The Christadelphian, August 1873, John Thomas

Compiled by Robert Roberts

“Dr. Thomas at Various Times on The Condemnation of Sin in the Flesh”

In Elpis Israel, page 114, the following sentences occur:—“Sin, I say, is a synonym for human nature. Hence the flesh is invariably regarded as unclean. It is therefore written, ‘How can he be clean who is born of woman?’—(Job 25:4.) ‘Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one.’—(Job 14:4.) ‘What is man that he should be clean? And which is born of a woman that he should be righteous? Behold, God putteth no trust in His saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in His sight. How much more abominable and filthy is man, who drinketh iniquity like water?’ (Job 15:14–16.) This view of sin in the flesh is enlightening in the things concerning Jesus. The apostle says, ‘God made him sin for us, who knew no sin’ (2 Cor. 5:21); and this he explains in another place by saying that, ‘He sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh (Rom. 8:3) in the offering of this body once.—(Heb. 10:10, 12, 14.) Sin could not have been condemned in the body of Jesus, if it had not existed there. His body was as unclean as the bodies of those he died for; for he was born of a woman, and ‘not one’ can bring a clean body out of a defiled body; for ‘that’ says Jesus himself, ‘which is born of the flesh is flesh.’—(John 3:6.)

According to the physical law, the seed of the unclean woman was born into the world. The nature of Mary was as unclean as that of other women, and therefore could give only to ‘a body’ like her own, though especially ‘prepared of God.’—(Heb. 10:10, 12, 14) Had Mary’s nature been immaculate, as her idolatrous worshippers contend an immaculate body would have been born of her; which, therefore, would not have answered the purpose of God; which was to condemn sin in the flesh; a thing that could not have been accomplished if there were no sin there.

Speaking of the conception and preparation of the seed, the prophet as a typical person, says, ‘Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.’—(Psalm 51:5.) This is nothing more than affirming that he was born of sinful flesh and not of the pure and incorruptible angelic nature.

Sinful flesh being the hereditary nature of the Lord Jesus, he was a fit and proper sacrifice of sin; especially as he was himself ‘innocent of the great transgression,’ having been obedient in all things. Appearing in the nature of the seed of Abraham (Heb. 2:16–18), he was subject to all the emotions by which we are troubled; so that he was enabled to sympathize with our infirmities (Heb. 4:15), being ‘made in all things like unto his brethren.’”

The Dr.’s Reply to a Charge Against Elpis Israel

A newspaper critic having held this up to ridicule, the Dr. replied as follows:—“If, in the days of his flesh, the Lord had not been perfectly human, what resemblance would there have been between the lifting up of the prepared body on the cross, and the lifting up of the serpent in the wilderness? If that body had not been perfectly human in all things like ours, how could God have ‘sent His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh?’ Is not sinful flesh perfectly human? Is it not ‘flesh of sin?’ This is all the ‘perfect humanity’ men are acquainted with. If the body crucified had not been thus perfectly human, how could sin have been condemned in it? Or how could ‘the Anointed’ ‘his own self have borne our sins in his own body upon the tree?’ Read Rom. 8:2; 1 Peter 2:24, and think upon them.

“To say, then, that Jesus was not made in all things like to this—that he had a better nature—is to say that ‘Jesus did not come in the flesh.’ This is the heresy that Elpis Israel is condemned for not teaching. It is true Elpis Israel affirms that Jesus came in sinful flesh; but that notwithstanding the plague of such a nature, he was obedient in all things—‘did no sin, nor was guile found in his mouth;’ in which sense there was no sin in him; ‘he was without sin;’ thus, ‘he who knew no sin, was made sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.’”

“The reverse is not a modern heresy, but an element of ‘the mystery of iniquity,’ which was festering in ‘the heritages,’ ο῾ι κληροι in the days of the apostles, ‘Many deceivers,’ says John ‘are entered into the world, who confess not that the anointed Jesus is come in flesh. This is the deceiver and the anti-Christ.’—(2 John 7.) In another place he styles these ‘deceivers’ false prophets, or ‘spirits,’ for they professed to have the Spirit and to speak by it, like the Gentile pietists and spiritualists of our day, who make the Word of God of none effect by their foolishness. In John’s time there were those who really had divine gifts; but when did men ever possess the genuine without the world being imposed upon by the counterfeit? It was so in the heritages of the first century; and so great and subtle did the evil become, that the authority of the apostles themselves was imperilled. John, therefore, found it necessary to lay down a rule by which the true might be distinguished from the false. ‘Beloved,’ says he, ‘believe not every spirit,’ or prophet; ‘but try the spirits, whether they be of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world.’ He then gives the rule by which they are to be tried. ‘Hereby,’ continues he, ‘know ye the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesseth that the anointed Jesus came in the flesh, is of God; and every spirit that confesseth not that the anointed Jesus is come in the flesh is not of God; and this is that of the anti-Christ which ye have heard that it comes, and is now in the world already.’ Here, then, was the heresy, from which has ripened the fruit of the ‘Immaculate Conception’—the latest edition of anti-Christ’s infatuation and stupidity. Its seed was sown by false prophets or teachers. before popes and popery had raised aloft their serpent forms. In the apostles’ day, it existed as a spirit, ‘opposed to the doctrine of Christ,’ which did not acknowledge the distinctiveness of the Father and the Son, but merged them, as Gentile sectaries, of the nineteenth century do, into one. But ‘he that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son.—(2 John 9.) He maintains the real humanity of Jesus, or the Father by the Spirit, manifested through sinful flesh; or as Paul states it, ‘God manifest in the flesh’—a mystery incomprehensible to the darkness of the anti-Christian apostasy.—(John 1:5.)

This heresy against the proper humanity of Christ is far more subtle than the counterpart of it, which denies his proper divinity. The orthodox have never been slack in excommunicating those who reject this; but they had better look well to themselves; for the ‘sinful flesh’ is as much an element of the divine Jesus as ‘the Spirit.’ In body Jesus only differed from other men in paternity. God was the father of that body, not Joseph; therefore, the body was Son of God, as Luke testifies of the first Adam. The logical consequences resulting from the denial of the true humanity of Jesus, are destructive of the mystery of the gospel; for if the Spirit did not take our nature, but a better nature, then is that better nature not our nature, and redeemed from whatever curse it may have laid under, and been reconciled to God. But if the human nature of Christ were immaculate (excuse the phrase, O reader, for since the Fall, we know not of an immaculate human nature) then God did not ‘send Jesus in the likeness of sinful flesh;’ he did not ‘take hold of the seed of Abraham;’ he did not ‘become sin for us;’ ‘sin was’ not ‘condemned in the flesh;’ and ‘our sins were’ not ‘borne in his body upon the tree.’ These things could not have been accomplished in a nature destitute of that physical principle, styled ‘Sin in the flesh.’ Decree the immaculateness of the body prepared for the Spirit (Psalm 40:6; Heb. 10:5), and the ‘mystery of Christ’ is destroyed, and the gospel of the kingdom cases to be the power of God for salvation to those that believe it. If the Son of Man did not live a life of faith, and if he did not experience all the temptations which we feet, then is his life, and his resistance of evil, no example to us. But ‘he was tempted in all things after our likeness without sin;’ this, however, can only be admitted on the ground of his nature and ‘the brethren’s’ being exactly alike: hence

He knows what sore temptations are,

For he has felt the same.

Enticements within and persecutions without make up the sum of his ‘sufferings for us,’ leaving us an example, that we should follow in his steps: who did no sin ‘neither was guile found in his mouth.’

But, as a last resort against all this, the doctors of the apostasy fall back upon the saying of Gabriel, in Luke 1:35, that the child to be born of Mary was a ‘holy thing,’ and, consequently, of an immaculate nature. But they forget that all the firstborns of Israel were ‘holv things.’ Jesus was Jehovah’s firstborn by Mary; and, therefore, one of the firstborns of the nation; so that the law of the firstborns applied to him equally with the rest. ‘All the firstborns are mine; for on the day that I smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, I hallowed unto me all the firstborn in Israel, both man and beast; mine shall they be; I am Jehovah.’ Hence, the holiness of Mary’s babe was not of nature, but of constitution by the law. Gabriel declared his legitimacy in styling it a ‘holy thing’—a declaration ratified by Jehovah Himself, before the multitude, when he acknowledged Jesus as His Son, in whom He delighted.—(Matt. 3:17.)

In conclusion, upon this point, we may remark, that previous to the resurrection of the firstfruits, the Scripture knows nothing of two kinds of flesh, one immutable, immortal, and incapable of acting otherwise than in conformity with the will of the Creator; and another flesh, mutable, mortal, and capable of acting contrary to the will of God; it knows but of one kind of flesh, and pronounces condemnation upon those who deny that in that one kind came the Son of God to do His will, as it is written of Him in the volume of the book. Christ made sin, though sinless, is the doctrine of God—a deep and wonderful scheme that the wisdom and power of Deity could alone devise.”

The Dr. in Eureka, Vol. I

“However perfect and complete the moral manifestation of the Deity was in Jesus of Nazareth, the divine manifestation was nevertheless imperfect as concerning the substance, or body of Jesus. This was what we are familiar with as the flesh. It was not angel-flesh, or nature; but that common to the seed of Abraham, styled by Paul σαρξ ἁμαρτιας flesh of sin; ‘in which,’ he says, ‘dwells no good thing.’—(Rom. 7:18; 8:3.) The anointing spirit-dove, which, as the Divine Form, descended from heaven upon Jesus at his sealing, was holy and complete in all things; the character of Jesus was holy, harmless, undefiled, without spot or blemish, or any such thing; but his flesh was like our flesh in all its points—weak, emotional and unclean. Had his flesh been like that of Angel-Elohim, which is consubstantial with the Eternal Spirit, it would have been unfit for the purpose of the Deity in his manifestation. Sin, whose wages is death, had to be condemned in the nature that had transgressed; a necessity that could only be accomplished by the Word becoming Adamic-flesh, and not Elohistic. For this cause ‘Jesus was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death; . . . that he, by the grace of the Deity might taste death for every man.’ For this cause, and forasmuch also ‘as the children (of the Deity) are partakers of flesh and blood, he also likewise took part of the same, that through death he might destroy that having the power of death, that is, the diaboloz,’ or elements of corruption in our nature, inciting it to transgression and therefore called ‘in working death in us.’—(Rom. 7:13; Heb. 2:9, 14.)

Another reason why the Word assumed a lower nature than the Elohistic was, that a basis of future perfection might be laid in obedience under trial. Jesus has been appointed Captain of Salvation in the bringing of many sons to glory. Now these sons in the accident of birth are all ‘subject to vanity,’ with inveterate propensities and relative enticements, inciting and tempting them to sin. A captain, therefore, whose nature was primarily consubstantial with the Deity, could not be touched with the feeling of their infirmities. He would be essentially holy and impeccable, and of necessity good. But a necessitated holiness and perfection are not the basis of exaltation to the glories of the Apocalypse. These are to be attained only by conquest of self under trial from without, by which ‘they come out of great tribulation.’—(Apoc. 7:14.) Its promises are to those who overcome, as their captain has overcome, when it can be said his victory is apocalyptically complete.’—(Apoc. 3:21; 11:15.) Hence, then, ‘it became the Deity to make the captain of the salvation of His many sons perfect through sufferings, and to effect this, he must be of their primary nature, that when the Great Captain and his associates shall rejoice together in the consubstantiality of the Deity, they may all have attained to it upon the principle of voluntary obedience, motived by faith, and maintained in opposition to incitements within, and enticements and pressure from without. The flesh is, therefore, a necessary basis for this; and making it possible for him to be tempted in all points according to the flesh-likeness without sin. Hence, though the Son of the Deity, and heir of all things, yet he learned obedience by the things which he suffered; and being made perfect he became the author of aion-salvation unto all them that obey him.’”

The Dr. in Eureka, Vol. II

“The germ which in after ages was fully developed into the Anti-christ was the denying the Father and the Son.—(1 John 2:22.) This denial was in the sense of not confessing that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh—(2 John 7.) All who hold this damnable tradition (which in our time is an article of ‘orthodoxy’ so called) forsook the fellowship of the apostles, and were manifested as anti-christs. ‘Ye have heard’ says John, ‘that the Anti-christs comes; even now there are many Anti-christs, They went out from us, but they were not of us.’ These where ‘false prophets,’ spirits, or teachers, whose doctrine was ‘that of the Anti-christ that should come, and even now already, ’ says John, ‘is in the world.”—(1 Epist. 4:3.) They confessed not, that he whom they called Jesus Christ was a man in the flesh common to all mankind, which is σαρξ ἁμαρτιας, sin’s flesh.—(Rom. 8:3.) They maintained that he had another kind of flesh, which was pure, holy and immaculate. They confounded his immaculate or spotless character, with immaculate flesh. This was a fatal heresy; for if Jesus was not crucified in the flesh common to us all, then ‘sin was’ not condemned in the flesh,’ as all the apostles taught, and there has been as yet no sacrifice for sin, and consequently there are no means of remission of sins extant.

“The immaculate nature of Jesus however involved ‘the Fathers,’ and their ‘Father of the Fathers’—πατηρ πατερων—in the necessity of transforming the mother of Jesus into an immaculate virgin-goddess—immaculate in her conception, and therefore not of the common flesh of Jewish nature. The Deity of the Apostasy was bound to decree this to avoid the inconvenient questions, ‘Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?’—(Job 14:4); and, ‘How can he be clean that is born of woman?’—(25:4.) Job says, ‘Not one’ can do this. But this paragon of virtue knew nothing of the Pope! He undertook to accomplish Job’s impossibility; for nothing is impossible with the Great Blasphemer of the Deity of the heaven! He decreed that the woman Mary was of clean and holy flesh, and therefore the thing born of her was ‘a holy thing,’ spotless flesh untainted of Adam’s sin, though εφ, ώ παντες ἡμαρτον in him all sinned, which an unsophisticated mind would suppose included all liable to death; Eli, Mary, her mother, and Jesus all died, and must necessarily have been included federally in Adam. But these considerations are no difficulty with the Chief Sorcerer of ‘Christendom.’ His magic wand, ‘thus I decree,’ transforms all lies into divine truths, and the grossest absurdities into the sublimest and most adorable mysteries.”

In Answer to a Correspondent, in 1866

The Dr. wrote thus on the point, in August, 1866: “The Deity did not die for sin. Why should the Deity die for the transgression of His own law, by the creature formed from the dust by His own hand? Did

God, the Mighty Maker, die

For man, the creature’s, sin?

Superstition and ignorance, parent and child of the flesh, say He did; but the Word of Reconciliation affirms no such absurdity. This word saith that ‘Deity condemned sin in the flesh,’ when that flesh died on the cross.

Jesus, or Yahweh Tzidkenu (he who shall be our Righteousness), was Son of the Deity by creation, and the son of man by the flesh developed from Mary, the descendant of David’s substance, without human intervention. Hence, his flesh was the same flesh as the First Adam with which ours is identical.”

“The begettal of Yehoshua, or Jesus (he who shall save) by Holy Spirit, or power, and of the will of the Deity, made him ‘more Deity than any other man,’ but ‘not less sin’s flesh’ than we.”

“Jesus was ‘more Deity’ than his brethren, in that he was generated independently of the will of the flesh, but not less flesh than they. Truly, as Paul says concerning this subject, ‘great is the mystery of Goldliness: Deity manifested in the flesh, &c.”

In a Summary of the Faith, in 1867

3.—“That by this same Spirit, or Power, the Father Spirit, prepared ‘a body, ’ (Heb. 10:5, ) out of the substance of Mary, and named it before its formation, Yah-shua, or Yehoshua, He shall be, the Saviour; in Greek, Jesous, or Jesus; and that when about thirty years old, he was anointed with the same Spirit and with power.—(Luke 1:35; Acts 10:3).

4.—That this Jesus Anointed was the Eternal Invisible Father, by his spirit, manifested in the nature that sinned in Eden’s Garden; that when nailed to the cross the Father forsook him, in withdrawing His Spirit from him (Matt. 27:46); that when he died, his death was ‘the condemnation of sin in the flesh’ (Rom. 8:3); and that in so dying, he bare the sins of his brethren in his own body to the tree.”—(1 Peter 2:24).

In the “One Great Offering,” in 1868

“1.—By what phrase is this Offering Scripturally expressed? By the words ‘the offering of the Body of Jesus Christ once.’—(Heb. 10:10.)

2.—In what did the offering of this body consist? In the condemnation of sin in the nature that sinned in the Garden of Eden.—(Rom. 8:3.)

4.—Who was the High Priestly Offerer in the crucifixion? The Eternal Spirit (Heb. 9:14), upon the principle that what one doth by his instruments, he doth himself; thus Herod, Pilate, the Rulers, Romans and Jews, did whatsoever God’s hand and counsel determined before to be done.—(Acts 18:27, 28.)

5.—What is the Melchizidec High Priest? The Eternal Spirit manifested in the flesh.—(1 Tim. 3:16.)

6.—What was this manifested Priest’s sin offering? “His own body.”—(1 Pet. 2:24.)

7.—Where did this Eternal Offerer offer his sacrifice? Upon the cross “without the gate,” or “without the camp.”—(Heb. 23:12, 13.)

In “Who Are the Christadelphians.” 1869

6.—“They believe in ‘one Lord, ’ who is the one God by His eternal Spirit, manifested in sinful flesh for ‘the condemnation of sin in the flesh, named ‘Jesus Christ, ’ who, after his resurrection, was ‘justified by Spirit,’ or ‘made perfect,’ and, forty days afterwards was ‘taken up to the right hand of power.”

7.—“They believe that Jesus died for the offences of sinners, and was raised again for the justification of believing men and women, and these obtain justification by faith in the obedience of faith.”

In a Letter to “the Rock” While Last in England

“‘Testimony’ says that if the manifestation of Jesus was in sinful flesh, then Jesus was a sinner, and desires to know if I mean to say this? Christadelphians mean to say neither more nor less than Paul saith. This unsurpassed teacher of the truth says that God sent His own Son in the likeness of sin’s flesh, which he declares was the same as ours. Compare Rom. 8:3, with Heb. 2:14–17. And he says, too, in Heb. 7:27: ‘He offered for his own sins and the people’s, when he once offered up himself.’ But what is to be understood by ‘his own sins?’ The sins committed by others and borne in his own body on the cross, as testified in 1 Pet. 2:24, saying ‘who his own self bare our sins in his own body to the tree,’ upon which ‘he became a curse for us.’ In the Mosaic and Christian systems, the unsinning victim is regarded as the sinner, in the sense of being the sin-bearer. Personally, Jesus was ‘holy, harmless, underfiled, and separate from sinners;’ if he had not been so, he would not have been fit for the sin-bearer of the world; the purpose of God being the condemnation of sin in the nature that transgressed in Eden, in the person of one who had himself committed no sin.”

Categorical Answers on the Subject a Year Before His Death

3rd.—”Was the flesh of Jesus from his birth by Mary pure, holy, spotless, undefiled? Answer: ‘No.’”

4th.—“Had he not been put to death violently, would he have lived for ever? Answer: ‘No.’”

5th.—“Did he stand in the same relation to ‘the law of sin and death’ as Adam did before he transgressed? Answer: ‘Answered above.’”

6th.—“Can a man be justified who believes the things implied in these questions concerning the nature of Jesus? Answer: ‘The Lord will settle this question at the judgment?’”

Two Years After His Death

And now, we are asked to believe that in all this the Dr. was mistaken. We altogether reject the suggestion, not because we have confidence in Dr. Thomas’s judgment (though we have that greatly); but because on the merits of the question itself, as shewn last month, the scripturalness and necessity of his view of the matter are abundantly evident. Least of all are we likely to consent to the suggestion at the bidding of a pen which writes its renunciation within a week of its owner’s easy perversion, under influences not difficult to be understood by such as look below the surface. We stand or fall with Dr. Thomas in the sense stated.—Editor.