Key Verse:
“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”
—John 1:14
When theologians refer to Jesus Christ, they often call Him the God-Man; this is because in a single Person, a divine nature and a human nature co-exist. When we speak of a nature, we speak of the essence of what someone is: the very core of what makes them what they are. Each of us has a human nature; in fact, when we behave in certain ways (doing things that reflect our fallenness), we chalk it up to “human nature.” The oft-quoted line: “to err is human, to forgive is divine” speaks of the difference between what the kind of behavior our nature produces and the kind God’s does.
Human nature is fallen; it carries with it our sinful condition called total depravity. This means that every faculty we possess has been tainted by the effects of original sin: the guilt we carry because of Adam’s transgression in the Garden of Eden. However, the creation account in Genesis makes it clear that being human does not intrinsically involve fallenness – God created man innocent and his humanness involves bearing the image of God, not bearing the marks of sin. In other words, sin is what happened to man due to his own choice; the imago dei (the image of God in man) is what he naturally bears due to His distinctive design on the part of the Creator (Genesis 1:26).
Jesus possessed an authentic human nature; not like yours and mine – it was not fallen. Jesus’ human nature was untainted by the ravages of original sin; He neither bore its guilt nor suffered its perverting effects on one’s will and personality. In this respect, Jesus’ human nature was like Adam’s prior to the fall. Paul compares Adam and Christ in this context (Romans 5:12-19): Jesus in a very real sense, “re-did” what Adam did – the first Adam failed miserably by disobeying and His disobedience affected his offspring by bringing sin and death into the world. Jesus’ obedience to God (His perfect life and His death on the cross) affects His “offspring” (spiritually, by faith) by bringing life to them eternally and undoing the effects of the curse brought on by the first Adam. This concept is called the doctrine of recapitulation: Jesus performed a “re-do” and fixed what Adam ruined. This action on the part of the Savior has cosmic consequences in that it positively affects the whole of creation – because of Jesus, all will someday become new (Revelation 21:5).
Jesus also has a divine nature. It was God in the second Person of the Trinity that “took on flesh” and tabernacled among us. This is the truth that our featured verse relates to us:
“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” —John 1:14
In becoming flesh, this means that God the Son took on all that it means to be human, but of course, retained His identity as God Himself. Nothing changed or affected His divine nature – it is not really what God became as much as what God took on: humanity. God Himself cannot change (Malachi 3:6; James 1:17), hence, He cannot become something He was not. God the Son did not become a strange mixture of God and man together, but God the Son took on humanity, yet, His two natures did not mix, combine nor affect one another by means of alteration.
The Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451), which examined the question of Jesus’ two natures, produced the Chalcedonian Creed or Definition, which reads in part:
… begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, according to the Manhood;
one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably;
the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ …
That Jesus is God and Man in one Person did not in any way alter or disaffect either of these natures – they are perfectly preserved in one Person who, because of His credentials as true God and true man, is ABLE to save us (because He can be our perfect human substitute). No one less than God and no one other than human could be our Savior – consider the following requirement:
“Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation (satisfaction of God’s righteous demands) for the sins of the people.” —Hebrews 2:17
The God-Man … an irrelevant concept? No – it is the very foundation for the salvation everyone who trusts in Him enjoys for eternity.
—Larry Carrino
Post By: Dr. Larry Carrino, Educational Director of The Omega Institute. ©2007 The Omega Institute
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