There Is Only One Person in Christ

But perhaps you think this a small matter to make clear; not because it lacks clarity, but because the darkness of unbelief always darkens even what is clear. Hear, then, how the apostle sums up in a few words this whole mystery of the Lord’s oneness of Person: “Our one Lord,” he says, “Jesus Christ, by whom are all things.” O good Jesus, what weight there is in your words! For yours they are, when they are spoken of you by your own. See how much is embraced in the few words of this saying of the apostle: “One Lord,” he says, “Jesus Christ, by whom are all things.” [a]

Did he use any roundabout way of speaking to proclaim the truth of this great mystery? Did he make a long story of what he wanted us to grasp? “Our one Lord,” he says, “Jesus Christ, by whom are all things.” In a short, plain phrase he taught the secret of this great mystery. He was confident that, in what concerns God, his statements needed no lengthy arguments, and that the Godhead itself lent belief to his words. For whenever the proof rests on the authority of the speaker, the statement of the facts is enough to confirm what is said. There is, then, he says, “one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things.” Notice that you read the same thing of the Word of the Father that you read of Christ. For the gospel tells us that “all things were made by him, and without him nothing was made.” The apostle says, “By Christ are all things”; the gospel says, “By the Word are all things.” Do these sacred sayings contradict each other? Certainly not. But by Christ, by whom the apostle said all things were created, and by the Word, by whom the evangelist relates that all things were made, we are meant to understand one and the same Person.

Hear, I tell you, what the Word of God, himself God, has said of himself: “No one,” he says, “has ascended into heaven except he who came down from heaven, the Son of man, who is in heaven.” And again he says: “If you see the Son of man ascending where he was before.” He said that the Son of man was in heaven; he declared that the Son of man had come down from heaven. What does this mean? Why are you muttering? Deny it, if you can! But are you asking the reason for what is said? I do not give you one. God has said this; God has spoken this to me. His word is the best reason. I do away with arguments and debates. The Person of the speaker alone is enough to make me believe. I may not debate the trustworthiness of what is said, nor discuss it. Why should I question whether what God has said is true, when I ought not to doubt that what God says is true?

“No one,” he says, “has ascended into heaven except he who came down from heaven, the Son of man, who is in heaven.” Certainly the Word of the Father was always in heaven; how, then, did he declare that the Son of man was always in heaven? You are to understand that he showed that he who was always the Son of God was also the Son of man, when he declared that he who had only recently appeared as the Son of man was always in heaven. That other passage points still more to this, in which he testifies that the same Son of man, that is, the Word of God, who, as he said, came down from heaven, was in heaven even at the time when he was speaking on earth. For “no one,” he said, “has ascended into heaven except he who came down from heaven, the Son of man, who is in heaven.” Who, I ask you, is this who is speaking? Christ, surely. But where was he at the moment he spoke? On earth, surely. How, then, can he declare that he came down from heaven when he was born, and that he was in heaven while he was speaking, or say that he is the same Son of man? For certainly no one but God can come down from heaven; and one who is speaking on earth certainly cannot be in heaven except through the infinite nature of God.

Consider this, then, at last, and note that the Son of man is the same Person as the Word of God. He is the Son of man since he was truly born of man, and the Word of God since, while he speaks on earth, he remains always in heaven. And so when he truly calls himself the Son of man, it refers to his human birth, while the fact that he never leaves heaven refers to the infinite character of his divine nature. And so the apostle’s teaching agrees admirably with those sacred words, when he says that he who descended is the same who ascended: “For he who descended,” he says, “is the same who also ascended above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.” But no one can descend from heaven except the Word of God, who certainly, “being in the form of God, emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even the death of the cross.” So the Word of God descended from heaven, but the Son of man ascended; and yet he says that the same Person ascended and descended. So you see that the Son of man is the same Person as the Word of God.