In Him Only: Is Jesus God Incarnate?

Is Jesus God Incarnate? And Why Does it Matter?

Part one of two parts

You can listen to this message on YouTube:

Over the years I have preached several sermons centered around the resurrection of Jesus. I’ve preached about the subject because without the resurrection of Jesus, there is no such thing as true Christianity. Without the resurrection of Jesus, there is no hope for our salvation. Without the resurrection of Jesus, every person on this planet is doomed to an eternity away from God’s presence.

Today and at least for another week, I feel it necessary to focus our full attention on the Holy Trinity as revealed to us in the whole of Scripture as One God in three Persons.

Let me say this at the very outset: We are not talking about three gods. We are talking of only One God whom Christians know as the Father, the Son of the Father (Jesus) and the Holy Spirit, who are of one nature, one essence, co-equal and co-eternal with each other. Each a distinct person, yet each identified as God.

So, today’s message is part one of two parts which center around the Biblical truth of the Trinity – and specifically of the full and irreducible Deity of Jesus the Christ.

Why am I preaching these focused messages? Because as your pastor and Bible teacher, it is my welcomed responsibility to protect us all from theological error. As St Peter tells us in his first epistle, our adversary, the devil, roams about the earth seeking souls to devour. And one way Satan devours souls is by seducing them into diminishing the full glory, weight, and majesty of the DEITY of the Lord Jesus.

That’s why St. Paul wrote to the Christians at Colossae: “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form . . . (Colossians 2:8-9)

In that text, and in the verses that follow, the apostle Paul proclaims that the FULLNESS, the completeness of Almighty God resided in Jesus. And how is that possible? Because Jesus IS God incarnate.

Christians often use the term ‘Incarnate’ when referring to the Lord Jesus. But what do we mean when we say Jesus is God incarnate? And why is that an important confession we must make if we hope to be saved from hell?

Let’s back up just a step and, without getting so deep into the realm of theology that this message becomes an academic lecture, let me remind us of how God describes Himself in the Old Testament of the Judeo-Christian Bible:

From the very first verses of Genesis, the Holy Spirit tells us God is the Creator of all that is seen and unseen. He existed before time itself existed. In the beginning, before there was a beginning, before Matter itself existed, before spirits and angels existed, God simply ‘IS’.

Many of you will remember God described Himself to Moses as: “I AM that I AM.” And then God told him, “This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’” (Exodus 3:14). We will come back to this important point in a few minutes.

Also key to our understanding of God as revealed to us in the Bible is this: God is One, but not a numeric one. For simplicity sake, we can say God is a unified one. Remember what He said of Adam and Eve: “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. (Genesis 2:24)

Adam and Eve were two separate individuals, but the Hebrew language in this text identified their union as creating a ‘unified one’ flesh – not a numeric one. Moses used same Hebrew word related to God Himself in multiple texts, for example, Deuteronomy 6:4 - “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!”

Perhaps a helpful way of viewing the triune God is not that He is 1+1+1=3. Rather, He is 1x1x1=1. God is a unified One which is then further defined in the New Testament as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

One God, Three Persons who existed before anything else existed – spirit or corporeal, visible or invisible – the Triune God existed in a co-eternal, co-equal, and co-existent relationship with each other.

So then, what does it mean to say Jesus the Son – the second Person of the Trinity – is God incarnate?

Simply stated, and as God the Holy Spirit tells us in multiple Scriptures, the Son took on Himself flesh and blood. Here is how God the Holy Spirit inspired St. John to write in the first verses of chapter one of his gospel:

“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 came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being . . . And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:1-3, 14)

Of Jesus, God the Holy Spirit moved St. Paul to write to the Christians in Philippi. J.B. Phillips renders the text from the Greek this way: ^“Let Christ himself be your example as to what your attitude should be. For he, who had always been God by nature, did not cling to his prerogatives as God’s equal, but stripped himself of all privilege by consenting to be a slave by nature and being born as mortal man. And, having become man, he humbled himself by living a life of utter obedience, even to the extent of dying, and the death he died was the death of a common criminal.” (Philippians 2:6ff)

God the Son was incarnate in the flesh and blood body of Jesus. And as incarnate, He was as human as you and I are human – HOWEVER, He was also at the same time fully and completely God because God can never NOT be God.

Just how Jesus became human, yet at the same time remained the Second Person of the Trinity is surely one of the great mysteries of Christianity. And it is extreme hubris that any human should expect to understand all of that in its fullest sense. The finite human mind can never understand the infinite God. Nevertheless, the belief in the Trinity is itself a test of orthodoxy. Our eternal salvation is inextricably linked to what we believe about Jesus’ deity.

St. John wrote his first epistle to those being buffeted by an early heresy called Gnosticism. Gnosticism, among it varied errors, denied the fully deity and humanity of Jesus: “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world. (1 John 4:2-3)

And so, through the millennia, to this very moment, those who believe Jesus was a created being – even the highest of created beings, even the best of created beings, even the first of created beings – those who believe Jesus was created by the Father do not believe in the Jesus of the Bible and are in grave danger of being lost for eternity.

Those who believe Jesus was a spirit created along with other spirits, such as Lucifer – making Jesus and Lucifer essentially spirit brothers – those who believe such things do not believe in the Jesus of the Bible and are in grave danger of being lost for eternity.

Those who believe that Jesus was the progeny of the Father, who had physical form, and a human mother – in this case, Mary – do not believe in the Jesus of the Bible and are in grave danger of being lost for eternity. As both Sts. Matthew and Luke tell us, it was God the Holy Spirit who came upon Mary and she conceived Jesus in her womb.

Let me reiterate the point because of its vital importance to our salvation: It has been the faith of the historical Christian church for 2000 years that belief in the Trinity is a test of orthodox Christian faith. All other ideas about Jesus qualify as heresy.

There have always been those who have objected to the idea that Jesus is God incarnate as a man. So, what are some objections to the deity and co-eternality of Jesus with the Father and the Holy Spirit? Let me bring up the most common three – and be quick to add that every historical objection to Christ’s deity is easily answered from the Scriptures.

Objection number one: Jesus said, “The Father is greater than I.” (John 14:28) In fact, Jesus often told His disciples and others that He is doing the Father’s will. Some have read into those statements that Jesus is subservient to the Father. But to think that demonstrates a poor understanding of the nature of the incarnation, during which Jesus took on human flesh and was temporarily “made lower than the angels” (John 1:1-3, 14, Philippians 2:6-10; Hebrews 2:9).

In other words, Jesus temporarily relinquished His divine attributes and subjected Himself to the Father’s will while on earth. And furthermore, subservience in role does not equate to subservience in essence.

For example, Scripture tells us the wife is to be submissive to her husband (Ephesians 5). That is her God-designed role in the family. But her submission does not at all diminish her essence – that being an equal member of the human race and of the husband-wife union. And so, the ‘greater than I’ statement of Jesus relates His ROLE on earth, and not to His fundamental nature which is co-equal with the Father (and the Holy Spirit).

Objection number two: Scripture tells us Jesus was the ‘first born of all creation.” For example, here is part of St. Paul’s letter to the Christians at Colossae: “And He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities — all things have been created by Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:15ff)

But once again, this objection melts away when we look at the original Greek text, and the 1st century middle eastern culture.

Paul did not say Jesus was the first-created. The word he used for firstborn is "prototokos" (pro TOT o kas)– which signifies SUPERIORITY and POSSESSION, not order of birth. In the culture of the Ancient Near East, the firstborn was not necessarily the oldest child. firstborn referred not to birth order but to rank. The firstborn possessed the inheritance and leadership. And so says Greek scholar Kenneth Wuest about this passage in Colossians:

“The Greek word implied two things, priority to all creation and sovereignty over all creation. In the first meaning we see the absolute pre-existence of the Logos. Since our Lord existed before all created things, He must be uncreated. Since He is uncreated, He is eternal. Since He is eternal, He is God. . . . In the second meaning we see that He is the natural ruler, the acknowledged head of God’s household…He is Lord of creation.”

This follows precisely what St Paul wrote in the next verses of Colossians 1: “For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities — all things have been created by Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:15ff)

Here again is John 1:1-3 -- “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 came into being through Him, and apart from Him not even one thing came into being that has come into being.”

And again in Hebrews 1:1-3 “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom He also made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature and upholds all things by the word of His power.”

A third objection people offer is that Jesus never said He was God. To which we answer – “Yes, He did.”

To the 21st century Western and non-Jewish orthodox reader, at first blush it seems that Jesus never said He was God. But to the first century orthodox Jews, Jesus did refer to Himself as God Almighty on many occasions.

For example: as I mentioned earlier in this message, when Jehovah God spoke to Moses from the burning bush, He referred to Himself as “I AM.” And Jesus, when speaking of Himself, used the same term, I AM, several times, for example, John 8:24; 58; 13:19 and 18:5-6. (Some English translations add the word ‘He’ in italics to indicate the pronoun is NOT in the Greek but was added by the translators).

And so, for example, in John 8:58 when Jesus told the religious leaders: “Before Abraham was born, I Am!” they fully understood what He meant, and they picked up stones to kill Him for blasphemy.

In John 10:30, Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.” The word Jesus used for ‘one’ means ‘to be of one essence, the same nature.” The orthodox Jews who heard Him make that statement knew very well He was claiming to be God. That’s why they picked up stones to stone Him. When Jesus asked them why they wanted to execute Him, they responded, “For blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God” (John 10:33).

In Revelation 21:6-7, Jehovah God reveals himself to us as “the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.” Yet, in Revelation 22:13, it is now Jesus who reveals Himself with the same language. And because there can only be ONE ‘alpha and omega, the beginning and the end,’ Jesus is Jehovah God incarnate –God who took on flesh and blood.

We took some time to look at only the merest beginning of the evidence that Jesus IS Almighty God, the second Person of the Holy Trinity. But we must not leave the subject matter like this, because there is so much more to be said that substantiates the Biblical truth of Jesus’ full and unqualified deity.

Next week we will look once more at the Biblical evidence that demonstrates who Jesus is, and why it is important for our salvation and our continuing maturity in Christ that we understand this truth of God incarnate in Jesus the Christ.