This chapter emphasizes that our Lord Jesus Christ is truly God and truly man: “one person, two natures, the two natures unmixed, joined but not mixed, not fused, not intermingled, remaining separate, God and man” (282). It is essential to assert these two natures of Christ because “we must assert the manhood because since man sinned, the penalty must be borne in the nature of man. No one can bear the penalty of man’s sin except someone who is man Himself; it is the only way to redeem man. Then the payment of the penalty involves sufferings of body and of soul such as a man alone can bear; sufferings which God could not bear” (282). Moreover, Jones further explains, “He has to be a sympathetic high priest,” and “He can only be a sympathetic high priest by having a human nature, by being ‘in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin’ (Heb. 4:15). It is because He is like us that He is able to bear with us. He understand us, He knows our feelings and our frailty. We have a high priest who has been ‘touched with the feeling of our infirmities’ (Heb. 4:15). He knows us in that sense because He has a human nature” (282). In addition, “in order that His sacrifice might have infinite value, He had to be God as well as man” and “in order to ensure a perfect carrying out of the law, in order that might bear the wrath of God redemptively, and free us from the curse of the law, without the fear or failure, it was essential that the Godhead should be combined with the manhood” (283).
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