The Humiliation of Christ

I was preaching recently on the humiliation of Christ from the Shorter Catechism:

Q . 27. In what did Christ's humiliation consist?

A. Christ's humiliation consisted in being born, and that in a poor circumstance; in being subject to God's law; in undergoing the miseries of this life, the wrath of God and the curse of death on the cross; in being buried; and in continuing under the power of death for a time.”

It did strike me forcibly how pseudo-Christian Liberalism must strip this doctrine of its truth and power. 

For them Christ was not humiliated in his birth, for he has no pre-incarnate existence and was not conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the virgin Mary. A mere human Christ has no pre-existence prior to conception. If Christ has no eternal pre-existence then there is no act of voluntary humiliation in his being born of woman.

Furthermore, there is their high handed and contemptuous dismissal of Christ bearing the wrath of God. We cannot possibly sing the words written by Keith Getty:

“Till on that cross as Jesus died

The wrath of God was satisfied

For every sin on Him was laid

Here in the death of Christ I live.”

Liberals must therefore remove any notion of Christ’s voluntary humiliation in vicariously bearing and satisfying God’s wrath on behalf of his elect. Christ’s death is no longer a “cursed death”, but merely a tragic injustice perpetrated by the Jewish leaders and the Roman authorities. He cannot bear the curse in our place for there is no curse to be borne.

Although Liberalism accepts the actual death of Christ as a fact of history, it cannot say “he continued under the power of death for a time.”  There is no terminus for death’s hold on Christ, for there can be no bodily resurrection.

So for Liberalism the re-written and revised catechism question must simply read, “Christ’s humiliation consists in his low condition, (poverty) and his undergoing the miseries of this life, (suffering), and then he died.”

Tragic, yes; saving, no! 

His condition merely reflects the condition of the poor and suffering throughout human history. For Liberalism salvation is not by spiritual redemption but by social action to eradicate poverty and alleviate suffering. The Gospel and its proclamation is displaced by social action and political rhetoric. This is part of the reason why, as Machen pointed out many years ago, Liberalism is not Christianity.