Why Jesus must be both God and Man
By Watchman Nee
Suppose there
are three persons, A, B, and C. C has sinned, and A asks B to die for C. In so
doing, A is able to express his love for C, and C is also able to answer the demand
of the law, but all this will be rather unjust to B. I have sinned, and God causes
Christ to die for me. Thus is manifested the love of God toward me, and in addition
I have met the requirement of the law. Yet will it not be highly unrighteous to
Christ? Only when Christ is both man and God at the same time can it be truly
just.
First of all, then, we need to know what is forgiveness. To forgive
presupposes a loss to the forgiver through the offense of the forgiven. For instance,
if someone owes you ten dollars and you forgive him, it automatically means that
you suffer the loss of ten dollars. In God's plan of redemption, Christ should
not be a third party. If He be a third party, God would be being unjust to Christ
since Christ has no sin and hence is not subject to death. The Bible tells us
that men have sinned and God is offended.
So what is involved is the relation
between God and men. To ask a third party to die as a substitute may perhaps fulfill
the law's demand on men as well as fulfill God's righteousness, but this will
be most unjust to that third party. Only because Christ is simultaneously God
and man can this substitution be termed just. "Wherewith shall I come before Jehovah,
and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt-offerings,
with calves a year old? will Jehovah be pleased with thousands of rams, or with
ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my first-born for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" (Micah 6.6,7) Here it is stated
that if we sin against God, it is futile to offer calves and rams. All kinds of
offerings are of no avail, not even the firstborn ones of our bodies. Christ,
therefore, must be (the same) God who is himself being offended. For only in this
way will He not become a third party. Because Christ is God, the work of redemption
is justified. Stating it conversely, since the work of redemption is just, Christ
must be God, since only the offended can ever forgive the offender. Who can ever
then say that forgiveness is unrighteous? Because Christ is God and He is the
One being sinned against, He is therefore able to forgive us.
Consider
these two verses: "The commandment, which was unto life, this I found to be unto
death" (Rom. 7.10); "The wages of sin is death" (6.23). These passages cause us
to see that unless a person keeps all the laws perfectly he must die. In order
to make us live, the Lord himself needs to suffer the penalty of sin, which is
death. Nevertheless, it is said in 1 Timothy 6.16 that God "[alone] hath immortality";
and hence, for Christ to die as our substitute He must simultaneously be man.
And in His body as a man He died for us. So that we can rightly say this: He is
God, therefore He has the possibility of saving men.
Watchman Nee
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