh of sin” and “Spirit of holiness,” God and man, earth and heaven, strength and weakness, poverty and riches, life and death, sorrow and gladness.

As chief among ten thousand, and as the subject of probably more than a thousand titles, types, prophecies, symbols, and descriptions, setting-forth the sublime and God-magnifying phenomena presented to our attention in Jesus of Nazareth, he may well be briefly but most gloriously styled in the Spirit’s language, “The Wonderful,” the mighty God, the everlasting Father.

The phrase “the man Christ Jesus” describes one side of Christ, the name “Immanuel—God with us”—describes another side of Christ; while the more complete version of Paul, “God manifest in the flesh,” uniting both sides in one view, presents us with the Spirit’s key to the sublime mystery of Godliness disclosed in the doctrinal history of Jesus.

Christ’s miracles, wonders and signs were things “God did by him;” so also the condemnation of sin was something for which God sent him into the world, and which God effected in him. The same is also true of reconciliation—it was God’s work by him; indeed God is our Redeemer; and besides Him there is no Saviour. The facts concerning Christ’s sacrifice, are only the visible operations of His outstretched arm to this end. As the apostle says, “All things are of God,” even the Son and the Spirit.—(Acts 2:22; 2 Cor. 5:18, 19.)

The flesh in which God was manifested was weak “sinful flesh,” or more exactly “flesh of sin;” besides which there is no other sort extant, nor ever has been in Adamic likeness.—(Rom. 8:3).

Since Paul affirms there is to be but “one kind of flesh of men” and “one blood” (which is the life of all flesh), and since, moreover, he testifies that Christ “likewise took part of the same, ” there remains no alternative but that both in the flesh, and the life of the flesh, the nature of Jesus was identical with that common to the race of which he was a member.—(1 Cor. 15:39; Acts 17:26.)

Since again there is but one kind of flesh in the premisses, it follows that the phrases, “his flesh,” “my flesh,” “days of his flesh,” “according to the flesh,” “made flesh,” “sinful flesh.” “after the flesh,” “manifest in the flesh,” “put to death in the flesh,” “suffered in the flesh,” come in the flesh,” “body of his flesh,” “through the vail . . his flesh,” “abolished in his flesh,” “members of his body and flesh,” as apostolically applied to Christ (in view of the premisses) are so many demonstrative evidences that, as to nature, he was made in all points like his brethren, and subject to all the disabilities common to the nature he came to redeem.

The nature Christ possessed was the nature that sinned, and the nature he came to save; and the life he possessed was the life common to Adam’s children, and the life he came to redeem from destruction.

The flesh of Adam, and the flesh of-Christ, before he died and when he emerged from the grave; and the flesh of his brethren now, and when they are re-formed from the dust of sheol, is all one and identically the same flesh, which, in all cases, before it can inherit the kingdom of God, must be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.”

The figure used by the apostle when he enjoins to “crucify the flesh with its affections and lusts,” is drawn from the fact that it was none other than the flesh containing these affections and lusts that was literally crucified when Jesus was put to death.

The death of Christ, apart from the resurrection of Christ, would have been unequal even to the remission of sins.—(1 Cor. 15:17; Rom. 5:10.)

Paul teaches that it is necessary for a priest to be “compassed with infirmity,” to the end that he may have “compassion on the ignorant, and on them who are out of the way;” for which reason also he says “he ought, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer for sins.”—(Heb. 5:2, 3.) Now, on Paul’s authority, these three figures in the Mosaic pattern find their spiritual counterpart in Christ, who was first compassed with infirmity (Heb. 4:15, 5:7; Psalm 77:10), and, therefore, 2nd, can be touched with a fellow-feeling of our infirmities (Heb. 4:15), and, 3rd, offered also for himself, on the ground of said infirmity.”—(Heb. 7:27.)

The physically unblemished nature of the sacrifice required under the law, did not represent an immaculate physical nature, but one personally innocent of transgression: this peculiarity was met in Christ in a way which reflected the wisdom, goodness, and justice of God, and, at the same time, fulfilled the diverse and otherwise inexplicable types and predictions in Moses and the Psalms. Other theories ignore but cannot, by any possibility, explain them.—(Lev. 9:7; 16:17; 19:33; Psalm 38:40.)

Everyone who confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of God; but everyone who confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is not of God, but of anti-Christ.—(1 John 4:2, 3.)