Incarnation: The Doctrine of Christ
The First Epistle of John
By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. (1 John 4:2-3)
“The incarnation is a permanent union of the divine with human nature…and this union is realized in the self-identity of a person, namely Jesus Christ, who is at once divine and human.…[In writing about Jesus in this epistle], John is not concerned about theology or orthodoxy when he proclaims the truth of the Incarnation but solely from a sense of its supreme necessity to the spiritual life of the Church and even the salvation of the world” (Robert Law, The Tests of Life [T&T Clark, 1909]).
To share important insights about this doctrine and the practical consequences that depend on it, Pastor John turns to excerpts from Robert Law’s The Tests of Life: A Study of the First Epistle of St. John, Being the Kerr Lectures for 1909 (Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1909). Robert Law was a contemporary of James Denney and closest in agreement with him on the meaning of the atonement as the ultimate demonstration of what sin means to God and the cost of his love as demonstrated in the cross of Christ.