The Incarnation: God Manifest in the Flesh

Of all the claims made by any religion in the history of the world, this is the strangest. Not that God exists — many have said that. Not that God is powerful, or holy, or worthy of worship — that too is widely believed. The Christian claim is that the God who made the galaxies was once an infant who had to be fed, who learned to walk by falling over, who grew tired at the end of a working day and had splinters in His hands from a carpenter's bench.

Nobody would invent this. Every religion men have constructed moves in the opposite direction — man reaching upward, climbing, purifying himself, ascending toward the divine. Only here does the traffic run the other way. Only here does God come down.

1. What is actually being claimed

Let us be precise, because a great deal of confusion comes from imprecision here.

The incarnation does not mean that a good man became divine. It does not mean that God possessed a human being, or appeared in a body the way an actor puts on a costume, or that a spirit temporarily inhabited a shell. Nor does it mean that God stopped being God for a while.

It means that the eternal Son of God, without ceasing to be what He always was, took to Himself a complete human nature — a real body, a real human mind and will — and became a man, permanently. One Person, two natures, neither mixed nor confused.

"And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory." (1 Timothy 3:16)

2. Announced centuries before it happened

This was not improvised. Seven hundred years before it occurred, a prophet gave a sign so specific that it could not be quietly fulfilled:

"Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." (Isaiah 7:14)

And the New Testament records the fulfilment, translating the name in case anyone should miss its weight:

"Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us." (Matthew 1:23)

God with us. Not God above us, which we already knew. Not God against us, which we had reason to fear. God with us.

And Isaiah went further, naming the child in terms no created being could bear:

"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace." (Isaiah 9:6)

Notice again the two verbs, which contain the whole doctrine. A child is born — His humanity had a beginning at Bethlehem. A son is given — His deity did not. You cannot give what does not already exist.

3. The Word made flesh

The apostle John opens his Gospel by establishing who the Word is before saying what happened to Him:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1:1)

And then, thirteen verses later, comes the sentence that divides all history:

"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth." (John 1:14)

The word rendered dwelt carries the sense of pitching a tent. God came and camped among us — not visiting from a distance, but moving into the neighbourhood and living there. And John, who wrote this as an old man decades later, says we beheld his glory. He is not passing on a rumour. He is reporting what he watched with his own eyes over three years.

4. What He laid aside, and what He never surrendered

Here is where careful thinking is required, and Scripture gives us the most precise passage on the subject:

"Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." (Philippians 2:6-8)

Follow the movement, step by step. He was in the form of God — that is what He was before anything happened. He thought it not robbery to be equal with God — equality with God was not something He seized; it was His by right.

Then: He made himself of no reputation. The older word is emptied. But emptied of what? Not of His deity — a God who could stop being God was never God at all. He emptied Himself of the outward glory, of the independent exercise of His divine prerogatives, of the reputation and honour that were rightfully His. He did not lay down what He was; He laid down what He was entitled to.

Think of a king who genuinely becomes a servant in his own household — not disguised, but actually taking the role, actually obeying, actually scrubbing floors. He has not stopped being the king. He has surrendered the exercise of everything the title would have secured him.

And note where the descent ends: obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Not merely death, which would have been humiliation enough for the Author of life. The particular death reserved for slaves and criminals.

5. Why He had to become a man

Was there no other way? Scripture answers that question directly, and the reasoning is worth following closely:

"Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." (Hebrews 2:14-15)

There is the reason, stated with brutal simplicity: that through death. God, as God, cannot die. If the penalty of sin was to be paid, and the penalty was death, then the One paying it had to be able to die — and so He had to become what we are.

He did not take on the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham. And the passage draws the conclusion:

"Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people." (Hebrews 2:17)

In all things. Not partly human, not human in appearance. He knew hunger and thirst and exhaustion, was homeless, was misunderstood by His family, was betrayed by a friend, and wept at the grave of another. He was tempted in all points as we are, and did not sin — which means, incidentally, that He knows the full force of temptation better than we do. We give in early; He never gave in at all, and therefore felt the whole weight of it.

6. Fully God and fully man, at once

Both natures must be held together, and the moment either is let go the gospel collapses.

"For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." (Colossians 2:9)

Weigh that sentence. Not part of the Godhead — all the fulness. Not in seeming — bodily. And He never once spoke as a creature about His own origin. Standing among men who traced their descent from Abraham, He said: Before Abraham was, I am.

"Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am." (John 8:58)

Now see why both are necessary. If He were only man, His death would be the death of one good person, sufficient perhaps for one other person, and worth nothing to us. If He were only God, He could not have died at all, and there would have been no sacrifice. Because He is both, His death has the infinite worth of deity and the genuine humanity that makes it ours. Remove either nature and there is no salvation left.

7. What "God with us" means in practice

This is not an abstraction for theologians. It changes how a suffering person may think about God.

It means God is not distant from human pain as a spectator is distant from a play. He has been inside it. When you speak to Him about grief, you speak to One who stood at a grave and wept. About betrayal, to One who was sold by a friend for silver. About injustice, to One who was condemned in a rigged trial. About physical agony, to One who was flogged and nailed to a beam. About the silence of heaven, to One who cried out and received no answer.

There is a great difference between a God who sympathises from above and a God who has been through it. Only the second can be trusted by someone in real trouble, and only the second is actually on offer.

And it means something further. If you want to know what God is like — not what philosophers deduce, but what He is actually like — you do not have to speculate. Watch the Lord Jesus Christ. His patience with slow disciples, His refusal to break a bruised reed, His anger at religious hypocrisy, His tenderness toward the woman everyone else had written off. That is not an approximation of God. That is God, in the flesh, showing us Himself in terms we can take in.

8. The descent was not the end of the story

The passage that describes the humbling does not stop there:

"Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Philippians 2:9-11)

The One who went lowest has been raised highest. And note that He did not lay aside His humanity when He returned. He rose in a body, ascended in a body, and there is at this moment a Man at the right hand of God — one of us, who knows exactly what it is to be us, representing us there.

9. What this asks of you

If God has come this far — from the throne to a stable, from glory to a cross — then the question is no longer whether He cares. That has been settled beyond argument.

"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23)

"For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 6:23)

"But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3:16)

"But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name." (John 1:12)

He came all the way down

Every other religion asks you to climb. This one records that the climbing was never going to work, and that God therefore came down the whole distance Himself — down past the angels, down into a woman's womb, down into a feeding trough, down through thirty ordinary years of labour, down to a criminal's execution, down into a borrowed tomb.

He did not come down partway and ask us to make up the difference. There is no gap left for us to bridge. That is what Emmanuel means, and it is why the message is called good news rather than good advice.

God was manifest in the flesh — and He did it for you.

Let us Pray:

Our gracious heavenly Father, we come before Thy throne of grace through the precious name and perfect merit of our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone has opened the way into Thy presence.

We thank Thee for Thy beloved Son, and for the mystery of godliness, that God was manifest in the flesh. We praise Thee for Thy preserved Word, which declareth **"The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us"** (John 1:14), and which cannot be broken.

We confess before Thee that we handle so great a wonder with so little awe. Forgive us, we pray, and cleanse us, for Thou art faithful and just to forgive us our sins.

We beseech Thee for every soul reading these words who is yet without Christ. Send forth Thy Holy Ghost to convince them of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment; open their understanding; and draw them to Thy Son before this day is done.

Strengthen Thy people who read it. Comfort the discouraged, establish the wavering, and let none go away empty. And use this message to let every reader marvel again at the stooping of God to a manger, for Thy glory and not for ours.

We pray all of this to Thee, O God, our Holy and Heavenly Father, in the precious name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by the power and anointing of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

The Most Important Prayer You Will Ever Pray

Before you close this page, one question matters more than everything you have just read: if you died tonight, do you know where you would be?

You cannot be saved by joining a church, by being baptized, by giving money, or by living a decent life. Salvation is not a wage that is earned; it is a gift that is received. Every one of us has sinned, the wages of sin is death, and there is a real hell prepared for sin — but the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died on the cross in the sinner's place, was buried, and rose again the third day.

If you know yourself to be a sinner, and you are willing to turn from your sin and trust Him alone, then speak to God now. There are no magic words — but if these words are the cry of your heart, pray them and mean them:

After You Have Prayed

1. Tell somebody today. "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" (Romans 10:9).

2. Begin reading the Bible. Start with the Gospel of John, then Acts, then Romans. Read a little every day. "As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby" (1 Peter 2:2).

3. Talk to your Father every day. You may now come boldly, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. No appointment is needed and no man's permission.

4. Find a Bible-believing church and be baptized. Not to be saved — you already are — but in obedience, and as the public confession of what has happened to you.

5. Rest in this, and do not be shaken by your feelings. "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life" (John 5:24). You will still sin; when you do, confess it and go on — "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).