on 30 June 2021
Q. 21. Who is the Redeemer of God’s elect?
A. The only Redeemer of God’s elect is the Lord Jesus Christ, who, being the eternal Son of God, became man, and so was, and continueth to be, God and man in two distinct natures, and one person, forever.
It is possibly the most beautiful answer in all of the catechism. Having outlined our desperate state and then told of us of God’s plan of salvation, the Redeemer is unveiled.
We are told that the only Redeemer of God’s elect is the Lord Jesus Christ. “There is no other name given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Jesus said, “I am the way the truth and the life no one comes to the father but through me” (John 14:6) There has never been and there never will be any other redeemer than Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament they looked forward to him, and we look back to him.
Who is this Redeemer? He is the eternal Son of God.
The one who we were taught of back in Q6 – who is the same in substance equal in power and glory with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Augustine famously wrote ‘Without ceasing to be what he eternally was he became what he was not’. There was a moment where the King of Angels became a little lower than the angels. He took on flesh, as the hymn puts it ‘Our God contracted to a span incomprehensibly made man’. The eternal Son of God unites himself to our humanity. The Creator enters into creation. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). In Him dwells the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Colossians 2:9). At this point we cannot fully understand, but we can worship.
The catechism tells us importantly that he becoming man, he so was and continues to be. In his life on earth and now his reigning in heaven, he continues to be a man. As Rabbi Duncan so famously put it ‘The dust of the earth now sits on the throne of the universe.’
He is both man and God, both the Son of Adam and the Son of God (Luke 3:38), there is no confusion between the two. His humanity is not lost in his divinity nor his humanity in his divinity. Jesus Christ is both fully God and fully man. However he is not two persons but one. Our God has taken upon himself our humanity, he is the God- man for all eternity.