Q21. Who is the Redeemer of God’s elect?
A. The only Redeemer of God’s elect is the Lord Jesus Christ, who, being the eternal Son of God, became man, and so was, and continueth to be, God and man in two distinct natures, and one person, for ever.
We will divide this answer under three heads: 1. the only Redeemer; 2. the Incarnation; and 3. the Hypostatic Union. A key word that runs through this question and answer is the word “necessity.” All classical theology has been very careful to distinguish between kinds of necessity at this point. The “need” here was not on God’s part—considered in himself—but on the part of the plan of redemption freely decreed. Turretin explained it this way,
“The question does not concern a simple and absolute necessity on the part of God for God could (if he had wished) leave man no less than the Devil in his destruction. Rather the question concerns a hypothetical.”1
This distinction that we might call one of absolute necessity and consequent necessity, was observed also by Aquinas, in asking “Whether it was necessary for the restoration of the human race that the Word of God should become incarnate?” He replies,
“A thing is said to be necessary for a certain end in two ways. First, when the end cannot be without it, as food is necessary for the preservation of human life. Secondly, when the end is attained better and more conveniently, as a horse is necessary for a journey.”2
He denies this of the first way and affirms it of the second.
The Only Redeemer
How does the answer start? THE ONLY REDEEMER OF GOD’S ELECT. Why? Because the previous answer (Q20) had ended out with the covenant of grace being found in a Redeemer.
“For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5).
He is called LORD (kurios) because he is the Master of, and Sovereign over, all that there is. He is called JESUS because “he will save his people from their sins” (Mat. 1:21). He is called CHRIST (Christos) because he anointed to be King over both the church and the world, since in the new heavens and new earth, these are not divorced but united as one realm.
The necessity of Christ to become man is wrapped up in salvation. Other hypothetical designs of the Incarnation have always been proposed—Irenaeus’ did so without the motive of heresy, and in a way not excluding the necessity of atonement. As he said in his own words: “If the flesh did not need to be saved, the word of God would by no means have been made flesh.”3 Socinians proposed a hypothetical incarnation so as to undermine the orthodox doctrine of the atonement.
“And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
“Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’” (Jn. 14:6).
The Incarnation
In speaking of the Word made flesh, both the deity and the humanity of Christ must be established before speaking about the union of the two natures. So, it says BEING THE ETERNAL SON OF GOD. So we will start where John started in his Gospel prologue:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (Jn. 1:1-3).
He is called “the Christ, who is God over all” (Rom. 9:5). In this way, the Lordship of the Son extends beyond his mediatorial role, as Turretin said: “If Christ was not to be incarnate before the consideration of sin, the church would not have been without a head … He would have been its head (no more than of the angels) not in respect of humanity, but by the right of divinity and creation.”4 But this gives us the logic of the relationship between Christ’s deity and the covenant of grace.
We should never forget the basics of establishing that deity in the first place. There are several different ways that the New Testament teaches the deity of Christ. There is:
(1) divine worship offered to Jesus (Jn. 5:23, 12:41, 20:28, Mat. 28:17, Phi. 2:10-11, Heb. 1:6, Rev. 5:12-13);
(2) divine attributes used to describe Jesus (Mat. 11:27, 28:18, Jn. 8:12, 9:5, 11:25, 14:6);
(3) divine names given to Jesus (Jn. 1:4, Mat. 28:20, Rev. 1:8, 19:11, 21:6, 22:13);
(4) divine actions performed by Jesus (Jn. 1:3, 5:20, 29, Mk. 2:7, 1 Cor. 8:6, Col. 1:16-20, Jude 5);
(5) the direct claims of Jesus (Jn. 8:24, 58, 10:30, 14:9); and
(6) The direct claims of his apostles (Jn. 1:1-3, 18, Rom. 9:5, Ti. 2:13, Heb. 1:3, Phi. 2:6, Col. 2:9, 1 Jn. 5:20).
But how does John continue in that prologue? “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (Jn. 1:14).
So the Catechism answer goes on that God the Son BECAME MAN, AND SO WAS, AND CONTINUETH TO BE. We will wait until the next question to get into the intricacies of the Incarnation; for now we simply establish that Christ is as truly man as he is truly God.
Two verses that will be relevant for next week, the Westminster Divines included here because they are relevant here as well. Thinking about the fact that the Word became flesh, for many Christians, begs the question why the Word became flesh. One advantage of Reformed Covenant Theology is that that rationale has already been built in. And it isn’t just two texts—Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15—but listen to Paul again.
“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal. 4:4-5).
Here we have God’s providence bringing about the miracle of the Incarnation. But what else? We also see in the references to being “born under woman” and “under law,” the rationale of the representative Man being put in the place of those he is redeeming.
Even the prooftext cited from Luke’s account of the nativity gets into this necessity.
“And the angel answered her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God’” (Lk. 1:35).
Again, yes, there is the supernatural emphasis, but we also see here a “therefore.” In other words, because it is the Holy Spirit that causes the formation of the human Christ, therefore he is holy in his humanity. So the Scriptures everywhere give us ground for what we have seen in all of the logic of the covenants. Dabney helps us see the circle of that logic extending from the nature of God to the nature of the covenants to the nature of this solution in the Redeemer. He says,
“The intrinsic righteousness of the rules imposed on man in the Covenant of Works, as being precisely what they ought to have been; and the immutability of God’s nature, show that whoever came forward to be their surety, must expect to have to undertake precisely what was incumbent on them in that covenant.”5
Two premises—divine immutability and the righteousness of the rules in the first covenant—that if the premises are accepted, the need for exactly such a Redeemer follows.
The Hypostatic Union
The term literally means “union” of the “person” (hypostasis). But this is a very profound concept that requires going beyond the label. The Chalcedonian Creed confesses the Son of God as being, “in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ.”
If anyone should ask why the Westminster Divines focused only two questions on such deep mysteries as are contained in the doctrine of Christ, I would reply that it was because they were not attempting to be novel and stood in the great tradition of Nicene and Chaledonian orthodoxy. They said enough to reaffirm. So the language here is GOD AND MAN IN TWO DISTINCT NATURES, AND ONE PERSON, FOR EVER. If anyone was novel here, it was the views of Rome (and others) who falsely applied what is known as the communicatio idiomatum. So let me explain that.
This term is Latin for the “communication” or “sharing” of the properties. Different traditions will debate how to apply this to various issues, but at its core it implies that (1) whatever is true of either nature (divine or human) may be said, in a real sense, of the whole Person of the Son, so long as (2) each nature remains unconfused with the other.
A biblical example is Acts 20:28. God does not bleed, yet Paul speaks of God purchasing the church “with his own blood.” Now how was this misapplied? We will come to this when we arrive at the section on the Lord’s Supper; but in simple terms, the doctrine of Transubstantiation, among other things, asserts a miracle of the body and blood of our Lord which cannot be the case of the human nature, but which no one would assert of the divine. And yet a divine property is nevertheless brought in to apply to the human nature.
When Paul says, “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Col. 2:9), he does not mean by “fullness,” that the divine attributes, whether omnipresence or immensity, or any other, is being confused with the human nature. It is rather speaking to the union of that body, true human with true God.
And then how does the answer end? FOR EVER. Here is the punchline.
“The former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office, but he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7:23-25).
The prooftext for the Catechism cites verses 24 and 25, but verse 23 is necessary for contrast to the merely mortal priests. It is just like in the words of the Nicene Creed—for us and for our salvation. The Person of Christ is utterly foundational to the work of Christ; and so much of why we study the mystery of the Incarnation and the Hypostatic Union is precisely to come to appreciate what kind of a Savior we needed and that we in fact have.
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1. Turretin, Institutes, II.13.3.14.
2. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Pt.III. Q.1, Art.2
3. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, V.14.
4. Turretin, Institutes, II.13.3.10.
5. Dabney, Systematic Theology, 435-36.
