JESUS CHRIST: GOD-MAN - Vital Christianity

Calvin is on solid ground, therefore, in his teaching that Christ is the supreme Word of
God and the Mediator of all God's revelations.
Calvin goes on to point out that this does not mean that this wisdom was always
manifested in the same way. Rather with the patriarchs God used secret revelations with signs
that made it very plain to them that it was God who spoke to them.
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The patriarchs transmitted this revelation from hand to hand to their posterity since God
had made this a condition. Succeeding generations understood that this message was from God
as He made this certain to their hearts.
Wolfhart Pannenberg states categorically,
"As Christians we know God only as he has been revealed in and through Jesus.
All other talk about God can have, at most, provisional significance."4
Like Karl Barth and many before him theologian Emil Brunner states that God's
revelation is Jesus Christ Himself:
"He is not a 'Word'; He is not 'speech', or a summary of sentences like the prophetic
utterances; and it is this very fact which is joyfully proclaimed: that for this very
reason, just because He is quite different from a speech, namely, God Himself
present, acting in His own Person, that He is the consummation of the revelation
of God. For what the prophets could 'only' say, towards which their word could
'only' point, as something which was yet to come, a Perfection yet to be realized
in the future, has not happened: Emmanuel, God with us. God Himself, not only
a Word about Him, is now here."5
What made Jesus' message (i.e. the Sermon on the Mount or other teachings) so startling
was not primarily the content of the sermons but His authority. Attention is riveted on the
Preacher rather than the sermon. After all, there is a real sense in which the Preacher of the
sermon is the sermon. For Jesus is the Narrow Gate we must enter. He is the Narrow Road we
must travel. He is the Rock upon which we must build our lives (Mt 7). It is Jesus Himself that is
most important.
THE WITNESS OF SCRIPTURE
The message of Jesus continually points to the Preacher as He Himself pointed out:
"You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess
eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about Me . . ." (Jn 5:39).