Two Paradoxes

The quadruple vision of Christ in the gospels meets with two paradoxes.

Eliseo Apablaza

Our Lord Jesus Christ, as He is shown in the Gospels, belongs to such a great wealth and majesty that all that could be said about him would be little more than swimming on the edge of an ocean.

It could well be said that in the Gospels, Christ is shown to us by the Holy Spirit in an astonishing quadruple vision of King, Servant, Man and God. This has been demonstrated by countless bible students throughout history. But these four portraits of Christ not only astonish us by their very defined outlines, and by their association with other passages of Scripture, but also because, when put together they bear a paradox.

We should not believe that a paradox could ruin the beauty of the vision of Christ; on the contrary, it adds shades that enhance its wealth. The wisdom of God usually goes by ways that are different to human wisdom, and Christ is shown as a stumbling stone and rock that makes men fall. This paradox begins with the figure of our Lord, but it also includes the whole gospel and the Christian life. Mark Shaw, in his book "10 Great Ideas in the History of the Church", affirms: "The principal of the cross is that God does things in surprising and contradictory ways. To inspire our worship He wears the ridiculous suit of weakness and folly. To do this, everything begins from nothing. To free sinners He allows Himself to be defeated by them". The word of the cross has a "strange way of transforming broken sinners into saints"-he adds.

Four atypical profiles

As was mentioned, Matthew's Gospel shows us Jesus as the King, Mark shows Him as a Servant, Luke as the Son of Man, and John as the Son of God.

Each one of these profiles, taken separately, is perfectly defined. The King Jesus is a true king, because he has authority and he has a Kingdom. The Servant Jesus is one who truly serves, irreprehensibly. The Man Jesus is perfectly human, and goes through all the main stages of development that one has as a man in this life. And Jesus, the Son of God, shows enough signs of his divinity so as to not doubt him.

However, in these four profiles of Christ we find a double paradox: on the one hand, the that being a King he is at the same time a Servant; and on the other, that being Man is at the same time God. How can somebody be King and Servant? How can somebody be Man and God?

These four figures of Christ break the human norms that we understand by the terms king, servant, man and God. As King he doesn't show the magnificence and splendor that are characteristic of a king; as a Servant, although he shows the weaknesses and fragility of a servant, he doesn't have the same complexities; as Man he has all the beauty of the design of God in the creation, but not his sinful character; and as Son of God, having all things under his hand, he doesn't show the self sufficiency that could be expected, but a total dependence and subjection to the Father.

The mixture of King and Servant, and of Man and God, constitute a wonderful paradox, the greatest and strangest form of being given in order to know the true God in our Lord Jesus Christ. How was God able to show us the King that was in his heart?

Through this paradox of being a King and at the same time a Servant. How could he show us the humility of God, that perfect humility that only the Father knew? Through this paradox of being Servant and at the same time King. How was God able to reveal the eternal project of having a Man impregnated with divinity? Through the paradox of being Man and at the same time God. Lastly, how was God able to reveal His loving heart toward man? Through the paradox of being God but at the same time Man.

The King-servant paradox

To understand this King-servant duality we must fuse the portrait that Matthew gives of the King Jesus with that which Mark gives of the Servant Jesus. We must unite these opposites and thereby solve this paradox.

The King that Matthew depicts is described with very different terms to those that are used for the great kings of the earth, because his heart is that of a servant. The adjectives "powerful", "magnificent", "overcomer", having perfect application to Christ as King, give way to others of a different nature, like "humble", "meek", "compassionate". This King came to serve man in silence, not looking for honor nor exercising violence like a normal king. He didn't break "the bruised reed", nor snuffed out the smoldering wick. For that reason, we are not surprised that Pilate, when a bloody Jesus was before him could not accept him as king. Jesus is a King, but he doesn't desire the thrones of this earth. He is a King in a Kingdom of a different class to that which we know here; one that, as Mark says "I didn't come to be served but to serve". Jesus is a King that can only be known by revelation. Truly, he is the King according to the heart of God, a King whose features God had already determined ahead of time, in a slightly blurred way, in the king David.

Matthew shows us Christ's royal genealogy, but queerly, in that genealogy it was accepted that there should be four women of doubtful reputation included. He is a king, and therefore it corresponds that He have a genealogy, yet it is as though he didn't, like that of the Servant whose genealogy is omitted by Mark. In Matthew's genealogy we are told that he is the Son of David, and we can understand why because the magnificent figure of Solomon corresponds so closely to Christ. But it also tells us that he is the Son of Abraham, which refers us to Isaac who was offered on the altar of the sacrifice, as a lamb. From his childhood, Jesus is the King who is recognized by the gentiles but rejected by his own people and persecuted by the earthly king. Born in Bethlehem, a noble place, he then chose to live in Nazareth, and to be known as "the Galilean". There, in that dark region, he carried out a great part of his ministry; in a place from which no prophet had ever arisen. His presentation to Israel in the Jordan was nothing to look at (who would care about the baptism of a servant?), but all of heaven was attentive to it. The teachings given by the King are of such a special nature that they are not applicable to any Kingdom on the earth, because those who reign together are "the weak and the vile things" of the world. However, they were "spoken with authority" by the king.

When the crowds wanted to exalt him, he escaped to the mountains; when he was acclaimed in Jerusalem by the crowds, he mounted a young colt, riding in as King, just like the kings of peace. Finally, Pilate ordered for a sign be put above his head, on the cross: "This is Jesus, the King of the Jews". This title answers the wise men's original question: "Where is the king of the Jews who has been born?". Christ crucified is the King-servant. Likewise, the mark of the cross is the mark of all future king-servants who follow him.

The God-Man paradox

The Lord Jesus, being the Son of God, eternally coexistent with the Father, the incarnate Word as John shows us, preferred to call Himself the Son of Man as Luke shows us. The Holy Spirit exalts Him through John, but He prefers to humble Himself in Luke's gospel. For His love of men He left the form of God and participated in the human condition. He suffered their same sufferings, and poured out their same tears. He took the form of their humiliation (although not that of their sin), to be in like them in all things.

When we see Him in the gospel of john, perfect in His deity, it astonishes us to see him at the same time in his humanity, the noblest humanity, that which God had in His heart when creating Adam. That which is most astonishing is not his position as the Son of God, by which he enjoys the intimacy and inheritance of his Father, but seeing him as a Son, restricted to the condition of an obedient Man. That is how his condition of God remains subjected to a lesser one, that of Man.

The Son doesn't become Man because there are no other options available to him, but because he voluntarily takes it. It was necessary to introduce perfect obedience into the world, and for Him to come down in order to achieve it. Being one with the Father, He submitted himself in everything to Him. His coming was not of Himself, but by the Father's request. And he came not to do his own will but the Father's. He doesn't act alone, but with the Father; he doesn't choose those that must follow him, but the Father. The Son doesn't decide the time of his earthly pilgrimage, but the Father. The Son's teaching is not his own, but that of the Father; he seeks the Father's glory, not his. For that reason, he remains in the Father's love, and the Father delights in him.

When we see him act in this way, we see the fulfillment of the dream that Adam frustrated in the beginning. The Son's humility contrasts with Adam's sufficiency; the Son's dependence contrasts with Adam's independence.

As the Son of God, he doesn't only show what God has ordered man's highest character to be, in his obedience and dependence, but rather also, in Luke's gospel, he shows the wonderful grace of God as the Son of Man. Luke's gospel is the gospel of grace. Here, Jesus' great compassion for children, suffering women and the oppressed can clearly be seen. The great messages is: the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost. Luke's kernel is chapter 15, in those three parables where those "tax collectors and sinners" occupy the central place in his heart and teaching.

The paradoxes of the Christian

The will of God is that many children be transformed into the image of His Son. What is Christ's image? This is the image of the earthly Christ, who came doing good works and freeing those oppressed by the devil. It is the multifaceted image that should be wrought into his many children.

The paradoxes of Christ's character are also the paradoxes of the Christian and of the church. Is a Christian not that vessel of clay that contains the greatest treasure? Is the church not that tabernacle in the desert, so common on the outside -covered with badger skins-, but so magnificent inside? Is the Christian life not a constant dying that we might live, a permanent state of losing that we might win? Is the agony of supreme weakness not to prove the excellence of Christ's power? Is it not the taking up of the cross every day to obtain the eternal crown? Is the present time not a pale shadow of the future eternal glories?

May the Lord grant us, in His grace, to know Christ just as the Father reveals Him, and to be transformed into that same wonderful image.