Advent Week 3--Theology of God Incarnate

The Christmas Theology of God Incarnate

December 14, 2025

Fellowship Question: If you had been able to give one gift to the baby Jesus and his parents when he was born, what would it have been?

INTRO: 3rd Sunday of our Advent series on “The Theology of Christmas.” Today we’ve already sung about what we call “God Incarnate”. We sang about it already in…

Hark the Herold Angels Sing

(Vs. 2) Christ, by highest heaven adored,

Christ, the everlasting Lord,

late in time behold him come,

offspring of the Virgin's womb:

veiled in flesh the Godhead see;

hail th'incarnate Deity,

pleased with us in flesh to dwell,

Jesus, our Immanuel.

Thank you Charles Wesley and Felix Mendelssohn!

One of the major problems both ancient and contemporary Jews as well as Muslims have had with the Christian concept of Jesus being God incarnate is that, to their credit, they have a high and exalted view of God. To them, the notion that God, who is above and beyond all creation (the entire universe), could be somehow confined to a singular human being for 33 years of human existence is, well, blasphemous.

Humanity is sinful and corrupted…and we agree. God is absolutely perfect and holy…and we agree. Those two don’t co-mingle or mix in the same essence or being…and we disagree!

So, the incarnation forms a major stumbling block to both Jews and Muslims. We could add to that most secular humanists today who probably view the idea of a God-becoming-human as fanciful as the notion of a pantheon of Greek gods with their human-like flaws and all.

To every incredulous Jew, Muslim, atheist, agnostic or secularist, the Advent story we celebrate every Christmas seems, well, incredible if not impossible. But to us, it is one of the most awe-inspiring mysteries and miracles of our faith. And to help us appreciate that today a bit more, I want to look at three things:

1.) Just what is the Christian belief called “the incarnation”? In other words, when we say Jesus is the God-Man, what do we mean and what don’t we mean?

2.) Is there any evidence in the O.T. for truth of a divine-human Messiah/Christ? Could God’s people prior to Jesus have anticipated an incarnate Messiah?

3.) What should amaze us about God becoming human?

1. Just what is this Christian theology called “the incarnation”? In other words, when we say Jesus is the God-Man, God-in-human-flesh, what do we mean and what don’t we mean?

For the first several hundred years of the church, different heresies arose about just who Jesus was that forced the church fathers to clarify what the Scripture teaches when it says Jesus was God the Son in human flesh and nature.

The word incarnation means “the act of being made flesh.” It comes from the Latin version of John 1:14, which in English reads, “The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us.” The incarnation focuses on the humanity of Christ.

Christianity has developed other words to talk about the combination of the divine and human natures. Let’s expand our theological vocabulary today and talk about just 2 of them:

• The hypostatic union: The hypostatic union is the term used to describe how God the Son, Jesus Christ, took on a human nature, yet remained fully God at the same time. Jesus always had been God (John 8:58, 10:30), but at the incarnation Jesus became a human being (John 1:14). The addition of the human nature to the divine nature is Jesus, the God-man. This is the hypostatic union, Jesus Christ, one Person, fully God and fully man. This term focuses on how Jesus’ two natures are joined.

Jesus’ two natures, human and divine, are inseparable. Jesus will forever be the God-man, fully God and fully human, two distinct natures in one Person…from the incarnation forever onward. Jesus’ humanity and divinity are not mixed, but are united without loss of separate identity. While on earth, Jesus sometimes operated with the limitations of humanity (John 4:6, 19:28) and other times in the power of His deity (John 11:43; Matthew 14:18-21). In both, Jesus’ actions were from His one Person. Jesus had two natures, but only one personality.

So, the doctrine of the hypostatic union is an attempt to explain how Jesus could be both God and man at the same time.

It's an imperfect illustration but let me try to make a parallel. When someone gets married, they don’t cease being their own person. But they take on something they were not before: spouses. They become “married.” By their union as husband and wife, they become something they weren’t before and, ideally, will never return to again, i.e. being single. If they are genuinely inseparable, they form a union that did not exist before all while not losing who they were and are as persons apart from being “one” in marriage. Imperfect but hopefully helpful.

• The Kenosis doctrine: Christ’s “self-emptying” in the incarnation. This doctrine comes from Philippians 2:7—

But not that this passage does not specify what the Son of God “emptied” Himself of. And here we must be careful not to go beyond what Scripture says. Jesus did not empty Himself of His divine attributes—no such attributes are mentioned in the verse, and it is obvious in the gospels that Jesus possessed the power and wisdom of God. It is better to think of Christ’s “emptying” of Himself as a laying aside of the privileges that were His in heaven. Rather than stay on His throne in heaven, Jesus “made himself nothing” (as the NIV translates

Philippians 2:7). When He came to earth, “he gave up his divine privileges” (NLT). He veiled His glory, and He chose to occupy the position of a slave. The incarnation was never an exchange of deity for humanity. Jesus never ceased to be God during any part of His earthly ministry. He did set aside His heavenly glory. He also voluntarily refrained from using His divinity to make His way easier. During His earthly ministry, Christ completely submitted Himself to the will of the Father (John 5:19).

As part of the kenosis, Jesus sometimes chose to operate within the limitations of humanity. God does not get tired or thirsty, but Jesus did (John 4:6; 19:28). God knows all things, but it seems that, at least once, Jesus voluntarily surrendered the use of His omniscience about the day and hour of His return (Matthew 24:36). Other times, Jesus’ omniscience was on full display, such as when he knew the thoughts of people (Luke 6:8—people in the synagogue when healed man with withered hand) or knew future events and who would do certain actions (John 13:11—betrayal by Judas; 18:4--crucifixion).

When it comes to the kenosis, we often focus too much on what Jesus gave up. The kenosis also deals with what Christ took on. Jesus added to His divine nature a human nature as He humbled Himself for us. Jesus went from being the glory of glories in heaven to being a human being who was put to death on the cross. Philippians 2:7–8 declares, “Taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!” In the ultimate act of humility, the God of the universe became a human being and died for His creation.

While not the focus of today, let me just note that some of the heresies about Christ’s nature that developed through the years actually helped the early church leaders define more precisely the true nature of Jesus.

• Arianism: taught by Arius, a priest in the 4th c. Constantinople (now Istanbul) he denied the deity of Jesus, seeing him as the first and highest of created beings. Arianism affirmed a created, finite nature of Christ rather than equal divinity with God the Father and was denounced by the First Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. as major heresy. JW and Mormons would be modern examples of this heresy today.

• Apollinarianism (Apollinaris the Younger, Bishop of Laodicea, 361A.D.) was a fourth-century Christian heresy that plagued the early church and that denied the full humanity and perfection of Jesus Christ. He taught that Jesus had two natures, human and divine, that couldn’t coexist at the same time in a human body. It was either one or the other at any given moment. Thus, he believed that Jesus sinned when his human nature was in charge. He denied the doctrine of the hypostatic union and therefore canceled the doctrine of the atonement of Christ for us.

So, given the challenges that even arose in the early church, we can certainly appreciate the challenge that the Jews of Jesus day experienced in being willing to even consider that the infinite, unchanging, all-powerful God would somehow confine himself to a human body and assume human nature while being fully God. Their exalted view of God caused them to blind themselves to the possibility-become-reality that God had chosen to invade our sinful world in a rescue mission designed to save us from our sins.

#2. Is there any evidence in the O.T. for truth of a divine-human Messiah/Christ? Could God’s people prior to Jesus have anticipated an incarnate Messiah?

Since this was the plan of God for our salvation all along, couldn’t the Jews have seen this possibility in God’s word, the O.T. they had, somewhere? I would say a patient, “Yes” but acknowledge that it is not a dominant truth in the O.T. Nevertheless, let me give you a few examples of where you can see it looking back.

• Jesus himself confronted the religious leaders of his day with the passage from Psalm 110:1 in which the Psalmist David talks about the Messiah being greater than David (David calls him “Lord”) yet being his human offspring (which, in Hebrew culture, made him less significant than David).

Matthew gives us the encounter in Mt. 22 when he records, “41 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, 42 saying, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” 43 He said to them, “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying,

44 “‘The Lord said to my Lord,

“Sit at my right hand,

until I put your enemies under your feet”’?

45 If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” 46 And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.”

(Matthew 22:44, Mark 12:36, Luke 20:42-Luke 20:43)

Jesus is clearly pointing to the fact that the Messiah was both LORD over David as well as human offspring of David.

• Isaiah 9:1, 6-7-- The people who walked in darkness

have seen a great light;

those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,

on them has light shone.

6For to us a child is born,

to us a son is given;

and the government shall be upon his shoulder,

and his name shall be called

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

7 Of the increase of his government and of peace

there will be no end,

on the throne of David and over his kingdom,

to establish it and to uphold it

with justice and with righteousness

from this time forth and forevermore.

• Isaiah 53:1--

• Daniel 7:13-14

13 “I saw in the night visions,

and behold, with the clouds of heaven

there came one like a son of man,

and he came to the Ancient of Days

and was presented before him.

14 And to him was given dominion

and glory and a kingdom,

that all peoples, nations, and languages

should serve him;

his dominion is an everlasting dominion,

which shall not pass away,

and his kingdom one

that shall not be destroyed.

• Micah 5:2—

But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah,

who are too little to be among the clans of Judah,

from you shall come forth for me

one who is to be ruler in Israel,

whose coming forth is from of old,

from ancient days.

IF you’re looking for a few of the key N.T. passages that describe how the human and divine natures joined in the incarnation, you’re going to want to look at

• Philippians 2:5-11

• Hebrews 1:2-3—“… in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. 3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being,

sustaining all things by his powerful word.”

• Colossians 1:15-20-- 15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

So, clearly there were hints of a possible divine-human Messiah. While humans may have been slow to catch on, the angelic realms that Andrew talked about last week were not. They knew the glory from which this Christ-baby had come. They had seen the Father send the Son from heavenly realms beyond this universe to this little speck of dust in the cosmic dust-storm of the universe. And they were undoubtedly amazed, perplexed and not a little curious.

How could the God who they knew was even greater than the vast universe they knew had been created by Him possibly confine himself to the realm of mere humans?

How could this God of all knowledge, wisdom, power, and glory confine himself to the powerless and ignominious body of a baby?

They watched in abject wonder at what we too often fail to wonder at.

So, to help us leave with a bit of wonder today about this miracle we call the incarnation, let me paint a picture of where you and I are in this vast universe and this amazing story. To do that, I want you to visualize your place in this incomprehensible creation God chose to draw close to. I’ll attempt to use just a few of the millions of facts and figures that we currently know about our world and universe.

Imagine it’s a warm, beautiful summer evening. You’re up on Mt. Spokane where there are no artificial lights to dim your view of the Milky Way. You’re lying on your back, looking up at a starlit sky, seeing perhaps 2,000 of the 100-400 billion stars in our medium-sized galaxy. [Until just over 100 years ago (1920s—Edwin Hubble), we didn’t even know that some of the smudge-looking dots of light were actually other galaxies let alone how vast this universe is.]

Traveling at the speed of light, you’d be able to go back and forth across the U.S. 37 times in a second. So if you left the earth, traveling at that speed [186,000 miles/sec.] you’d pass the moon in 1.3 seconds, the sun in 8 minutes, some 91 million miles away.

(By the way, our sun, a medium sized star, is about the size of 1.3 million earths. But there are other larger stars that we know of.)

Back to the speed of light. You’d pass Mars in 12 ½ light minutes and Saturn in 1.18 hours. Before a quarter of that first day was over (4.2 light hours), you’d be past the distant planet of Neptune. But you wouldn’t be out of the distant Oort Cloud, the solar system's outermost boundary, for another 1.87 years.

Going to our nearest neighboring star, Alpha Centauri would take you over 4 years. It would take another 10,000 years just to leave our Milkey Way galaxy, which, by the way, is about 100,000 light years wide from side to side. ILL: For comparison, if our solar system were the size of a quarter, our galaxy would be the size of the entire United States.

Assuming you don’t want to stay in the blackness of space between galaxies and wanted to visit our nearest neighboring galaxy, Andromeda, traveling at 5.88 trillion miles a year, you’d only need to stay alive about 2.5 million years to reach it! To cross that neighbor galaxy will take you another 220,000 years. Andromeda and the Milkey Way are but two of a half dozen galaxies that form our little “galaxy cluster” in a larger cluster of some 100,000 galaxies called Laniakea. It would take you about half a billion years more just to escape this galaxy cluster. How many of these kinds of galaxy clusters are there in the known universe? Untold millions.

And we still don’t know how large our universe is. Current estimates of observable space put it at around 93 billion light years, give or take a few billion years.

And our God, the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ the incarnate One, brought all that into existence by the power of his voice. Col. 1:16— For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible….

Is it any wonder the angels marvel at God’s humility in the incarnation? Is it any wonder Jews and Muslims would question the notion of that God inhabiting in all his fullness the single, growing ‘universe’ contained in the cell of an embryo in the womb of a virgin? But he did.

As incomprehensible as the incarnation is physically, it will take us an eternity to truly appreciate what that incarnation meant spiritually. That the God-man, who lived the only morally perfect life—never had a hateful or lustful thought, never spoke an unkind or unloving word, never failed to do in a single day what he should have, and instead lived every single moment mindful of and obedient to his heavenly Father’s will and heart—that He should, at every turn, humble himself lower and lower and lower in a world that knows nothing of the blazing beauty and glory He had inhabited for all eternity past, that will take far more than a few billion years to fully appreciate.

Philippians 2:6-8-- Who, being in very nature God,

did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

7 rather, he made himself nothing

by taking the very nature of a servant,

being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,

he humbled himself

by becoming obedient to death—

even death on a cross!

Just as it is impossible for us to comprehend the vastness of the universe God created and the miracle it was for God to take on human nature and finiteness, so it is impossible for us to comprehend what it was for Jesus Christ to live an absolutely perfect life for 33 years only to willingly take on the guilt, the sins, the shame and the punishment for the entire sordid, sad history of humanity.

We all know the pain, guilt and regret of sin. And hopefully we know, to some degree, the freedom, the joy, the satisfaction and the peace of moments lived rightly, of people loved well, even sacrificially. What is impossible for us is to know what 33 uninterrupted years of unending moments like that, lived rightly, purely, in absolute holiness, is like. We shall know that one day, when we take up our resurrected bodies at Christ’s return.

But Jesus knew that his whole existence before the incarnation. He knew it his whole infancy as he learned to walk and talk and live in perfect obedience to imperfect parents. He knew it for his entire childhood as he did his chores and probably got pecked by the chickens and butted by the goats. He knew a completely sinless adolescence as he worked with his dad in his carpenter shop, hit his fingers with the hammer, dealt with sinful siblings who probably resented just a little bit having such a well behaved older brother they had to live up to. He knew perfect fellowship with the Father as he attended the synagogue in Nazareth, memorized whole books of the Scriptures, and asked questions the local rabbi probably found troublesome from time to time. He never once sinned as he played with neighborhood children who may have treated him spitefully, excluded him selfishly and despised him jealously.

He never felt egotistical pride or misplaced identity even as he confounded the intellectual elite of the nation as a mere adolescent. He spent every day intimately in tune with God the Father, constantly listening to God the Holy Spirit and continually living out the heart of God without once putting himself forward or demanding that people treat him with respect. He never felt the regret of using others for his own benefit, never failed to stop and help those who needed it, never lost his temper, never spoke harshly or uttered a word he shouldn’t have, never shaded the truth in the slightest, never drank too much, never ate too much, never played favorites with anyone, never gossiped, and never took a coin or complement that belonged to another. He never failed to put the needs and interest of others the Father put around him above his own.

Through over 3 years of ministry teaching thousands, healing hundreds, dealing with adoring crowds and murderous antagonists, he never once dealt with any of them in a way that brought him regret or shame or misplaced emotion. He loved those who loved him and those who would betray him. He spent himself and performed miracles for those who were forever grateful and those who would cry out for his torture and death. He was the only man to walk this earth who never sinned once against God or man or creation.

Yet in his last hours of life, he was left utterly alone. The one time he truly needed the company of friends, they all deserted him. Hour after hour, people he had created to love and enjoy Him forever poured out their brutal hatred, their vile and false accusations and their unchecked violence on him. Then the One being with whom he had never failed to enjoy the deepest love and fellowship poured out on Him all His divine wrath and hatred for every one of the trillions of sins mankind had flung at God through human history…and walked away, leaving him to die on that awful cross in Jerusalem.

What must the angels have thought then? How must they have trembled and groaned and pleaded with God the Father for the opportunity to come to His rescue, to slay his torturers and traitors and to restore, for all to finally see, the glory the dying incarnate God had always had for as long as they had existed.

This is the wonder of the Christ-child. This is the mystery of God incarnate. This is what we sing and speak and marvel about at this season: John 1:14

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John 1:10-12

He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—

PRAY—invitation to faith in Jesus