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The Word Made Flesh: God Enters Human History | Jonathan Edwards · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome to Reformed Thinking and our show The Deep Dive.
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It's good to be here. Today we're opening up a really
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remarkable piece of theological work from Jonathan Edwards.
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We're going to be looking at his detailed thoughts on the
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incarnation of Christ. And specifically, what that
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single event means for what he calls the entire work of
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redemption. Right.
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And this is a listener request, actually focusing on a part
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where Edwards explains how Christ's arrival wasn't random
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at all. Not in the slightest, he argues.
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It happened at the one precise, perfect moment in all of human
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history, an idea he calls the fullness of time.
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So our goal today is to really get into Edward's view of this
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period, of Christ's humiliation, you know, that short span of 30
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or so years, and see why he presents it as the single most
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decisive action in cosmic history.
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It's a huge claim, He's arguing that this sliver of time holds
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more weight than everything that came before it and everything
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that will come after. So he sees history as moving
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toward a specific goal, Teleologic.
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Completely. And that goal is the
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glorification of Christ through redemption.
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For Edwards, that brief period of Christ's life is the very
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center, the axis on which all of history turns.
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Everything before was just preparation.
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Even the eternal counsels of the Trinity.
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Yes, even the plans of God before time began were, in his
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view, chiefly focused on what would happen during those 33
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years. OK, let's start with that core
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claim then, because it really changes how you look at the Old
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Testament. The claim is that the purchase
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of redemption was only made during Christ's humiliation.
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Right. And that's a big statement,
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because what about all the sacrifices the millions of lambs
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offered up? That's the question.
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Did they do nothing? Were they useless?
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You're not useless. But they weren't the price.
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Edwards is very clear on this. Those sacrifices were like
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shadows. They were types and figures
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appointed by God to point forward to the real thing.
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So. They were like a promise of
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payment, but not the payment itself.
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A down payment, maybe, but not the settling of the debt they
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had actually purchased. Redemption.
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If they had paid the price, then Christ's coming would have been,
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well, unnecessary. So the transaction, the actual
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satisfying of divine justice, it doesn't even begin until the
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Word is made flesh. That's his starting point.
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The purchase begins the moment of incarnation and the entire
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time of Christ's humiliation. His life, his suffering, his
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death right up until the moment he rose.
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All of that was part of making the purchase.
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So there's a very precise endpoint to this transaction.
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Very precise 1 he says the purchase was entirely and
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completely finished. The instant Christ, human nature
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was no longer under the power of death.
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Resurrection, the resurrection. At that moment the debt was
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paid. He uses this great old phrase
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settled down to the utmost Farthing.
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That's such legal financial language.
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It is. It's meant to convey absolute
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completion, and because it's complete, nothing more was done
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after the resurrection to purchase salvation.
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Nor will anything ever be done. The work of purchasing is
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closed. So everything that happens now,
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the spread of the gospel, the work of the Spirit, that's all
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the application of a finished purchase.
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That's the idea. We're living in the time of
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application, not addition. The price is paid in full.
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Which brings up a huge question. If Christ as God is infinitely
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powerful, infinitely sufficient, why did he need to become human
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at all? Why the incarnation?
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Right. What was he lacking as God that
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he need to gain by taking on flesh?
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And this is where Edwards gets into some very fine but very
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necessary distinctions. He says Christ became man to
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capacitate himself for this specific work.
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To gain a capacity that sounds strange when you're talking
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about God. It does, but Edwards's point is
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that the limitation wasn't an imperfection in the divine
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nature. The limitation was actually it's
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perfection. OK, you have to break that down.
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How does perfection create a limitation?
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Well, think about what was required to redeem humanity.
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Two things mainly. Obedience to the law given to
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man, and suffering the penalty for breaking that law.
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OK, obedience and suffering. The divine nature, because it's
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perfect, eternal, and unchangeable, is by its very
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nature incapable of suffering. It's infinitely above it.
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So God as God can't suffer. And God, as God can't obey a law
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that was made for a creature. He is the law giver, not a
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object of the law. So to do those two things to
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Obed and to suffer, he needed to take on a nature that could.
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A created nature. A created nature.
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While he was infinitely sufficient in his person, he
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wasn't in an immediate capacity for the job.
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If he remained only God, he needed to be able to stand
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legally in our place. That distinction is so critical.
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Infinitely sufficient versus immediately capable.
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It's the whole hinge of the argument for the incarnations
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necessity. OK, so a created nature was
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required. That brings us to the next
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logical step. Why a human nature?
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Why not an Angel? An Angel is a created being.
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A great question and Edwards gives 3 clear reasons.
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It couldn't just be any creature, it had to be a human
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being. What's the first reason?
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It goes back to obedience. The law that was broken was a
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law given to mankind. The command thou shalt not eat
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thereof was given to human nature in Adam.
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So the same nature that broke the law had to be the one to
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keep it perfectly. That's it.
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For the law to be truly honored and satisfied, the very nature
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to which it was given had to fulfill it.
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An Angel living a perfect angelic life wouldn't have
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satisfied the demands of man's law.
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It had to be a man obeying as a man.
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It's a matter of legal standing. An Angel isn't part of the same
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legal entity. You've got it.
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That handles the obedience part. Then there's the second reason,
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which deals with the suffering. The punishment?
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Right. The threatening thou shalt
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surely die was also spoken to human nature.
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So the nature that sinned must be the nature that bears the
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punishment. The nature that was threatened
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with death has to be the one that dies.
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It's a matter of justice. If an Angel had suffered, it
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wouldn't have legally paid the debt for humanity.
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The substitute has to match the one he's substituting for.
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OK, that makes sense. Obedience and suffering both
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required a human nature. What's the third reason?
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It feels a little different from the first two it.
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Is it's less about the legal requirements and more about the
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the fittingness of the location, the stage of redemption.
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You mean the planet Earth? The planet Earth God saw fit
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that the same world that was the stage of man's fall should also
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also be the stage of his redemption, so the.
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Recovery had to happen right here in the same place as the
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crime. Absolutely.
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Christ had to come into the sinful, miserable, undone world
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to save it. He had to come down to man, to
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our home, so that, as John says, the Word was made flesh and
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dwelt among us. He didn't just become one of us
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in nature, He joined us in our place.
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He did, and that brings us to the actual mechanics of how this
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happened, which Edwards finds just as full of purpose.
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Let's talk about the conception. He's stressing that it happened
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in the womb of a woman from the human race.
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This made him truly the son of man and a son of David, a child
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of Abraham, fulfilling all the specific covenant promises.
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But the way it happened was unique.
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It wasn't ordinary generation. No, and this was critical.
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It was by the power of the Holy Ghost.
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He was formed from the substance of Mary's body, which makes him
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truly her Son, truly human, but the supernatural mode meant he
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could bypass the corruption of original sin.
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Which is absolutely necessary for a Redeemer.
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He couldn't be sinful himself. A sinful substitute can't save
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anyone. He had to be a pure, spotless
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lamb. So this supernatural conception
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ensured his sinlessness from the very start.
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And what about the birth itself? Edwards makes a point to say
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that after the supernatural conception, the rest of the
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process was natural. The development in the womb, the
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birth itself, it all happened in the way of nature.
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So he was a real baby, a real human being, A.
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Real human being in every sense. This wasn't a phantom or an
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illusion, It was a real incarnation.
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So if the nature had to be just right, the timing had to be just
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right too. This brings us to this idea of
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the fullness of time. Why then?
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Why not 2000 years earlier? Why wait so long?
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This is a huge part of Edwards's argument.
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The delay wasn't a delay in a negative sense, it was a
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preparation. He goes through all of history
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to show that any other time would have been inappropriate.
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OK, let's walk through that. What about the very beginning,
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the pre flood era? Why was that not the right time?
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Well, for one, the full extent of the ruin from the fall hadn't
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really been seen yet. Things were bad, but not as bad
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as they were going to get. Right.
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The curse needed to be fully executed in a global sense,
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which happened with the Flood. The world needed to see the
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totality of God's wrath against sin before the Redeemer could
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arrive. And he also mentions the long
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lifespans of that time. He does.
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When people lived almost 1000 years, The curse of death unto
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dust thou shalt return hadn't fully hit home.
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The painful shortness of life. The mortality we feel that had
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to become the universal human experience first to show what
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Christ came to save us from. So humanity needed to feel the
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full weight of the curse before the cure could be offered.
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That's the idea. The problem had to be fully
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diagnosed. OK, so after the flood we enter
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the pre mosaic era. What still wasn't right at that
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point? At that point, mankind had
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pretty much fallen into universal paganism.
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The knowledge of the true God was almost lost, so the need for
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Christ as the light of the world was becoming clear.
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But something was still missing. The Law.
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God hadn't yet given the written law through Moses.
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The world needed the Law to act as a mirror to show the true
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depth of human sinfulness and our inability to save ourselves.
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The law had to come first to show that no one could keep it.
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The law increases the sense of need it.
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Does it magnifies the trespass? Also, man's lifespan was still
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being reduced. It wasn't until around Moses
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time that it settled at the 70 or 80 years we see today.
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OK, so after Moses the law is given, the sacrificial system is
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in place. Why the next long delay of what,
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1500 years? Well, a few things were
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happening. First, God let the Gentile
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nations Stew in their own Pagan darkness for centuries.
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Why? To demonstrate through long
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painful experience that their condition was hopeless.
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They tried everything, philosophy, idolatry, politics,
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and nothing worked. It showed the absolute necessity
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of the heavenly physician. So.
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Humanity had to exhaust all its own self help remedies first.
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And prove that they all failed. But there was another reason for
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the wait. A later arrival meant the world
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would be much more populated. More people on the earth.
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Which means a more extensive Kingdom for Christ.
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His victory over Satan is more glorious because of the sheer
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multitude of his conquests. And what about Israel?
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During this time, they weren't just waiting around.
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No, the Church itself needed that long period of preparation.
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The Messiah had to be long, prefigured, foretold, and
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expected. You needed centuries for the
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prophecies to be written, for the types and shadows of the
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sacrificial system to unfold, so that when he did come, the
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faithful would recognize him. So you're building up a huge
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weight of expectation over centuries.
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A huge weight. The historical record had to be
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written and preserved first. All right, let's jump to the
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geopolitical situation of the 1st century.
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Edwards makes a very specific point about the Roman Empire.
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Why was that the perfect? He sees it as absolutely
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crucial. Christ came during the time of
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the Roman monarchy, which was the greatest and strongest of
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the four great empires from prophecy.
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And for Edwards, that empire represented something.
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It represented the height of Satan's visible Kingdom in the
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world. It was organized, powerful and
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global in its reach. So God deliberately staged the
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confrontation for when the enemy was added strongest.
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That's it. So that the victory would be all
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the more glorious by overcoming the Roman Empire not with
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armies, but with the cross and the gospel, Christ visibly
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triumphed over Satan's Kingdom in its greatest strength and
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glory. But there's also a very
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practical side to the Roman Empire's role isn't?
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There. Oh absolutely.
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Think of the Pax Romana, the Roman Peace.
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It created a level of stability and safety for travel that
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hadn't existed before. And the roads.
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The Roman roads, they built this incredible network that
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connected the whole Mediterranean world and you had
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a common language, Greek, that was spoken almost everywhere.
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So the very mech communisms of empire became the highways for
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the gospel. God used Caesar's ambition to
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create the perfect infrastructure for the rapid
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spread of the Christian message. It would have been almost
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impossible 500 years earlier. That's an amazing thought.
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Let's look at the period just before that, after the
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Babylonian captivity. What preparations happened then?
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That era was also vital. For one, it's when you get the
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great histories of the Greek and Roman world being written.
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Why was that necessary? Because those histories provided
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a permanent record of the failure of the Pagan world, the
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chaos, the immorality. It's all documented, building
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the historical case for why a savior was needed.
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This was also the great age of Greek philosophy.
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Plato. Aristotle.
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Yes, and that was also a preparation.
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Learning and human wisdom needed to flourish and then fail to
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show their insufficiency. To prove that humanity couldn't
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think its way to salvation. Right.
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God let humanity build its best philosophical systems, and when
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they couldn't fix the human heart, the gospel arrived with
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the answer. And what about the Jewish people
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themselves after the captivity? The diaspora, the scattering of
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the Jews, was key. It planted synagogues and
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communities who knew the scriptures all across the Roman
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Empire. So they became like spiritual
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beach heads. A perfect way to put it.
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They were the initial places where the gospel could be
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preached and their loss of a central homeland also made it
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clear that the old temple based system of worship was coming to
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an end. The new covenant had to be
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portable. It really does seem like Edward
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sees history as this single complex machine with every gear
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turning perfectly to bring everything to a head at that one
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moment. That's his view.
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Not a single bit of it was accidental.
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Every historical movement, every empire, every philosophy was
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part of the divine setup. So now that we've established
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the timing, let's look at the event itself.
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Edwards makes a huge deal about the greatness of the
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incarnation. He does.
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He ranks it as a greater event than the creation of the world.
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Greater than creating the entire universe from nothing?
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How does he justify that? He argues that it was a great
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thing for God to make a creature, but it was an
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infinitely greater thing for the Creator himself to become a
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creature. The act of condescension.
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Condescension is what makes it so mind boggling.
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The greatest person, whoever was or will be, was born in that
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moment. The creation was the stage, but
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this was the main drama. And yet this greatest event in
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history was surrounded by, well, the most humble circumstances
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imaginable. And that paradox is at the very
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heart of the story. Take Mary, for instance.
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He points out She was a core virgin.
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How do we know she was poor? From her offering at the temple
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after Jesus's birth, she offered 2 turtle doves.
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According to the law in Leviticus, that was the specific
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offering allowed for people who couldn't afford a lamb.
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A small detail, but it speaks volumes about their financial
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state. It does, and even though they
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were of the royal line of David, the family was, as Edwards puts
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it, extremely reduced. Joseph was the rightful heir to
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the throne, but the line of David had fallen into total
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obscurity. And then the location Bethlehem.
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A fulfillment of the prophecy in Micah.
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And how is it fulfilled? Through a decree from a Roman
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emperor to tax the world which forced this poor couple to
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travel to that specific small town at that specific time.
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It's amazing how a global political event was used to
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fulfill a local prophecy. Providence at work.
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And then of course the birth itself happens in the lowest
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possible condition. A stable laid in a Manger.
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A feeding through for animals. It's almost absurd.
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The king of the universe, the creator of all things, enters
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his world in a barn. The humility is just staggering.
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But even in that humble setting, there were supernatural signs
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happening all around it. Edwards lists them out.
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Let's start with the return of the Spirit.
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Yes, this is a big one for him. He notes that for 400 years
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since the prophet Malachi, there had been spiritual silence, no
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prophecy, no visions from God. The heavens were closed.
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But with the incarnation, that silence is shattered.
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The Spirit returns in a flurry of activity.
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You have visions given to Zacharias, to Mary, to Joseph.
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And it wasn't just visions. No, the Spirit comes upon
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people. Elizabeth speaks prophetically,
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Mary sings her song, Zacharias prophecies, then the shepherds,
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Simeon, Anna in the temple. It's this concentrated burst of
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divine communication signaling a new age has dawned and.
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It wasn't just a quiet event, Edward says.
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Great notice was taken of it starting in heaven.
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Starting in heaven, the angels, the glorious inhabitants, they
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noticed immediately. You see it in the joyful songs
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the shepherds heard, Edward says.
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This was the greatest act of God the angels had ever seen.
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Greater than when they saw the creation of the world.
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Even greater, he says, they sang at creation, but they rejoiced
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even more at the birth of their creator as a creature.
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They had been involved in the plan of redemption for ages,
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ministering to Abraham and Jacob, and now they saw the
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culmination of it all. And on earth, the Church, or at
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least the faithful remnant, also took notice.
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You see that Joy and Elizabeth and Mary and Simeon and Anna.
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He makes a point that heaven and the true Church on earth were
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united in their praise. But it went beyond Israel.
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The Gentile world was notified as well.
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Yes, God honored His Son by stirring up some of the wisest
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of the Gentiles, the wise men, to travel a great distance to
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worship Him. And they were led by a
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miraculous *. A * star which Edward sees as a
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symbol for Christ himself, the bright and morning star, and he
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speculates that maybe they knew to look for it because of the
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ancient prophecy of Balaam about a star rising out of Jacob.
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Or just the general expectation of a Messiah that had spread
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through the Jewish dispersion? Either way, it was a divine
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signal to the non Jewish world that their king had arrived.
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The event also fulfilled specific prophecies about the
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temple. It did when Christ was brought
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to the temple as an infant for Mary's purification.
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That simple act fulfilled Haggai's prophecy that the
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desire of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house
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with glory. The glory had arrived, even if
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it was in the form of a baby. Exactly.
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And it also fulfilled Malachi's promise that the Lord whom you
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seek shall suddenly come to his temple.
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His very first visits validated his identity.
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OK, let's cover the last great sign that the fullness of time
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had arrived. This is a big one, the departure
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of the scepter from Judah. This is a huge confirmation for
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Edwards. He can exit directly to that
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ancient prophecy in Genesis that the scepter, or the right to
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rule would not depart from Judah until Shiloh the Messiah had
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come. And he says this happened right
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around the time of Christ's birth.
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Precisely with the death of Herod the Great, Edwards
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explains that even though Judah had been conquered before, by
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Babylon, by Persia, by Greece, they had always maintained some
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kind of internal governor or ruler.
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They still had some local authority.
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They did. Even Herod, who was a client
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king of Rome, was still a king of Judah.
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He held the power of life and death.
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But after Herod died, that all changed.
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It changed completely. His successor was quickly
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removed by the Romans, and from then on Judah was ruled directly
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by a Roman governor like Pontius Pilate.
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They lost their king and they lost their authority to carry
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out capital punishment. And we see that confirmed in the
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Gospels. We do.
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When the Jews bring Jesus to pilot, they say it is not lawful
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for us to put any man to death. For Edwards, that's the
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historical proof. The scepter was gone.
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Shiloh had come. The timing was perfect.
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So when you look at it through Ed versus lens, the incarnation
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isn't just a beautiful story or a miracle.
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It's this perfectly engineered, legally necessary event.
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It's an answer to a cosmic legal problem executed with perfect
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timing after centuries of deliberate divine preparation.
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It shows God's absolute control over every detail of history.
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So if we take this all in, what is this highly structured,
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legally precise view of history mean for us?
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I mean, Edwards, this whole mapping of prophecy in history
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shows that Christ's purchase of our redemption was calculated,
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as you said, to the utmost Farthing.
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I think it gives us a deep sense of confidence.
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If the central event of history, the purchase, was governed with
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such precision, then we can trust that the ongoing
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application of that redemption is just as orderly and certain.
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History isn't just a chaotic series of events.
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Which leads to a final thought. Considering that incredible
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precision of the fullness of time in the 1st century, what
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might that say about our own historical moment?
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That's a great question to ponder.
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Right. If that long delay was all about
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preparation for the purchase of redemption, what kind of
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preparation is God making now, in our world, in our culture, in
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geopolitics, for the next great unfolding of the application of
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that redemption? What things are happening now
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that we might only understand in retrospect?
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Something to think about. If the timing was necessary,
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then every day now is also part of a deliberate unfolding
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purpose. A worthwhile thought for anyone
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who believes in the sovereignty of God.
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Thank you for joining us on The Deep Dive.