God’s incarnation is emphasized throughout the scripture
that we cannot even think of denying it. If we fail to identify him, it can
brutally affect the gospel itself. Jesus himself is the theme of the whole
Bible. A greatest event in human history: God dwelt among his people in their
likeness. The first chapter in the book of John makes this absolute clear.
The Logos[i]:
The gospel of John talks about the Logos who was from the
beginning with God and was God. Logos expresses the concept of immanent reason
in the world. It was a law, an impersonal law of change, to Heraclitus; mind,
an impersonal moving principle, to Anaxagoras; the intermediate Demiurge which God had to form matter from
perfect Ideas to Plato; and the intelligible structure of the universe was the Logos:
active, creative world-reason, unfolding the divine plan in world processes by
myriad forms and laws, which give individual divine manifestation to individual
objects and their activities to Stoics.
The word of the Lord is both creative (Gen, 1; Isa.:
55:10-11) and commanding (Amos 3:1) in the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew’s
projection of the Logos is:
a. Word of the personal God as
causative divine formative energy, responsible for the present arrangement of
the cosmos (Gen. 1); the Creative
(Psa. 33:6; 104:7; 148: 1-5)
b. Appearance of the malach
Yahweh, the "Angel of the Lord," God's Messenger of revelation to
the patriarchs and prophets; the
Mediatorial-Preservative (Psa. 107:20; 147:15-18; 148:6,8); the Judicial (Hos.
6:5; Isa. 11:4)
c. the activity of the debhar
Yahweh, the Word of Jehovah," primarily in the Psalms and Prophets
d. the prominent Wisdom passages of Proverbs
8 and Job 28.
John argues that Jesus, the
Word or Logos, is eternal and is God. Further, all creation came about
by and through Jesus, who is presented as the source of life. Amazingly, this
Logos came and lived among us: John’s Gospel begins by using the Greek idea
of a “divine reason” or “the mind of God” as a way to connect with the readers
of his day, who mostly spoke Greek, and introduce Jesus to them as God.
Greek philosophy may have used the word in reference to divine reason, but John
used it to note many of the attributes of Jesus. In his use of the Logos
concept,
·
Jesus is eternal (“In the beginning was the
Word”) Jesus was with God prior to coming to earth (“the Word was with God”)
·
Jesus is God (“the Word was God.”) Jesus is Creator
(“All things were made through him”)
·
Jesus is the Giver of Life (“In him was life”)
Jesus became human to live among us (“the Word became flesh and dwelt among
us”)
God's Logos does include action.
The Logos is the eternal Word in action. But it is no
irrational action or sheer expression of feeling. It is the divine Actor,
acting in creation and redemption in a coherent way, who is announced in John's
Gospel. It is the supreme moment of visitation of the eternal with the
temporal, the infinite with the finite, the unconditioned with the conditioned.
In Hebrew thought, the Logos is personal. He indeed
has the power of unity, coherence, and purpose, but the distinctive point is
that the biblical Logos is a He, not an it. Therefore, Logos
is broadly defined as the Word of God, or principle of divine reason and
creative order, identified in the Gospel of John with the second person of the
Trinity incarnate in Jesus Christ.
Clear Biblical teaching
John 1:14 clearly teaches Jesus wasn’t a phantom or hologram
but a real human who eternally existed with Father. Jesus if of exact same
substance as God.[ii] The
word “dwelt” may be translated “tabernacled.” Just as the divine presence is
with ancient Israelites in the pillar of cloud and fire, as well as in the
tabernacle and the temple, Yahweh now manifests Himself in the person of Jesus
Christ.[iii]
Philippians 2:6–11 is a poetic description of Jesus'
willingness to humble Himself for our sake. Rather than coming first as God and
King, Jesus freely took on the form of a human being. He was humiliated and
oppressed, following the will of the Father, in order to be the sacrifice for
our sins.[iv]
Colossians 2:9 – “For the entire fullness of God’s nature
dwells bodily in Christ.” As the NIV renders it, “For in Christ all the
fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.”
In this passage, the apostle Paul responds to heretical
views that later find their place in Gnosticism – namely, the categorical
denial that Christ has come in the flesh. Paul emphatically states that Jesus
is full divinity wrapped in human skin. The Incarnation is central to Paul’s
writings here and elsewhere.[v]
1 John 4:2 – The apostle John counters first-century
Docetics, a heretical group that embraces the deity of Christ but denies His
humanity, arguing that Jesus only appears to be human (from the Greek dokeo,
“to seem”). John makes Christ in the flesh a true test of Christian orthodoxy,
arguing that every true “spirit” – a person claiming divine gifting for service
– upholds the doctrine of the God-Man.
As theologian Gerald Bray writes, “The Son of God, eternally
begotten of the Father and fully equal to him in every respect, became a man so
that he could unite us to himself, pay the price for our sins, and bring us
back to God.”[vi]
From https://mbcpathway.com/2020/12/22/truly-god-truly-man/;
Ten truths of the Incarnation:
1. Jesus Christ is one person possessing two distinct
natures: a fully divine nature and a fully human nature i.e. God-Man.
2. Christ is the same person both before and after the
Incarnation. As the writer of Hebrews notes, He is the same “yesterday, today,
and forever” (Heb. 13:8). The difference is that before the Incarnation, Jesus
had but one nature (divine). In the Incarnation, He added a human nature, one
that exists together with the original divine nature, which did not and will
not disappear.
3. Through His divine nature, Jesus is God the Son, the
second person of the Trinity, who shares the one divine essence fully and
equally with the Father and the Holy Spirit. For example, when Jesus declares,
“I and the Father are one,” He clearly means one in essence, not just purpose.
The unbelieving Jews who hear these words get the meaning, for they want to
stone Him for blasphemy (John 10:30-33).
4. Through His human nature, Jesus possesses and exhibits
all the essential attributes of a true human being. He gets tired, hungry and
thirsty. He feels pain, experiences abandonment, and dies.
5. Jesus, as one person, retains all the attributes of both
natures. For example, through His divine nature He is omniscient, while
simultaneously and voluntarily, through His human nature, He may lack
knowledge.
6. The union of Jesus’ two natures is a true and personal
union. In other words, it is not simply the indwelling of the divine presence
in a human being, as is the case with Christians whom the Holy Spirit indwells.
Rather, in Jesus, the divine and the human come together in one person. In
essence, as Kenneth Samples points out, we may describe the incarnate Christ as
two “whats” and one “who.” That is, Jesus possesses both divine and human
natures (the “whats”) in one person (the “who”).
7. The two natures form a perfect, complementary union. The
human nature of Jesus is never without the divine nature, nor the divine
without the human. To deny the deity of Christ at any point in eternity is to
undermine His eternal existence as the Creator and Sovereign. To deny the full
humanity of Jesus at any point after His miraculous conception in a virgin’s
womb is to refuse His necessary sacrifice on our behalf as the Word who became
flesh (John 1:14).
8. Jesus’ two natures – divine and human – are distinct and
inseparably united in one person. The two natures retain their own attributes
or qualities and thus are not mixed together.
9. The human nature is not deified – that is, Jesus’
humanity does not become divine – and the divine nature does not suffer human
limitations.
10. The word “nature” refers to essence or substance, and
these two natures are inseparable, unmixed, and unchanged.
Jesus was really a wonderful man in human history ever born.
No mere words are enough to explain his nature and essence. The more you dive
deeper, the more you will get to explore his glory and love.
[i] 21.3%
Information has been extracted from a research report by Matthunna karki
[ii] https://www.bibleref.com/John/1/John-1-14.html,
accessed on 6/18/2021, 10:51 pm
[iii] https://mbcpathway.com/2021/05/13/key-passages-about-the-incarnation/,
accessed on 6/19/2021, 4:43 pm
[iv] https://www.bibleref.com/Philippians/2/Philippians-2-6.html,
accessed on 6/18/2021, 11 pm
[v] https://mbcpathway.com/2021/05/13/key-passages-about-the-incarnation/,
accessed on 6/19/2021, 4:46 pm
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