JESUS CHRIST: GOD-MAN - Vital Christianity

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Scottish theologian D. M. Baillie points out:
"It is quite plain that this is the kind of Christological interest that we find in the
New Testament. We never find there anything that could be called a Jesus-cult,
or a Christology interested simply in the question of who or what Jesus was,
apart from the action of God the Father. Whatever Jesus did, in His life, in His
teaching, in His cross and passion, in His resurrection and ascension and
exaltation, it is really God that did it in Jesus: that is how the New Testament
speaks. It becomes most striking of all in connection with the reconciling death
of Jesus. When His early followers spoke of His death on the cross as a supreme
expression of love for men, it was not so much of the love of Jesus that they
spoke as of the love of God who sent Him. In the New Testament . . . it is the
love of God Himself that is seen in the sufferings of Christ. In the New
Testament the love of Christ and the love of God are the same thing: the two
phrases can be used interchangeably. 'God was in Christ, reconciling the world
unto Himself', and 'it is all of God'."12
There is no legitimate way to separate Jesus from the Father and have any semblance of
Christianity left. For Jesus was sent on a mission by the Father to reconcile the world. Apart
from that reconciling work on the cross Jesus becomes a foreign figure to the church and
irrelevant to the rest of mankind.
Jurgen Moltmann in his book, The Crucified God, claims:
"The death of Jesus on the cross is the centre of all Christian theology. It is not
the only theme of theology, but it is in effect the entry to its problems and answers
on earth. All Christian statements about God, about creation, about sin and death
have their focal point in the crucified Christ. All Christian statements about history,
about the church, about faith and sanctification, about the future and about hope
stem from the crucified Christ. The multiplicity of the New Testament comes
together in the event of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus and flows out
again from it. It is one event and one person. . . .
In coming to terms with this Christ event, the christological tradition closely
followed the Christ hymn in Phil. 2. It therefore understood the incarnation
of the Son of God as his course towards the humiliation on the cross. The
incarnation of the Logos is completed on the cross. Jesus is born to face his
passion. His mission is fulfilled once he has been abandoned on the cross.
So it is impossible to speak of an incarnation of God without keeping this
conclusion in view. There can be no theology of the incarnation which does
not become a theology of the cross. God did not become man according to
the measure of our conceptions of being a man. He became the kind of man
we do not want to be: an outcast, accursed, crucified. Ecce homo! Behold
the man! is not a statement which arises from the confirmation of our