The Vicarious Ministry of Jesus…And What It Means

By Neil Earle

For some five years our church, Grace Communion International, has been stressing the importance of the Trinitarian relationship inside the Godhead and what it means for our salvation.

Mike Feazell, Trinity defender and expositor

The technical term for this teaching is “Trinitarian-Incarnational theology,” a challenging concept, perhaps, that nevertheless explains the decisive and cosmic event that happened when the Word became flesh. In summary it means…

  1. As God the Son, Jesus has eternally existed in perfect communion with the Father and the Holy Spirit (John 1:1; 14:7-11). This means that the key term that explains what God is all about is not power or sin or guilt but…relationship.

“Out of this Triune relationship comes everything,” said Dr. Mike Feazell at a GCI Conference in Ontario, CA on February 25. ”God is not ticked off about sin and out to get us but is instead calling us to focus on sharing that love relationship between the Father and the Son.”

God is not the Great Rule Maker in the sky; he is the Father of Jesus. It is Jesus, says Saint Paul, who has made us accepted in the heavenly realm (Ephesians 1:6). Through Jesus’ work in the power of the Spirit we are adopted into God’s Triune relationship, the centerpiece of all that is (Ephesians 1:6). For wayward, erring human beings this is great news: Someone already loves them before they were born and even if everyone else rejects them God is still there. The sin issue is very important but a subset of the far greater reality that God is love (1 John 4:4).

Martin Luther on ‘You Died’ (Colossians 3:3)

This excerpt from Luther’s teaching is printed in Scottish theologian Thomas Torrance’s 1996 work, Kingdom and Church: A Study in the Theology of the Reformation. Luther powerfully holds together the two planes of our salvation – the earthly and the heavenly – with Jesus the Mediator.

Luther writes:

“A Christian is a person who is buried with Christ in his death, he has died to sin, the law and death. ..But we do not see that, for it is hidden from the world; it does not appear, does not strike us in the eye (1 Peter 3:4; 1 John 3:8).

“For the Christian is not in this world. He does not live, he is dead. He stands in another life, the heavenly, which is far beyond what we have here. And what troubles and work and what plagues we shall have to experience before we reach there…

“But the Christian lives here as there through God’s imputation, righteous and holy, under the wings which like a hen he spreads over us. And yet so far as the Christian is a fighter and is engaged on military service, he is still under the law here and under sin, for he is still in this life. Daily he feels and experiences the struggle with his flesh and lives only too close to it (Romans 7:23, 25)…

“A man who believes in Christ is through divine imputation righteous and holy; he already lives in heaven for he is surrounded with the heaven of mercy. But here while we are embraced in the Father’s arms, clothed with the best robe, our feet stick out from below the mantle, and Stan tries to bite them off if he can. Then the child whimpers and cries and feels that it still has flesh and blood, and the devil is still there…Thus we are holy and free in the Spirit and not in the flesh…You must pull your feet under your cloak else you will have no peace.”
Martin Luther

  1. Through the Son becoming like us (Incarnation) he has lifted our humanity into the divine life of the Godhead (Colossians 3:3; Hebrews 2: 10-19). “We have been taken by the Holy Spirit to share what’s going on in heaven which is shown in Revelation 4 and 5 as the perpetual worship of the Father and the Son in the power of the Spirit,” Mike Feazell added. As shocking as that sounds it has been in the Bible all along: “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6).

(Read box at right to see how Martin Luther expanded on this glorious good news.)

  1. Jesus was and remains fully human but is also fully God and thus our Mediating High Priest who ministers between God and humankind. 1 Timothy 2:5 shows that the Mediator between God and humanity is “the man Jesus Christ.” Revelation 5 adds to this unusual and little-understood teaching by showing us in symbol that Jesus appears before the throne in heaven as a “Lamb looking as if it had been slain” (Revelation 5: 6). The expositor Leon Morris explains John’s phraseology here: “But he does not think of the Lamb as slain. The Lamb is as though slain for he is very much alive. The Greek perfect tense here signifies that the Lamb was not only slain at a point of time, but that the [effectiveness] of his death is still present in power” (Tyndale Commentary: Revelation, page 95).

Hebrews 9:25 teaches that the divine Son “ever lives to make intercession for us.” That is Jesus in his High Priestly role. “We’re created for good relations with God,” Mike Feazell adds. “God has brought us into his own self. All humanity has been taken into Christ and we are meant to live out Christ’s command to love one another.”

A new look at the Trinity tied to Jesus' incarnation is surfacing these days.

That is another practical application of Trinitarian-Incarnational theology – we see people through new eyes. C.S. Lewis said we never meet ordinary people, only potential sons of God unaware of their high purpose.

  1. The God-Man, Jesus the Christ, has effected the reconciliation of all things and all humanity to the Father. Romans 5:18 shows Paul expounding on the superiority of Jesus, the New Adam, over the First Adam: “Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men (what is called “the Fall”) so also the result of one act of righteousness was that justification that brings life to all men.” Colossians 1:15-20 reinforces this as does 1 Corinthians 15:21-22 – “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.”

This is the basis of our forgiveness and our hope, reports Mike Feazell. “The human race has hope because God’s love is expressed and based on what he has done in Christ.” As the hymn puts it:

“Full atonement can it be/Hallelujah what a Savior”

When Christian ministers lead in their preaching with God’s love and what he has done for us, then this is a much more hopeful and effective form of evangelism, of reaching out to the world.

  1. And now a little understood principle: When Jesus died he symbolically took the whole human race down with him in his death (2 Corinthians 5:14) but when resurrected he took us up with him, vicariously, to the Father, into the divine life of the Trinity (Romans 6:11; Ephesians 2:6). This fully explains what Saint Paul means when he says we are accepted in the Beloved Son (Ephesians 1:5-6).

The cosmic nature of our salvation clarifies the vicarious ministry of Jesus. He effected “so great a salvation” through his death, burial and resurrection by the power of the Spirit (Romans 1:4). Jesus’ sacrificing activity unites the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in our salvation. He is our representative in heaven just as a Congressman vicariously represents all his constituents. Thus Paul can state in Colossians 3:1-3, “Since then you have been raised with Christ set your hearts on the things above, where Christ sits, on the right hand of God…for you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.”

This is the vicarious [in our stead] ministry of Jesus Christ, perfect God and perfect man, representing us in heaven, showing that the human race does not need to worry about “getting in God’s good graces.” As Thomas Torrance puts it, they are already in God’s good graces through the salvation flowing from God’s three-fold nature. It is the church’s job to place humanity’s acceptance into this Trinitarian mystery near the heart of its message as opposed to a gospel that begins with sin and God’s wrath. This is why we baptize in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (Matthew 2:19-20).

How great are His ways and his counsels far above ours!