To the Editors of Scripture Truth,
The question is asked if to know Christ “after the flesh” is knowledge the flesh is capable of.
In clearing the ground for an answer it would be well to state that flesh is used in two senses in Scripture. (1) To indicate a condition of flesh and blood, a link with the first creation, and in this connection alone does it refer to our Lord, in His case, of course, absolutely and entirely apart from sin or the effects of the fall. (2) To describe that evil nature which our first parents acquired at the fall, and transmitted to all of their race, except the one blessed exception already mentioned.
I take it the questioner uses the word “flesh” in the first sense only. It must be so in connection with our blessed Lord, and as to mankind, flesh in the second sense could not know Christ at all. The demons recognized who the Son of God was, it is true, but such recognition and true knowledge are two different things and the recognition of demons was very much fuller than that of men.
Now arises the inquiry—“Was Christ when in this world, known ‘after the flesh’?” He was, but here we tread on sacred ground for the questioner adds, ‘Is this knowledge what the flesh is capable of?’ and to that I should answer No, for you must emphasize the words capable of and give them their true meaning.
What is the only impression the flesh is capable of in this connection? Isaiah tells us “He has no form nor comeliness, and when we shall we Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him,” yet in the eyes of God He was as “a tender plant and as a root out of a dry ground”, the one object of beauty and comeliness in this world.
The Gospels tell us what impression the flesh was capable of. Men saw His miracles and they considered Him to be a mere prophet. Again, they charged Him with being devil-possessed and lunatic. He moved among men, and they did not know Him. John is very sweeping in his refusal of the idea that flesh is capable of knowing Christ after the flesh, “He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not.”
When Simon Peter, in contradistinction to the wild guesses the flesh was capable of, recognised in Christ after the flesh, “Christ the Son of the living God,” the Lord clearly indicated that flesh was not capable of such knowledge when He replied, “Flesh and blood has not revealed this to thee, but My Father which is in heaven.”
Of course more than manhood was involved in this answer, for it must ever be remembered that manhood did not cover the truth of Christ’s person. He was ever as a Man absolutely unique and besides that He was more than Man, even God and the Sent One of God, the Messiah, the Christ, for Christ is but the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Messiah. The mystery of His person may never be solved by us. It is beyond us, and to attempt it has brought sad trouble in numberless cases. It were well to lay this most remarkable and absolute statement of our Lord’s heart, “No man knows the Son, but the Father,” and let it ever be the absolute check to the prying of irreverence into what is not nor could be revealed.
And now can we go a step further. 2 Corinthians 5:16 shows that if it was once possible to know “Christ after the flesh,” that knowledge is not possible now. He has died out of that order of things. Indeed, He came into that order of things for the definite purpose of setting that order aside, as being unprofitable in every sense of the word. “He … came by water and blood,” that is, He came in that connection. If blessing had to flow to us it must be so. “Water and blood” express the scope and purpose of His death—“blood” to expiate for our guilt, “water” to set aside the order of things that made “blood” necessary. If the fruit of a tree is bad you need to end the tree as well as pluck the fruit.
Christ’s death has set this whole order of things aside, and whilst we are left in it, and have our links for the moment, and rightly so, with flesh and blood, in those links our TRUE life does not consist. And any knowledge we have of Christ necessarily is outside of this world, its order, “flesh and blood,” and is connected with Himself where He is, in a new order of things, summed up in the expression “new creation,” Himself the glorious Head of a new race with new affections and links.