“Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your house.” Acts 16:30-31
We have been considering essential truths about Jesus. Why? Because one must believe in the biblical Jesus, not a Jesus of one’s own imagination. We have previously considered the deity, humanity, and the person of Christ. Let’s now turn our attention to the “estates” of Christ. His estates include: A. His former glory before He was incarnated; B. His humiliation, when He was living and dying as a man on the earth; and C. His exaltation upon being resurrected and His ascension back to Heaven. (Also see LBCF Chapter 8.)
A. The Estate of Former Glory.
Before Christ was born on this earth, He existed from all eternity past as the eternally begotten Son of the Father. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit existed eternally in perfect unity and fellowship, needing nothing or no one outside of Themselves. Before His incarnation, Jesus was not human. When Jesus was conceived, God the Son entered into the estate of humiliation, taking a human nature (without sin), a human will, and a human body.
B. The Estate of Condescension (two phases).
1. Christ’s Condescension is formerly called the kenosis, which is most fully articulated in scripture in Philippians 2:5-8. The kenosis has not always been understood correctly or uniformly. While it is clear that Jesus laid aside some of His prerogatives as God (e.g., omnipresence, omnipotence, and majesty), some have incorrectly insisted that Christ laid aside His deity. Still others have incorrectly taught that the divine attributes remained but became no longer divine.
The Biblical understanding of kenosis is that at the Incarnation, Jesus remained fully divine, but that He voluntarily laid aside the use of some of His divine attributes. He never became less than God in any way, at any time.
2. Christ’s Descent into Hell.
What is meant by Christ’s descent into Hell? It does not mean, as some erroneously insist, that Jesus was in Hell for three days between His death and resurrection under the authority of Satan. Jesus has never been, nor will He ever be, subject to Satan. Rather, this descent into Hell is a reference to: a) Jesus’s lifeless physical body being in the grave for three days, and b) His receiving the full force of the Father’s wrath for the sins of His people. It is also an error to believe that the Father and the Son were separated for three days. They cannot be separated since they are both essentially God. While it is clear that Jesus’s body was dead for three days, His soul was with the Father in Heaven (Paradise, Luke 23:43)
C. The Estate of Exaltation.
The estate of exaltation includes (1) Christ’s resurrection and glorification (Acts 2:24, 32), (2) His ascension (Acts 1:6-11), and (3) His being seated at the right hand of God (1 Corinthians 15:24-28) where He intercedes for His people (Hebrews 7:25), and from where He is the Judge of all the earth (Acts 10:42). In His eternal estate, Jesus remains, and ever will be both human and divine.
Next time we will consider the Work of Christ: What He did and still does as High Priest.