Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 86:342 (Apr 1929)
Article: The Deity Of Jesus Christ
Author: C. Norman Bartlett

BSac 86:342 (April 1929) p. 197

The Deity Of Jesus Christ

C. Norman Bartlett

If the Epistles dwell much upon the fact of Christ’s Incarnation in the flesh, they also abound in references to the glorification of the Savior that followed his rising from the dead. The matchless humiliation of the earthly Jesus made possible the matchless exaltation of the risen Christ. When the inspired writers of the New Testament letters touch upon this glorious theme their thoughts and words take fire like meteors bursting into flame when they enter the atmosphere enveloping our terrestrial globe.

The significance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ played a large part in the thinking of the Apostle Paul. He alluded to it again and again in one connection or another. Let us turn to a passage that bears directly upon the subject of our thesis. In Rom. 1:1–4 we read, “Concerning his Son who was declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, even Jesus Christ our Lord.” This is the crystallized essence of Paul’s thought of the resurrection of Christ as an unveiling of the full deity which, due to the necessary limitations of the flesh, had been only partially revealed during his earthly life. The resurrection did not make Christ the Son of God; it only manifested him as such to the understanding of men. Furthermore, in raising Christ from the dead, God the Father installed him in the glory which had been his before he came to earth. By the resurrection all the pent-up power of his deity burst forth to bless the world for ages to come. The manifestations of divinity which had been budding with ever brighter promise during the three short years of his ministry now flowered forth in tropical luxuriance. And this was made possible because the resurrection wrought a real transformation in his mode of being. We think of

BSac 86:342 (April 1929) p. 198

the appearances that Jesus made to his disciples during the forty days that intervened between his rising from the dead and his ascension to heaven. He appeared and disappeared suddenly and mysteriously. He became visible and invisible at will. He was sublimely independent of space and time limitations. But, however we may explain these appearances to his disciples, we do know that after his ascension Christ was no longer localized as to bodily presence but became transcendent and omnipresent. During his earthly ministry his presence with his disciples had been like a lighted lamp in their immediate vicinity. But now after the ascension his presence became like the all-pervasive sunshine. As the sun is in the sky, so Jesus is in heaven at the right hand of God; and as the sun is in the rooms of our homes, so Jesus is in the hearts of all who love him.

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