The Incarnation

It is Christmas time—the season of the year when we celebrate, not just the birth of a baby who grew up to be a great moral teacher, but the birth of one in whom was the union of both divine and human natures. Immanuel (God with us) is one of the names by which he is known. The idea of this union is sometimes called “the incarnation”.

The incarnation can be a difficult concept to grasp. We are familiar with some words from the same root, though. Carnivorous means “flesh-eating”. Chili con carne is chili with meat. We know that carnal has something to do with the body. The Latin root of these words means “flesh”.

Incarnation is not a biblical word. If you look for it with a concordance, you won’t find it. The concept is thoroughly biblical, however. It is seen most clearly in John 1:14.

“ The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (NIV)”
or “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us…” (KJV)

It refers to the fact that in Christ God became human. In the person of Christ was the union of divine and human natures. This theological truth was hammered out in the early centuries of the Church in response to several different ideas which we still see in various forms today: that Jesus was human, but not divine; that Jesus was divine, but not fully human; that Jesus had two natures, but neither one complete—neither fully divine nor fully human.

The Church eventually came to say that in Jesus Christ God became fully human while in the same person being fully God. The term “incarnation” conveys that mystery as adequately as it is possible to do with an idea that, like all mysteries, is not explainable.

At Easter, we think of the resurrection of Jesus Christ as the greatest miracle. Perhaps that’s because each of will eventually die, and Jesus’ resurrection gives us hope that we too will be resurrected (see I Corinthians 15). But the greater miracle is that God became human in the first place.

The idea that the Holy, the Creator, the awesome God condescended to live as a human—one of His creatures—is indeed the most fantastic claim of a miracle that one can make. In fact, it is so fantastic, it seems a fantasy and a falsehood to many; and it is not provable by itself. It is a doctrine we must accept by faith.

The virgin birth and the incarnation are not offered as proofs of the divinity of Jesus Christ. We hold those beliefs by faith. The life and work of Jesus Christ, including His teachings and His miracles, are evidence of the claim of the incarnation. It took the resurrection to provide the proof that Jesus was indeed the Son of God.

In the incarnation is the promise of heaven, but only the promise, not the full reality. In Christ people experienced the awe of being in the presence of holiness. They observed righteousness being lived out in their midst. But the experience was time and space limited. As they went away, that experience faded.

When we encounter God today, as Christ through His Holy Spirit works in us, we experience some of that promise of heaven also. But our experiences also fade. We have the Holy Spirit with us, but we are not the Holy Spirit. The best we can hope for is that the Christ who embodied both human and divine, will—through His Spirit—live in us and work through us to extend the experience of “God with us” to others. May it be so.
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