There is an aspect of the incarnation that needs further consideration because of its far-reaching implications.
When the Lord Jesus came, He came not only to reveal God the Father and to show what God is like, but also to be, or in one sense, to become, the perfect Man. He had to succeed where Adam had failed, to be victorious where he had been defeated. Jesus had to show forth a new kind of man, a different humanity from that of which Adam was the head.
Adam never entered into Gods purpose for man. In the Tree of Life, he had been offered eternal life, a life-union with God, but he did not receive it, so he did not become a true man. Gods Ideal Man is seen only in Jesus of Nazareth. In Him first, and in Him alone perfectly, has true manhood been seen on the earth.
God measures everything by the Lord Jesus, not by unfallen Adam, and we must do the same. Gods purpose for man was never realized in Adam. Only Jesus could be crowned.
The Lord Jesus is the unique God-Man, but it is significant that His preferred title for Himself was the Son of Man. This underlines the point we are making, that He came to achieve Gods purpose in mans creation, to be the True Man, here on earth, in history, time and space.
This explains some passages which seem strange at first sight, such as,
Who in the days of His flesh though He was a son learned obedience by the things which He suffered; and having been made perfect, became the author and source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him.
Though He was without sin, He gained the perfection of manhood through the testing discipline of life, through His suffering in a fallen world. Through all the trials of life and attacks of Satan, He lived in obedient dependence upon His Father. He received a kind of manhood unseen on the earth, before or since, in its perfection, and yet seen in some lesser degree in every truly born-again believer.
The significance of His transfiguration, which took place about six months before the cross, lies in this, that He had Himself reached Gods goal for man. It was not a demonstration of His Deity but rather that He, as Man, was now the perfect vehicle for the glory of God to shine through. His face shone as the sun - the glory of God was seen in the face of Jesus Christ. Here, on the mount, we see perfected manhood glorified and Gods purpose in mans creation achieved in His Son. God now had One Man in whom His Ideal was realized. At this point Jesus Himself could have gone straight to heaven. His ascension could have taken place immediately, as far as He was concerned, but He had been sent to open a way for sinners. He came down from the mount to accomplish an exodus for us, to bring many sons to glory, so that we could also be with Him. Only if the One Son died, could there be many sons.
Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
In considering the implications of this for us, we must be clear that sanctification is not only a matter of producing in us the perfect character of Christ, but also of remaking us so that we live as He lived. His truly human life was lived on a different basis and in a different way from the way in which we naturally live. Let us mention two things:-
1. He drew His resources from the Father.
I live because of the Father I can of myself do nothing
It is clear that He did not depend directly upon nature or the natural human resources of this world for His needs, but upon His Father, even though His Father usually used natural means to meet these needs. In His temptation, after fasting for forty days and nights, He refused to turn stones into bread. He would not move from His position of obedient dependence to save Himself. He knew His Father would provide. There were times when He continued all night in prayer to God. He would normally eat and sleep, for this was His Fathers will, but He did not need to do so if His Father chose, on occasion, to overrule nature. Or course, it would be futile for us to try to copy Him - His life can only be reproduced in us by the Holy Spirit. His resources were in the Father. But we tend to take the natural way for granted. We look to nature first, as a matter of course. We do not look to, consult, and trust the Father for everything. All too often our prayers are also mere formality. We do not live as Jesus did.
2. Jesus sought His Fathers direction in everything. He always acted in obedience to Heaven. He made no decisions or choices without reference to His Father. He was in constant fellowship with His Father, constantly about His Fathers business. He wanted no private life apart from the Father. His spiritual life was not part-time, as it is so often with us. The whole of His everyday life was lived in touch with His Father.
The Lord Jesus was not governed in any way by men or by the ideas and ways of this world, but by His Father alone. His whole life was governed and sustained from Heaven that was His position with His Father. For the first thirty years, this meant a very ordinary life in Nazareth, helping to bring up the family and working in the family business. This was nothing sensational, but it was His Fathers will as necessary preparation for the three years of public service that followed, culminating in His greatest task, the Cross.
It is important to understand the significance of the thirty hidden years in Nazareth. The way of life set before us by the Lord Jesus embraces the whole of life. He was as much in touch with the Father and doing His will at the carpenters bench and helping with the family chores, as He was preaching to the crowds and feeding the 5,000. We tend to separate private life and serving the Lord, and to place what we call full-time service on a superior plane, imagining that anything less is somehow second-best. We think that the more Christian activities we are engaged in the more the Lord will be pleased. The thirty hidden years show how wrong we are. Every Christian should be full-time for the Lord, all day and every day, in everything they do, living in the center of His will, in fellowship with Him. This is all that matters.
This then was the Lord Jesus way of living. Of course, He was sinless and therefore had perfect communion with His Father. Yet as we abide in Him and the Holy Spirit has unhindered sway in us, we may grow up into this kind of communion with the Father.
For you died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.