The Incarnation: Three Key Aspects

Good morning. I'm JP, and I'm really delighted to speak with you this morning about the incarnation—the fact that God became man in Christ during this Christmas season.

My conviction is that if we look closely at what the church has affirmed for 2,000 years, we will find the incarnation to be far more beautiful and relevant than we sometimes give it credit for. While we might see it as a warm-up act to the cross, the incarnation itself contains profound truths that transform our everyday lives.

Understanding the Incarnation

Let me start with a definition. Incarnation refers to the fact that God the Son—the second person of the Godhead—came to earth as a man without stopping or limiting his divine activity in order to save us. The word comes from the Latin in carne, meaning "in flesh."

Think of it like chili con carne—chili with meat. Jesus is very much in flesh, one of us. He was genuinely and fully human. In Luke 1, we see that he was conceived in Mary's womb, that he was born, that he was named. Things happened inside time and space in his life. He wasn't merely gift-wrapped in a body.

But the passage also affirms that he is fully divine. He is described as the Son of the Most High. He reigns over the house of Jacob. He will be called the Son of God.

Veiled in flesh, the godhead see; hail the incarnate deity, pleased as man with man to dwell, Jesus our Emmanuel.

Though God the Son became man, God the Father did not, and neither did the Holy Spirit. But whenever God works, all three persons of the Godhead are involved. Here, the Father sends the Son to be conceived in Mary's womb by the Holy Spirit.

Three Key Truths About the Incarnation

The church has traditionally affirmed three remarkable ways the incarnation makes a difference to us:

1. Rescue

Christ was born to save us. The cross doesn't work without the incarnation. He had to come and live a sinless life in order to credit it to us. He took on humanity so that he could be crucified—so that God himself could die. This means the incarnation is forever enshrined in history as him taking the first step, reaching out to us.

When you're next doubting the goodness of God, when you feel overwhelmed, when you're tempted by sin, remember this truth: he took the first step. A fact that can never be erased from history. He doesn't wait for you to work your way out of it. He took on a human nature so he could step in and speak into the silence.

I heard recently of an international student who became a Christian here in Nottingham. When authorities asked her why she picked up that Bible, why she went to that church, why she started asking these questions about God, she finally said: "I just don't know. It's as if he found me." What a wonderful truth of the incarnation.

But here's something deeper: this wasn't just him deciding to show up to the party for a few years. This is the grand unveiling of the eternal plan of God, in which Jesus Christ is now forever human as well as divine. There is always now a human representing us before the throne of God. The incarnation is the permanent, still-existing humanity of Christ that shows, even to this very day, his commitment to you.

2. Recognition

God identifies with us. He knows our frailty. And that's true. But this isn't just him hanging out with us for a while. If Jesus Christ has forever become one of us, then he doesn't just identify with us—he dignifies us. He gives our humanity a refresh by dealing with the sin that sustained it at the cross, and joins us to him in new resurrection life.

Consider something like self-image, which many of us struggle with. The lie of the health and beauty industry, of social media, is that we're meant to see something divine when we look in the mirror—a beauty that defies age, a status that implies power. We feel we don't have those things, so we struggle.

But if Jesus Christ has taken to himself a human nature with all its frailty and weakness (except for sin), then we must note: it was good enough for him. He honored humanity by coming as a man. Jesus has dignified and legitimized what it means to be human.

Isaiah 53 tells us that Jesus had no beauty that we should desire him. He came in a very ordinary way. And yet, he has created in himself a new humanity—one that is ransomed, healed, restored, and forgiven.

So when you see yourself in the mirror, or think about how you're perceived, know this: first and foremost, you are loved by God. You are defined by him. And those things are true—not in spite of, but very much within your broken bodies, average appearances, mundane interactions, and clearly not divine reputations.

No matter how you look, how you sound, how you feel about yourself, no matter how skewed your desires or confused your identity, Jesus has given you a beauty and validation of more worth than any reputation or label. Because he himself now wears a human nature. Hebrews 2 tells us that Jesus is not ashamed to call us his brothers and sisters. He's not ashamed to be known as one of us.

3. Revelation

Jesus came to make God known. But as we talk about the two natures of Christ, we quickly realize: this can't be reasoned away. It can't be mathematically proven. Analogies fail because it's beyond human understanding.

Mystery is the word theologians use when two things are true, but their precise interaction is inexplicable to our finite minds. It's when your feet stop touching the sands of human logic and begin to swim in the seas of scriptural truth. And when we're talking about God himself in the person of his Son who became one of us, we have something utterly transcendent, utterly supernatural.

But isn't that what we long for? Something beyond us? Look at our entertainment—Stranger Things, fantasy novels, blockbuster depictions. We're spiritually intrigued. We want transcendence. We want mystery. We want beauty that blows our minds. And then we want it to come close into our lives.

We see this in our culture's obsession with celebrity—we long for those of power and majesty to be amongst us. This summer, my family watched Celebrity Gladiators being filmed. Thousands of people packed Sheffield Arena, screaming, holding up placards of adoration. It's a longing for incarnation—just the wrong idea of what is truly divine.

But the beauty of the true incarnation is that the one true God has come amongst us and remains so by his Spirit. You can meet him. You can mark the moments. You can interact with him. And he who is the most known and followed figure in all the earth, who never disappoints, who never fails to live up to expectation, is willing to stop right in front of your life and enter in.

The Invitation

The incarnation isn't just an event. It's an invitation into beauty, into transcendence. It's not just a good idea from long ago, but the fulfillment of thousands of years of prophetic expectation. It's the satisfaction of our deepest longings: that one day God would dwell with his people, that the Savior would come and defeat evil and make the world new.

Who is God that he would take our frame, the artisan inside the paint? Who is God that he would breathe the very air that his breath sustains, the architect inside the plan?

Oh, come now. Hail his arrival, the God of creation, royalty robed in the flesh he created. Jesus the maker has made himself known. All hail the infinite infant God.