The Word Became Flesh: What the Incarnation Means for Humanity

The Word Became Flesh

What the Incarnation Means for Humanity

Michael D. Morrison, Editor

Copyright 2015 Grace Communion International

www.gci.org

Cover artwork by Gerard van Honthorst; public domain

Table of Contents

Who Was Jesus Before His Human Birth?

And the Word Was God

The Question of Christ’s Prayers

Is Jesus Really God? A Look at the Arian Controversy

Who Jesus Really Was

A Study of the Incarnation

The Incarnation: The Greatest Miracle

The Real Miracle Story of Jesus’ Birth

What Jesus’ Incarnation Shows Us About Being Human

He Gave Himself

God in the Flesh

Who Is Jesus?

Who Is This Man?

Why the Incarnation Is Good News

God Chose to Enter Into Our Humanity

What Jesus' Humanity Means for Us

The Importance of Jesus’ Humanity

Jesus Has United Himself to Us

Jesus Is Still a Human

About the Authors

About the Publisher…

Grace Communion Seminary

Ambassador College of Christian Ministry

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Who Was Jesus Before His Human Birth?

Did Jesus exist before his human birth? What or who was Jesus before his incarnation? Was he the God of the Old Testament?

In order to understand who Jesus was, we first should understand the basic doctrine of the Trinity. The Bible teaches us that God is one and only one being. This tells us that whoever or whatever Jesus was before his human incarnation, he could not have been a God separate from the Father.

While God is one being, he exists eternally as three coequal and coeternal Persons, whom we know as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In order to understand how the Trinity doctrine describes the nature of God, we must keep in mind the difference between the words Being and Person. This distinction has been put in the following terms: there is but one what of God (that is, his Being) but there are three whos within the one being of God, that is, the three divine Persons—Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The Being we call the one God has an eternal relationship within himself of Father to Son. The Father has always been the Father and the Son has always been the Son. The Holy Spirit has always been the Holy Spirit. One Person in the Godhead did not exist before the others, or without the others, and neither is one Person inferior to the other in his essence. All three divine Persons—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—share the one being of God. The Trinity doctrine explains that Jesus was not created at some point, but existed eternally as God.

There are three pillars to the Trinitarian understanding of God’s nature.

1) Only one true God exists, who is Yahweh (YHWH) of the Old Testament or theos of the New Testament—the Creator of all that exists.

2) God includes three divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Father or Holy Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father or the Son.

3) These three distinct (but not separate) persons equally share the one divine being, God, and that they are eternal, co-equal and co-essential. Thus, God is one in essence and one in being, but exists in three persons. (We must always be careful not to understand the Persons of the Godhead like persons in the human sphere, where one person is separate from another.)

God as Trinity transcends our understanding. God is greater than our finite minds can completely grasp. Scripture does not explain how it is that the one God can exist as the Trinity. It just gives us the basic facts: there is only one God, but the Father is God, the Son is divine, and the Spirit is also divine.

How the Father and the Son can be one being is difficult for us humans to understand. Our experience in the created world is that persons are different beings. So we need to keep in mind the distinction the early church made between person and essence, which the doctrine of the Trinity makes. This distinction tells us that there is a difference between the way God is one and the way that he is three. God is one in essence and three in persons. If we keep that distinction throughout our discussion, we will avoid being confounded by the seeming (but not real) contradiction in the biblical truth that God is one being in three Persons—Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

A physical analogy, though an imperfect one, might help us understand. There is but one pure light, and we perceive it as white light. But white light can be broken down into three primary colors—red, green and blue. Each of the three primary colors does not exist apart from the other primary colors—they are included within the one light, which is white. There is but one complete light that we call white light, but this light contains three distinct but not separate primary colors. (The analogy fails, as all analogies from the created world do, if we extend it further. Although white light contains three primary colors, it is physically possible to separate the colors, and to have a stream of red light, for example. In the Trinity, it is not possible to separate the Persons, although they can be distinguished from one another.)

The above explanation gives us the essential basis of the Trinity, which provides the perspective to understand who or what Jesus was before he became human flesh. Once we understand the relationship that has always existed within the one God, we can proceed to answer the question of who Jesus was before his incarnation and physical birth.

Jesus’ eternality and pre-existence in John’s Gospel

The pre-existence of Christ is clearly stated in John 1:1-4: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life.

This Word (Logos in Greek) became incarnate in Jesus. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, John tells us (verse 14). The eternal, uncreated Word who was God, and yet was with God as one of the Persons of the Godhead, became a human being. The Word was God (an eternal state) but became a human being. The Word never came into being, that is, he didn’t become the Word. He always was the Word, or God. The Word’s existence is open-ended. He has always existed.

As Donald Macleod points out in The Person of Christ: He is sent forth as one who already has being, not as one who comes into being by being sent (page 55). Macleod further states:

In the New Testament, Jesus’ existence as a man is a continuation of his previous or prior existence as a heavenly being. The Word who dwelt among us is the same as the Word who was with God. The Christ who is found in form as a man is the very one who previously existed in the form of God. (page 63)

It was the Word, the Son of God, who became flesh, rather than the Father or the Holy Spirit.

Who is Yahweh?

In the Old Testament the most common name for God is Yahweh, which comes from the Hebrew consonants YHWH. It was Israel’s national name for God, the ever-living, self-existent Creator. In time, the Jews began to consider the name of God, YHWH, as too sacred to be pronounced. The Hebrew word adonay (my Lord) or Adonai was substituted. In many English Bibles, we see the word Lord used where YHWH appears in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Yahweh is the most common name of God in the Old Testament, being used over 6800 times. Another name for God in the Old Testament is Elohim, which is used over 2500 times, as in the phrase the Lord God (YHWH Elohim).

In the New Testament, there are many scriptures the writers apply to Jesus that referred to Yahweh in the Old Testament. The practice of the New Testament writers is so common that its significance may escape us. By using Yahweh scriptures for Jesus, these writers are implying that Jesus was Yahweh, or God, now made flesh. We shouldn’t be surprised that the writers make this comparison, because Jesus himself explained that Old Testament passages applied to him (Luke 24:25-27, 44-47; John 5:39-40, 45-46).

Jesus is the Ego eimi

In John’s Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples: I am telling you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe that I am he (13:19). The phrase I am he is translated from the Greek ego eimi. The phrase occurs 24 times in John’s Gospel. At least seven of these are said to be absolute, in that they are not followed by a predicate, such as in John 6:35, I am the bread of life. In the seven absolute cases, no predicate follows, and the I AM phrase comes at the end of the clause. This indicates that Jesus is using this phrase as a name to identify who he is. The seven places are John 8:24, 28, 58; 13:19; 18:5, 6 and 8.

If we go back to Isaiah 41:4, 43:10 and 46:4, we can see the background for Jesus’ reference to himself in John’s Gospel as ego eimi (I AM). In Isaiah 41:4, God or Yahweh says: I, the Lord…I am he. In Isaiah 43:10 he says I am he, and later says, ‘You are my witnesses,’ declares the Lord, ‘that I am God’ (verse 12). In 46:4, God (Yahweh) again refers to himself as I am he.

The Hebrew phrase I am he is translated in the Greek version of the Holy Scriptures, the Septuagint (which the apostles used), by the phrase ego eimi in Isaiah 41:4; 43:10; and 46:4. Jesus’ made the I am he statements as references to himself because they directly connected to God’s (Yahweh’s) statements about himself in Isaiah. John said, in effect, that Jesus was saying he was God in the flesh (a point also taught in John 1:1, 14, which introduces the Gospel and speaks of the Word’s divinity and incarnation.)

John’s ego eimi (I am) identification of Jesus can also be carried back to Exodus 3, in which God identifies himself as the I am. Here we read: "God [Hebrew, elohim] said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you‘" (verse 14).

The Gospel of John makes a clear connection between Jesus and Yahweh, the name of God in the Old Testament. We should also notice that John does not equate Jesus with the Father (and neither do the other Gospels). Jesus, for example, prays to the Father (John 17:1-15). John understands that the Son is distinct from the Father—and he also sees that both are distinct from the Holy Spirit (John 14:15, 17, 25; 15:26). John’s identification of Jesus as God, or Yahweh (if we think of his Hebrew, Old Testament name), is therefore a Trinitarian explanation of God’s being.

Let’s go over this again, because it is important. John repeats Jesus’ identification of himself as the I AM of the Old Testament. Since there is but one God, and John would have understood that, then we are left with the conclusion that there must be two persons sharing the one nature that is God. (We have seen that Jesus, the Son, is distinct from the Father.) With the Holy Spirit, also discussed by John in chapters 14-17, we have the basis of the Trinity.

To put aside all doubt about John’s identification of Jesus with Yahweh, we may quote John 12:37-41, which says:

Even after Jesus had done all these miraculous signs in their presence, they still would not believe in him. This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet: Lord, who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For this reason they could not believe, because as Isaiah says elsewhere: He has blinded their eyes and deadened their hearts, so they can neither see with their eyes, nor understand with their hearts, nor turn—and I would heal them. Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about him.

The quotes above come from Isaiah 53:1 and 6:10. The prophet originally spoke his words in regards to Yahweh. John says that what Isaiah actually saw was Jesus’ glory and that he spoke of him. For John the apostle, Jesus was Yahweh in the flesh; before his human birth he was known as Yahweh.

Jesus is the Lord of the New Testament

Mark begins his Gospel by saying that it is the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God (1:1). He then quotes from Malachi 3:1 and Isaiah 40:3 in the following words: I will send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way—a voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him’ (Mark 1:2-3). The Lord in Isaiah 40:3 is Yahweh, the name of the self-existent God of Israel.

Mark, as noted above, quotes the first part of Malachi 3:1, "I will send