The Incarnation | From the MLJ Archive on Oneplace.com

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What does it mean that the Son of God became a man? This great doctrine is what has traditionally been called the incarnation. It is God taking on a true human nature in order to save His people. In this sermon on the incarnation, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones preaches on the great importance of this doctrine, not only for theology, but also for the Christian life. He warns of two main errors in thinking about the incarnation. The first is the misconception that Jesus merely appeared to be a man. But this is false, because Jesus was both man and God as the savior. The other error is to believe that the second person of the Trinity was changed in the incarnation, that the very nature of God changed. This is false because there was no mixing of the natures, so that the divine nature remains fully divine and distinct from His human nature. God in the incarnation was not only both God and man, but this fact is declared in the virgin birth. There was a miraculous conception in accordance with the miraculous person born. This doctrine of the incarnation as found in the Bible is the teaching that God has come down to humanity as a man to save all those that believe in Him.

Source: The Incarnation

Creation, the Incarnation, and Christmas | The Master’s Seminary Blog

Among all the other wonderful blessings of Christmas, at its core, this season is a celebration of the gift of life through the birth of a baby. Of course, any time a baby is born it’s a glorious event worthy of a decent party. My wife and I have 4 children, and our friends and family have greeted each birth with joy and excitement, and rightly so. 

Every birth reminds us of the mystery of life and the gift of our created world. This person who is sleeping in my arms was non-existent only a year ago. In a small way, each birth reflects the original creation story as a movement from non-existence to life. God graciously spoke the world into existence from nothing and, upon assessment, considered it very good. Each life points us to this reality and gift. However, if every child born reminds us of the grace of the created world and physical life, then the birth of our Lord should bring us to rejoice in both the original created order and the new creation. In fact, we cannot grasp the joy of the new creation, brought by the birth and work of Christ, without a proper knowledge of its connection to the original creation.

The apostle John makes this connection explicit in the opening chapter of his Gospel. He writes that the Word “was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” Later in 1:14, he says that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Why is it so significant that the one who created the world out of nothing came to earth and dwelt among us? To ask this another way, how will making this connection between creation and new creation through the incarnation help us to truly appreciate Christmas and the gift of life we’ve been given?

To help explain this relationship, I’d like to enlist the help of the fourth century bishop, Athanasius of Alexandria. No doubt Athanasius is most widely known for his staunch defense of the deity of Christ and the Trinity against Arianism; yet, I’d like to draw from one of his earlier works, On the Incarnation, to help us this Christmas season.

Creator and Creation

Athanasius begins his argument on the importance of the incarnation by pointing out what we have already been discussing. It matters immensely that the same Lord who spoke the world into existence at creation should take on the form of a servant and come in the likeness of men. He wrote:

We will begin, then, with the creation of the world and with God its maker, for the first fact that you must grasp is this: the renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the beginning. There is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation; for the One Father has employed the same agent for both works, effecting the salvation of the world through the same Word Who made it in the beginning.¹(18)

The fact that the Word of God who came in the flesh is the one who created the world is significant, but it’s also necessary to rightly grasp the manner of creation. God did not use pre-existing matter to construct the world as a foreman builds a house. Instead, God spoke the whole of creation into existence out of nothing but his Word. Every plant, animal, ocean, and mountain was made by the power of his voice. At the very height of creation God placed mankind—made in his image and given the ability to know and love him. Athanasius describes this capacity as true life and a gift: “He reserved especial mercy for the race of men” (20).

Creation and Fall

Having been given the gift of physical life from non-existence by the Word, God placed mankind in the garden and gave them one prohibition so that they might “continue for ever in the blessed and only true life of the saints in paradise” (20). The choice was open to the human couple:

If they guarded the grace and retained the loveliness of their original innocence, then the life of paradise should be theirs, without sorrow, pain or care, and after it the assurance of immortality in heaven. But if they went astray and became vile, throwing away their birthright of beauty, then they would come under the natural law of death and live no longer in paradise, but, dying outside of it, continue in death and in corruption. (20)

Sadly, we live in a world where the tragic results of that first couple’s choice still reverberate today. When mankind sinned in Adam, the process of death began to undo the work of creation and plunge mankind into a spiral toward non-existence as we were cut off from the source of true life, the Creator God. Athanasius explains:

For the transgression of the commandment was making them turn back again according to their nature; and as they had at the beginning come into being out of non-existence, so were they now on the way to returning, through corruption, to non-existence again. The presence and love of the Word had called them into being; inevitably, therefore, when they lost the knowledge of God, they lost existence with it; for it is God alone Who exists, evil is non-being, the negation and antithesis of good. (21, italics mine)

The Divine Dilemma

The rebellion of mankind against God was more than a simple wrong decision that could be repented of and moved beyond. In turning from the author of life in rebellion, mankind turned to corruption and non-existence. Of course (from our perspective), this appears to put God in a dilemma. Here’s how Athanasius describes the apparent problem:

It would, of course, have been unthinkable that God should go back upon His word and that man, having transgressed, should not die; but it was equally monstrous that beings which once had shared the nature of the Word should perish and turn back again into non-existence through corruption. It was unworthy of the goodness of God that creatures made by Him should be brought to nothing through the deceit wrought upon man by the devil; and it was supremely unfitting that the work of God in mankind should disappear, either through their own negligence or through the deceit of evil spirits. (24)

So, what was God to do? His beloved and high point of creation, his image bearers, were corrupted in nature. His love for his creation was too great to leave humans to descend into further death, disarray, and disorder. However, he could not simply step around the sentence of death pronounced in judgment over sin. The judgment of death handed down for sin was not arbitrary. Humans were created to draw life from their Creator and to be sustained by his fellowship and under his authority. His Word is life, and to reject that Word is to turn from existence to non-existence and to utterly forsake that which is true life.

The heart of the divine dilemma lay in the rejection of life—and of existence itself—by humanity. God’s people had turned from true life to seek life in themselves, and thus began their descent into death and destruction. What could possibly bring them out of death and into life? What could reverse the course from non-existence to existence? Only the one who had originally given life. Only the true Word of God—who spoke creation into existence out of nothing—could bring life out of death. And so, he must go to the world he created and to the people he loved and take a human body in order to bring them to life.

The Incarnation Brings Life

Here is the point where we begin to fully grasp the reason the same Word who created the world had to be the one who became man to redeem the world.

This He did out of sheer love for us, so that in His death all might die, and the law of death thereby be abolished because, having fulfilled in His body that for which it was appointed, it was thereafter voided of its power for men. This He did that He might turn again to incorruption men who had turned back to corruption and make the alive through death by the appropriation of His body and by the grace of His resurrection. (26)

Throughout John’s Gospel, we read about the life that comes through the Word who became flesh. In John 1:4, immediately after John tells us that all things were made through him, we read that “in him was life.” In John 3, Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be born again, to true life, which only comes through believing in him. In John 5:21, we read, “For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will.” And finally, in John 11:25–26, Jesus says to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”

If Athanasius is correct, then all these passages describe the great reversal brought into the world with the birth of Christ, bought by the death of Christ, and secured by his resurrection. Christ’s birth was the key moment for which creation held its breath. By becoming man and entering the world, he could bring true life to those sitting in the shadow of death. Only the one who created the world could once again give life to the world.

Celebrating the Gift of Life

For us, this means the celebration of Christmas is a chance to recognize and rejoice in true life. We were created to enjoy God and fellowship with him. True life is found in him. Sin took that away through death and destruction, and the incarnation reverses course by bringing life to us. John 17:3 puts it like this, “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” At Christmas, we are celebrating the chance to do what humans were originally created to do: live with God.

What’s so magnificent about the gift of life brought through the incarnation is what it tells us about God’s initiating love. Our greatest need was to be pulled out of the death spiral of sin, yet, we had no way of doing that on our own. The incarnation, perhaps more than any other moment in history, shows us that God pursues, seeks, and loves what he has made. He came. He showed up. He took on the form of a servant. In him was life, and he brought that life to us. He rescued us from death and decay when we could not rescue ourselves.

This Christmas, let the freely given gift of life, brought to us through the incarnation of our Creator, bring us to gratitude and joy.  

[Editor’s note: This post was originally published in December 2020 and has been updated.]

[1] Athanasius (2018). On the Incarnation (A Religious of C.S.M.V. Trans.) Louisville, KY: GLH Publishing Company.

https://blog.tms.edu/creation-the-incarnation-and-christmas

The Incarnation and the Fullness of Time | Tabletalk

The Incarnation and the Fullness of Time

In this excerpt from Truths We Confess, R.C. Sproul describes the timing of the incarnation of Jesus as it is summarized in the Westminster Confession of Faith.

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The Son of God . . . did, when the fullness of time was come, take upon him man’s nature, with all the essential properties, and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin; being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the virgin Mary, of her substance. (WCF 8.2)

The fullness of time is a concept taken from the New Testament (Gal. 4:4). It places redemption in the arena of ordinary history. God is working out salvation in and through history. The Old Testament reveals to us God’s progressive unfolding of His divine plan of salvation, beginning with Adam and Eve and continuing with Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses. There is a clear progression of redemptive history, and a developing clarity in what God reveals to His people. Christianity is inseparably bound up with history. It is married to time and space, not something that occurs merely in some spiritual sphere. That is why the New Testament makes such statements as this: “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria” (Luke 2:1–2). There was a historical setting for the entrance of Christ into the world. The incarnation happened in real history. The Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, is mentioned in the Apostles’ Creed. Christianity is about real people, places, and events. God promises us that there is a future for the people of God in time and space.

In Galatians 4:4, the “fullness” of time is the plērōma of time. The English language falls short in translating that idea. If we took a glass and filled it to the brim with water, we would say that the glass is full. But plērōma suggests a glass under the faucet, with water cascading over the sides of the glass, full to the point of overflowing. This is what the Bible means when it refers to the “fullness” of time. History was overflowing with anticipation; all of history, from the creation onward, was converging in that moment in history when Jesus Christ would be born.

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Athanasius on the Incarnation, the image of God, and knowing God. | Love Truth Blog

Athanasius on the Incarnation, the image of God, and knowing God.

God, Who has the power over all things, when He was making the race of men through His own Word, seeing the weakness of their nature, that it was not sufficient of itself to know its Maker, nor to get any idea at all of God; because while He was uncreate, the creatures had been made of nought, and while He was incorporeal, men had been fashioned in a lower way in the body, and because in every way the things made fell far short of being able to comprehend and know their Maker—taking pity, I say, on the race of men, inasmuch as He is good, He did not leave them destitute of the knowledge of Himself, lest they should find no profit in existing at all.

For what profit to the creatures if they knew not their Maker? or how could they be rational without knowing the Word (and Reason) of the Father, in Whom they received their very being? For there would be nothing to distinguish them even from brute creatures if they had knowledge of nothing but earthly things. Nay, why did God make them at all, as He did not wish to be known by them?

Whence, lest this should be so, being good, He gives them a share in His own Image, our Lord Jesus Christ, and makes them after His own Image and after His likeness: so that by such grace perceiving the Image, that is, the Word of the Father, they may be able through Him to get an idea of the Father, and knowing their Maker, live the happy and truly blessed life.

— Athanasius

Cited from On the Incarnation of the Word, 11.1-3

Athanasius challenges the Arians and all others who denied Christ true divinity. Should Christ merely be a demigod, or another creature brought forth from the Creator, humanity would be lost. They would be without a way of attaining a relational connection with the Heavenly Father. But God fashions us in the image of God. This image of God in us reflects the likeness of the Lord Jesus Christ. After all, Christ is the image of the invisible God. It is the incarnation of the Son of God sets the way that we can know the Father. If we see the Son, then we see the Father. We can only come to the Father through the Son. Our union with God becomes the basis for a truly happy and blessed life.

Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 295-373) served as the Bishop of Alexandria in North Africa. He was known for taking bold stances against error, which resulted in his exile on several occasions. Athanasius stood string against the doctrinal errors perpetuated by the Arians. The Arians denied Christ was truly God but one of highest created beings of God.

The Bishop of Alexandria’s name is also attributed to the Athanasian Creed. This is one of the three ecumenical creeds of Western Christianity. It expounds upon the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation.