The Incarnation

“Incarnation”  is one of those big theological words Christians throw around that a lot of people, especially non-believers, just don’t understand.  We can impress our friends when we say it, but, do we know what it really means? 

It’s a little like chili con carne, “chili with meat.”  “God incarnate” means “God with meat”, “God with flesh”, “God in human form”.   As I said in a recent blog, Jesus draped His divine nature with flesh just as we drape our eyes in flesh when we blink or sleep.  The eye’s nature is still there.  It just doesn’t function as it would if it did not have flesh covering it.

We get this idea straight from the Bible:  Philippians 2:5-8 (ESV) “…Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷  but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. ⁸  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

So, Jesus always existed in the form of God, as God, but a little over 2000 years ago He came in the form of man.  Jesus is called God in Scripture (Titus 2:13), so while Jesus since conception in Mary’s womb until today has had two natures, divine and human.  The human nature of Jesus had a beginning.  His divine nature did not. 

Jesus is fully man and fully God.  The two are not mutually exclusive any more than being round and being blue are mutually exclusive for a ball.

This biblical teaching clarifies a lot of passages that would be problematic if we didn’t understand the incarnation.  Passages like John 14:28 where Jesus says His Father is greater than He, for instance.  Of course He is.  Jesus humbled Himself and took the form of a servant.  The Father is not better than Jesus as “better” is a word depicting quality.  The Father is greater because, positionally, Jesus is submissive/obedient to the Father by His own choice (Phil 2:8).

It is why Jesus prayed to the Father and yielded to the Father’s will (Luke 22:42).  It’s how Jesus could still be God but die on the cross.  It was His human body which died, not His divine nature, and it was His human body which was raised from the dead (1 Cor. 15:3-4).  It’s how Jesus could be called “a little lower (positionally) than the angels” (Heb. 2:9).  It’s why Jesus could say the Father was His God (John 20:17).  As a man, the Father was His God.

The fact that Jesus took on human form also has great benefits for believers.  If Jesus had not become human, He could not have died for us nor have been raised.  Jesus’ death and resurrection are the foundations of our faith.  If He did not shed His blood, our sins remain (Mat. 26:28).  If Christ is not risen, we are lost (1 Cor. 15:17). 

Even more, our continued growth in Christ  depends on his taking human form.  As a human being, He was tempted as we are (Heb. 4:15), yet He did not sin.  And, because He has a human nature and walked the earth as we do, He knows what it is to be one of us.  So, He is the perfect mediator, advocate, for us before the Father (1 Tim. 2:5).

The infinite God merely spoke, and all things came into existence.  That God humbled Himself to the point of washing the feet of the humans He created, then dying on the cross for them so that they/we might be with Him forever.  How truly great He is.