The eternal Son did not visit humanity or wear it like a costume. He became one of us, and he still is. Here is what the Bible says, what the church settled, and why it changes how you see God and your own body.
The incarnation of Jesus means that the eternal Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity, became a real human being without ceasing to be God.
He took a human body, a human mind and a human life. He was born of Mary, grew up, got tired, wept, died and rose bodily. One Person, fully God and fully human, and the clearest look at God anyone has ever had.
The word itself is Latin. Incarnatio is built from in and caro, carnis, flesh, which is why in carne simply means in the flesh. Church writers used it for one event above all others: God in Christ being made flesh.
John 1:1 to 3. The Word was with God and was God, and all things came into being through him. The Son does not begin at Bethlehem, whatever begotten is taken to mean.
Galatians 4:4. God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law. Sent means he existed before he was sent. Born means he really arrived.
Luke 1:35. The Holy Spirit comes upon Mary, and the child is called holy, the Son of God. The Son adds a human nature. Nothing divine is subtracted.
Luke 2:52. Jesus grew in wisdom and stature. He got hungry, slept in a boat and wept at a friend's tomb.
Luke 24:39. A spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have. The resurrection did not end the incarnation. It glorified it.
Written after the ascension, 1 Timothy 2:5 still calls him the man Christ Jesus, the one mediator.
The incarnation had a beginning in time and it has no end. The Son who became human is human still, reigning now at the Father's right hand.
John opens by echoing Genesis, in the beginning, and builds for thirteen verses toward one sentence.
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
John 1:14 (ESV)John holds two things in the first verse without flinching. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. Distinct, and fully divine. That is the Trinity in seed form, and we hold it plainly: one God, Father, Son and Spirit, three distinct Persons, each fully God.
In verse 14 John could have said the Word appeared in human form. He chose the bluntest words available.
Flesh. The ordinary word for the soft tissue of a body, and for human nature in its frailty and mortality. Luke 24:39 uses it for the risen Jesus: flesh and bones.
To pitch a tent, to encamp, to take up residence. It comes from skēnē, the word for a tent or tabernacle.
Israel met God at the tent of meeting and the tabernacle, where the glory settled. John says the glory now lives in a person, and we have seen it.
No one has ever seen God, John says, and the Son who is at the Father's side has made him known. The prologue ends by calling Jesus the explanation of God.
Hold on to that. The prologue ends with a claim about revelation: if you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus.
Paul wrote this to a church where people were jockeying to be first, and his answer is to sing about Jesus. Many scholars think verses 6 to 11 were an early hymn. Paul puts it to work: have this mind among yourselves.
“Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.”
Philippians 2:6 to 7 (ESV)The verb is kenoō, to empty out or make void, and it gave this passage its nickname, the kenosis. Emptied himself of what? There are three main answers.
The classical view, held broadly from the early church through the Reformation, says the Son emptied himself by addition. He kept every divine attribute and took on the form of a servant. The emptying is the taking, and Paul's own grammar leans this way: emptied himself, by taking.
Strong kenotic theories came out of nineteenth century German theology. Gottfried Thomasius argued that the Son laid aside what he called relative attributes, omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence, while keeping essential ones like holiness and love, as the Schaff-Herzog encyclopedia summarizes.
A middle view says the Son kept every divine attribute but chose not to use them on his own terms. He lived as a man, dependent on the Spirit and obedient to the Father. That is why Acts 10:38 credits his healings to God anointing him with the Holy Spirit and power.
That the Son stopped being God, handed in his divinity at the door, or became a lesser god for thirty years. A God who can stop being God was never God in the first place.
That the Son refused to use his status for his own advantage, took the form of a slave, and obeyed all the way to a cross. The form of God and the form of a servant, held in one Person.
Sound of Heaven holds the classical reading together with the best insight of the middle view. The Son never stopped being fully God, not in the manger and not on the cross. Colossians 2:9 says the whole fullness of deity dwells in him bodily, and a God who could shed his attributes would not be the faithful, unchanging God Scripture describes.
We also believe the Gospels mean it when they show Jesus growing, learning, praying and relying on the Spirit. He lived a genuinely human life in dependence on the Father, which is why his life is an example as well as a marvel.
So we disagree with kenotic theories that have the Son give up omniscience or omnipotence. The motive, taking his humanity seriously, is good. The cost is too high. We disagree just as firmly with any picture of Jesus as God in a human costume who never really hungered or struggled. Both miss the Jesus of the text.
The emptying is about posture more than inventory. The one who had every right to grab refused to grab, and that is the mind Paul asks us to have.
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Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
In Colossians Paul asks who this man is. In Hebrews he asks how far he came.
“For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.”
Colossians 2:9 (ESV)He is the image of the invisible God. The unseen God has a visible face, and it is this one. Firstborn here means rank and preeminence, as verse 16 explains: all things were created through him.
All the fullness of God was pleased to dwell in him, and through him to reconcile all things, making peace by the blood of his cross. The incarnation is aimed at reconciliation.
Since the children share flesh and blood, he shared them too, so that through death he could break the power of death. Verse 17: he had to be made like his brothers in every respect.
A high priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses, tempted in every respect as we are, yet without sin. Not a spectator of human weakness. A participant in it.
Hebrews 2:14 names the devil as the one with the power of death. In Scripture the devil is the accuser and adversary, the opposition that keeps people enslaved by the fear of dying. Jesus broke that grip from the inside, by entering death in a real body and walking out of it.
We believe Paul wrote Hebrews. Timothy appears in 13:23 as a travelling companion, the early Eastern church received the letter as Paul's, and its themes of the new covenant, the finished sacrifice and living by faith run straight through his other letters. Some scholars see another hand, and we respect that, but we read it as Paul's fourteenth letter. More in who wrote Hebrews.
Almost every early wrong turn came from easing the tension by cutting one side off.
From the Greek dokein, to seem. Jesus only appeared to have a body. John had already answered it: every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God (1 John 4:2). A phantom cannot bleed, and a phantom cannot redeem bodies.
Arius taught that the Son was the first and highest creature, exalted but not eternal. The Council of Nicaea in 325 rejected it and confessed the Son to be of one substance with the Father. If Jesus is a creature, looking at him shows you something less than God.
Apollinaris taught that the divine Word replaced the human mind in Jesus, a human body with God where the mind should be. Gregory of Nazianzus answered with a line that still holds: “That which He has not assumed He has not healed”. If Jesus had no human mind, our minds are not redeemed.
In 451 the Council of Chalcedon drew the lines together. Its definition confesses Christ “perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man”, one Person “acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably.” Those four words fenced off two more errors at once: blending the natures into some third thing, and splitting Jesus into two persons sharing one body.
Chalcedon does not explain how this works. It marks the edges, and inside them is one Jesus with nothing about either nature shaved off.
Which early teaching said Jesus only seemed to have a real body?
Docetism comes from the Greek dokein, to seem. Arianism denied that the Son is eternal God, and Apollinarianism denied that he had a human mind. The church rejected all three because each one leaves part of us unreached.
If the Son is the image of the invisible God, there is no hidden God behind Jesus who is harsher than he is. Whoever has seen me has seen the Father (John 14:9). When parts of the Old Testament describe God in ways that look nothing like the man who touched lepers and forgave the men nailing him to a cross, Jesus is not the one who needs adjusting. He is the lens. That is how we read the whole Bible, and it is why we can call him Lord without fear.
The Son did not merely tolerate a body. He took one, kept it and raised it. That ends every version of the faith that treats the body as a cage for the soul. Meals, touch, sleep and work are the places God chose to live. Paul can call your body a temple of the Holy Spirit because the Word had already made a human body his dwelling.
It also means Jesus knows what it is to live in one. Tired, grieving, tempted, in pain. He does not sympathize from a distance.
Maybe your body has been hurt, mocked or worn down, or you were taught to be ashamed of it. God is not ashamed of it. The Son took on flesh like yours on purpose, and he meets you there with tenderness, not inspection.
If this stirs up something heavy, you do not have to carry it alone. Ask us to pray with you, and talk with someone you trust this week.
The incarnation settles two questions at once. What is God like? Look at Jesus. Does God care about ordinary, physical life? He moved into it.
Christmas cards make the incarnation look small and sweet. It is enormous. The One through whom all things were made learned to walk.
The Kingdom he brought is not waiting in the wings. It is here, established by a risen man who reigns now, and he invites you to live in it in the same body you woke up in this morning. You do not have to climb up to God. He came all the way down, and he has not left.
For related ground, see what Emmanuel means, our summary of Philippians, the image of God, what the resurrection is and the Apostles' Creed. You can also read what we believe or plan a visit and worship with us in Deer Park.
The incarnation of Jesus is the eternal Son becoming fully human without ceasing to be fully God, one Person who shows us exactly what the Father is like and who honored human flesh by taking it, keeping it and raising it.
If the incarnation raises questions for you, or you just need prayer, send it in and someone at Sound of Heaven will walk through it with you.
The incarnation of Jesus is the teaching that the eternal Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity, became a real human being without ceasing to be God. John 1:14 says the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of Mary, lived a full human life, died and rose bodily. The word comes from the Latin for being made flesh. The result is one Person who is fully God and fully human.
Kenosis comes from the Greek verb in Philippians 2:7, usually translated emptied himself. It does not mean the Son stopped being God. Paul explains the emptying with the next phrase: by taking the form of a servant. The Son kept his divine nature and added a human one, refusing to use his status for his own advantage. Some nineteenth century theologians argued he laid aside attributes like omniscience, but Sound of Heaven holds that he remained fully God throughout while living in real dependence on the Father and the Spirit.
Yes. The New Testament presents Jesus as fully divine, with the whole fullness of deity dwelling in him bodily (Colossians 2:9), and fully human, made like his brothers in every respect (Hebrews 2:17). The Council of Chalcedon in 451 summarized this as one Person acknowledged in two natures, without confusion, change, division or separation. He did not switch back and forth between the two or operate as half and half. Both natures belong to the one Jesus, all the time.
Scripture gives several reasons that fit together. To reveal the Father, because no one has ever seen God and the Son has made him known (John 1:18). To reconcile all things through the cross (Colossians 1:20). To share flesh and blood so that through death he could break the power of death (Hebrews 2:14). And to become a high priest who truly sympathizes with our weakness (Hebrews 4:15). Only one who is both God and human could do all of that.
Yes. The incarnation did not end at the cross or the ascension. Jesus rose with a real body of flesh and bones (Luke 24:39), and after he returned to the Father, Paul still calls him the man Christ Jesus, the one mediator between God and humanity (1 Timothy 2:5). He reigns now as the risen, glorified Son, fully God and fully human. The one at the Father's right hand knows from the inside what it means to be one of us.