The Incarnation, Part 1: The Moment When Jesus Took On Frailty for Us

The Incarnation, Part 1: When Jesus Took On Frailty for Us

© GodWords.org

The Greatest Mystery of All: When Infinity Became Infancy!

An Eight-Part Series Exploring Jesus’ Lifesaving Incarnation

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Part One

The Moment When

Jesus Took on Frailty for Us

David Bryant

Introduction

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Nearly 317 Church fathers, meeting in A.D. 325 at Nicea (in modern Turkey), unanimously tried to summarize the essence of the Incarnation’s mystery for the churches rapidly spreading across the map. They incorporated it into a short creed for Christians everywhere to recite as they gathered. Here is the key portion of the Nicene Creed:

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of
the Father, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made; who for us men, and for our salvation, came down and was incarnate and was made man; he suffered, and the third day he rose again, ascended into heaven; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead (emphasis added).

There’s no question about it! The early Church fathers concluded that how infinity became infancy is a mystery.

It’s a conundrum how Jesus brings human nature and the Godhead together in a single person—a fellow mortal who will never cease to be one of us, among us and over us, and always for us. Paul puts it this way:

There is no doubt that true godliness comes from this great mystery.
Jesus came as a human being.

The Holy Spirit proved that he was the Son of God. He was seen by angels. He was preached among the nations. People in the world believed in him. He was taken up to heaven in glory (1 Timothy 3, NIRV, emphasis added).

God climbed down!

Popular theologian and author Michael Horton, in an article titled “The Good God Who Came Down,” defines the distinctiveness of Christmas this way:

God has climbed down to us, meeting us not in the “high places” we erect, but in the lowest places: in a barn, suffering our scorn, fellowshipping with sinners . . . the humility of a feeding trough and a cross.

The New Testament message is that the living God has come among us as one of us— not simply in words on pages, but as a genuine, living, breathing human being.

Jesus himself is the living God who came down among us but as one permanently united to us—bone of our bone just like us, taking strategic action to save us and liberate us.

This kind of incarnation consists of nothing less than the dramatic display of a God-orchestrated redemptive invasion—his lifesaving intervention of planet Earth, of world history, of human community, of mankind’s tragedy, but ultimately of the heart’s sinful lethality.

The thing that’s so hard for us to process

Jesus retains unity with the Trinity and our humanity both at the same time. He embodies two natures, without confusion and without division.

He did not change what he was (God); rather, he took on what he was not (human). Jesus added to himself our humanity and our frailty without compromising his deity.

No other person in the universe has brought human nature and the Divinity together like this. This is not God in a human apparition; it is God as a genuine human being. This is how two perceptive scriptures put it:

He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all.

When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human.

It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion (Philippians 2:5-8, The Message).

For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body. So you also are complete through your union with Christ, who is the head over every
ruler and authority (Colossians 2:9, NLT, emphasis added).

Scottish theologian Oliver Crisp helps bring this additional measure of clarity to this mind-blowing transaction:

The characteristics of humanity become the property of God the Son, while the characteristics of his divine life become the property of his human nature.

In other words, God the Son acquires the qualities of a human being in addition to his divine qualities. He is no longer just a divine person. Now he is a divine person with a human nature.

His divinity and humanity are not fused together in some mixture of divine and human characteristics, like many heroes of myth and legend. Rather, his two natures are held together in this one complex person.

In the Lord Jesus Christ, all that makes God God took on bodily form to become all that makes humans human.

Note how The Message cleverly expands on this miracle in Colossians 2:9-10:

Everything of God gets expressed in [Christ], so you can see and hear him clearly. You don’t need a telescope, a microscope, or a horoscope to realize the fullness of Christ, and the emptiness of the universe without him. When you come to him, that fullness comes together for you, too. His power extends over everything.

In Jesus resides the entirety of the Deity—
not just a portion of it—
alive in one single human being.

Jesus did not simply excel in specific endowments of Heaven’s gifts and power. He is the true and perfect God with all divine attributes, such as infinite wisdom and goodness, permanently dwelling among us, as one of us, for us.

No aspect of God’s fullness was withheld from us when Jesus came among us. Consider these familiar biblical texts that back this up:

The Word became a human being. He made his home with us. We have seen his glory. It is the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father. And the Word was full of grace and truth (John 1:14, NIRV, emphasis added).

Don’t you know me, Philip? I have been among you such a long time! Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. So how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father? Don’t you believe that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. The Father lives in me. He is the one who is doing his work (John 14:9-10, NIRV, emphasis added).

God, who first ordered ‘light to shine in darkness,’ has flooded our hearts with his light. We now can enlighten men only because we can give them knowledge of the glory of God, as we see it in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6, PHILLIPS, emphasis added).

“O Come, let us adore him!”
What else can we do?

So then, you and I find ourselves, once again, thick in the middle of the annual Advent festivities. A host of activities demand our attention—concerts to go to, gifts to buy, decorations to be hung, family and friends to visit, and Christmas Eve services to plan.

But where should we focus? Must we not keep ourselves centered on appreciating and amplifying—and then adoring with all our hearts—the person at the center of the supremely awesome, unprecedented, and unrepeatable miracle of his incarnation that we celebrate especially in this season?

After all, “advent” literally means “coming” or “arriving”—referring to the moment the living God came into the world as a little baby. Should we not, in turn, come before him to worship him?

Christmas does not mark simply another observance in some liturgical calendar. Rather, it reminds us of a monumental, unparalleled, inexplicable event “when eternity entered time, sanctified it and caught it up into eternity” (in the view of Thomas Merton), and when “infinity dwindled to infancy” (in the poetic words of Edward T. Oakes).

Christmas is “gospel”! The “great news” is that the everlasting, self-sufficient, all-powerful Son of God took on frailty—in time and space and history—and introduced himself to us as the Son of Man.

Bishop Melito of Sardis, writing late in the second century before Nicaea, captured this sacred mystery beautifully, settling the matter once and for all:

He appeared as one of the sheep,
yet He still remained the Shepherd.

He was esteemed a servant,
yet He did not renounce His Sonship.

He was carried in the womb of Mary yet arrayed in the nature of
His Father.

He walked upon the earth,
yet He filled heaven.

He appeared as an infant,
yet He did not discard the eternity of His nature.

He needed sustenance inasmuch as He was man; yet, He did not cease to feed the entire world inasmuch as He is God.

Spend the next three minutes reflecting on Advent in these three activities:

  • Appreciate more fully some of the significant truths we’ve just explored by skimming back over them.
  • Amplify some of those truths as much as you can by meditating on all the promises they secure for you or imagining all the ways Jesus is like you.
  • Adore the humble but victorious Son of MAN in a minute of worship and praise focused on him.

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About the Author

Over the past 50 years, David Bryant has been defined by many as a “messenger of hope” and a “Christ proclaimer” to the Church throughout the world. Formerly a minister-at-large with the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, president of Concerts of Prayer International (COPI), and chairman of America’s National Prayer Committee, David now provides leadership to ChristNow.com and Proclaim Hope!, whose mission is to foster and serve Christ Awakening movements. Download his widely read ebooks at ChristNow.com. Enjoy hundreds of podcast episodes. Watch his vlogs at David Bryant REPORTS. Meet with David through Zoom or in-person events through David Bryant LIVE!

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