The Essentials, Part III: The Incarnation of the Eternal Word

When we get to this part of the essentials we come across this unique word – incarnation – which we can say so easily and still have no real idea as to what we refer.

When we refer to Christ is the incarnation of the one true God, we mean that Jesus Christ was God in the flesh. We do not proclaim the deity in full and the humanity in part, nor the humanity in full and the deity in part. We proclaim the full humanity and deity of Christ in all events, actions, words, personality, characteristics, thoughts, and emotions of Christ during His life on earth.

We proclaim the eternal incarnation of Christ as well. In other words, we proclaim that Jesus Christ, in His glorified state, continues to be the God/Man in every sense of that term.

We proclaim that Jesus Christ is the Word of God (Jn 1:1-3) – that is, the perfect and culminating expression of God’s mind and heart, of God’s will and character – present in the intimate fellowship of the Trinity from eternity and fully engaged with the Father in the work of creation and redemption.

The incarnation affirms that Jesus had “in Him all the fullness of God” dwelling (Col. 1:19) and was in truth “God with us” (Mt. 1:23) – a living tabernacle of God’s holy presence, “full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14-18).

The early church had problems, not with the deity of Christ, but with His humanity. Greek philosophy had brought into the culture of that time the idea that the material was deficient to the spiritual, that there was something basically sinful in just being human. Christianity was a radical new concept at the time. It was not just a Judaic reformation. It was something new, but with its roots in Judaism.

The Nicean Creed was written not to affirm the deity of Christ, but to confirm the dual nature of Christ – fully God and fully human. The significance of this is: in Christ we are dealing with God Himself; in Christ we have a human being who truly represents us before the Creator.

Jesus Christ is God’s only Mediator between God and humankind and God’s unique agent for the salvation of the world. He is also the perfect expression of what humanity was designed to be. In His complete obedience, he became the representative Human Being, a second Adam, modeling for us human life and offering to God on our behalf human life that is rightly in God’s image. Since there is no other part of all creation able to fill this void, the incarnation of Christ makes this piece of our theology an essential.

Pastor Craig