When it comes to the incarnation, it’s simply hard to fathom the depths that God was willing to condescend in coming to earth and being born in a barn next to animals.
The humility of Christ in taking on flesh should cause us to marvel. The glorious Son of God who has dwelled in unapproachable light for all eternity took on flesh and had no form or majesty that we should look at him.
And yet what exactly does the incarnation mean and what does it not mean? Let’s look at the essential doctrines of sound Christology.
Truly God
First, Jesus was God. He was not a created being. He also wasn’t subordinate to the Father, but was himself God.
The early heresy that denied that Jesus was God was Arianism named after the theologian who popularized it, Arius. But if Jesus isn’t God then he’s not truly our Redeemer or worthy of our worship.
This teaching was condemned as heresy at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, which produced the Nicene Creed.
We believe in one God, the Father almighty, Maker of heaven and earth,
and of all things visible and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten,
begotten of the Father before all ages.
Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not made,
of one essence with the Father by whom all things were made;
who for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven,
and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary
and became man.
The Council of Nicaea didn’t rely on theological preference, logic, or philosophy but Scripture.
Passages they looked to were Philippians 2:1-11, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped but made himself nothing…” Also, John 1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God….And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” There’s also Jesus’ “I Am” statements, and Colossians 1, “He is the image of the invisible God…for by him all things were created…through him and for him.” Jesus also accepted worship as only God could do and did not deny it when the chief priests asked him if he was the Son of God (Matt. 26:64).
But he was also truly man.
Truly Man
Some agreed that Jesus was truly God, but denied that he was truly man. Among those who believed and taught this was Apollinarius. Apollinarianism espoused that Jesus only seemed to have a human body and mind but was actually just divine. Apollinarius thought that the human mind was the source of sin, so if Jesus had a human mind he would be corrupted. He also thought that if Christ was God and man he would be split into two people.
The Council of Constantinople in 381 AD condemned this as heresy. Gregory of Nazianzus famously said, “What has not been taken up has not been healed.” In other words, if Jesus didn’t truly become man like us then he couldn’t have saved us or lived a righteous life in our place since he wasn’t actually man.
A passage of Scripture that teaches the humanity of Christ would be Hebrews 2:14-17:
“Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. There he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.”
John 1:14 teaches this as well when it speaks of Jesus taking on flesh. Of course, we see evidence of this in the gospels like Jesus napping in the boat during the storm in Mark 4.
So, Jesus was truly God, and truly man.
One Person
Then along came Nestorius who agreed, “Yes, Jesus is truly God and truly man.” But he then said Christ was two people. Nestorianism tended to speak about Jesus as a man with whom the divine Son had united himself.
The church objected to this doctrine by teaching that Christ wasn’t divided; he was one person. Scripture doesn’t reveal a divided Jesus. The disciples don’t speak to the divine Jesus at times and the human Jesus at others.
The single personhood of Jesus was articulated in the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD.
Two Natures
Then came Eutyches. Eutyches said, “Yes, Christ is one person, not two,” but then he taught that Christ’s human nature and his divine nature were bound up in such a close fusion that the human nature was swallowed up in the divine nature. In other words, his deity had absorbed his humanity and transformed it into divinity.
Well, this would oppose passages like Hebrews 2, that he was made like his brothers in every respect. Also, Philippians 2 that he was made in human likeness.
Against this the Council of Chalcedon 451 AD condemned Eutychianism, stressing that Jesus was truly God, truly man, two distinct natures, but one person, without confusion, without separation, the two natures in no way being abolished by the union.
This is why Scripture can both say that Jesus was eternal (John 1), and knows all things (John 1:48 – I saw you under the fig tree; Matt. 12:25 – he perceived people’s thoughts; John 16:30 – He didn’t correct Peter when he said that Jesus knew all things; Col. 1 – In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell). Yet, at the same time Scripture tells us that Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men (Luke 2:52), that he took a nap cause he was tired, and that he didn’t know the day or the hour of his second coming (Matt. 24:36). We know that Jesus is speaking here of his human nature, not his eternal, divine, and omniscient nature.
Yet, Jesus is not two different people, but has two distinct natures in one person.
Fred Sander’s diagram helpfully visualizes a sound Christology.
Jesus is truly God, truly Man, one person, two distinct natures.
Now this understandably racks our brains to understand. But there’s something crucial we must understand. When we talk about the mystery of the incarnation, or anything in our faith that is challenging for us to understand, what we do not mean is that the incarnation or anything in Scripture is illogical or contradictory, but we believe it anyway. That’s not what faith is.
Faith in Christ is recognizing that there are certain things that are challenging for us to understand or reconcile, yet in humility we submit to God’s Word, trusting that God’s wisdom is greater than ours. We see seeming mysteries or challenging passages and yet we can say, “But I know that my Redeemer lives.” When we stumble over the mystery of the incarnation or seeming contradictions in Scripture the problem does not lay with God but rather in our feebleness to grasp the depths of God’s knowledge or wisdom. There’s nothing illogical in God, only in our understanding of logic. It’s not that the incarnation is divinely impossible, but that our feeble minds fail to grasp how it’s possible.
I don’t think it can be said better than how J.I. Packer puts it. It’s worth quoting him at length:
The question, therefore, that we must ask ourselves when faced with these puzzles is not, is it reasonable to imagine that this is so? But, is it reasonable to accept God’s assurance that this is so? Is it reasonable to take God’s word and believe that He has spoken the truth, even though I cannot fully comprehend what he has said? The question carries its own answer. We should not abandon faith in anything God has taught us merely because we cannot solve all the problems which it raises. Our own intellectual competence is not the test and measure of divine truth. It is not for us to stop believing because we lack understanding, but to believe in order that we may understand.[1]
In other words, we humbly give highest allegiance to God’s wisdom, not our own ability to reason or rationalize. We grasp at comprehending all of God and when we’ve exhausted our knowledge we say with the psalmist, “O LORD, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me” (Ps. 131:1).
Lest, we walk away from this with merely an exercise in the esoteric, we must consider the glory of the incarnation, not just its mysteries. Jesus, the all-powerful one, emptied himself and came to serve rather than be served. None of us could imagine humility like this. Jesus created the world. By him all things were made (Col. 1:16) yet he entered his own creation so humbly. He wrote himself into his own story in order to rescue us.
We rightly focus on the cross as Jesus’ loving sacrifice for us. But we must also see his sacrificial love for us in the incarnation.
John Donne wrote this about the humiliation of the incarnation:
He found a Golgotha, where he was crucified, even in Bethlehem, where he was born; for to his tenderness then the straws were almost as sharp as the thorns after, and the manger as uneasy at first as the cross at last. His birth and his death were but one continual act, and his Christmas Day and his Good Friday are but the evening and the morning of one and the same day.[2]
Unto us is born a Savior who is Christ the Lord. He was born to die, that we might live. He was humbled so we could be lifted up. He was emptied so we could be filled. The incarnation might be mysterious, but it’s even more loving and glorious.
[1] J. I. Packer, “Fundamentalism” and the Word of God (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1958). 109.
[2] John Donne, “Christmas Day, 1626,” in Sermons of John Donne, ed. Evelyn M. Simpson and George R. Potter (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962), 7:279. As quoted in Nancy Guthrie, ed., Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus: Experiencing the Peace and Promise of Christmas (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2008). 20.
Mike McGregor
Mike McGregor (MDiv, Reformed Theological Seminary) is Director of College Ministry at First Baptist Church in Durham, N.C. You can follow him on Twitter at @m5mcgregor.
