Very God and Very Man

When something breaks, when something is wrong, you need to be able to assess the problem and be able to fix it. Then, knowing how to fix it, you need to have a plan to make sure the repair works.

When humanity, through Adam’s sin, was plunged into bondage to sin, God knew what it would take to fix it. Indeed he knew even before the beginning of creation. God knew that human sin would have to be paid for by a human. He also knew that he alone, that is, God alone was able to bear the eternal debt owed by humanity.

So, God took to himself a true human nature. God the Son, was conceived in Mary by the Holy Spirit. In this way, he took to himself a true human nature. As a fully human person, Christ lived a perfectly righteous life. He fulfilled all the covenant agreements, he fulfilled and kept the law perfectly.

What this creates is a bit of a difficult teaching. The teaching that Christ is fully God and fully man, at the same time, without ever confusing the two natures, without deifying his humanity, or humanising his deity, is difficult to understand. However, the Bible teaches it, so we need to learn it.

John, in his gospel, puts it this way: The Word became flesh and moved into the neighbourhood. Jesus took his human nature from Mary. He was totally human, he ate, slept, worked, was tired, go angry, experienced every human emotion. He was totally like us in every way, except sin.

In order to understand this doctrine, the Belgic Confession explains it in three parts. First: The Eternal Son Truly United to Human Nature. If Jesus wasn’t human, then there would be no means of human redemption. Second: Both natures are distinct. The divine doesn’t take over and make the human divine, nor does the human make the divine somehow less divine. Third: He must be truly God and truly man to save. Adam sinned, and his sin condemned all humanity. Christ had to remove, not only the sin we commit as individuals, but the state of sinfulness that has been present since Adam.

The whole debate about the two natures of Christ comes out of an event that is celebrated all around the world, though in the west it has been commercialised and everything so much that the true meaning is lost. I’m talking about Christmas. I’m talking about the incarnation of Christ. But we need to explore, what does the incarnation mean? How did God take on humanity?

This has been an important doctrine, as well as a hotly contested doctrine in the church. Hardly anyone contest that Christ is fully God. The difficulty they have is with his humanity, how?

Some said that Jesus only appeared to be a man. Others said that his divinity kind of covered over a normal human guy named Jesus. The Bible clearly teaches that those two ideas are wrong. We can’t separate the humanity from the divinity.

For, the Bible doesn’t really talk about Jesus having two natures, like “On the cross, Jesus’ human nature suffered, but his divine nature didn’t suffer.” The Bible doesn’t talk, or separate the two natures of Christ, the Bible merely states, the person, Jesus, suffered on the cross.

Basically, understanding the two natures of Christ and how they relate to one another is like trying to understand the Trinity. As finite beings, we’re unable to comprehend the infinite abilities of God. So, we can only state what the Bible says. We can only wonder at how Christ’s two natures are united.

1. Christ Is Very God and Very Man

John 1:14: The Word became flesh.

John 10:30 I and the Father are one.

Romans 9:5 “Theirs are the patriarchs and from theme is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised.”

Phil. 2:6-8 “Christ Jesus being very nature God... even death on a cross.”

Col. 2.9 “For in Christ all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form.

Clearly, these texts teach that Jesus Christ, who is God the Son from all eternity, assumed a human nature while remaining truly God.

2. Both Natures are Distinct

Jesus’ divine nature is eternal, God. God, by definition is eternal, without beginning, without end. Jesus in his own words is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. He is eternal.

But his human nature has a beginning, he was born, his mother Mary gave birth to him one day in either 4 or 6 B.C. depending on the historian. When God raised Jesus from the dead, he raised his human body. His new body is immortal. He is the hope for all who trust God, that we too will receive immortal bodies. And his immortal body was able to do pretty great things.

Christ’s two natures are so closely united in one person, they were not separated even by his death. Just as the divine nature didn’t manifest itself when he was a little child, so too at his death. The divine attributes are not communicated to the human nature, as some theologians try to explain. Jesus has a human will and a human personality, which is in union with the Logos, one person. Jesus of Nazareth, the God-man who speaks and acts as a single person.

3. Why must he be truly God and truly man to save?

Simply put, Jesus had to be truly God in order to pay the eternal debt, in order to break the curse, death. He must also be truly human so that he might die for us according to the infirmity of his flesh. In order to redeem a fallen humanity, he had to assume a truly human nature. If, somehow, frogs had sinned against God, then Christ would have had to become a frog in order to save the sinful froggies.

The reason why Jesus’ death pays for not just one person’s sin, but for many is because he is God. No mere human can make sufficient payment, atonement, propitiation for the debt of sin, as we read in Psalm 49.7-10

So what!

Okay, so there’s this great big doctrine concerning the two natures of Christ, which we separate only because we want to understand, but which isn’t something we can totally understand anyway. Churches have split over this, even though the Bible teaches it, we want to go farther; we make stuff up to satisfy our curiosity. Okay, so what’s important?

Over against everything else, the doctrine of the two natures of Christ teaches us about God’s amazing love and power. In this doctrine, we see the great lengths God goes to in order to save us from our sin.

Without the incarnation, there is no salvation, no deliverance. We’re still in bondage, still in Egypt, making bricks for someone else’s house. Because human nature sinned, a human nature must pay.

But the one who saves, must be perfectly without sin. He has to be without sin, without blemish, in order to sacrifice himself for others. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit so that he would be free from Adam’s guilt.

Jesus subjected himself to God’s law so that he could live just and righteous life, so that he could give that justice and righteousness to others. In this, the Apostle Paul calls Jesus the second Adam. He didn’t fall into temptation, he kept God’s commandments perfectly, he earned life, which Adam didn’t, Jesus did everything perfectly, while being truly human.

Being truly human, he truly knows how weak our human nature really is. He knows what it is like to face temptation—he experienced all of them, without ever sinning once! He knows suffering; he experienced death. He knows the suffering we go through, he knows what he’s calling us to, the trials and tests. Because he is without sin, he’s the perfect example to all of us.[1]

Yet the debt owed by humanity to God is infinite. Only God can apply Jesus’ life to others as a covenant of grace. Thus why he has to be totally God.

Q&A 12-15 puts it this way:

12 Q. According to God's righteous judgment we deserve punishment both in this world and forever after: how then can we escape this punishment and return to God's favor?

A. God requires that his justice be satisfied. Therefore the claims of his justice must be paid in full, either by ourselves or another.

13 Q. Can we pay this debt ourselves?

A. Certainly not. Actually, we increase our guilt every day.

14 Q. Can another creature—any at all—pay this debt for us?

A. No. To begin with, God will not punish another creature for what a human is guilty of. Besides, no mere creature can bear the weight of God's eternal anger against sin and release others from it.

15 Q. What kind of mediator and deliverer should we look for then?

A. One who is truly human and truly righteous, yet more powerful than all creatures, that is, one who is also true God.

Because Jesus is truly man, he redeems human nature, a nature that he took to heaven at his ascension. Not only will God redeem our souls, he will redeem our bodies as well. Jesus is in heaven right now, in the flesh. And that means we who have put our trust in him, have hope for the future, knowing we’ll be living with God forever!

For these reasons, we confess Christ as truly God and truly man, though one person only. Christ came to seek and save the lost by living a perfectly righteous life, perfectly obeying God’s law. But Christ took on human flesh also to redeem human nature, being like us in every way, but for sin. So, when we say someone is saved, we mean more than just our souls are saved; Christ saved the whole person, body and soul. That’s why we say that Christ is truly God and truly man! Amen.

[1] Berkof, Systematic Theology, p. 319