Church of the Holy City

This Is My Beloved Son

This Is My Beloved Son
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
January 10, 2010

Isaiah 43:1-11 Luke 3:15-22

Our New Testament passage this morning is about the baptism of Jesus. For me, this underscores just how human Jesus was. Like us, Jesus went to John in order to be baptized at the start of His ministry. The Bible tells us that Jesus was 30 years old when He was baptized.
But Jesus’ humanity is not the whole story. After He was baptized, heaven opened up and a voice was heard saying, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.” This divine voice tells us that Jesus was more than an ordinary human. Fully human, indeed, but more than human, too. For Christians, Jesus is God incarnate, Immanuel, or the Son of God.
But Jesus’ divine origins should not obscure his full humanity. In Jesus Christ, God fully reconciled Himself to the human condition. He lived the same kind of human life that each of us lives. Swedenborg emphasizes this point:
God assumed the Human according to His Divine order. . . . Now because God descended and because He is order itself, . . . in order that He might become actually Man, He could not but be conceived, carried in the womb, brought forth, brought up, and successively gain knowledges, and by them introduced into intelligence and wisdom. Therefore as to the Human He was an infant as an infant, a boy as a boy, and so on; with this difference only, that He accomplished that progress more quickly, more fully, and more perfectly than others (TCR 89).
So Jesus had to pass through the same stages of life that we pass through as we grow up spiritually. Thus Jesus was baptized as we are baptized, as part of his development.
But exactly who was Jesus? How are we to understand the Biblical language that calls Him “Son of God?” For most Christians, Jesus and God are two separate persons. (That they are of one essence is a mystery, and often ignored.) This makes it easier to deal with the Son of God language. But we all know that there is only one God. Deuteronomy 6:4 reads, “Hear, O Israel, Yahweh our God, Yahweh is one.” If God is one, then thinking of two persons when we think of God is highly problematic. And we are back to the Biblical question, “What does Son of God mean?”
Indeed, that is a gigantic question. What would being a son mean with God as a Father? Clearly, the ordinary process by which an egg is fertilized would not apply. Mary was a virgin. In human reproduction, the male seed is an emission from his body. To that extent, the seed is just a tiny, tiny aspect of male anatomy. And the child that is begotten is quite a separate being from the father, although hereditary traits are still passed down.
Well, then, how would God beget a child? I don’t think that we can know the answer to this immense question. But we do have a scriptural passage rich in suggestion. Here, I’m going to have to indulge in speculation. And my remarks will best be taken as suggestions for your own reflection and speculation. In Luke 1:35 the Angel Gabriel tells Mary, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” I think that it is important to note here, that the Gospel records Mary’s consent. She says, “I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said” (Luke 1:38). The power of the Most High will overshadow Mary, says the angel Gabriel. This tells us that God’s power will impregnate Mary. This is not like the semi-divine births of the Greek and Roman gods. In Classical mythology, the gods took on mortal forms and impregnated women in the ordinary human fashion—that is when they didn’t assume the form of a bull or a swan as some of the gods did. For the Christian idea of God’s Son, we imagine God’s power directly infusing Mary’s egg with divine life. The union between God and Man would be very intimate, with God’s power forming the soul of Mary’s egg.
In Swedenborg’s theology, we are told that God is Jesus’ soul. So by Son of God, he understands God’s human body. The doctrine states that Jehovah God descended and took on a human body in Jesus. “By the Lord the Redeemer we understand Jehovah in the Human; for that Jehovah Himself descended and assumed the human that He might accomplish redemption . . .” (TCR 81). The Bible tells us quite clearly that Jehovah is our savior, and also that there is no other God than Him. We heard that in this morning’s Bible reading, “I am Jehovah, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior (Isaiah 43:3). . . . Before me no God was formed, nor will there be one after me. I, even I, am Jehovah, and apart from me there is no savior (43:10-11).” How are we to take the words, “Apart from me there is no savior?” We think of Jesus as our savior. And, indeed, He is our savior. The only way to reconcile this apparent conflict is to understand Jesus as the human form of Jehovah God. As Swedenborg puts it, “By the Lord the Redeemer we understand Jehovah in the Human; for that Jehovah Himself descended and assumed the human that He might accomplish redemption . . .” (TCR 81). So for Swedenborg, the power of Jehovah God is the soul of Jesus. And Jesus is the body of Jehovah God. An ancient Christian creed says this. It is called the Athanasian Creed, and part of it goes as follows:
Our Lord Jesus Christ is God and Man; and although He be God and Man, still there are not two, but there is one Christ: He is one, because the Divine took the Human to itself; yea, He is altogether one, and He is one person; for as the and body is one man, so God and Man is one Christ.
By understanding Jesus as the body of Jehovah, and Jehovah as the soul of the Christ, we preserve both the full divinity of Jesus and the oneness of God.
But when we say that Jesus is the body of God, we are referring to the fully glorified and resurrected Jesus Christ. Jesus became fully united to God over time and according to the same process by which we are spiritually reborn. As Jesus grew spiritually, he approached the Father and the Father approached the Christ until the two became fully one.
The Lord [by the acts of redemption] united Himself to the Father, and the Father Himself to Him also according to Divine order. That the union was so effected by the acts of redemption is because the Lord wrought them from His Human; and as He so wrought, so the Divine, which is meant by the Father, came nearer, assisted, and cooperated, and at length They so conjoined Themselves that They were not two, but one; and this union is glorification (TCR 97).
There were times in Jesus life when His humanity was apparently distant from His divine origins. Then, He spoke to God as if to someone else. This is especially evident on the cross, when Jesus says, “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me.” But there are other places in the Bible where the relationship between Jesus and God are intimately one. This can be seen in the transfiguration on the mountain top (Matthew 17), and in John, where Jesus says, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (John 14:10). One could hardly say more plainly that God is Jesus soul, than by saying the Father is in me.
But this union with God and Jesus was a process. It followed the same process according to which we are reborn spiritually. Earlier I read a quote from Swedenborg saying that Jesus approach the Father and the Father approached Jesus so that they became one. In the same manner, we approach God and God approaches us. However, we will never become one with God as Jesus did. But the process is the same human process that Jesus underwent on earth. Swedenborg writes,
. . . the Divine order is that man should prepare himself for the reception of God; and as he prepares himself, so God enters into him as into His habitation and house; and that preparation is made by means of knowledges concerning God and the spiritual things of the church, and thus by intelligence and wisdom; for it is a law of order that so far as man approaches and draws near to God, God approaches and draws near to man, and conjoins Himself with him in his interiors (TCR 89).
It is our role to prepare a place for God by learning spiritual truths that point us in the direction of Godliness. There are many ways by which we are taught God’s ways and the life He would have us lead. But we need to act as if by own power and our own free will to bring God into our hearts and lives. God is all the while subtly working the acts of redemption in us. God stands at the door and knocks. All we need do is open it. And we open the door by learning Godliness, by learning what is good, and by living in every aspect of our lives the precepts we learn.
What I have been talking about this morning is called Christology. It is among the most complex and difficult aspects of Christian theology. Perhaps it will be enough for us to remember Christ’s full humanity, and to follow His footsteps into union with God. Then we will be called children of God, as John 1 puts it. Then Jesus will be in us, even as the Father is in Him.