Sanctification of Christ’s Human
Nature
The human nature assumed into
union with the Logos was miraculously sanctified, so as to be sinless and perfect:
“The Word was made flesh and dwelled among us full of grace and truth” (John
1:14); “God gives not the Spirit by measure unto him” (3:34); “the Spirit of
the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding the spirit
of council and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord”
(Isa. 11:2); “Christ was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin”
(Heb. 4:15); “such a high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled,
separate from sinners” (7:26); “that holy thing which shall be born” (Luke
1:35); “butter and honey shall Immanuel eat, that he may know to refuse the
evil and choose the good” (Isa. 7:14-15); “a body have you prepared for me”
(Heb. 10:5); “this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17); “in
him is no sin” (1 John 3:5). . . . It was not fitting for the Logos, the Son of
God, to assume a nature polluted by sin. For whatever is born of flesh—that is,
from a sinful, unsanctified woman—is flesh, falsehood, and worthlessness. The
Holy Spirit well knew how to separate in from the nature of man, the substance
from the accident. For sin is not of the nature of man but was added to the
nature from somewhere else, by the devil. The Holy Spirit separated from the
fetus all impurity and infection of original sin. . . . Marck (person of Christ
11.14) teaches that the virgin’s substance was preserved from original sin.
After saying that “Christ had his human flesh from the substance of the virgin
Mary, since he is called her son in Luke 11:7, and Gal. 4:5 states that he was
made of a woman,” he adds respecting the miraculous conception: “The action of
the Spirit was exactly threefold: making the virgin’s seed fruitful, the
formation of the human nature, and the preservation from every stain. From
these facts it can well be concluded that Christ, supernaturally generated, was
not bound (tenetur) by Adamic guilty and consequently could not be stained with
Adam’s stain.” Here nothing is said respecting positive sanctification, but
only of preservation from corruption. De Moor, however, in his commentary upon
Marck (19.14), adopts the statement of Alting in the following terms:
Alting observes that “the seed
from which the body of Christ was formed, since it was taken from a sinful
woman (peccatrice), was therefore infected with sin, at least as far as the disposition.
But the Holy Spirit in preparing it purged it from every stain inhering in it.
And so he separated from lawlessness and disorder (anomia kai ataxia) even the
foundations of weaknesses, common to the entire species, which remained.” (William
G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology: Complete and Unabridged, Volumes 1-3 [Reformed
Retrieval, 2021], 557, 558, 559)
