E-Note 4/1: Flesh of my Flesh

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

In his fifth century letter to Honoratus, another Bishop of the early Church, Augustine describes why Jesus is crying out from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me." In the ninth hour the Lord transfers to himself, Augustine says, "the voice of this infirmity of ours." What is our infirmity? Death. In death the wages of sin are fully paid for those who are slaves to sin. In death body and soul are separated from the presence of God forever. Death is the final forsakenness of God from sinners. This is where Augustine makes a profound observation that exalts the strength and love of Christ before us.

Referring to Jesus becoming forsaken by God in his righteousness (Psalm 22), Augustine says: "The benefits of the old covenant had to be refused [by Christ] in order that we [the Church] might learn to pray and hope for the benefits of the new covenant. Among those goods of the old covenant which belonged to the old Adam there is a special appetite for the prolonging of this temporal life. But this appetite itself is not interminable, for we all know that the day of death will come. Yet all of us, or nearly all, strive to postpone it, even those who believe that their life after death will be a happier one. Such force has the sweet partnership of flesh and soul."

If I am reading Augustine right, he is saying that Jesus refused the benefits of the old covenant, the covenant of works, when he was the only man who could rightly lay claim to them. Remember the old covenant said, "Do this and live." It is a covenant of works that if fully obeyed would result in continued life in the flesh. Jesus' perfect obedience permitted him to lay claim to what no other man could lay claim to: a deathless life. Yet, as Augustine said, Jesus refuses the benefits of the old covenant. Jesus, through the Spirit, offers himself unblemished to God in death (Hebrews 9:14). While still among the living he deliberately presses in to suffer the agonies of death. He presses in to the impending separation of soul from flesh and the separation of both from God. This is why Matthew reports that "being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground." Man of sorrows indeed!

We who deserve death spend years and great effort striving to keep the "sweet partnership of flesh and soul," and we only know it as sweet because we live and move and have our being in the nearness of God in creation (Acts 17:28). Yet Jesus, the eternal and true Son, who deserves life, who is Life, spends great effort to take on the very separations we deserve so we might receive the benefits of a new covenant made by his blood: the forgiveness of sins and the forever partnership of soul and flesh in the presence of God.

How does Jesus accomplish this great salvation for us? Through the incarnation he forever united himself to our flesh and humanness. Through the crucifixion he united his flesh to our sin by becoming a curse for us: the curse of the law, the curse of our transgressions - death. And through his resurrection, having now been raised from the grave, he has brought our flesh and humanness for the first time into the Kingdom of God. In his triumph and victory we see the hope and destiny of all flesh who are united to him by faith. Praise God we have such a brother as this! Yours in Christ, John