Q & A with Brian Sorgenfrei: Hypostatic Union

A long-tenured Presbyterian pastor, Brian Sorgenfrei has worked for both college ministry and churches for several years in and around Mississippi. With his experience of being ministered to as a college student and ministering to college students as an ordained pastor, Brian Sorgenfrei is an insightful perspective on the personal nature of the holy God’s relationship to His people. 

• What is your simplest definition of hypostatic union? 

The hypostatic union is the theological term that describes how the person of Jesus, his divine nature, and his human nature, dwell together in one person. 

• What implications does this have on our relationship with God? 

So, the fact that he really did take on a full human nature means that he knows what it's like to be us.  Probably the most amazing of all is in a world that is full of sin and evil and brokenness and suffering– I think it’s John Stott that said this– I would find it hard to believe in a God that did not undergo evil and suffering himself. And the hypostatic union means God Himself really did undergo suffering, pain, and even Evil himself. Whatever questions I have, which I think are usually good questions about evil, God, and his sovereignty and goodness, the hypostatic union means that God took his own medicine. He knows what it's like to live in this world that we live in.

• How does this change how we can visualize the Lord and connect to Him with other senses as well? 

That one is hard because we really have no physical descriptions of Jesus. What I will say is it does mean that the ways that you think about or visualize God should always start with Jesus. Because Jesus is the Word of God who has become flesh. So if He’s the Word, He is everything that God wants to say, He’s the exact representation of what God is like.  To know what God is like, look at Jesus and you get to know him through his word. So sometimes when I sin or am feeling guilty about things, I think Jesus is frustrated or shaming me. When I read the Gospels, and I see Jesus come to people who are in shame, He actually welcomes them. So I need to run whatever false idea I have about God through the person of Jesus because Jesus is the Word exactly. There's no God in heaven that is unlike Jesus.

• If Jesus remained fully God while being fully man, how can we trust he experienced temptation in the same way we do? 

Well, Hebrews tells us that he experienced temptation in every way except without sin. Jesus was assaulted with really profound temptation from outside of himself by Satan, by circumstances, by other people. I mean for instance, when He is in the wilderness, it’s a real temptation when Satan is saying, “hey turn this rock into bread, stop your suffering.” He was really suffering because he really is human. He could’ve done it. He, yes, did not experience temptation like I do in one sense, I am also tempted by my own sinful flesh within me, and Jesus never experienced that. But any kind of temptation you experience on the outside Jesus really experienced that and resisted it in full.

• What do you have to say to the college student wondering if Jesus experienced the emotions they feel in his human form? Does hypostatic union shed light on this concern? 

I would say read the gospels …. You will see Jesus get angry at injustice, you will see Jesus weep over the death of Lazarus, you will see Jesus afraid the night before he’s gonna die, you will see Jesus rejoice, almost in laughter, with disciples. Sin actually diminishes my humanity. It dehumanizes me. Jesus is fully human as we should be so his emotions are actually more alive than mine and yours. He experienced sorrow in a way that we never have because sorrow is an emotion that comes when youlose something that you love, and Jesus loved deeper and richer than you and I ever did. So, when those things were lost, there was a deeper sorrow.

• What about hypostatic union sparks wonder or questions for you personally? 

I would say what still sparks wonder to me is the hypostatic union is still true today. So, the dust of earth sits on the throne of heaven right now. So that is a real man, the God man, sitting at the right hand of God the Father. That blows my mind. It brings me a lot of wonder about the fact that if Christianity is true, I’m united to Christ and that what is true of Jesus and his humanity is going to be true of me, one day. It makes me wonder. Because you watch the resurrection of Jesus and what Jesus was like after his resurrection… I mean that is what our resurrection’s gonna be! And I don’t know how Jesus appeared in a room that was closed off from people. I don’t know what it’s like that Jesus ate a meal in a resurrected body. It just promotes wonder to me really when I think about the resurrected and glorified body of Jesus that is going to be ours one day too. 

• Anything else? 

I think what is really important about the hypostatic union is that it says both natures reside in the person of Jesus. They do not confuse each other. They don’t meld together. They achieve this thing so that each nature’s only functioning according to their property but in one person, and I know that’s a lot. But here’s where I think that’s important: so Jesus obeys his Heavenly Father perfectly as a man using no resource that you or I don’t have access to. And the reason that is so important is twofold: that means when he dies on the cross as a man he really can take my place, so when my sin covers Jesus, it’s covering the true human who is perfect and he dies in my place. So there’s no condemnation for me. But it also means He obeyed perfectly in my place, so that righteousness, that goodness is shared with me. And that sharing can only happen if He’s truly human.