The Incarnation

The Word Made Flesh: The Glory and Grace of the Incarnation

O Come Let Us Adore Him

I. The Wonder of God With Us

Night settled over Bethlehem. The streets were crowded with travelers answering Caesar’s decree, yet on the outskirts, silence covered the fields like a blanket. Shepherds kept watch, unaware that history was about to split open. Then heaven’s light poured through the darkness, and an angel’s voice broke the stillness:

“Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

(Luke 2:10–11)

The infinite became an infant. The eternal entered time. The Maker of stars was wrapped in swaddling cloth and laid in a manger. Heaven stooped low enough to be held.

C. S. Lewis once said, “The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. Every other miracle prepares for this, exhibits this, or results from this.” At Bethlehem, we behold not sentimentality, but salvation itself. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory.” (John 1:14)

If Christ did not truly take on flesh, He could not truly redeem flesh. J. I. Packer put it plainly: “The Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity—hope of pardon, hope of peace with God—because at the Father’s will Jesus Christ became poor, born in a stable so that thirty years later He might hang on a cross.”

Athanasius, the great bishop of Alexandria, said it in a single sentence: “He became what we are that we might become what He is.”

This is the heart of Christmas—the unthinkable mercy of God taking on our humanity so that we might share His divine life.

In the manger we see not weakness but majesty disguised, not merely a birth but a rescue.

And the song of the saints rises still: “Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing.”

II. The Doctrine of the Incarnation

A. What We Mean by “Incarnation”

The word incarnatio means “enfleshment.”

The eternal Son, the second Person of the Trinity, took on true and complete human nature without ceasing to be God.

Paul tells us in Philippians 2:6-8,

“Though He was in the form of God, He did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

The proper response is worship, not dissection.

We bow before mystery; we do not master it.

And the church has always sung that mystery.

“Thou camest, O Lord, with the living Word that should set Thy people free.”

Theology finds its truest voice in doxology.

B. The Scriptural Foundation

The Bible opens its Gospel witness with awe.

John 1:1-3, 14 proclaims,

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made.

… 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.”

Paul echoes this in Colossians 2:9:

“For in Him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.”

And the writer of Hebrews adds in 2:14-17:

“Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil… Therefore He had to be made like His brothers in every respect, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.”

Athanasius saw the whole of salvation summed up here:

“The Word of God took a body capable of death in order that it might be sufficient for death on behalf of all.”

So when we sing that the “hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight,” we are not reciting nostalgia—we are confessing theology.

C. Why the Incarnation Was Necessary

Why did God take flesh?

Because only one who is truly God could save us, and only one who is truly man could stand in our place.

Anselm reasoned, “The debt was so great that while man alone owed it, only God could pay it. Thus, the same person must be both man and God.”

The logic of heaven required the love of the Incarnate.

Gregory of Nazianzus added, “What was not assumed is not healed.”

If Christ had not taken on our full humanity, then some part of us would remain unredeemed.

C. S. Lewis said it with the clarity of a storyteller: “The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.”

The King became a servant so that servants might become sons.

So the church rejoices still: Born Thy people to deliver, born a child and yet a King.

Reasons for the Incarnation:

To reveal God to humanity. Jesus said, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). In Christ, the invisible God became visible (Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1:3). The Incarnation makes the character, compassion, and holiness of God tangible and knowable. To fulfill God’s promises. Every covenant—Abrahamic, Davidic, and prophetic—finds its “Yes” and “Amen” in Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20). Jesus came “born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law” (Galatians 4:4–5). His coming fulfills the ancient promises given through the prophets (Isaiah 7:14; Micah 5:2) and fulfills the cosmic plan of God described in Ephesians 4:1–10, in which Christ descends and ascends to fill all things. To provide a perfect example of obedience and complete righteousness. Christ became the second Adam, living the life of perfect righteousness that Adam failed to live. Romans 5:19 declares, “By the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” Philippians 2:8 adds, “He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” His perfect obedience (Romans 5:19) fulfills the righteousness required by the law (Romans 8:3–4) and is imputed to all who believe. To offer Himself as a substitute for sinners. Only a sinless man could die for sinful men, and only God could bear the infinite weight of divine justice. Hebrews 9:26 says, “He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.” 1 Peter 3:18 adds, “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God.” To destroy the works of the devil. As 1 John 3:8 says, “The Son of God appeared to destroy the works of the devil.” Hebrews 2:14–15 explains that through death He destroyed “the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil.” By taking on flesh, He entered our battleground and conquered through death and resurrection. To sympathize with our weakness. In becoming man, He entered our pain, hunger, sorrow, and temptation—yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). He became the compassionate High Priest who truly understands. Hebrews 2:18 reminds us that “because He Himself has suffered when tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted.” To secure our adoption as children of God. Through His Incarnation, Christ not only redeems but also brings us into the family of God. Galatians 4:4–5 says, “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” This adoption is the crowning grace of the Incarnation, turning rebels into sons and heirs. To unite heaven and earth. Through the union of divine and human natures, Christ became the eternal bridge between God and man, reconciling all things to Himself (Colossians 1:20). Ephesians 1:10 says God’s purpose was “to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth.”

III. The Chasm and the Bridge

Before the councils, before the creeds, before the ink of theology had dried on any page, the church already knew this truth in its bones: we were separated from God, and only God could bridge the divide.

Imagine a vast canyon stretching between two cliffs—on one side, God: holy, infinite, pure; on the other, humanity: fallen, finite, estranged. Between them lies the abyss of sin.

Isaiah 59:2 says,

“Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear.”

No human effort could build the bridge. Every plank of good intention snaps under the weight of guilt.

Only God Himself could cross the chasm—but to do so, He must truly enter our side.

The bridge must be anchored in both shores—fully divine, fully human.

That bridge is Christ Himself—the Word made flesh.

A. The True Bridge: The Hypostatic Union

In Jesus Christ—one Person in two natures—God and humanity meet “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.”

His divine nature anchors the bridge in heaven; His human nature anchors it on earth.

And the single Person of the Son holds it all together—strong, stable, saving.

In Him, the infinite became touchable, and the immortal became vulnerable.

The hands that formed galaxies learned the feel of wood and stone.

He who breathed life into Adam now drew breath beside the animals of Bethlehem.

Job once cried out, “Would that there were an arbiter between us, who might lay his hand on us both.” (Job 9:33)

That longing is fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

He lays His divine hand on the Father and His human hand on us, and the gulf is closed.

B. How the False Bridges Fail

Throughout history, many have tried to cross the gap by half-truths.

The early church met them one by one.

Docetism (to seem) offered a mirage bridge—touching heaven but never earth. Christ only seemed human, they said. But if He only appeared to suffer, then we are only apparently forgiven.

The Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 8, summarizes the orthodox position beautifully:

“The Son of God, the second person in the Trinity… being very and eternal God… did, when the fulness of time was come, take upon Him man’s nature, with all the essential properties and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin.”

Arianism built from the other side—a bridge beginning on earth but never reaching heaven. If Christ were a created being, no matter how exalted, He could not unite us to the Creator.

Council of Nicaea

Nestorianism gave us two half-bridges that never met—dividing Christ into two persons, one divine, one human. But if the natures never meet, there is no Mediator.

Theotokos debate and the council of Chalcedon

Eutychianism melted the metals together—a confusion where Christ’s humanity dissolved into divinity, losing footing on both shores.

Only the gospel bridge holds: one Person, fully God and fully man.

Every other structure collapses under the mystery of grace.

C. The Perfect Bridge

In Christ, the chasm becomes a meeting place.

He descends into our pit and lifts us to His height.

The manger and the cross are both ends of that same bridge—wood joined to wood, heaven joined to earth.

He who was born among beasts would die among thieves.

He who lay in straw would hang upon a tree.

But both moments reveal the same glory—the glory of the God who will not stay distant.

The bridge holds.

And the nails that pierce Him fasten heaven to earth forever.

IV. The Mystery Explained: The Two Natures of Christ

The early centuries of the church were spent wrestling with this radiant paradox:

How can one Person be both God and man?

They were not quarreling over abstractions; they were guarding the gospel.

If Christ is not truly God, He cannot save us.

If He is not truly man, He cannot stand with us.

Every heresy was, at its heart, a misstep on the bridge.

C. S. Lewis admired Athanasius for standing contra mundum—against the world—to defend this truth: that the Son is “of one being with the Father.”

Before creeds were codified, before orthodoxy had a name, believers clung to Scripture’s witness that in Jesus, God Himself had walked among us.

A. The Early Church and the Councils

In time, the church gathered to clarify the mystery she already adored.

At Nicaea in A.D. 325, she confessed that Christ is “very God of very God,” begotten, not made.

This was not a victory of philosophers but of worshippers: they had seen His glory and refused to dim it.

At Chalcedon in A.D. 451, the church found language sturdy enough to carry the weight of wonder:

Christ is one Person in two natures—“without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.”

These four negations are like guardrails.

If the natures are confused or changed, He cannot save; if divided or separated, He cannot represent us.

They protect not mere theology but the heartbeat of redemption.

And the Athanasian Creed later gathered these truths into confession:

“Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man—perfect God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting.”

Such words were never cold formulas.

They are the grammar of grace—the language that allows us to speak rightly of a Savior who truly saves.

Lewis once said, “The old teachers are more likely to give us plain truth than modern speculations.”

Athanasius gave us that plain truth: “God became man that man might be restored to God.”

In his courage we hear the echo of every saint who has ever clung to Christ alone.

B. The Unity of Christ’s Person

The Westminster Confession of Faith, drawing from these ancient streams, summarizes the mystery with clarity and awe:

“Christ, in the work of mediation, acts according to both natures, by each nature doing that which is proper to itself; yet, by reason of the unity of the person, that which is proper to one nature is sometimes in Scripture attributed to the person denominated by the other nature.”

In other words, the one Christ acts through both natures.

His divinity heals; His humanity hungers; yet both belong to one Lord.

It was not His divine nature alone that raised the dead, nor His human nature alone that hungered or wept—it was Jesus Himself.

The same Christ who calmed storms also cried in Gethsemane.

The unity of His person is the harmony of salvation.

To divide Him, even in thought, is to lose the melody of the gospel.

C. Christ’s Suffering in Body and Soul

Louis Berkhof warns us not to separate Christ’s bodily suffering from His anguish of soul.

Sin wounded both body and spirit, and so both must be healed.

His pain was not merely physical—it was cosmic.

In Gethsemane He said, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death.”

At Calvary His body was scourged and pierced, and His soul drank the cup of wrath.

He bore the whole curse—body and soul—for our salvation.

The one who once filled heaven with light was plunged into our darkness.

The one who knew no sin became sin for us, that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

The bridge did not merely touch the abyss; it carried our guilt across it.

V. The Implications: Flesh and Faith

A. What Christ’s Flesh Means for Salvation

The incarnation is the hinge of all hope—the living bridge between heaven and earth.

In His humanity, Christ represents us; in His divinity, He redeems us.

Because He took on flesh, our flesh will be raised.

Gregory of Nazianzus said, “What is not assumed is not healed.”

Athanasius added, “The incorporeal Word took to Himself a body so that through His death all might be made partakers of His incorruption.”

Every sinew of Christ’s humanity was an instrument of grace.

C. S. Lewis captured it with unmatched simplicity:

“He came down—down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, into humanity. But He went down to come up again, and bring the whole ruined world up with Him.”

The Son’s descent is the world’s ascension.

In Christ, the lowliest flesh becomes the dwelling place of glory.

B. The Incarnation Shapes Our Worship

We worship a God who draws near.

Christian worship is not escape from the world; it is God’s sanctification of it.

We kneel, sing, eat, and drink because God has made holy what He has touched.

In the Lord’s Supper, we remember not an abstraction but a body given, blood poured out.

The table is testimony that salvation came not by idea but by incarnation.

Lewis noted, “Spirit, which we think of as highest, is joined to matter, which we tend to despise. The highest does not stand aloof from the lowest.”

So we worship with bodies as well as souls—with breath and song, with bread and cup, with hearts lifted and knees bent.

Every act of embodied worship whispers the same truth: the Word became flesh.

C. The Incarnation and Our Humanity

Christ redeems not only souls but bodies, emotions, and experiences.

He sanctifies our laughter and our tears, our work and our weariness.

Athanasius wrote, “The Word was made man that we, being made men, might be made gods”—not by nature, but by grace.

The Incarnation is not only the foundation of salvation but the vindication of creation.

When you wake tired, remember: Christ knew fatigue.

When you are lonely, remember: He had nowhere to lay His head.

When you weep, remember: Jesus wept.

Our humanity is not an obstacle to holiness—it is the place where holiness took residence.

And because He rose with a glorified body, the future of every believer is not escape from flesh but the redemption of it.

As Paul writes, “He will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body.” (Philippians 3:21)

VI. The Pastoral Charge

A. The Hope of the Incarnation

Because God has taken flesh, He will never forsake His creation.

The same Jesus who took our humanity now intercedes for us in heaven—glorified, yet still human.

John Calvin noted that when Paul describes Christ as Mediator, he deliberately calls Him man—“There is one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5). Why? Because the Spirit, knowing our weakness, comforts us by setting before us a Mediator who is one of us.

In His divinity, He has the power to save; in His humanity, He draws near in sympathy and compassion.

Calvin wrote that Christ “provides for our infirmity by the most appropriate remedy,” showing Himself to be not only our sovereign, but our brother. In his Institutes of the Christian Religion (II.xii.1–2), Calvin explains that the Holy Spirit inspires Paul to emphasize Christ’s humanity as Mediator so that our faith might rest in comfort rather than fear. Though the Son is of one essence with the Father, He humbles Himself to draw near to us in the weakness of our flesh. Calvin teaches that this is no mere figure of speech but a deep mystery of divine mercy—the Son of God clothed Himself in our nature so that we might be united to His glory. As he writes, the same One who is Lord of heaven stoops to call us brothers; the Majesty before whom angels veil their faces now stretches forth His hand to lift us from the dust. Thus the doctrine of Christ’s two natures is not abstract theology but the sure anchor of our assurance: our Redeemer is both God enough to save and man enough to sympathize.

B. The Invitation

The Incarnation means we are not alone.

God is Emmanuel—God with us, God for us.

Think of the film Children of Men.

The world has grown barren—no child has been born for years.

Then a woman conceives, and hope itself takes on skin.

When soldiers see the child, they lower their weapons. For a moment, war gives way to wonder.

So it is with Christ.

In a dying world, a Child was born.

Hope came wrapped in flesh, carried through danger, and cradled in a manger.

He came not only to die, but to live the perfect life we could not live—to stand in our place, to carry our shame, to conquer our death.

At Christmas, we behold not merely a baby, but salvation Himself.

The silence of the ages is broken by the cry of God made man.

C. The Final Charge

Let this truth move from head to heart, from creed to comfort, from doctrine to doxology.

“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)

So let every heart prepare Him room.

Let heaven and nature sing.

Glory to the newborn King.