The Incarnation: Why Did God Become Man?

When you set out to know someone, you usually want to know where they came from and what they are like. Such information is far from trivial. Instead, it becomes the blood that pulses through the heart of the relationship. When we ask the typical “getting to know you” questions about Christ, we find the answers are given in the doctrine of the incarnation (a word that simply means “in flesh”). Incarnation describes what happened when the second person of the Trinity left the bliss of heaven for some thirty-three years to enter, as one of us, the mess of the human condition.

The historic Christian doctrine of the incarnation can be expressed in a few simple phrases that the Western church codified in the Athanasian Creed around the sixth century.

Christ Is True God

Jesus of Nazareth is of the same substance as the Father, equal to Him in deity (Athanasian Creed, 31, 33). Christ is not a lesser God. When the second person of the Godhead became a man, God didn’t compromise Himself and change into something lesser than He was. Christ is “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15). “In him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. 2:9). He is the “brightness of [God’s] glory and the express image of his person” (Heb. 1:3).

God reveals Himself as a triune being: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. “The whole three persons are co-eternal, and co-equal” (Athanasian Creed, 26). In the incarnation, Christ did not shed His glory as a snake sheds its skin; He veiled His glory in humanity. Those who see Jesus see God (John 14:9).

Christ Is True Man

Jesus isn’t almost like us. He didn’t come as close to experiencing full humanity as God could come without going all the way. He had a real body and soul (Athanasian Creed, 32) because He was really human. Jesus’ conception was extraordinary (Matt. 1:20); the rest of His development as a man was mundanely human. The Bible describes His birth in very typical fashion. “When the fullness of time had come God sent forth His son, born of a woman” (Gal. 4:4). He was nourished from Mary’s body. He matured through the same phases as others. He was subject to pain, pleasure, hunger, thirst, fatigue, disappointment, suffering, and death. He thought, reasoned, and felt as a man. The Bible puts it plainly: “In all things He had to be made like His brethren” (Heb. 2:17) because only as a real man could Christ be “in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15).

Christ Is One Person with Two Natures

The relation of Christ’s natures to His person is mysterious, but it is important. If we fail to recognize the unity of Christ’s person, we might see Him as divine with some human characteristics or as human with some divine characteristics or as a confused combination of the two. Jesus is one Christ with both a human nature and a divine nature, and these natures do not bleed together. In Christ, God added to Himself our humanity, while continuing to be God.

Highlighting the relevance of the incarnation, the Athanasian Creed transitions seamlessly from Christ’s person to His work. During the whole of Jesus’ earthly ministry (and into eternity), Christ the God-man secures salvation for His elect. He acts as man, because it is man who needs salvation. But, for a mere human, however infused with divine help, the call of duty is too great. Only God could provide man’s remedy. In Christ, God and man meet, and sinners are saved.

To call the incarnation “relevant” almost sounds patronizing. But we need to recognize the intimate connection between this important doctrine and personal piety.

It Opens Up Scripture

Until we grasp that Christ is God-in-flesh, the Old Testament will remain a collection of stories about how men and women struggled with the call to faith. The incarnation helps us to see that the Old Testament sets the stage for God to once again live with man as He did in Eden. On every Old Testament page, God promises a human deliverer who is also stronger than Satan (Gen. 3:15); both a suffering servant and an anointed king.

The reality of God-with-us is explained and applied throughout the rest of Scripture starting with Matthew. The New Testament is not simply a collection of ethical instruction, or even a commentary on the life of a certain Nazarene. It is the real-life story of what happened when God came to men that they might belong to Him. The New Testament is the answer to the Old Testament anticipation of a redeemer. Only in the incarnate Christ, are all of the promises answered with a resounding “yes!” (2 Cor. 1:20).

Near the story’s last chapter, John heard these words from heaven: “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with then, and they shall be his people. God himself will be with them, and be their God” (Rev. 21:3).

It Makes God Accessible

In the Old Testament, God was accessible only through the mediation of prophets, priests, tabernacle, and temple. No Israelite could properly see God (John 1:18). John Calvin said the revelation of God prior to Christ was like a pencil sketch.

In Christ, God became accessible to us in a most familiar form. Six times in the opening of His first letter, John says, “We saw him!” (1 John 1:1-4). During Jesus’ earthly ministry, the majestic God of heaven and earth cried out to the crowds, “Come to me!” (Matt. 11:28). If you want to know what God is like, study Christ. As Richard Phillips has written, Jesus’ earthly posture, tone of voice, attitude, and reaction to events were those of God. “God is Christ-like.”

It Reveals Our Only Mediator

At Mount Sinai Israel needed mediation; they were justly terrified by God’s thunderings. “If we hear the voice of the Lord our God any more, we shall die.” (Deut 5:25). God gave Moses as a temporary mediator (Deut. 5:27) who admonished the people to look for a better one! (Deut 18:15). Of the man Jesus, Paul later wrote, “There is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men…” (1 Tim. 2:5). In His humanity Christ suffered our judgment for sin. In His divinity He endured that judgment to the very end.

It Reveals God’s Humility and Glory

Christ prostrated Himself to the earth because we needed rescue–that’s humbling. God lowered Himself to gather to Himself His rebellious children. Even the earthly body of Christ was lowly. It was as crude as the tabernacle in the desert compared with the pyramids of Egypt or the ziggurats of Babylon. Christ willingly compromised His reputation by becoming a man (Phil. 2:7). Paradoxically, in Christ’s humility, God also reveals His other-worldly glory. Phillips explains: “Jesus saw the event of His greatest earthly humiliation–the apex of His servant obedience–as His true glorification on earth. ‘The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified’ (John 12:23).” Calvin boldly states that the richness of God’s glory “is invisible until it shines forth in Christ . . . the majesty of the Father is hidden until it shews itself impressed” on Christ’s image.”

It Compels Us to Godly Living

“For the love of Christ compels us . . . those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again” (2 Cor. 5:14-15). True godliness is lived out in a mutually loving experience with God. With biblical warrant, we usually think of the cross as the greatest manifestation of God’s love. But if on the cross, Christ’s descent reached the pit of hell, the incarnation was His first step in that agonizing descent. We need to know Christ as He truly is, God and man in one beautiful, glorious person. Knowing Christ ensures being changed by Him.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on December 14, 2020.