Hebrews 1:3, “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature, and He upholds the universe by the word of His power.”
I’ve been teaching a small Wednesday night study at our local church and for the last few months we’ve been walking through the ecumenical councils. Last night we were discussing the council of Chalcedon–which substantially solidified orthodox Christology for the Church. One passage of the creed of Chalcedon reads:
“…one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, to be acknowledge in two natures, incofusedly, unchangeably, indivisible, inseparably…”
There are many implications that could be drawn from just these few words, but at least one of them is that when the eternal Son took humanity to Himself, He did so “unchangeably” and “inseparably.” In other words, since the incarnation, God the Son has never and will never cease to be fully man.
Again, beautiful implications abound, but the one I wanted to focus on in this image is that–even in His death–the “natures” of God and Man are not divided. Consider it, even while a “corpse” (Mark 15:45-46), Jesus was all that God is….meaning that all that God is (the “fullness of diety” Col. 1:19, 2:9) was once expressed in and true of the lifeless man, Jesus.
God the Son did not cease to uphold the universe with the word of His power according to His deity even as He Himself lay, according to His humanity, in the dust of death.
And an even more glorious reality flowing from these things is that, even while His body was veiled in the tomb, Jesus was still the “radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature.” Becuase He is ever and always fully God, it is always true to point at the man Christ Jesus and say, “Here is the radiance of God’s beauty and exact image of His identity”….and that did not cease to be true–indeed, it became definitively true–when Jesus gave Himself even unto death on the cross for our sins.
There is no God like YHWH.
