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Dominique Deming
December 3, 2004
John Gill, A Body of Doctrinal Divinity, (Paris, Ark.: Baptist Standard Bearer, 2000) pp. 45-46.
Yet, Christ, when He became man, confined Himself to time and to space. Being God
incarnate, He became everything man is, including being subjected to the controls of time and
space. While the analogy between the three-dimensional man becoming two-dimensional is not
perfect, it does grasp the limiting nature of Christs incarnation. No longer was Christ able to
exist in all time. No longer was Christ able to be in all places at once. Jesus, when He took on the
form of a man, became limited by the very things He created. Accustomed to existing in all ages,
Jesus was forced to live day by day, moment by moment, in successive time. Used to being
everywhere at once, Christ was forced to move step by step, foot by foot in spatial habitation. He
was limited in a way we cannot comprehend. And He chose this. God the Son, chose to take
upon himself all the limits of time and space and suffer the loss of freedom in order to carry out
the divine plan of salvation. For thirty-three years, Christ lived in history (the combination of
space and time) voluntarily.
Theologian John Miley said:
[Christ] is God in his divine nature man in his human nature . . . The necessary
union of the two natures is possible only in the mode of a divine incarnation. The
divine nature is eternal while the human originated in time. The divine was
therefore eternally before the human. Hence the union of the two in the person of
Christ must have been an event in time.2
Miley recognized that the incarnation must have taken place in time because, as a man,
God incarnate had to exist within time. Miley stated that The Son, who was in the form of God,
was made the likeness of man. He assumed a body of flesh and blood in the likeness of our
own.3 Christs human body must have existed in time if it was truly a human body, so Christ
must have existed in time.
2
3
Lewis Sperry Chafer, Systematic Theology, (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, c1993), 41.
Ibid, 40.
6
James Petigru Boyce, Abstract of Systematic Theology, (Hanford, CA : den Dulk Christian Foundation, n.d.), 290.
5
servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man Here
again, we find Christ being all that is essential to man. Luke 2 tells us of the birth of God
incarnate. Included in this narrative is a distinct time and place within history. Verse 2 tells us the
time in which Christ was born. And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of
Syria. Christ was born within the time of Cyrenius who lived in a certain time of history. Later
in verse 11, we read the place, or space, in which Christ was born. For unto you is born this day
in the City of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. We learn that the space where God
incarnate began His time on earth was in Bethlehem, the City of David. In the story of Lazaruss
death and resurrection found in John 11, we learn that Jesus was not in Bethany, but in another
place (Christ had to go to Bethany), and that he abode two days in the same place where he
was. (John 11:6) This passage shows Christ existing in space and in time. He could not be in
Bethany at the same time He was away; neither was He existing in all of time, for He abode two
days. The Bible mentions Christ acting in specific times and places in history, but never is God,
as man, described as acting in all of time or in every place.
Christ became man. He was made in fashion of His very creation. Christ fully made
Himself everything a human is. He was not always this way: He had to restrict and limit Himself
to have the form and fashion of one of His created beings. It was a conscious, voluntary act. He
became as man in order to redeem man.
God incarnate existed with everything that characterizes man; all things essential to man.
Being bound by time and space is one of those things essential to man. Man cannot live
otherwise. Man is a created being and all of creation exists in time and is bound by succession of
moments. Space, too, limits all of creation, for when God created, He imposed space and spatial
restraints upon all. Man cannot even comprehend what it would be like to exist outside of these
restrictions. Christ, because He was formed in the fashion of man, had to be bound by them as
well.
It must be stressed, however, that Christ did not give up any of His divine nature. Christ
did not lose His eternality, nor did He lose His omnipresence. To have lost these would have
made Christ less than God, because all these attributes are necessary in order for Him to be God.
Christs deity is never denied in Scripture; rather, it is affirmed. Therefore, Christ must have
retained these attributes while He was on earth as a man. In order to be fully human and
experience all things essentially human, Christ laid aside His attributes of eternality and
omnipresence, just as He laid aside His glory and riches. He never lost these things, they were
always His but He chose to do without them. Christ purposefully limited Himself to His creation
by casting these aside. He denied Himself the attributes of eternality and omnipresence so that
He might minister to His creation. He subjected Himself to His creation so that He would be
further glorified.
Christ voluntarily limited Himself. This cannot be overemphasized. God, Creator of all
things, laid down His glory, on His own accord. Nothing could limit God unless He allowed it.
Gods creation could never bind Him unless He bound Himself to it. Christ Himself chose to
reject His eternality and omnipresence to bring salvation to man and glory to His Father.
Limiting oneself is not easy, and it is usually undesirable. Yet God came to earth and
accepted the limitation of mans dimensions. Time and space are dimensions God is outside and
completely independent of; yet, He chose to deny this and give up the freedom that come from
being outside of them. It was restricting, yet Christ did it because He loved His creation. He did
not deny or give up His divinity, but he chose voluntarily to lay aside His eternality and
omnipresence to take on the form of one of His creatures. He chose to limit Himself.
Works Cited
Boyce, James Petigru. Abstract of Systematic Theology. Hanford, CA : den Dulk Christian
Foundation, n.d.
Chafer, Lewis Sperry. Systematic Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, c1993.
Miley, John. Systematic Theology. Peabody, MA : Hendrickson, 1989.