3 Reasons Christ Must Remain Human for Us: Learning from Calvin and Owen

What Is Jesus’s Present Ministry?

Contemporary sermons (often rightly) address the reasons that Jesus became human in the incarnation, explaining Jesus’s accomplished work on the cross (1 Cor. 2:2; Gal. 6:14). Yet by focusing so much on Christ’s work in the past, we may ignore the significance of what Christ is doing in the present.¹ John Owen rightly said that the ascended Lord Jesus’s work before the throne of grace in the present “is the spring and center of all the comforts of the church.”² Here we will give three reasons that we should study Christ’s present work.

1. To Secure Our Lives in the Presence of God

All that Christ does in his human nature, that which he takes on and achieves, is for our sake and not his own. Calvin said, “Christ descended to us, to bear us up to the Father.”³ By taking our nature on himself, he can “lead us with himself into God’s holy of holies.”⁴Like a rock climber who goes ahead of the group to secure an anchor at the top of the mountain, regardless of how well we climb ourselves, so long as that first climber remains atop the mountain, our lives are anchored and safe.

Calvin frequently describes the exalted incarnate Christ as the priest who “carried all the twelve tribes on his breast and on his shoulders, because twelve stones were woven into his breastplate and their names were engraved on the two onyx stones on his shoulders to be a reminder of them, so that they all went into the sanctuary together in the person of the one man.”⁵

Since Jesus wears our names before the Father, we need not fear death or loss in this world, and we can be confident that we will join Christ after death.⁶ Christ is “holding out his hand to us” and “covers us with his goodness” so that when we see the majestic and mighty God, all that we see is “grace and fatherly goodwill.”⁷ Because our names are graven onto his shoulders, there is “no cause to fear that the door of heaven may be shut to our faith, since it is never disjoined from Christ.”

Our lives are hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3:3). That is, contrary to appearances, we not only walk the face of the earth but we are also truly present with Christ and therefore present with God. We are there and belong there because Christ has brought us to God and remains with us (as human) before God. So as we consider our standing before God now, “we ought not to separate Christ from ourselves or ourselves from him.”⁸ Christ has ascended to the Father not for his own sake but as the head of the body (the church) “in our flesh, as if in our name.”⁹ Julie Canlis articulates the importance for Calvin of our lives being “hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3) by stating that the ascension of Christ’s finite humanity beckons us “to remember that our identity is now elsewhere.”¹⁰

2. To Sympathize with Us in Suffering

Thinkers in both Owen’s day and Calvin’s denied Christ’s experience of genuine human feelings (e.g., they denied that he experienced dread or lacked knowledge). In opposition to this view, Calvin and Owen both defended Christ’s relatable human emotions and feelings. Calvin claimed that we must affirm these experiences of Christ since “from this also arises the comfort for our anguish and sorrow that the apostle holds out to us: that this Mediator has experienced our weaknesses the better to succor us in our miseries.”¹¹ And it is through his human experience of fear that he can “drive away fear” in us and “bring peace and repose to our souls.”¹²

Therefore, urged Calvin, whenever we experience suffering, “let this be our immediate consolation, that nothing befalls us which the Son of God has not experienced himself, so that he can sympathize with us; and let us not doubt that he is in it with us as if he were distressed along with us.”¹³ That is, we can be confident that Christ is merciful toward us in the midst of our suffering because we know that he too experienced it. Like my (Ty’s) son, when he is struggling with his spelling homework, he can come to me confidently, knowing that I will be merciful because I, too, have struggled with spelling my entire life—which is true of me (Kelly) as well! Because of our own experiences of the struggle, there is no chance that we will mock, ridicule, or dismiss someone like Ty’s son for his struggle. Further, while Ty’s son struggles, Ty’s connections with his son mean he struggles alongside him.

Jesus is acquainted with both the experience of suffering and the support received from the Holy Spirit amid suffering.

Of Christ’s present work Owen said, “He bears still in his holy mind the sense he had of his sorrows wherewith he was pressed in the time of his temptations, and thereon seeing his brethren conflicting with the like difficulties is ready to help them; and because his power is proportioned unto his will, it is said ‘he is able.’”¹⁴

Because our ascended priest has had these experiences, we can be confident that, when we experience them, he cares for us. Jesus is acquainted with both the experience of suffering and the support received from the Holy Spirit amid suffering. Owen connected this work of Christ to the commandment given to the Israelites to be compassionate to strangers in their land because “from the experience they had themselves of the sorrows of their hearts,” it could be said to them, “Thou knowest the heart of a stranger,” for “from their own sufferings they [could] know how to exercise tenderness over their brethren.”¹⁵

He may not have experienced our particular kinds of suffering (e.g., the death of his biological child or a broken engagement). Still, he experienced loss and stands ready to offer consolation and comfort. As our continuing and unique mediator, Jesus will not leave us in our despair; as our high priest and great King, he will ultimately comfort, rescue, and heal.

3. To Intercede for Us

If the first reason is the objective security that Christ brings, and the second reason is the subjective compassion of Christ, this third reason unites the two and unites Jesus’s past work on the cross with his present work in heaven. Owen claimed, “If, when he had finished his sacrifice, and the atonement which he made for sin, by the offering up of himself, he had then left off his human nature, . . . we could not have been delivered nor saved.”¹⁶ As Owen explained, “There yet remained some parts of his mediatory work to be discharged, which could not be accomplished without this nature, . . . and the exaltation of our nature in glory was needful for the supportment and consolation of the church.”¹⁷ The sacrificial death of Christ is “the procuring cause of all good things interceded for and the argument to be pleaded for their actual communication.”¹⁸ That is, his sacrifice both purchases the things asked for and serves as the argument that they be granted to the church. So the intercession becomes “the means of the actual impetration [i.e., obtaining] of grace and glory” and “consists in the real presentation of his offering and sacrifice for the procuring of the actual communication of the fruits thereof unto them for whom he so offered himself.”¹⁹

Owen summarized the intercession of Christ by stating that Christ’s intercession is “his continual appearance for us in the presence of God . . . representing the efficacy of his oblation, accompanied with tender care, love, and desires for the welfare, supply, deliverance, and salvation of the church.”²⁰ Thus, Owen included (1) “the presentation of his person before the throne of God on our behalf,” (2) specifically as “the representation of his death, oblation, and sacrifice for us; which gives power, life, and efficacy unto his intercession,” and (3) “a putting up, a requesting, and offering unto God, of his desires and will for the church, attended with care, love, and compassion, Zech. 1:12.”²¹ Notice that each of these intercessory activities requires Christ’s retention of a finite human nature, specifically the very same nature that he suffered in.

We should not imagine that Jesus’s intercession is like a long prayer list before the Father—if that were the case, he could only intercede for one person at a time. Instead, Jesus’s intercession is the presentation of his humanity before the Father, the very humanity that the Son gave up to death for the church, as a request to God that he care for her. I (Ty) wear multiple bracelets that my daughters have made me, and they are constantly before my eyes, drawing my attention, prayers, and compassion to those girls. Likewise, Jesus is constantly before the Father, petitioning him to care for those people who look like him.

Kelly M. Kapic and Ty Kieser are coauthors of Owen Among the Theologians: Conversations Across the Christian Tradition.

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