John 1

¹⁴ And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

In the year 451, Christian leaders from around the world met to consider an important question about Jesus. Over one hundred years before, at the Council of Nicea, they had answered another very important question: Is Jesus God? Yes, they answered. Jesus is God. But that gave rise to another question: How can God become a man? What does that look like? Does Jesus cease being God because He becomes a man? Or did He remain God in His incarnation and His humanity was essentially a façade?

This was the question that the Christians who gathered at the Council of Chalcedon met to answer. And they formulated their answer in what is known today as The Chalcedonian Definition or The Chalcedonian Creed. I would like you to hear their answer, but, before I read their answer, a plea: Do not be overwhelmed. Do not be discouraged. This was written a long, long time ago. The language is going to sound strange. Yet, this is important, and we need to remember the good work of these Christians.

Here is what they said:

We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable soul and body; consubstantial with us according to the manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the virgin Mary, the mother of God, according to the manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the prophets from the beginning have declared concerning him, and the Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us.[1]

Now, as I said, that is a mouthful to be sure! But I would like to say something to us this morning: This strange and wordy statement is our inheritance and I want to show that it is a very valuable inheritance indeed! I want to show this: The Christians at Chalcedon were correct and their essential formulation matters. It is this: Jesus has two natures in one person and is fully God and fully man.

I believe that the Chalcedonian definition is fundamentally biblical and strong and true. But I do believe that maybe there is an easier way for us to understand why it is important that Jesus be fully God and fully man, having two natures in one person. And the way I would like to do this is by arguing three things:

1. Jesus had something to accomplish as man.
2. Jesus had something to accomplish as God.
3. But to accomplish these things, it was necessary that Jesus be fully God and fully man, one person with two natures.

Let us consider these three assertions.

Jesus had something to accomplish as man.

In John 1, John wrote:

¹⁴ And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…

The Word, John told us in verse 1, is Jesus who is God. So God, in the incarnation of Jesus, “became flesh.” That means, He really because a human being. And this raises the question of why. There are a number of reasons, but here are three very important reasons.

Jesus came as fully man so that He could give the world the only human being who was truly innocent of sin.

The rest of humanity had sinned and fallen and died in our trespasses. All of us. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). So it was necessary for God, in order to save us, to take on our humanity without taking on our curse.

You can see this dynamic in Galatians 4, when Paul writes:

⁴ But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law

Notice there the two qualifications:

• born of woman
• born under the law

He became flesh under the law of God under which we all reside. Yet, whereas we violated that law we were born under, He did not. In Hebrews 4, the writer of Hebrews makes this very clear.

¹⁵ For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

So this is the first part of our answer to the question, “Why did Jesus become fully man?”

Jesus came as fully man to experience humanity so that we could know He understands.

His truly experiencing our humanity also accomplishes a relational dynamic that is very important to us. It means that He understands us. And it means that He does not misunderstand us! That passage in Hebrews 4 that we just looked at presses this home. Watch:

¹⁵ For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

Jesus can truly sympathize with you, especially in your weakness! The Word became flesh. He understands! In Hebrews 2, the author of that book wrote of a specific way that His becoming flesh helps us.

¹⁷ Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. ¹⁸ For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

Jesus understands temptation! He was Himself tempted by the devil. He knows what it is to be tempted to do wrong, to sin. And He resisted His temptations and did not sin! But He understands where you are and what you are going through! He gets it! He is not ignorant of your plight.

And this understanding and experience of temptation alongside His refusal to sin is itself in service of the most crucial reason why it was important that Jesus became fully man: Jesus came as fully man so that the price for our sins could be paid by a true substitute.

If Jesus was going to pay a price that humanity owed because of our sinfulness, it was absolutely necessary that He go to the cross as a human being. He had to die as a human being for human beings. In Hebrews 2, we read:

¹⁷ Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

“He had to be made like his brothers in every respect…to make propitiations for the sins of the people.”

Propitiation is satisfaction. He met God’s demands of perfect holiness and He did so for “the people.” He paid the price! But He needed to be one of us to truly pay the price we owed!

Jesus had something to accomplish as God.

Jesus is fully man. But Jesus is fully God! And here again we see how very necessary this was.

As man, Christ could die as a true representative. Ok. An innocent man is dying for a guilty man as an act of love. But only as God could His eternal nature suffice as a payment (a) chronologically, for humanity past, present, and future and (b) collectively, for all humanity!

Jesus came as fully God so that His sacrifice would be sufficient for all humanity.

No mere man could die for all humanity! Only one who was man and God could do such a thing. For a mere man is mortal and limited, but not God! And here we understand the scriptural assertions to this point.

Consider what John writes in 1 John 2:

² He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

There is that word again: propitiation. Satisfaction. He paid the price. He met the just demands of the law. And not just for us, but for “the whole world”!

It is the same word we saw in Hebrews 2, and there too we saw the emphasis on the universality of our sacrifice.

¹⁷ Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. 

Jesus dies as a man so that He can truly represent humanity. Yet, the fact that Jesus is God means He is able to make a payment that goes far beyond the limitations of one mere man.

Theologian Millard Erickson was correct when he wrote:

If the redemption accomplished on the cross is to avail for humankind, it must be the work of the human Jesus. But if it is to have the infinite value necessary to atone for the sins of all human beings in relationship to an infinite and perfectly holy God, then it must be the works of the divine Christ as well. If the death of the Savior is not the work of a unified God-man, it will be deficient at one point or the other.[2]

Jesus came as fully God so that, in His death and resurrection, He could triumph over the spiritual powers of darkness.

Jesus’ death did not only herald salvation for lost humanity. It heralded doom for the dark spiritual powers that torture humanity: the devil and his ilk. To this point, Paul, in Colossians 2, writes:

¹³ And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, ¹⁴ by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.¹⁵ He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.

In the cross and in the empty tomb, God, through Jesus, “disarmed the rulers and authorities.” By this, Paul means the spiritual rulers and authorities or this fallen world. In Jesus, God “triumphed over them.”

Here is why Jesus must be fully God: for the work of redemption was also a work of repudiation and triumph over cosmic forces that we are in no way equipped to combat without Christ first securing the victory! Jesus does not merely forgive our sins. Jesus also whoops the devil!

There was more at play here than you and me getting to heaven. Jesus, through His saving work, disarms the devil and sets the stage for the redemption of the cosmos and the future coming of the new heaven and the new earth. No man who was only a man could accomplish this! Rather, God steps down, down, down into fallen creation to accomplish this!

The God-man does what only the God-man could do!

It was necessary that Jesus be fully God!

It was necessary, then, that Jesus be fully God and fully man, one person with two natures.

The implications are clear. They are:

• Jesus must really be a man.
• Jesus must really remain God.
• Jesus’ humanity and deity must remain (a) unmixed but (b) in one person.

In other words, only the one person who is both God and man can accomplish what Jesus came to accomplish. And what did Jesus come to accomplish? In Luke 19, Jesus says to Zacchaeus:

¹⁰ For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.

There too we see the two natures and one person peeking through! Consider:

• One person: “the Son of man”
• Fully man: “came to seek”
• Fully God: “and to save”

In His humanity, He seeks us. In His deity, He pays the price for our salvation! In His one person, He saves us.

The two natures meet in the one person to secure and offer salvation for lost humanity. Paul, in 1 Timothy 2, lays this out beautifully.

⁵ For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, ⁶ who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.

Jesus is our mediator.

Jesus stands between God and man!

He does not stand between God and man as some sort of divine/human amalgam, some sort of tertium quid, a strange third thing. Rather, He stands between God and man as fully God and as fully man yet one person!

And each part of this is utterly necessary:

• fully God
• fully man
• in one person

We dare not lose any element of this formula! I agree with James Boyce, that Southern Baptist theologian of yesteryear, who wrote:

This one person was…able to suffer and bear the penalty of man’s transgression, because, being of man’s nature, he could become man’s representative, and could also endure such suffering as could be inflicted upon man; yet, being God, he could give a value to such suffering, which would make it an equivalent, not to one man’s penalty, but to that of the whole race.[3]

And I agree with the Anglican theologian Gerald Bray, who wrote:

As a person, Jesus can take our place and represent us before the judgment seat of the Father. Being divine, he has access to the other persons of the Godhead in a way that we do not. That is why he can be our mediator and reconcile us to God in the way that the Father intended when he sent his Son into the world.[4]

That is well said! Jesus, in His person and death and resurrection, opens the very doors of the Kingdom to us! But only the King of Kings can do this!

What this means is that the birth of Jesus at Christmas is bound up with the death of Jesus on Good Friday and the resurrection of Jesus at Easter.

He comes in flesh to live and die and rise again and ascend and come again in glory!

Yes, our brother John said it well John 1:

¹⁴ And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

The Word (God!) became flesh (man!) and did so in His one person.

What, then, of that clunky statement from the Council of Chalcedon? Here is what I would say: we believe it not first and foremost because it came from an old council. We are people of the book, the Bible! So we believe it because what they said at that old council makes sense of what we find in the Bible. As Gerald Bray puts it, “The only solution that does justice to the biblical witness is to say that Jesus was fully God and fully man, not half one and half the other.”[5]

What a marvel Jesus is! What a wonder! What a beautiful savior we have!

If you will allow but one more strange and beautiful statement, I am deeply touched by these brief words from the poet G.M. Hopkins. Here, Hopkins says of Jesus:

Now burn, new born to the world,

Doubled-naturèd name,

The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled

Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame,

Mid-numbered he in three of the thunder-throne![6]

Ah, yes! The “doubled-natured name”! I love it! Yes, Jesus has come, “the heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled, Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame, Mid-numbered he in three,” second person of the Trinity!

Let us see Him!

Let us rejoice before Him!

Let us worship Him!

Let us proclaim Him!

Oh come, let us adore Him!

 

[1] https://www.theopedia.com/chalcedonian-creed

[2] Erickson, Millard. Christian Theology. 2^nd Edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2003), p.740.

[3] Boyce, James Petigru. Abstract of Systematic Theology. (Cape Coral, FL: Founders Press, 2006), p.291.

[4] Bray, Gerald. God is Love, 569.

[5] Bray, Gerald. God is Love. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), p.567.

[6] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44403/the-wreck-of-the-deutschland