This article is the nineteenth installment in our series "Christian, What Do You Believe: The Belgic Confession of Faith." Find the whole series here.
The ancient church struggled to believe that God could become man. A heresy called Gnosticism claimed that matter is evil—surely, God could not become human. Some people, adherents of Docetism, said that the incarnation was an illusion. Jesus only appeared to be human but was really pure Spirit. Today, the more common view is just the opposite. Jesus is often presented as merely a very good person, but not God. Both views miss the truth and beauty of the coming of Christ: the great mystery that “God was manifested in the flesh” (1 Tim. 3:16 NKJ).
This lesson can help us understand and value the “inexpressible gift” of God’s Son (2 Cor. 9:15).
The Promise of the Incarnation
All the positive promises in Scripture aim at the renewed fellowship between God and man.
God promised to be with Abraham (Gen. 21:22), Isaac (26:3), and Jacob (28:15). And he was—but not like he was with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, walking with and talking to them face to face. Godly people often felt that God was distant: “a comforter is far from me,” they lamented (Lam. 1:16). But God heard those cries and promised to be with his people again. Isaiah predicted that “The virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel,” God with us (Is. 7:14; Matt. 1:23). King David believed that Messiah would be both his son, a real human descendent, and his Lord (Ps. 110:1; cf. Matt. 22:45). God’s promise to David was not simply that a king would sit on his throne, but that God himself would descend from David and lovingly reign over his people (Ps. 132:11; cf. Acts 2:30). Somehow, God would enter the human experience.
So, for generations, godly Jews looked forward to the coming of the Messiah who would personally shepherd them, bind up their wounds, and wipe the tears from their eyes. They believed that God always keeps his promises even when he requires his people to wait a long time (2 Pet. 3:8–9).
Paul speaks to this waiting and of God’s fulfillment of his promise: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman” (Gal. 4:4). In Jesus, God had finally become personally, even physically, with his people. The apostles recognized that Jesus was the Savior of Israel who was raised up from David’s seed according to the promise (Acts 13:23). The life and ministry of Jesus, as God in the flesh, fulfills all of God’s promises (2 Cor. 1:20).
But what can it mean for God to take on flesh?
The Principle of the Incarnation
Incarnation means “in the flesh.” It comes from the Latin, in carne. By this term we mean that God truly became one of us to be our Savior.
Christ Retained Full Deity
Jesus Christ “is the true eternal God” (art. 10). This must be our starting point. Jesus was not a man who became divine, but the Second Person of the Godhead, God’s “eternal Son,” who became man without losing his divinity. Jesus assumed human flesh from his mother. But his holy conception was achieved “by the power of the Holy Spirit without male participation.” When the angel Gabriel told Mary that she would give birth to the Christ, her reaction was natural: “‘How will this be, since I am a virgin?’ And the angel answered, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God’” (Luke 1:34–35). True God entered into the womb of the virgin Mary.
Christ Became a Real Man
God’s eternal Son did not merely take the shape of a man, adorning humanity as a person puts on a coat, or wears a disguise. He took the “form” of a human servant even as he was eternally “in the form of God” (Phil. 2:6–7).
When the Second Person of the Trinity came into the world, God prepared for him a genuine human body (Heb. 10:5). “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things (Heb. 2:14; Rom. 1:3, 9:5). This truth is so vital that the apostle John made it a litmus test of genuine Christianity. “Those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh” are deceivers (2 John 1:7; cf. 1 John 4:2–3).
Jesus also took a true human soul. Christ didn’t become half a man, merely physical. Our Lord said, “My soul is very sorrowful” (Matt. 26:38) and “troubled” (John 12:27). His soul also rejoiced (Luke 10:21). Jesus experienced all the human emotions from the time of his infancy through his teen years and into adulthood. Christ experienced full humanity.
The Power of the Incarnation
The doctrine of the incarnation is a glorious mystery. But even if we can’t fully understand it, those who trust in Christ can draw deep comfort from it.
God Is Trustworthy
It may seem that God waited a long time to send his Son. But his perfect patience encourages us as we see him doing just what he promised despite fierce opposition. If God is reliable in fulfilling his greatest promise, to come to earth and defeat the devil’s work, can we not trust him in all things? And if God got the timing right in sending his Son, can we not trust him to work at the right time in our lives, too?
Jesus Understands Us
Eternal God became fully man, “like his brothers in every respect” (Heb. 2:17). “He is man from the essence of his mother, born in time.” Unlike the first Adam, Christ’s body was not made in paradise, but in the womb of a fallen young woman, “in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom. 8:3), vulnerable to suffering and death. You can tell Jesus what you are tempted with, troubled by, and desirous of. And he will understand. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15).
Jesus Is Qualified to Save Us
Still, the main message about Jesus is not that he gets us, but that he is able to save us. He is like us “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” (Heb. 2:17). Since he himself “has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted” (Heb. 2:18). In his body and soul, Christ obeyed the law for us. And God “made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21).
When God took on flesh, he proved his willingness to be our God. And one day soon, Christ will fulfill all the divine promises by bringing us into the real presence of the triune God forever.
Footnotes
Athanasian Creed, art. 31.
