The Incarnation


The doctrine of the Incarnation is inseparable from the Trinity in discussions about the God. The doctrine of the Incarnation unites the apparently contradictory statements:

  1. Jesus is fully Man (John 1:14, Rev 1:13 - he became fully man when he was conceived by the Holy Ghost and the virgin Mary and is still fully human)
  2. Jesus is fully God (Col 1:19, 2:9, etc.)
  3. Jesus is one Person (1 Cor 8:6, etc.)

This doctrine works like the Trinity but in reverse. In Jesus' one Divine Person their are two essences, his own copy of the human essence (which includes a human soul as well as a human body), and the only copy of the Divine Essence.

This means that it is possible for Jesus, according to his human essence, to grow, learn, die, etc. and according to his Divine essence to perform miracles, create from nothing, etc. The two essences each have their own set of properties, and which properties you see in a verse in Scripture will have something to say about one or the other of them (sometimes both).

Because Jesus is human, he has a God to whom he prays and to whom he offers worship. Because he is God he is properly the object of our worship.

It is hard to grasp this completely. Perhaps you have been wondering how it can be that Jesus can die, yet we know that God cannot. Thus it would seem that having a Divine and human essence are mutually exclusive. This is not so. Death is something that happens to a human nature, specifically it is the separation of the body from the soul. The Divine Essence is not composed of parts, and undergoes no separation. Thus, death is something that happens to a nature, but it is the customary way of speaking to say it happens to the person who possess that essence. We do not say, for example, someone punched my human essence, we say someone punched me.

Thus, when Jesus died his body separated from his soul but His Divine Nature remained unaltered. During this separation, Jesus still possessed a human soul which descended into Hell (not for punishment, it would be a digression to go into the purpose here). Thus, while Jesus was dead he was still human.


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