The incarnation

The Word became flesh

The last lesson followed God's covenants to the new covenant made in Christ's blood. This unit asks who stands at the centre of all those promises. John's Gospel begins before time began.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

John 1:1

A few verses later comes the sentence on which the whole Christian faith turns.

The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John 1:14

The church calls this the incarnation, from the Latin caro, ‘flesh’: God's Son taking flesh. It does not mean that God dressed up as a man for a while, or that a good man was promoted to divine rank. It means that the eternal Son, remaining what he always was, became what he had never been: a real human being, with a body that grew tired and a mind that learned.

‘Became’ does not mean ‘was changed into’. Augustine compares it with the way a thought in the mind takes on sound when we speak it aloud: "as our word is made voice, yet is not turned into voice; so the Word of God was made flesh, but never turned into flesh" Augustine. The Word took on something new without ceasing to be himself.

Born of a woman, by the Holy Spirit

Paul says it happened at the moment God had set: "when the time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law" (Galatians 4:4). The Son had a mother, a family line and a Jewish upbringing like any child of Israel. Yet his conception began with God, not with a human father. The angel told Mary:

The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.

Luke 1:35

Matthew tells the same story from Joseph's side. Mary "was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 1:18), and the child is Immanuel, "God with us" (Matthew 1:23).

The Apostles' Creed confesses that Jesus "was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary" Apostles' Creed. The Nicene Creed says that "for us men, and for our salvation" he "came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man" Nicene Creed. The virgin birth is a sign that this child is not one more life that began with us, but the one who came from above. The questions people ask about it are taken up in Was Jesus really born of a virgin?

Why did God become man?

Scripture gives several reasons, and they belong together.

He came to show us the Father. No one has ever seen God, but the Son made him known in a human face, a human voice and human hands. "Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father," Jesus told Philip (John 14:9).

He came to stand where we stand. As God, the Son cannot die; to die for us, he took a nature that could.

Now since the children have flesh and blood, He too shared in their humanity, so that by His death He might destroy him who holds the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

Hebrews 2:14-15

"He had to be made like His brothers in every way" (Hebrews 2:17), and he was tempted in every way as we are, "yet was without sin" (Hebrews 4:15). Where Adam disobeyed, the second Adam obeyed, all the way to the cross. In the eleventh century Anselm of Canterbury put the logic sharply: the debt of sin is one that humanity owes but cannot pay, and God can pay but does not owe, so only one who is both God and man can pay it Anselm, Why God Became Man.

He came to bring us into the life of God. Peter says God's promises make us "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4). Chrysostom, commenting on John 1:14, says that "God's own Son was made the son of man, that he might make the sons of men the sons of God" Chrysostom. Athanasius said it more boldly still: "He was made man that we might be made God" Athanasius, On the Incarnation. He did not mean that we become God by nature. The Eastern churches call this teaching theosis: by grace we are drawn into the communion and life of God. Western traditions more often describe this gift as union with Christ and adoption as God's children.

To heal us, he had to take the whole of what we are. When some taught that Christ had a human body but not a human mind, Gregory of Nazianzus answered that "what has not been assumed has not been healed" Gregory of Nazianzus, Letter 101. He took body, soul and mind, so that every part of us might be made whole. We will meet that debate again in the next lesson. For more on the question, see Why did God become human?

What ‘emptied himself’ means

Paul describes the incarnation as a descent.

Who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross.

Philippians 2:6-8

The verb is kenoō (κενόω), to empty, and from it comes the word kenosis. What did the Son empty himself of? Christians have answered in two main ways.

The classical reading was held by the Fathers, the medieval theologians and the Reformers, and it is the teaching of the Catholic and Orthodox churches and of the Protestant confessions. It notices that Paul explains the emptying by what the Son took: he emptied himself "taking the form of a servant". He did not subtract his deity; he added our humanity. He did not cling to the glory that was his, but veiled it in a servant's life. Chrysostom writes that the Word, "remaining what He was, took upon Him the form of a servant" Chrysostom. Matthew Henry writes that Christ took the form "of one in a low state; not appearing in splendour" Matthew Henry.

From the mid-nineteenth century some theologians in Germany and Britain, and some more recent writers after them, have offered what are called kenotic views. They take with full seriousness that Jesus "grew in wisdom" (Luke 2:52) and said that the Son did not know the day or hour (Mark 13:32). So they suggest that during his earthly life the Son laid aside some divine attributes, such as omniscience and omnipresence, or at least their use, while keeping his holiness and love, and lived a truly limited human life in dependence on the Spirit. The classical reading takes the same texts as spoken of Christ according to his human nature.

The two approaches agree on a great deal. Both insist that the Son really became man, and that his weakness and limits were not play-acting. And as the historic creeds confess, he never for a moment ceased to be God; no church teaches that the Son stopped being divine.

The incarnation is good news because God did not watch us from a distance. "Though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich" (2 Corinthians 8:9). So we can bring our weakness to him without hiding it, and treat the body, ordinary life and even suffering as places God himself has shared. For more on who he is, see Who is Jesus?

Practice