Sinclair B. Ferguson and Derek W.H. Thomas: Ichthus: Jesus Christ, God’s Son, the Saviour. Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2018.
According to the New Testament, God requires us to know Christ, if we desire salvation. Very well, then, who is He? The authors provide a clear account of the identity of Jesus based upon the principal events of His life as presented in the Gospels.
At birth, Jesus was God incarnate—a status vehemently disputed by Jerusalem rabbis when He laid claim to it in their presence, some thirty years later. The rabbis demanded His execution, the penalty for blasphemy under Jewish law. Because they lived under Roman law, they could not themselves execute that penalty but instead prevailed upon the Roman governor to have Him crucified. Jesus’ death thus in a sense followed from His birth, but in a way unlike any other human being. No one had accused him of any illegal or sinful act prior to His alleged blasphemy; there was no evidence to suggest that He had been subject to ‘original sin,’ or the curse entailed by it, until the allegation of blasphemy that led to his execution.
To explain the Incarnation, the authors begin by citing the famous opening lines of the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word….” In this case, perhaps unique in the ancient world, ‘word’ or logos refers to a Person, not an idea or a faculty of the soul, and not simply an utterance. Whereas Matthew begins his account of Jesus with an account of Abraham and Luke begins with John the Baptist’s parents, “John begins with eternity,” to “the very first words of the Hebrew Bible.” “John is helping us understand creation. That creative speech of God described in Genesis chapter 1 was not simply a sound” but “a person”; “the entire created order has a personal, not an impersonal foundation.” What is more, the Word was with God; as the Son of God, Jesus was with His Father, capable of looking upon His Father and living, unlike any other human being. And the Word was God; that is, “He is uncreated,” a being “on the side of God, not on the side of creation,” with “the authority to bring us into the family of God.” At the same time, He is incarnate, ‘approachable’ or ‘viewable’ by human beings, unlike His Father. “If we know Christ the Logos then we know the one who has been from eternity, always is, and ever will be, face to face with the heavenly Father.” “This for John is the wonder of the incarnation. The one who was able to live ‘face to face’ with God in that holy atmosphere, and to gaze into the eyes of his Father, has assumed our flesh and come to live ‘face to face’ with us in our fallen world, in obedience to his Father.” Without the Incarnation, without the assumption of physical, human being by God, there could be no “substitute and sacrifice for human sinners.” “The Son of God became what he was not in order that we might become what we were not.” He came “as one person who functioned appropriately according to each of his two natures”—functioning “as the creating and sustaining Word” in His divine character to redeem creatures powerless to redeem themselves, yet experiencing weariness, thirst and hunger, calm and joy and sadness, amazement and sorrow, finally death on the Cross, in His human nature. “In the incarnation of the word, God himself was sovereignly at work to bring salvation” to human beings.
In so doing, not only His death but His life was a continual sacrifice. Human beings “have never truly and fully tasted or sensed how sinful sin is because it is so normal to us. Jesus, by contrast, saw how abnormal, distorting, ugly, and deeply rebellious it really.” God embodied must feel the difference between holiness and unholiness more than any other being. At the same time, by bringing the divine light of the Word to earth, among mere humans, God illuminates their intellectual and moral darkness, a darkness otherwise terminated only in the final darkness of death.
After His birth, His incarnation, the next major event in Jesus’ life is His baptism. Born of Mary’s sister, John the Baptist lived to denounce the Pharisees and Sadducees as a brood of vipers, in need of baptism as a sign of their repentance. More, “He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry,” a Person who will baptize you not with water but “with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” But before He does that, and to John’s astonishment (the full truth had not been revealed to the prophet), Jesus comes to be baptized by John. Why would the Son of God, infinitely superior to John, with no sins to repent, come to John for baptism?
“John was the first prophet to appear in Jerusalem or in its environs for four centuries,” the last of the type of prophets seen in the Old Testament. He attracted huge crowds who gathered to listen to his words. “A massive spiritual awakening seemed to be underway,” along the lines of similar ‘revivals’ which had occurred in the history of the Israelite nation. John’s baptism, “a baptism of confession of sin and repentance,” recalls the baptisms ordained for the conversion of Gentiles to Judaism. “Unclean by definition,” Gentiles “needed to be washed.” At the same time, John’s baptisms occurred at the River Jordan, where Israel had entered the Promised Land, where Elijah was last seen before ascending to Heaven. If John is the new Elijah, then he “the appearance and the message of the divinely appointed herald of the end of the age.” Ages end when God visits His righteous anger upon them, sending flood waters over the world or drowning the Egyptian army in the Red Sea.
But this only highlights the significance of Jesus. It does not explain why He would want to be baptized by a mere mortal, however divinely inspired. John quite reasonably asks, “I need to be baptized by you, and you come to me?” Jesus replies, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” What righteousness does the Son of God, of all Persons, need to fulfill?
The authors suggest that Jesus invokes Isaiah 53, where the prophet’s songs “describe and interpret the life and suffering of a figure simply described [by God] as ‘My servant.'” “By his knowledge,” the prophet sings, “shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.” If Jesus “came to be that Servant, to identify himself with us in our sin, and to become the one who would bear the iniquities of his people,” then Jesus thinks of John’s baptism as preliminary to taking on the sins of the humanity whose nature He has assumed. Since baptism is not only a cleansing ritual but a naming ritual, this baptism ‘names’ Jesus “among sinners,” counts Him in the census of covenant-breakers. The authors quote John Calvin: Jesus “willed in full measure to appear before the judgment seat of God his Father in the name and in the person of all sinners, being then ready to be condemned, inasmuch as he bore our burden.” Therefore, Jesus’ baptism is “an act of substitution.” “The Egyptians received the curse; but God’s people got the blessing. So it will be when our Lord’s symbolic baptism becomes a reality. The curse he bears is ours; the blessing we receive is his.” Jesus’ death “draws both the guilt and sting of sin,” while His resurrection is the act “through which we are raised into a new life altogether.”
Immediately after Jesus’ baptism, he is anointed by the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. The dove recalls the dove Noah released from the ark. The dove returned carrying an olive branch, proving that life on land had revived, signifying “that the judgment of God [on humanity] had passed and that a ‘new creation’ had begun.” The Holy Spirit is said to “hover” over the waters, perhaps an allusion to God’s hovering over the waters of chaos during the creation week. “Now, through Jesus’ identification with covenant-breakers, God is going to bring about not only the redemption and regeneration of individuals but something far grander even than that—a new creation altogether.” The Holy Spirit “has come to help” the Son, a human as well as divine Being, who has entered a new and far more dangerous time in His “life and ministry,” the “prolonged war” with Satan “for which he had been in preparation these past thirty years. “Until the end, even in his death,” Jesus “will be upheld by the Spirit.” While it is true that, qua divinity, Jesus would need no assistance whatever in displaying His power. But to do so would not accomplish this mission. “He would no longer be the second man, the last Adam,” “our representative,” the one who suffers for humanity’s sins in place of humanity. He would ‘only’ be God on earth, performing wonders.
Where is the Father? Right here, at least in His voice, which confirms, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” God the Father may utter these words “to confirm to the human mind of Jesus his identity as the second person of the Trinity.” The human mind needs such confirmation, as it will wonder, “how can this man be himself God?” In submitting to baptism by John the Baptist, Jesus obeys the Law of His Father and submits “to the Father’s plan” as the sacrificial substitute who “tak[es] the place of Adam and his posterity.” This means that we are not only pardoned for our sins, but that Jesus’ righteousness counts in our favor. Baptism is an act of justice, of righteousness, which clears the way for divine grace, which is far beyond justice. Among the Israelites, men sacrificed something they might have eaten, something that might have sustained their flesh, for the spiritual purpose of ‘getting right,’ realigning their souls, with God. Jesus will sacrifice His own human-all-too-human flesh, flesh never made to sin by His own divine character but baptized as if it had been. Baptism in obedience to the Father’s Law signifies His readiness to sacrifice that flesh in substitution for the sin-directed flesh of human persons.
Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness evidently parallels the Israelites’ forty years in the desert, Noah’s forty days and forty nights in the ark. The authors remark that Luke’s version of the Temptation differs from Matthew’s; Luke begins Jesus’ genealogy with Adam instead of Abraham. By calling attention to Jesus’ human ‘lineage,’ Luke wants his readers to notice that Jesus is the Second Man, the Last Adam. (Nietzsche satirizes this when presenting his own ‘Last Man,’ whom he regards as the culmination of Christian egalitarianism.) Luke sets “our Lord’s ministry within the cosmic context to which it belongs.” Having “entered the bloodline of Adam,” Jesus “is being led on to the front line to do battle against Satan,” but “this time—as Mark points out—not in a garden where the animals were named by and obedient to Adam, and where food and beauty abounded,” but “in a wilderness where there was neither food nor water, and where wild animals roamed.” Against Adam’s condemnation, defeat, and bondage in sin as a consequence of his disobedience, Jesus sets obedience, freedom, victory, and salvation. “This temptation narrative tells us that what Adam failed to do, Jesus has come to do. The image of God that was marred through Adam is now being repaired through Christ.” By entering Satan’s desolate territory, Jesus makes war against him, seizing his hostages, the sons of Adam. The temptation story calls attention to Jesus’ acts, not His ‘being.’ His incarnate Being enables Him to launch a counterattack on Satan, and win.
What is Satan’s strategy in response to Jesus? “Satan is not interested in tempting [Jesus’] deity, for he knows God cannot be tempted with sin”—what, indeed, would an all-powerful Being gain by contradicting Himself? “Rather he is focused on destroying the ministry that the Savior was sent to exercise.” Each of Satan’s temptations aims at getting Jesus to deny not His godhood but His manhood, the conduit (as it were) whereby He can take on the burden of humanity’s sins.
Satan first tempts Jesus by challenging Him to turn the stones that surround them into bread. Why is this a temptation? What is morally wrong with turning stones into bread? Nothing, in itself. Satan implies that Jesus has the ‘right’ to do so, in order to end His hunger. But it isn’t “because of any need he has for himself as the Son of God that Jesus is in the wilderness. He is there as the Second Man. Where Adam became disobedient by taking and eating, Jesus means to be obedient by not taking and by not eating,” by acting as “Adam in reverse.” Jesus is God, so He can perform the miracle, but what has He to prove to Satan, who already knows who He is? He is in the desert to humiliate Himself before the Father and thereby to redeem mankind, not to react proudly to Satan’s provocation and thereby to confirm it. Hence His reply, the authors observe: “Man shall not live by bread alone.” He is “here for man and therefore…must live as man“—not to use His divine powers as a means of relieving his all-too-human bodily desires. Satan lied to Eve, telling her that she and Adam will not die but live as gods; Jesus chooses to live as a man and to die as one because there is no use lying to the One who is the incarnate Word. “Where Adam sought exaltation, Jesus embraced humiliation.“
It is worth adding that by saying “Man does not live by bread alone,” Jesus points to one of the distinctive characteristics of human nature. God does not live by bread, at all. Neither do angels. Animals live by bread, only. Only man lives by bread, but not by bread alone; man alone by his nature combines material with rational and spiritual qualities. Jesus combines those qualities, too, but in a different way, remaining divine while being human.
Satan’s second temptation is ‘Worship me, and I will give you authority over all the kingdoms of this world,’ thereby offering Jesus the authority Adam had lost, without needing to endure crucifixion. Since Jesus can have authority over all the kingdoms of this world whenever He wants it by overthrowing Satan, impotent in the face of His power, the promise is empty. Satan’s offer amounts to an attempt to prevent Jesus from seizing Satan’s human subjects. Indeed, if the Son of God acceded to it, the Father might well punish Him for disobedience, as Adam was punished. Jesus would lose His authority over the world He created, and Satan might rule it a bit longer. But Jesus loves His Father and men, not Satan, and although He is harmless as a dove, he is even more prudent than a serpent, including the Serpent.
Satan finally challenges Jesus to throw himself down from the pinnacle of the temple. Again, the temptation or test consists of proving His deity. But Jesus “has not come to play in the world he has created, but in order to save it at great cost to himself.” Satan wants Jesus to tempt God, to do what Satan himself is doing, to perform an imitatio Satani. In refusing, Jesus “exposed the devil for what he really is behind his mask: the enemy of God, and at the same time the enemy of humanity.” In refusing, Jesus puts the lie to the liar. He will prove His divinity not in jumping off the temple, by falling, but by rising from the dead. He will prove His divinity on the Father’s terms, not Satan’s.
Before he does that, he must go not to the wilderness but to the mountaintop. Peter, John, and James accompany Him to the mountain to pray. There, Moses and Elijah appear before them, to be told by the Father that only Jesus is His Son, His Chosen One. Moses had brought the Law of God; Elijah had brought His prophecy. Jesus will fulfill both God’s Law and God’s prophecy. Jesus is transfigured, giving three of his disciples “a glimpse” of “the kingdom of glory to be ushered in by his return,” after His crucifixion and resurrection. “Peter said that they were ‘eyewitnesses of his majesty.'” John said that “Jesus was always ‘face to face with God,’ bathed from all eternity in his Father’s love,” “full of grace and truth.” Having seen Jesus as a man, they now see Him as the true Son of God, as divine.
Moses and Elijah appeared on the mountaintop to speak with Jesus about “the exodus which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem.” Moses knows that the exodus he had led from Egypt to the border of the Promised Land prefigured “a greater Exodus,” not from human tyranny but “from a deeper oppression under sin, Satan, and death.” In ascending from the dead, Jesus will lead His people to the holiest of promised ‘lands’—in Heaven, not on earth. By appearing to the Son, the prophets, and the apostles in the form of a cloud, the Father does something He has done before: during the first exodus, He had “manifested his presence” by the means of a cloud; he had done so when Moses met with God on Sinai; he had covered the tabernacle that way, and filled Solomon’s temple that way, also. “It is the Shekinah—the glory cloud of the presence of God coming down.” The men all fear it. The cloud “overshadows” them, as it had done to Mary “when he came to empower her at the conception of the Lord Jesus.” It may be that it will come at Calvary, too, when the sky darkens. “It is the physical expression of God’s presence in space and time inexorably fulfilling his purposes.” It is only after the Father has attracted their fearful attention that He speaks, telling them that Jesus and only Jesus is His Son. Jesus was born of a woman, but He is the Son of God. “If we are going to live” the Christian life and live it “well and to the glory of god, then Jesus alone must be the one who fills our horizon,” the authors conclude. Although “we have a thousand different needs,” “at the end of the day, there is only one need,” to “see the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, and to know” Him as the only one who truly offers salvation.
In their fifth, central chapter, the authors move to the garden at Gethsemane, where Jesus asks His Father not to send Him to the Cross but obeys when not relieved of that burden. His “spirit is willing,” but His “flesh is weak.” The ‘Man’ dimension of the Man-God can only shrink from the prospect of torture, scorn, and crucifixion. “This is the decisive moment,” the central event in Jesus’ life on earth—another decision in a garden, made in “the hour of the power of darkness,” in full realization of “what it would mean for him to be the Mediator between a Holy God and sinful humanity.” “Humanly speaking it is unhinging him”—the prospect of “enter[ing] into the unique horror of making atonement, of being someone who knew no sin but was made sin for others.” Moses had trembled at the presence of God. “But what he saw was God in covenant,” God self-restrained by His own guarantees. “What Jesus sees is the unmitigated wrath and anger of God unleashed against covenant-breakers,” with “no mercy,” fury descending on him as he “tak[es] the place and undergo[es] the curse due to ‘sinners in the hands of an angry God.'”
Not only as Man but also as God, Jesus must find crucifixion repellant. Having lived sinless, incarnate in a sinful world, was pain enough, “but to be reckoned sin—to ‘be made sin for us, who knew no sin’—surely his revulsion of that must have been total?” Yet “the will of the Son of God in his divine nature is exactly the same as the will of his Father,” there being “only one divine will.” Jesus’ decision is the supreme manifestation of self-sacrificing agapic love, the specifically Jewish and Christian form of love. When the Christian prays, “Thy will be done,” he aligns himself with the same will, but never so perfectly, and never at such a cost.
For their discussion of Christ’s Passion on the Cross, the authors turn to the Gospel of Mark. “For as many as twenty hours the Lord Jesus was subjected to unmitigated, relentless and ruthless shame, climaxing in the final exposure of the cross.” This was more than physical torture. The Being most deserving of honor was shamed by a cohort of Roman centurions, sneering at His nakedness and His agony. Being nailed to a cross is to be exhibited, held up as an example of what happens when you violate the law. Unknown to His torturers, He was indeed being held up as an example, the supreme example of sacrifice on behalf of those torturers, among whom all human beings have numbered, insofar as they really do sin. “Ecce homo, indeed. Behold the man, now dehumanized by men, that we who have been unmanned in sin might become truly human again.” The most courageous guardians of Rome, the glory of their time and place, not only utterly despise the Being who is their only real guardian, but they mar him “beyond human semblance,” unwittingly doing exactly what needed to be done, namely, to destroy the one example of perfect human nature since Adam’s fall into sin, so that God and not ‘humanity’ may become the example, the guide, the guardian of human conduct. His nakedness recalls the nakedness of Adam before Adam’s sin, when ‘Man’ or Adam was truly man as God intended him to be. At the same time, His agonized question, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?” is the last cry of the Last Man, the words of Man in his imperfection, loaded with sin.
On what grounds as Jesus been condemned to die? And why is it that those who condemn Him “recognize and acknowledge that he is in fact innocent”? The first charge is the charge of the rabbis, who accuse Him of blasphemy against God. The second charge is the charge of treason against Caesar in calling Himself a king. But “Jesus is not guilty of the religious court’s charge of blasphemy,” since the witnesses “cannot agree” on what they heard Him say. As for Caesar, the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, finds “nothing worthy of death in this man.” He yields to the clamor of the rabbis, thereby himself committing treason against Caesar, committing the crime Jesus was tried on, before the judgment of Rome. “Why, then, when he is innocent is he crucified?” Because He took on the guilt of all human beings, suffered punishment for “the charges of which we are all guilty before the judgment seat of God.” All human beings stand guilty of blasphemy, having “made ourselves, rather than God, the center of our universe.” All human beings are traitors, too, having “rebelled against [God’s] authority over us.” “He is being crucified for us.”
Upon His death, the curtain of the temple was torn from top to bottom. The curtain had separated the holy of holies, “the one room that represented the presence of God” on earth, from the rest of the world, from the unholy. The curtain separated Creator from creation. Only the Jewish High Priest could enter that room, only once a year, carrying the annual sacrifice. But now that the supreme sacrifice had been made, “no other sacrifice will ever be needed.” The Father, “not in sorrow, but in the welcome of the gospel, tore the veil that hid him from us and barred sinners from entering his holy presence.”
From Jesus’ crucifixion, the authors move to John 20:1-23, the account of His resurrection. The tomb is empty. That discovery “set in motion a change to everything—absolutely everything.” Among the many messianic movements in the decades that followed, only one survived, its Messiah alone having survived death according to some 500 witnesses. The Sanhedrin had warned Pontius Pilate that Jesus’ disciples might steal the body and claim it was resurrected—the rabbis of the major Jewish sect, the Sadducees, did not believe resurrection possible—but many saw the living Christ.
The first of these was among the humblest. The former prostitute, Mary Magdalene, could not have given legally admissible evidence in the courts of that time, under that regime. This, the authors argue, makes the account more likely to be true, since a fictional account more probably would cite a man as the first witness. Indeed, Mary Magdalene initially mistakes Jesus for a gardener, an unwitting allusion to Adam, the First Man. Her error is telling: “the Creator had become the Second Man, appointed to do the work which the first gardener, Adam, had so signally failed to do” by “replanting this fallen world and beginning a new creation that would eventually become a glorious garden.” She recognizes Him not by seeing but by hearing—rightly, since the sheep know their master by his voice (John 10:3). His first human body mutilated, He has remained in bodily human form. She reaches out to confirm His presence by touch, but Jesus tells her “not to hold on to him,” as “I have not yet ascended.” Resurrection is only the first part of Jesus’ exaltation; His “ascension to the right hand of his Father” would soon occur, and that is why Jesus must not suppose that he has “simply been resuscitated so that his former life can continue more or less as it was.”
Jesus appears to His disciples, greeting and blessing them with “Shalom“—Peace be with you. “The word signified wholeness, well-being, complete healing, integration; peace with God, peace with themselves, peace with each other, peace with creation.” Isaiah had prophesied that the Suffering Servant would endure “the chastisement that brought us peace.” Through the Holy Spirit, Jesus will give his disciples the authority to forgive or not to forgive—sharing with them a portion of His lordship. Luke 24:50-53 relates Jesus’ blessing of His disciples and His ascent to Heaven; Acts 1:1-11 records the disciples’ receipt of the authority, as witnesses of His ascension, to tell the world of it.
Jesus stayed with His disciples for six weeks after His resurrection. During that time, he taught them that he was not intending to restore the kingdom to Israel, as they had imagined, but that His destination was not Jerusalem but Heaven, where He “would be seated at the right hand of God” and “exercise all authority in heaven and earth, not merely over the Jewish people.” In so doing, He would never relinquish His embodiment. “The incarnation did not provide a merely temporary vehicle in which the Son of God was able to make a sacrifice for our sins” but His permanent body, in which He will reappear when the Last Day arrives. “He will come again in the same way he left—visibly, physically, bodily.” Bodily presence implies weight and force. “The ascension is about the kingship of Jesus,” His regime. Having “been in a prolonged and fierce battle” against Satan, God’s rival for rule, having “proved victorious,” He now “mount[s] his throne.” Such a visible triumph was familiar to Romans, as their victorious generals would return from the wars to a victory parade in the capital city. To prevent hubris, the triumphal procession would include a slave who accompanied the general in his chariot, repeating Homos es—you are a man and (by implication) not a god. “But this triumph,” Jesus’ triumph, “is different,” as this warrior really is God. His triumphal movement isn’t ‘horizontal,’ along the streets of Rome, but ‘vertical,’ an ascent to Heaven. Moreover, when Luke writes Christos kurios, Christ is Lord, he corrects the Romans’ practice of deifying their emperors.
Before that, Jesus teaches the disciples something else, that the Holy Spirit will come to them, “another Helper,” one who will never depart from them, one that will descend to them not ascend from them. This outpouring of the Holy Spirit occurred on the holiday of Pentecost, when Diaspora Jews gathered from around the world in Jerusalem. Feeling that holy Presence, they heard Peter’s explanation, that this was “the guarantee that Jesus had now ascended into the presence of the Father and had asked for the Spirit to be sent to the church,” as He had promised the disciples. Peter spoke to them in Hebrew, in one language, as if the curse of the destruction of the Tower of Babel had been reversed and mankind could now listen to one voice. Only “the convicting and converting power of the Holy Spirit” could do such a thing. As a result, “Christ’s Spirit is present with us, indwelling us and carrying out his mission of making the things of Christ known to us, and distributing his gifts among us.” In fulfilling this promise to the disciples, Jesus strengthens Christians’ faith in the fulfillment of His still greater promise of return.
“The second coming is about Christ himself.” In his letter to the Thessalonians, Paul addresses the worries of Church members who wonder what will happen to Christians who die before Christ’s return. Their initial hope that He would return quickly, during their lifetimes, had been falsified. (For one thing, Jesus had said that He wouldn’t return until the Gospel had been preached “in all the world,” giving all human beings a chance to hear and to respond to it.) Meanwhile, will the Christian dead “miss out on the blessing of the second coming”?
Paul reassures them, pointing to the rule of Christ over His Church as a regime. “The gospel message is that the kingdom has already arrived in Jesus Christ, although it is not yet consummated (hence we continue to pray “Your kingdom come”). Christians are its citizens here and now. ‘The gospel of the kingdom’ is the only gospel there is.” As for the timing of His return to earth ‘in the flesh,’ He explicitly stated, “It is not for you to know” (Acts 1:7). Instead of wasting time in speculation, Christians should live “in the light of the possibility that Jesus could come back within our lifetime.” Out of sight, out of mind, as the saying goes; living as if He will return soon, in the confidence that our salvation doesn’t depend upon whether or not he does, will prove a good way to keep the Ruler of the Christian regime consciously present in our minds throughout our lives.
How will we know when He does return? For one thing, a trumpet will sound: in Jesus’ time, the trumpet was the herald of the arrival of the ruler; the trumpet called soldiers to battle; the trumpet proclaimed the Year of Jubilee, “when all debts and all bondage came to an end”; prophets had described the trumpet sound as the warning of “impending judgment.” “The ‘last trumpet’ functions in all these ways,” above all as a proclamation of “the beginning of an eternal jubilee, in which the Lord of glory will bring in the day of eternal joy.”
Although a sound will herald Jesus’ arrival, He will be seen. The main terms associated with His return—epiphaneia, apokalupsis, parousia—all “suggest visibility.” More, He will see in addition to being seen, and “His gaze will cause a reflection of himself to become visible in his people.” The metamorphosis of their souls, already initiated by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, invisibly, will become manifest in their bodies. They will “become like him.”
Then what consolation has the dying Christian? “For the believer the process of dying may be a trial, a sore ideal, a difficult stage in the journey to the celestial city. But Christ has drawn the sting of death” by making it into “the gateway of life.” The metamorphosis of the living bodies of Christians will be paralleled even more miraculously by the resurrection of dead bodies—many of them now reduced to their elements. “No matter how disintegrated they may have become, he will regenerate these bodies marked by humiliation so that they will become like his body of glory.” What has disintegrated will then be integrated into the body of Christ as part of the politeuma of God’s regime.
Jesus Christ is the Second Man, having shared in the death inflicted upon Man for Man’s sin, and having suffered for Man’s sin, taking Man’s just punishment for him. Jesus Christ is also the Last Adam, having been resurrected, conquering death, and uniting His people with Him in His Kingdom then, now, and especially in the future, for eternity.
The authors title their book Ichthus, a reference to the familiar Christian symbol of the fish, which dates to the earliest years of the Church. This may have been a way for one Christian to signal his identity to another, during the many years of persecution under the Roman Empire, the rival regime at that time. According to a long tradition, the letters spell out an anagram meaning “Jesus Christ is the Son of God and Savior.” In writing this clear statement of what that means, Ferguson and Thomas provide a straightforward account of the core principles of the Christian regime, of what the rule of God is for.
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