The Hypostatic Union/Kenosis; 2 John 7
2 John 1:7 NASB
“For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge
Jesus Christ {as} coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the
antichrist.”
These deceivers had denied
the true humanity of Jesus Christ. What Jesus was doing in the incarnation was
showing that in His humanity, born perfect as Adam was created, He was going to
overcome the testings whereas Adam had failed. In order for the testings and
the solutions to be equivalent He had to handle it in His humanity, and he did
it by relying upon God the Holy Spirit. That does not mean that Jesus didn’t
perform certain things from His deity. He did perform many miracles out of His
own deity in order to demonstrate that He was fully God. If Jesus didn’t do
anything out of His deity then He would have given no evidence that he was God.
God never makes a claim anywhere in Scripture, Old Testament of New, without
backing it up with empirical evidence. When Jesus changed the water into wine
He was demonstrating that He is the creator. At the end of His ministry when
the Roman guards came to arrest Him they sought to grab Him in order to control
the situation. There was a burst of His glory and they just fell down, knocked
down and knocked out. That came from His deity. Jesus Christ did a number of
things from His deity but they were not to solve problems related to His
spiritual life—handling testing and temptation—they had to do with
demonstrating who He was as the qualified God-Man to go to the cross to pay the
penalty for our sins.
Anselm lived during the time
of Charlemagne. He was a famous theologian because of one particular work that
he wrote called “Why the God-Man.” In that he writes as a conclusion:
“Therefore,
none but God can make this satisfaction
[the importance of the atonement as a satisfaction. None but someone who was
perfectly righteous could satisfy the perfect righteousness of God in terms of
the sacrifice], but
none but man ought to do this. [No one
but man can do this. He is recognising the principle that only true humanity
can pay a substitutionary price] Otherwise man does not make the satisfaction. If it be
necessary therefore, as it appears, that the heavenly kingdom be made up of
men, and this cannot be effected unless the aforesaid
satisfaction is made, which none but God can make and none but man ought to
make, it is necessary for the God-Man to make it.”
What he is saying there: a)
if the heavenly kingdom is to be made up of human beings; b) If this can only
be effected by a satisfaction being made to God’s
character; c) No one but God can make and no one but God ought to make it. The
only conclusion that can be arrived at is that it is necessary for the God-Man
to make it.
This is the historical foundation
for understanding the hypostatic union. In fact, it is in this writing that
Anselm is the first person in church history to clearly articulate the doctrine
of a substitutionary atonement. This doesn’t mean that this wasn’t understood
in some vague sense before; it clearly was. But in terms of really
understanding it and technically developing the implications of it, of
explaining it in ways other than just repeating Scriptural terminology, Anselm
is the first to understand this.
The hypostatic union: The
term “hypostatic” is based on the Greek word hupostasis
[u(postasij]. It has to do
with a substance or in some case essence. In the hypostatic union what we have
is the union of undiminished deity and true humanity in one person where there
is no mixture or confusion of attributes, so that that which pertains to deity
stays deity and that which pertains to humanity stays humanity. When Jesus is
operating in His humanity He is not relying on His divine attributes to solve
His problems. On the other hand, when Jesus is functioning in relationship to
His deity—for example on the Mount of Transfiguration—it is not bleeding over
into His humanity. If those attributes/natures mixed then He wouldn’t be fully
God and He wouldn’t be fully man. What He does from His humanity the entire
person does, and what He does from His deity the entire person does. So it is
almost wrong to say He did this from His deity and that from His humanity
because that makes it sound like there are two persons. There is one person who
is composed of two essences. It is better to say “Jesus hungered” because that
demonstrates His true humanity; Jesus changed the water into wine, and that
demonstrates that He is true deity. Forgiveness of sins isn’t a function of man, it is a function of deity.
The biblical documentation
John 1:1 NASB “In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
The word that is translated “Word” derives from the Greek word logos [logoj]. If we look this word up in a standard classical
Greek dictionary we will find eighteen or more definitions for this word. It
means reason, thought, communication, word. It is the Greek word from which we
get the ending of a word like biology, zoology, psychology. Anything with
“logy” comes from this Greek word logos
which means the study of something; it has to be with reason, thought, rationality. All of these concepts are packed into this one
word which is used by John as a title for the Lord Jesus Christ. It is
important to recognise that the first phrase of John chapter one is also the
first phrase in the Bible, in Genesis 1:1, so that when John says “in the
beginning” the first thing that is going to pop into the mind of a reader of
the Gospel is Genesis 1:1. This is when everything starts, and we would say
that this is the time that God would invent the space-time continuum. Space and
time are related. The space-time continuum is not the same as the universe, it is that space in which the universe operates.
Before that there is no time, so we can’t talk about beginning prior to that
because “beginning” is a temporally found word. So at this
point in time God created the space-time universe. Before that He had
already created the angels and according to Job 38 the angels were present when
God laid the foundations for the earth.
At this
point in time John uses a word
that is translated “was” in the English, but the English “was” just doesn’t
carry the punch that the Greek word carries. The Greek word is in the imperfect
tense. In Greek there are two past tenses, the imperfect and the aorist. The
aorist is a summary tense; the imperfect expresses continuous action. The
difference is that the imperfect represents a video—continuous action. The
aorist is going to just take a snapshot of that action. John uses the imperfect
tense of the verb eimi [e)imi] in the
Greek which is equivalent to our word “is.” The verb “is” is also called an
existential verb because when you are saying that some is you are saying that
something exists. So John says at that beginning point when everything began,
when space-time began, at that point in time “was,” i.e. the logos already was
continuously existing. It is a very strong statement. In Greek
philosophy when they kept pushing things back, pushing things back, and asked What created that? Where did that come from? Where did you
get that? they didn’t really know what came before
“that” and they just called it the first principle, and this was the Greek term
arche [a)rxh]. So John says
when you go back as far as you can go, at that point in time the logos was already existing and
continuously existing. That is a powerful statement and it can only apply to
God. It indicates His eternality. If he had used the aorist tense it would just
mean He existed, so it is important to emphasise the tense here. The idea of
continuous indicates that it was going on forever and ever and it is an
indication of the eternality of the logos.
In the next clause John says,
“and the logos
was with God.” This phrase “with God” indicates that there must be a
distinction in personality between the logos
and God; they are two distinct persons. He uses the preposition pros [proj] in the
Greek, which indicates that He was face to face with God; they were together;
it intimates a unity, not a distinction. Then he says, “and
the Word was God.” They are distinct but they are identical. There is embedded
in this verse the idea that will come to be known as the Trinity. There are
distinctions of personality in the deity but they are nevertheless one in essence.
In each of these statements John uses the same verb in the same tense,
indicating in the beginning the logos
continuously existed, the logos
was continuously with God in the past, and the logos
was continuously God. This indicates the full deity of the logos.
The so-called Jehovah’s
Witnesses don’t understand good grammar very well, and they come along and say
there is no definite article there in the Greek, and therefore it should be
translated that there is just “a god.” In other words, a
subordinate deity. The problem there is that in Greek there are certain
nouns, just as we do in English, that are inherently definite; you don’t have
to put a definite article with it for it to be definite. For example, the
British say, “I am going to hospital” or “I am going to university.” In
American English the tendency is to put a definite article in and say, “I am
going to the hospital” or “I am going to the university.” In British English
“hospital” and “university” are inherently definite, so the definite article is
not added. Furthermore, in Greek when the article is taken out and you just
have the noun it often emphasises the quality or essence of the noun. So by not
having an article here what John is saying is that the logos is equal in essence to God, and that is a profound
statement. The fact that there is no article there emphasises the full deity of
the logos.
Then in verse 2 John goes
on to say: “He was in the beginning with God.” So at the beginning point of
creation we see that the logos was
present with God. He was in the beginning with God; He was involved with the
creation at the beginning. This is further emphasised in Colossians
Then John comes back to
talk about the incarnation. John
There are two different
ways to approach glory. There is the Old Testament approach to the glory of God
which is the Shekinah
and referenced the dwelling of God between the cherubim on the ark of the covenant in the holy of holies in the tabernacle,
and later in the temple. That was a glory that became visible in the pillar of
fire and in the cloud. That was a physical manifestation of glory. But this
referred to by John is a different kind of glory. The Greek word here for
“dwelt among us” is skene [skhnh], the etymological cognate of Shekinah. Shekinah is a word that is never
used in the Old Testament but it is a Hebrew word that means dwelling. It is
the Shekinah
of the Old Testament that now lives among us in this incarnation of Jesus
Christ. But now this incarnation is muted, there is no visible glory. When
Jesus was walking through
Hebrews 1:3 NASB
“And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His
nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power…” The word “radiance”
is the Greek word apaugasma [a)paugasma]
which has to do with the flashing forth of His character. He is the
demonstration, the representation of who He is; He is the radiance of His
glory. This is the writer of Hebrews emphasising something slightly different
in terms of glory but he is still saying that it is the glory of God that is
manifested in the second person of the Trinity. He is the flashing forth of His
glory. And there is a parallelism here, notice he says, “and
the exact representation of His nature.” The writer of Hebrews is connecting
the glory of God to His character. The English word “character” is a direct
transliteration of the Greek word charakter
[xarakthr]. So in Hebrews 1:3 Jesus is the radiance, the
flashing forth of His glory and the exact representation of His character. The
writer is paralleling these two concepts, so for the writer of Hebrews the
glory of Jesus Christ is that He is demonstrating the essence and character of
God in the flesh. So by looking at Jesus Christ we can come to know who God is.
The “exact representation of His nature” means that He partakes of all of the
elements of deity, including eternality and infinity. So if
Jesus partakes of all of those elements then He is undiminished deity, and He,
too, is eternal and equally God with God the Father. “and
upholds all things by the word of His power…” It is the Lord Jesus Christ who
sustains everything.
From verse 6 on in
Philippians chapter two we have an illustration to help us understand the
command in verse 5. Philippians 2:5 NASB “Have this
attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus.” Paul is
challenging the Philippian believers to be humble, to
have true and genuine humility as part of their makeup. This is a mindset. He
uses the Greek word phroneo [fronew] which means to think a certain way, to have a
certain mindset, to think about life in a certain way, to think about ourselves
a certain way. So how are we to understand what true humility
is? By looking at Jesus Christ. Humility has to do
with power under control, it is not the idea of someone who is just a doormat
or who just conforms his life to whatever people want him to be. It is someone
who has power under control , under authority,
understands his place in life, and is totally oriented to it.
Our illustration of humility
comes in the person of Jesus Christ in the act of incarnation. Philippians 2:6 NASB
“who, although He existed [participle: existing] in the form of God, did not
regard equality with God a thing to be grasped.” The participle “existing”
emphasises continuous existence in eternity past. The word “form” is morphe [morph]. Plato
thought that what we see on the plane of creation was a reflection, just a
shadow of an ultimate reality which existed somewhere “out there,” and he
called that “out there” the form. The idea of morphe
is Greek philosophical terminology and background has to do with the essence of
a thing. What Paul is saying here is that although Jesus Christ was existing in the form or essence of God… it is
emphasising that he continually existed in the essence of God, partaking of all
of the attributes of God. Although he was fully God, in other words, with all
the rights and privileges God has, He did not regard equality with God
something to be grasped. He wasn’t asserting Himself. Jesus had all the rights
and privileges of deity and yet He is not going to emphasise it. The contrast
here is that in the garden of Eden when God put the fruit of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil there and forbad the eating of it or they would die,
Satan came along and said that would not happen; that God doesn’t want them to
eat of it because if they did they would be like Him. So they grasped at it. In
contrast, Jesus is God but He doesn’t grab for it.
Philippians 2:7 NASB
“but emptied Himself, taking the form [morphe]
of a bond-servant, {and} being made in the likeness of men.” Jesus said He came
not to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for all. The
word translated “likeness” is the Greek word schema
[sxhma] from which we get our English word “scheme,” the
scheme or them plan of something. schema
has to do with the outward form and indicates the genuine humanity of the Lord
Jesus Christ. What does it means that He “emptied” Himself? This is the Greek
verb kenoo [kenow]. The noun form is kenosis
[kenosij]. So this is known technically in theology as the
Kenosis. A brief definition: It means to deprive one’s self of a rightful
function. It doesn’t mean that he gave it up but that He limits the exercise of
His deity.
Definition of Kenosis: The second person of the Trinity condescended
to become true humanity while not relinquishing any attribute of deity. The
main idea here is that during the incarnation Jesus Christ willingly restricted
the independent use of His divine attributes in compliance with the Father’s
plan for the incarnation.
There is a problem with that
definition, and that is with the word “independent.” The second person of the
Trinity never ever independently operates. He never operated independently of
the Father’s plan for anything because the Father and the Son are one. So we
have to work on this definition a little bit. The idea that is trying to be
communicated here is what the Lord does in emptying Himself is to limit the
immediate manifestation of His divine attributes in His human life. They are,
as it were, veiled so that they are not seen by those around Him. He chose to
appear as a man and to conduct His life as a man without it being obvious to
anyone around. In the incarnation the logos
gave up the external manifestation of His divine attributes and perfections in
the given realm. On other words, He maintains His divine attributes and all of
the activities of His deity, but they are masked to the finite observer. In a
crowd there was not anything that made Him stand out, but at the same time He
is holding the universe together. In accepting the incarnate state He chose not
to externally manifest His divine attributes in the human realm apart from the
Father’s will and the Spirit’s leading. He was always in complete accord with
the Father and he is always led by the Spirit. But He does function in His
deity and there are times when His glory is manifested, as on the Mount of
Transfiguration where His glory was manifested to John, Peter and James. It is
interesting that Jesus’ full glory was manifested to John on the mount but when
John talks about glory he never talks about that because his focus on glory is
character. That, incidentally, is how we reflect the glory of God, and how we
glorify God is by letting the Holy Spirit transform our character into the
character of Christ. As we mature spiritually under the filling ministry of the
Holy Spirit He produces the fruit of the Spirit in our life which is the
character of Christ, and as that is manifest it reflects the glory of God in
our life, i.e. character.
Philippians 2:8 NASB
“Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to
the point of death, even death on a cross.” This is what humility is. It is not
asserting our own rights. The word for humility here is tapeinophrosune [tapeinophrosunh] which was not a positive quality in Greek culture. The
idea in Greek culture was that you asserted yourself,
you did not stand back and let somebody else be the one who praised you. Jesus
had every right to be worshipped as deity and yet he becomes a man and
completely shrouds His deity so that He goes through all of the suffering, sees
all the suffering, and goes through all the difficulties of human existence for
the purpose of going to the cross, to die on the cross for our sins. This was
crucial to accomplish salvation, but it goes beyond simply the accomplishment
of salvation, it lays the foundation for the precedent for the spiritual life
for the church age. The spiritual life of the church age is designed to produce
something worthy of reward at the judgment seat of Christ so that we will not
be ashamed at His coming. That is why John moves from the incarnation and its
importance in 2 John 7 to 2 John 8 where he brings in the spiritual life in
terms of rewards, because we are preparing ourselves for what we will be in
eternity.