Two Natures

 DEVOTION

THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS

TWO NATURES

Rom 1:1-6

1:1 Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God— 2 the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures 3 regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, 4 and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. 5 Through him and for his name's sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith. 6 And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.

NIV

In the very beginning of this letter, Paul writes to those who are loved by the Lord in Rome and called to be saints, has so much theology, we might be considering this for several days. First, we need to explore this truth about the two natures of Christ, his human nature and his spiritual nature. Paul makes it clear that in human nature Jesus is a descendant of David. We understand both Joseph and Mary were physical descendants of David, although Joseph had nothing to do with being involved in the human nature of Jesus. The only thing that counts is that Mary was in the line of David for Jesus was conceived by the Spirit, which in itself is both wonderful and awesome to think about. Here is the Son of God who was from the beginning or at least the beginning of time as God established for our benefit, coming to earth and taking up the form of an embryo within the womb of a young virgin girl. Here he grows just like every other human into an infant and thus we have the birth story of Jesus coming in the form of man. For God to change himself so as to become a human in the same manner as all humans come into this world is too awesome to fully comprehend. It is interesting how the Father decided to have the Spirit conceive Jesus with the womb of Mary, still, the whole idea that Jesus, who was the one who created all that is created who was always and ever was, who had no beginning, changed himself, or reduced himself into the smallest of cells containing the DNA of the Spirit and Mary. Thus Jesus was fully man, having the DNA of Mary and he was fully God having his own DNA by the Spirit, the very same Spirit who hovered over the waters at the beginning of the creation. It is interesting that Paul mentions that Jesus was declared the with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead. Why would Jesus have to wait to be declared to be the Son of God until he was resurrected? He was always the Son of God, even before time existed. The Father knew Jesus was His Son, the Spirit knew Jesus was the Son, and surely Jesus knew he was the Son of the Father. But us mere humans in our meager understanding of all things concerning God, needed some form of spiritual power revealing Jesus to be the Son of God to all humans. Even then, we still feel in some sense this is beyond our complete understanding, however, we accept all this truth through faith. We also remember the truth revealed to us that Faith always insists transformation happens. So we simply believe that Jesus is fully human and fully God and this causes a change to happen continually within us, for we also have two natures. We have the nature of man, bent toward sin, but we also have the nature of Spirit dwelling within us, bending us toward God. Thus, we are like Christ in that sense of having two natures, but each day we become more like him.