Isaiah 61's opening verse is one of the most precisely located prophecies in all of Scripture. The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me; He has anointed Me. The verb anointed is the Hebrew root of Messiah, the Greek root of Christ. The text does not merely describe an office; it names the person who holds it: the Anointed One, sent to bring good news to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. When Jesus reads this passage in the synagogue at Nazareth and sits down, the eyes of all are fixed on Him, and He says: today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. Augsburg Confession Article III is the confessional answer to the question that announcement raises: who is this person, and what kind of salvation can He actually provide?
Psalm 34:18, "The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit," is the Old Testament promise that stands behind Isaiah 61's proclamation. Its comfort is total or it is nothing. The Lord who is near to the brokenhearted must be a Lord with the power to do what nearness implies: to bind up, to save, to release from the captivity of sin and death. AC III's careful confessional precision about the two natures of Christ is not theological pedantry appended to pastoral promises. It is the determination of whether Psalm 34:18 means what it says, or whether the Savior who draws near is only a holy man whose proximity is moving but whose power is insufficient to save from anything that ultimately matters.
| Term | What It Means |
|---|---|
| Communicatio Idiomatum | The communion of properties. Because the divine and human natures are inseparably united in one person, the acts and sufferings of each nature belong to the whole person. Therefore the Son of God truly suffered and died, and the blood shed on the cross is properly called the blood of God. |
| Alloeosis | Zwingli's figure of speech: when Scripture speaks of Christ suffering, it applies only to His human nature, keeping the divine nature separate from the cross. Luther called this a devil's mask and declared that if only a man died for us, we are lost. |
| Satisfactio Vicaria | Vicarious satisfaction. Christ stepped in as our substitute and appeased the Father's righteous wrath against sin. AC III specifies that this satisfaction covers not only original guilt but all actual sins of men, leaving nothing for the believer's own works of penance to address. |
| Idem | The same. AC III's Latin word connecting Christ's humiliation to His exaltation: the exact same God-man who was broken on the cross descended into hell, rose again, ascended, and now reigns to send the Holy Spirit into the hearts of those who believe. |
Augsburg Confession Article III opens with a confessional precision that the Reformers did not regard as optional. The Son of God took on human nature in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and the two natures, divine and human, are inseparably conjoined in one person, one Christ, true God and true man. The Confession was written against the background of two errors that had attacked this unity from opposite directions. Nestorianism divided the person, effectively creating two Christs, one divine and one human, loosely associated. Zwingli's alloeosis achieved a similar division by attributing Christ's sufferings exclusively to the human nature while keeping the divine nature safe from the cross. Luther's response to Zwingli's figure of speech was not a matter of theological taste. He called it a devil's mask committed to the abyss of hell, and his argument was pastoral: if only a human nature suffered and died on the cross, the brokenhearted have no Savior. A human suffering alone, however holy, could never overcome the cosmic powers of sin, death, God's wrath, and eternal damnation. These are powers of infinite weight, and they require a counterweight of infinite value. The communicatio idiomatum provides that counterweight: because the two natures are inseparably united in one person, the acts of each nature belong to the whole person, and therefore we may say without reservation that the Son of God, true God Himself, truly suffered and died for us. The blood that paid for sin is God's blood. No lesser currency could clear the debt.
AC III's description of the purpose of the Incarnation contains a phrase that repays close attention. Christ suffered, died, and rose "that He might reconcile the Father unto us." The Confession does not say that Christ reconciles us to the Father, as if the problem were merely our subjective distrust or alienation. It says He reconciles the Father to us, which means the problem addressed is the Father's righteous wrath against sin. Christ stepped in as our substitute and appeased that wrath by taking it upon Himself. The satisfactio vicaria is not a metaphor for a change in our attitude toward God; it is an objective transaction in which the penalty demanded by divine justice was paid by the divine-human person to divine justice. The pastoral consequence is stated with equal precision: Christ is a sacrifice not only for original guilt but also for all actual sins of men. The crushed in spirit does not need to look to his own works, his own contrition, or his own penance to compensate God for the sins of this week. The God-man has provided a complete and total satisfaction for every sin that will ever be committed by every person who shelters under His atonement. Isaiah 61's year of the Lord's favor is not a partial remission; it is the proclamation that the debt has been paid in full, by the One who was both the debtor, standing in our place, and the creditor, receiving the payment as God.
One of the most structurally elegant features of AC III is its use of the Latin word idem, the same, to connect Christ's humiliation to His exaltation. The same Christ who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, who suffered and was crucified and died and was buried, is the same Christ who descended into hell, rose again on the third day, ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father. The word insists that the trajectory of the Incarnation does not culminate in the grave. The person who bore our sins is the same person who now reigns in glory. The Confession specifies what that reign accomplishes. The same Christ "sanctifies them that believe in Him, by sending the Holy Ghost into their hearts, to rule, comfort, and quicken them, and to defend them against the devil and the power of sin." Isaiah 61's Anointed One who binds up the brokenhearted does not finish His work on the cross and withdraw. He continues it from the throne by the Spirit He sends. Psalm 34's Lord who is near to the brokenhearted is near through the same Spirit: ruling, comforting, quickening, defending. The Incarnation does not end at Bethlehem or even at Golgotha; it extends into every heart in which the Holy Ghost takes up residence.
Psalm 34's Lord who is near to the brokenhearted is not a sympathetic observer. He is the One who took brokenhearted human nature into His own divine person, carried it through death, and raised it to glory, so that when He draws near to the crushed in spirit, He draws near as the One who knows from the inside what being crushed means and as the One who has already paid in full the price that the crushing was meant to exact. Isaiah 61's year of the Lord's favor has been declared, the captives released, the brokenhearted bound up, and the garment of praise given in place of the spirit of heaviness, all because the eternal Son of God was willing to become the man the prophecy described and to be the sacrifice the article confesses.