The Person of Christ Quotes

“What is significant about stating it this way? It explains more precisely how Christ is one person subsisting in two natures. Christ’s humanity has no independent existence by itself since it became and now is the humanity of the divine Son. Yet Christ’s human nature remains human; it is not mixed or confused with his deity. Also, Christ’s human nature is fully human and lacks nothing, yet it’s the Son who lives a fully human life, subject to the contingency and vulnerability of human existence. Nevertheless, in all that Christ does for us as our Redeemer and new covenant head, his work is truly a divine-human work because his humanity subsists in the person of the Son who lives and acts for us. As the Son lives a fully human life and renders human obedience for us as a man, it’s the divine Son who does it. In Christ, then, as David Wells reminds us, “we see all that Adam was intended to be, but never was, all that we are not but which we will become through resurrection” and union with him,4 yet we also see in him the dawning of the new covenant age and God’s kingdom—an age and kingdom that only God can initiate, inaugurate, and accomplish. In Christ, we find our Lord and Redeemer, as well as our sympathetic high priest and elder brother.”
― Stephen J. Wellum, The Person of Christ: An Introduction

“As for Christ, he has the ability to will as a human and the ability to will as God. Yet it’s the person (the Son) who does “concrete acts of willing.” By this distinction, Maximus could speak of both a person who wills and his will similarly to how we speak of both a person who thinks and his ability to think, given his intellect and mind.39 In Christ, there is one willer (the Son) who has two wills, hence the ability to will as a human and as God.40 Also, because it’s the Son who is the subject of his human nature, it’s the Son, in and through his human nature, who wills as a human, thus rendering human obedience.”
― Stephen J. Wellum, The Person of Christ: An Introduction

“Whenever we look at the life of Christ and ask, Who said or did this? or, Who died for us? the answer is always the same: God the Son. Why? It’s not the divine or human nature that acts and does things; rather, it’s the person of the Son who acts in and through both natures. It’s the Son who was born, who was tempted, who died for us, and who rose from the dead. It’s the Son in whom all God’s righteous demands are met so that our salvation is truly of God.”
― Stephen J. Wellum, The Person of Christ: An Introduction

“Who is Jesus? He is God the Son, who has always subsisted, along with the Father and the Spirit, in the divine nature. But now, for our salvation, the Son has become human and, as a result, now subsists in two natures.”
― Stephen J. Wellum, The Person of Christ: An Introduction

“In Scripture, the human problem of sin before God is a serious one. Our only hope is that God himself acts to redeem by satisfying his own righteous demands against us. Scripture is clear: we don’t need a man indwelt by or joined in some kind of union with God the Son to redeem us; what we need is the divine Son to assume our human nature in his own person so that he can represent us and act on our behalf as our new covenant head and substitute.”
― Stephen J. Wellum, The Person of Christ: An Introduction