But of course He was born through Adam's posterity, Mary. The gospel of Matthew declares Jesus to be descended from David and Abraham both of whom traced their ancestors all the way back to Adam.
Ver. 3.
— For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, and sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin condemned sin in the flesh:
This was the remedy which God provided; therefore it was the best remedy. It was the highest possible remedy; therefore there could be no other. It would be inconsistent with infinite wisdom to employ means greater than are necessary in order to accomplish an end. The law was strong to perform its own office, — that is, to justify all by whom it was perfectly obeyed. Its weakness was through the flesh, — that is, the guilt and corruption of our nature. The weakness is not in the law; it is in man.
God sending His own Son. — God sent His Son to do that which the law could not do. He sent Him in consequence of His great love to His people, 1
John 4:9; and as the accomplishment of His Divine purpose,
Acts 4:28. The object, then, of Christ’s mission was not merely that of a messenger or witness; it was to effect the salvation of guilty sinners in the way of righteousness. He did what the law could not do. The law could justify those only by whom it was observed; but it could not justify or save those who should violate even the least of its commands. But Christ Jesus both justifies and saves the ungodly.
His own son — Christ was God’s own Son in the literal sense. It is on this supposition only that the sending of Him is a manifestation of infinite love to men. There is no more appearance of any figurative meaning in the use of this appellation, when ascribed to Jesus Christ, than there is when Isaac is called the son of Abraham. He is here emphatically called not only the Son of God, but the Son of Himself, or His own Son — His very Son.
Godhead of Christ explain the passages that assert His sonship as referring to His incarnation. That the phrase
Son of God imports the Divine nature of Jesus Christ, there can be no doubt,
John 5:18.
Adam is called the son of God because he was created by the immediate exercise of Divine power. The elect angels are called the sons of God on account of their creation, and the greatness of their condition; believers, by the right of their adoption and regeneration; but none except the Messiah is called the Only-begotten of the Father. These words, ‘I have begotten Thee,’ are indeed applied to Jesus Christ,
Acts 13:33, not with respect to His eternal generation, but to His resurrection and establishment in the priesthood; and import that He was thus made known to be the Son of God, as it is said,
Romans 1:4, that He was declared to be the Son of God with power, by His resurrection from the dead. The exaltation of Jesus Christ, whether in His office of Mediator or in sovereign glory, is the authoritative declaration of the Father that He was His Son, His only-begotten Son; and this is signified in the second Psalm. There, the elevation of Jesus Christ to the sovereign dominion of the world is spoken of. ‘I have set My King upon My holy hill of Zion.’ It is as to the act of His elevation that this declaration is made. ‘I will declare the decree: The Lord hath said unto Me, Thou art My Son; this day have I begotten Thee.’ Thus, according to the usual style of Scripture, things are said to be done when they are declared or publicly manifested. When it is said, ‘This day have I begotten Thee, the eternal Godhead of the Savior, which had been before concealed, was brought to light and fully discovered.
In the likeness of sinful flesh. — Jesus Christ was sent, not in the likeness of flesh, but in the flesh. He was sent, however, not in sinful flesh, but in the
likeness of sinful flesh. Nothing can more clearly prove that the Lord Jesus Christ, though He assumed our nature, took it without taint of sin or corruption. To His perfect holiness the Scriptures bear the fullest testimony. ‘He knew no sin.’ ‘The prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in Me.’ He was ‘holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.’
His absolute freedom from sin was indispensable. As God becoming manifest in the flesh, He could not unite Himself to a nature tainted with the smallest impurity. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, and
did not spring from Adam by "ordinary generation"; and, not belonging to his covenant, had no part in his sin. His freedom from sin,
original and actual was absolutely necessary, in order that He should be offered as ‘a Lamb without blemish and without spot,’ so that He might be the truth of His types, the legal sacrifices, which it was expressly provided should be free from all blemish; thus distinctly indicating this transcendent characteristic of Him who was to be the one great sacrifice.
If the flesh of Jesus Christ was the likeness of sinful flesh, there must be a difference between the appearance of sinful flesh and our nature, or flesh in its original state when Adam was created. Christ, then, was not made in the likeness of the flesh of man before sin entered the world, but in the likeness of his fallen flesh. Though He had no corruption in His nature, yet He had all the sinless infirmities of our flesh. The person of man, in his present state, may be greatly different from what it was when Adam came from the hand of his Creator. Our bodies, as they are at present, are called ‘the bodies of our humiliation,’
Philippians 3:21. Jesus Christ was made in man’s present likeness.
And for sin. — The reason of the mission of our Lord Jesus Christ into the world — of His incarnation and humiliation — was the abolition of sin, its destruction, both as to its guilt and power. The same expression occurs,
1 Peter 3:18, ‘Christ also hath once suffered for
sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.’ It is sin that is the cause of separation from God; and by its removal reconciliation is made, and peace restored.
Condemned sin in the flesh. — Here, by the flesh is meant, not the body of Jesus Christ only, but His human nature. In this sense the word flesh is used where it is said, ‘the Word was made flesh,’ — that is to say, was made man, and took our nature, composed of body and soul. The nature and the person who suffered must also be distinguished. Respecting the person, it is Jesus Christ, God and man; as to the nature in which He suffered, it is in the flesh. Of the person we can say that it is God, as the Apostle says that God hath purchased the Church with His own blood, and consequently that His suffering was of infinite value, since it is that of an infinite person; and this is the more evident, since Jesus Christ is Mediator in both His natures, and not in His human nature only. For if this were so, His suffering would be finite, since His human nature, in which alone He could suffer, by which He offered His sacrifice, was in itself only finite; and if He had been Mediator only as to His human nature — which, however, could not be, as He represents both God and man — He could not have been the Mediator of the Old Testament, when He had not taken the human nature. And as it is necessary that, in regard to His person, we should consider Jesus Christ suffering, it is also necessary that we consider that it was in the flesh that He suffered, — that is to say, in our nature, which He took and joined personally to the Divine nature. In this we may admire the wisdom of God, who caused sin to be punished and destroyed in the human nature, in which it had been committed.
Condemned sin. — Condemnation is here taken for the punishment of sin.
God punished sin in Christ’s human nature. This is the method that God took to justify sinners. It was God who, by His determinate counsel and foreknowledge,
Acts 2:23, punished sin by inflicting those sufferings on Christ of which men were only the instruments. Sin had corrupted the flesh of man, and in that very flesh it was condemned. The guilt and punishment of sin are eminently seen in the death of Christ. Nowhere else is sin so completely judged and condemned. What must be its demerit, if it could be atoned for by nothing but the death of the Son of God? and what can afford clearer evidence of God’s determination to punish sin to the utmost extent of its demerit, than that He thus punished it even when laid on the head of His only-begotten Son.
In all this we see the Father assuming the place of judge against His Son, in order to become the Father of those who were His enemies. The Father condemns the Son of His love, that He may absolve the children of wrath.
Later we will finish this post~part one
