God in Christ Jesus by Dave Jenkins for Servants of Grace
Colossians 2:9-10, “9 For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, 10 and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.”
How is Christ, after His ascension, localized in heaven and yet with His people no matter where we are (Matt. 28:18–20; Acts 1:6–11)? According to His humanity, Jesus is not on earth, but according to His deity, Jesus is never absent from us (The Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A 47).
This issue gets to the heart of the person of Jesus, who is both truly human and truly divine. Human beings can be in only one place at a time. It is an intrinsic limitation, something that makes us human. If Jesus’ humanity possessed omnipresence, He would not be truly human, and He could not have borne God’s wrath in our place. Similarly, omnipresence is one of the attributes that makes God, well, God. If Jesus’ divine nature were not omnipresent, He would not be God. We can commune with the entire Christ because His omnipresent divinity, perfectly united to His humanity, connects us to His whole person, including His humanity.
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We are taking care to distinguish, without separating, Jesus’ human nature from His divine nature because of their perfect union in the one person of Christ. The Heidelberg Catechism affirms the perfection of this union (Q&A 48), using Colossians 2:9 as a proof text. Paul tells us in Colossians 2:9 that “the whole fullness of deity” exists in Jesus; the union between the human and divine is so complete, so perfect, that the person of Jesus lacks nothing that is intrinsic to humanity or deity.
The perfection of this union means as Dr. R.C. Sproul writes in Essential Truths of the Christian Faith, that “what is said of the divine nature or of the human nature may be affirmed of the person.” Still, we may not confuse Jesus’ divine nature and human nature. Dr. Sproul notes that we rightly say, “Christ, the God-man, died. This, however, is not to say that God perished on the cross” (p. 81). Similarly, “Jesus knew what was in man” (John 2:25), but His human nature was not omniscient.
