FfaiaUy, redemption by Christ is best understood under this threefold aspect of his entire work. He who in his own person was the revelation of God, the Xoyoc of God to man, has by word and action, and bj his advent, revealed to man, in his state of error, ignorance, and sin, the law of God to man, and the mercy of God to the sinner. He who in his own per- son was the son of man, clothed with priestly holiness^ and making of himself a pure offering unto God, has, as a member of a race which is subject to the conse- qnences of sin, preserved his holiness under circum- stances which caused the curse of human sin to fall on the head of him, the sinless, and has thereby submitted himself to the judgment of God in our stead, t e. has given hhnself as an expiatory offering. He who in his own person was the kingly chief of mankind, has, in Older as priest to sacrifice himself, foregone this king- ly power and worn the crown of thorns, but thereby baa attained the crown of glory, the dominion over the Church he has redeemed, in which and for which he now reigns over heaven and earth.
We find, in all the N. T. account, that in Christ's teachings he was not exclusively a prophet, in his passion he was not exclusively a high-priest, nor was he a king only after his resurrection. On the con- traiy, the three offices cannot be thus mechanically set off from each other. The Scripture certainly as- cribes to Christ a mmus propheticum inmudialum (di- rect prophetical oflSce) only during his visible life in the state of humiliation (viz. a prcphetia persona^ by which his whole being was in hself a revelation of God, and a prophetia officii, in words and doctrines). But it teaches also that, as Prophet and Revealer, the exalted Christ continues to operate {piumupropiheticium mecKotem, mediate prophetic ofilce) by his Word, which he gave once for all, as well as by hia Spirit, through which he continues to enlighten the hearts of believ- ers. In the mtrnttf tacerdatak (priestly office) we dis- tinguish (scripturally) the once-offlBred oblation from the yet continuing intercession; and in the former, the obedienHa and ifUitfacUo activa, the offering of a holy life, from the obedientia and taHsf actio pamva, the assumption of the undeserved expiatory suffering. Finally, the Scripture teaches that Christ, in his state of humUiation, was already king (rexjvity or rex ftatus era£), as in John xviii, 87. He disclaims only the "exercise" of kingly power, not the feet. We dis- tinguish also the inherent regal glory and power of Christ from his exercise of them — the digmtoi regia fh>m the offieium — and in the latter also we distinguish the regnum gratia^ the governing of his people by his spirit, fh>m the regnum gloria, the dominion over all. There is, in fact, no concrete point in the existence and activity of Christ, whether in the state of humili- ation or of glorification, m which the three offices are not found constantly connected. Thus Chri8t remains in all respects, inseparably, the Revealer of the Father to man, the Intercessor for man with God, and the Chief and King of his people. See Knapp, Christian Theology, § 107 ; Nitzsch, Sg9ten% der chrisaiehen Lehre, § 182 ; Herzog, BeaUEncgldcpadie, vi, 607 ; Pye Smith, First Lines of Christian Theology, bk. v, ch. iv, § 2.
CHRIST, PERSON OF. See Chbistologt.
CHRIST, RESURRECTION OF. See Resurrec- tion.
CHRIST, SINLESSNESS OF. The Christian Church has always held that Christ was absolutely in% ftom sin. (This article is based upon Weiss, in Herzog> Real-Encyklop&die [Supplement, i, 193 sq.], and Ullmann, Sinkssness of Jesus [Edinburgh trans. 1868].)
I. Historical.— 1, To the minds of the apostles the perfect sinlessness of their divine Master presented it- self as an unquestionable fact, and this view continued to prevail, through the period immediately succeed- ing, in the development of the Church's doctrine of the person and work of Christ. No explicit statement of it seems to have been made or deemed necessaiy, but the allusions in the early ecclesiastical writers show that the doctrine was neither rejected as unfounded nor ig- nored as unimportant TertuUian inferred the sin- lessness of Christ from his divinity ; Origen regarded it as a peculiar property' of the human soul of Christ, resulting fhmi its union with the divine Logos, by whoee virtue it was interpenetrated as red-hot iron is by fire, so that sin became for him an impossibility. Apollinaris, setting out with the belief that human nature implies limitation, mutability, conflict, sin, etc., held that no man can be a perfect man witiiout sin ; and in order to preserve, consistently with this view, the sinlessness of Christ, sacrificed his true humanity by adopting the opinion that the Logos took the place of the human soul in Christ, and imparted to him an irresistible tendency to the good. Athanasius held the doctrine of a sinless yet perfectly human nature in Christ, arguing that sin does not belong to human nature per as, which was originally pure and sinless ;
CHBIST, SINLESSNESS OF 2«6 CHRIST, SINLESSKE8S OF
and that Christ could, conteqaentlj, usiune the na- tore of man without thereby being made subject to sin, and thus, by his perfect life as a man, beoome man's exemplar and guide in his conflict with eril and progress towards the good.