The Incarnation: Jesus, Fully God, Fully Man

“Jesus Christ is infinite and eternal; there is no end to Him. God wants us to pursue Him relentlessly and passionately with all we have for all of eternity.” -Michael Morgan. Initially, God walked with man, and was clearly seen and known by His people. However when sin entered our nature, He removed Himself from us until we could be returned to our first state. God was still revealed through creation, but men chose to ignore His image stamped upon themselves and upon all else in the universe (Romans 1:18-21). Can a child forget his parents? Yet we have intentionally forgotten and left Him Who begot us.

Still God is after His people and wants us to know Him. So He crafted a pattern of ways for His chosen people to follow, that they might behold, love, enjoy, and glorify their God. This revelation, put into effect through angels, was forsaken by a rebellious people (Acts 7:53). Yet that they might know Him, God sent prophets to disclose His nature (Hebrews 1:1), still, men rejected and persecuted these (Acts 7:51-52).

“[H]e had long contended with a stubborn world, and thrown down many a blessing upon them; and when all his other gifts could not prevail, he at last made a gift of himself to testify his affection and engage theirs.” -Henry Scougal. It takes a supernatural work to draw man back to God, thus the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, that through Him we might come to know the Father. By an inconceivable act of passionate obedience, Jesus, the Son of the Most High, in essence God Himself, left the throne room of heaven, approached a young girl, and became a single cell within her body. That cell multiplied and grew into a weak infant, born in a barn, laid in a feeding trough, and raised by two sinners. He grew up amongst His creation; from it He experienced rejection, temptation, oppression, betrayal, condemnation, revilement, scourgings, mockings, wounds, bruises, and ultimately crucifixion.

Henry Scougal wrote, “[...H]e hath testified his affection to us by suffering as well as by doing, and because he could not suffer in his own nature he assumed ours. The eternal Son of God did clothe himself with the infirmities of our flesh, and left the company of those innocent and blessed spirits, who knew well how to love and adore him, that he might dwell among men, and wrestle with the obstinacy of that rebellious race, to reduce them to their allegiance and fidelity, and then to offer himself up as a sacrifice and propitiation for them.”

Jesus stated His purpose in coming to earth: “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10b). He defines “life” in John 17:3, “And this is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.” Jesus is the full revelation of God. He is not a copy; He is fully God and fully man, manifested that we might seek and know the Father Himself.