How Do We Know Christ's Incarnation Is True? - Ask the Pastor

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This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Gary Hashley, Tim Hebbert and Brad Kilthau.

Tim Hebbert
We're gonna jump into a Christmas question this week. This is the question, "During the Christmas season, there is a lot of mention of the incarnation. How do we know it's true, and is that really so important to be included in the Christmas story for us today?" And I guess I would answer, yes, to that second question. But, so what is the incarnation? Let's start there. The incarnation, I'll give you the definition of it, the proper definition from a biblical dictionary, "The act of grace whereby Christ took our human nature into union with divine person and became man. Christ is both God and man. Human attributes and actions are predicated of Him, and He of whom they are predicated is God. A divine person was united to a human nature. The union is hypostatical or is personal; the two natures are not mixed or confounded. And that confounded, I would say, or confusing, and it is perpetual." A simpler definition would be, that the God of the universe came into the world and took on human flesh. You know, Brad, as I was working through that, I remember one of our topics, one of the days, probably been five, six months ago. And you were the one that probably for the very first time got me to really think about this. Now when Jesus was resurrected, He was resurrected in bodily form again, and then He ascended into heaven and He took that bodily form with Him. Now that bodily form is not the same as what we have here. It doesn't age, it's not susceptible to anything, but He still bears all of the scars. I think, I agree with what you'd said that day, of what He went through for us at the cross of Calvary. So when He returns, we're gonna see those nail scar hands. We're gonna see the scars of the crown of thorns on His head and all those things. So as we walk through this today folks, I'd just ask you to think in those terms. There's a few passages I wanna share with you that the scripture talks about, "The divine Jesus coming in the form of man." The first one is probably the most obvious to all of us, and that's the first chapter of the gospel of John, verse 14 "And the word," capital W referring to Jesus, "Became flesh and dwelled among us. And we have seen His glory, glory as of the only son from the father full of grace and truth." The second chapter of the book of Hebrews, the writer says this, starting with verse 11, "Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters. He says, I will declare your name to my brothers and sisters in the assembly, I will sing your praises. And again, I will put my trust in Him. And again, He says, here I am and the children God has given me. Since the children have flesh and blood, He too shared in their humanity. So that by His death, He might break the power of him who holds the power of death--that is the devil." And one last passage, and this is from the Old Testament. This is one that any Christian that's gone to a Christmas Eve service has heard this passage. Isaiah chapter nine, and I'm just gonna read verse six, "For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulders. And His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father and the Prince of Peace." So Brad, how do we know it's true that Jesus was fully God and fully man?

Brad Kilthau
Well, that passage you just quoted from Isaiah, of course, that one's the classic one, talking about the incarnation. The first part talks about His humanity, and then it goes on into His deity and what His plans are in the future. But I think another way we can look at this is, to know that Jesus was fully God and fully man, is you separate the two, was Jesus fully God? You go to the classic passage that you would normally be in during the Christmas season and the gospels, and in Matthew 1:1-17 you got this whole long list of how 'A' begot 'B'. It's one of those lists that we usually skip over, cause we don't wanna try to stumble through the names. But when you get verse 18, you find there's a record account of a birth without a human father. And you find that Matthew carefully guarded the fact that Jesus was born of a virgin. He takes out the whole genealogical table of the Lord and he states when he gets to Mary, that Jesus was only born of Mary. In fact, in chapter one, verse 16, it has the words, "of whom," a pronoun, "of whom." And that indicates clearly in the original language that Mary only, not Mary and Joseph, was the one that had Jesus. And so the fact that Jesus was born only of a Virgin, that's very clearly showing that He is truly God. And then I think another one that's kind of clear that we often forget about is the betrothal between Mary and Joseph. I think that's very important in this miraculous event, because as we know during betrothal period, a man and a woman were, what we would call today, engaged. But to them it was a lot more serious than an engagement. In fact, to break off the betrothal there would have to be a creed of divorce to make that happen. And so also during that period of time, which sometimes is almost a year in length, the couple, the man and the woman could not come together sexually. And if they did, it was actually considered an act of adultery and it could even mean death, it was that serious. And so that tells you, there's not something secret going on here of Mary sneaking off with Joseph or something of that sort. This was a serious thing in that culture, in that day and time, the betrothal period. And so yes, when you look into scripture, it was the holy spirit who came upon Mary during that time. And the Bible says, "Came upon her and placed the son of God, the Messiah in her womb." And we know that even though a lot of people probably mocked it in that day, I mean if they saw a pregnant girl walking around, they would say, "You know, well, she did this, she sinned or whatever." And we know even Joseph didn't believe it to start with until an angel appeared to him in a dream that it was the miraculous work of the holy spirit to bring about the incarnation.

And I think we need to be paying attention to the angel of the Lord when he revealed to Joseph that this son or this child inside of Mary was God Himself. There's something clear in the angel's message, because the angel told Joseph the sex of the baby, the name of the baby and the mission that the baby would carry out. And then of course on this side of things, we can look back and see exactly that was the truth. The baby was a male baby, His name, as we would say it in our language, Jesus, and His mission was fully carried out and that is to save His people from their sin. And so it was a spiritual work, it wasn't of a human father to bring about this conception. Something that never happened in the history of man, something that'll never happen again in the history of man. Jesus was born, He was fully God, and He was always God. As it says in Micah 5:2, "He is of the everlasting," as we look in that passage of scripture. So Jesus' personhood didn't start through this miraculous work of the holy spirit, when Jesus was born here on the earth. The Bible tells us clearly that He existed from eternity past. Absolutely He did, as we know, Jesus created the world that He was born into, when we studied that through the scriptures. And then you can look at the life of Jesus to see that He's fully God. The miracles that He performed when He empowered His disciples to do miracles; the transfiguration. And then you think about raising Himself back to life after the death on the cross. You think about His ascension up into heaven before eye witnesses. Definitely, He absolutely is God. And then the question is, "Okay, so maybe He's fully God, but can He be fully man?" Well, you got to keep in mind, He had a human mother, Mary, which produced a Mary substance, a complete human in nature, a body, soul, and spirit. And in knowing this, we can stand why the angel and his conversation to Mary described the one who being born, as the holy one. And I guess when you study that in the original language, the holy one in Luke 1:35, it indicates that Jesus was supernaturally conceived and Mary gave birth to Him as a human being. But Mary did not give Him His personhood and did not give Him His divine nature. So He was born as a human, He was a male child, but He already existed as the second person of the Trinity. I guess I just need to say that to you guys, because when we're thinking about this broadcast, I know that there are some who have had the thought that Mary is the mother of God. And that's been said often, and that is totally not true. Jesus existed in eternity passed and He existed way before Mary was ever born. Also some of the humanity things of Jesus: He shed tears, He felt real pain, hunger, and thirst during that time of temptation in the wilderness. He ran out of human strength, just like you and I would, He grew from a little baby to being a boy, to being a man. People could feel Him, they could touch Him, they could embrace Him. In fact, He was even able to be beaten, as we know, as He went to the cross and murdered and butchered and hung on a cross, that's got to have a human body for that to happen. So, Gary what are your thoughts on the incarnation?

Gary Hashley
Well, the part of the question that I was asked to think about and prepare for is, "What does the incarnation do for us today?" Brad, you hit on a very good point, Bethlehem isn't where Jesus started. Jesus has always been who He was, the second member of the Trinity from eternity passed, but He became flesh incarnation. If you go to the store, you buy Chili Con Carne, Chili with meat, Chili with flesh. Incarnation; Jesus took flesh to dwell among us and John, one of the disciples, writing in 1 John about Jesus, says, "We've heard, we've seen, we've looked upon, our hands have handled." And he's talking about Jesus that, "We heard Him speak, we saw Him with our eyes, we looked upon Him, we actually touched Him because He was real. He had a real human body, He always had been the spirit. The second member of the Trinity, He became flesh to dwell among us," John says. And the question is, "Well, what does that do for us today?" Well, I sat down and came up with five quick thoughts. One is, if Jesus really became a man while still being God, we talked about that, but if He really became a man, we can know God in a personal way. Because just as the disciples talked with Him and laughed with Him and ate with Him and walked with Him, we have in Jesus, one, we can know God who is spirit, but we can know Him in a personal way. The daily bread back in 2006 included, "God can exact nothing from man that He's not exacted from Himself. He has Himself, gone through the whole of human experience. From the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money, to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When He was a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty, died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile." Through Jesus we can know God, in fact we can't know God without Jesus. He said, "I'm the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the father but by me," so we can know God in a personal way and we can know that God understands our every need. Hebrews 2 talks about the fact that He suffered, and He's able to help those who are being tempted. He's able to help us in our need because He became one of us, just without sin. But He had every other attribute of humanity that we have, Brad talked about it: He got hungry, He got thirsty, He got tired He ate, He slept. So yeah, He understands our every need, He knows what it is to be tired. He knows what it is to be hungry, He knows what it is to have people walk away and feeling lonely. The third is, we have a helper for our every need. Hebrews 4 talks about the high priest, talking about Jesus, and says, "In Him, we can find grace to help in time of need." He's always there to help because He came to be among us and to be one of us. And we can know that He can help us in our time of need. The fourth one is, we have a perfect atonement for our sins. It says in 1 Peter, "He bore our sins in His body on the tree," He could not give His flesh for us if He didn't have flesh, and He could not give His blood for us, if He didn't have blood. And if He wasn't incarnated, if He hadn't left heaven to come to this earth and become flesh, there'd been no flesh and there'd been no blood to give for the atonement for our sins. And then lastly, we have a model to live our life after, 1 Peter 2 talks about Jesus and says, "He left us an example so that we might walk and follow in His steps." So because Jesus came, we can know God in a personal way. We can know that He understands our needs, He's there to help when we have needs. He's the perfect atonement for our sins, and we have a model to live our life. And all of that is part of the wonder of the fact that Jesus was born.