The Person of Christ
By Jerry Batson, Th.D.
Special to The Alabama Baptist
Theology at its best is theology that is practical as well as biblical. A prime reason for thinking about the personal qualities of Christ is that we make them a pattern for our own practices. The admonition of 1 John 2:6 remains relevant to every generation of believers when it says, “He who says he abides in Him ought to walk in the same way in which He walked.” The same can be said for the exhortation of 1 Peter 2:21, “Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in His steps.” This week we take note of the example that Christ set for us by being a Person who was good and godly.
Good because He is God
In asserting that Christ was good, we must not be turned aside by His response to the rich ruler who addressed Him as “Good Teacher” (Matt. 19:16). Christ’s response was a question, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God” (Matt. 19:17). His question was not meant to deny His own goodness, but to probe the young ruler’s understanding of Christ as God come in the flesh. Did the ruler have any inkling that looking upon Christ as good meant looking upon Him as God incarnate? With the testimony of the completed Scriptures, we are able to affirm that Christ indeed is good because He is God.
Reflections of the heart
Goodness lies at the very heart of God, both the Father and the Son. Because He was good, Christ went about doing good. Such was Peter’s witness about Christ to Cornelius when he pointed out “how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good” (Acts 10:38).
Since words and deeds are the reflections of our hearts, so it was with Christ. Going about doing good flowed from the kind of Person He was in His heart. He was good, so He went about doing good. We might cast this idea with a truism that maintains, “Good is as good does.”
What is good? Supremely, good is what is most like God. It is as many of us learned as children to say table grace with the opening words, “God is great; God is good.”
No good apart from God
We are good when we are Godlike or godly. We can and must confess with the Psalmist who addressed God by saying, “You are my Lord. My goodness is nothing apart from You” (Ps. 16:2).
Christ was godliness in a human body with a human nature. No other has walked our planet with the kind of goodness that Christ demonstrated. His divine nature showed through His humanity as godliness at its highest and purest.
Source of all that is good
We might say with accuracy that God is both the definition of what is good and the source of all that is good. In so saying, we might add that God’s goodness is closely akin to His love, mercy, grace, patience and holiness. As for human goodness, we might say that it is what God approves of in human thoughts, emotions, actions, reactions, words and deeds.
The take-away truth from thinking about Christ’s example of goodness and godliness might be the challenge of Galatians 6:10, “As we have opportunity, let us do good to all men, especially to those who are of the household of faith.”
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