Jesus Saves! But How? PART 2: Christ's Incarnation

Andrew Grey continues an adult Sunday School teaching on "Jesus Saves! But How?"

This is part 2: "Christ's Incarnation" from Sunday 16th November 2025

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

If you've got a Bible, please can you open up John chapter 1? So John's Gospel chapter 1. John chapter 1. Hopefully you've all got both a Bible and also a handout. Some handouts, I think, at the back of the room, if you need one. Let me pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for this day that you have made. We thank you for your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you that the angel said of him, You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. And as we study our Saviour, your Son, this morning, we thank you that he is not just an object for study, but he is our Saviour. Teach us of him, grow our love for him. In his name we pray. Amen. Amen. So let's listen to these wonderful words from John chapter 1. I'm going to read verses 14 to 18. 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. John bore witness about him and cried out, This was he of whom I said, He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me. For from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, the only God who is at the Father's side, he has made him known. About twenty years ago, a judge in India issued a court summons. There was a property dispute, nothing unusual, except the two individuals the judge summoned were gods, uh, two Hindu gods, Hanuman and Ram. So Judge Sunil Kumar Singh, he sat in Danbad and he published this summons in local newspapers when they didn't turn up. You failed to appear in court despite notices sent by person and later through registered post. You are hereby directed to appear before the court personally the following Tuesday. Now that is a true story if uh the BBC is to be believed. Now and it does make you both want to laugh and cry when you stop and think about that. We're thinking this morning about one of the glories of the Christian gospel. In a sense, it's the glory of Christmas, that God appeared on earth as man, that God the Son became a man. He's not some tinpot deity who can be summoned by a man. What a horrible and blasphemous thought. The Most High God freely and sovereignly stooped down to us, did not become an idol or a statue made by human hands. God the Son became a man. Now, last week we started this series which we're calling Jesus Saves, but how? And we thought about our need of salvation, how much we need a saviour. We thought about the depths of our sinfulness. Do you remember total depravity, which means total inability, we cannot save ourselves, we're left facing the holy wrath of God. And so we need God to do something for us, that is, deal with wrath and make us such that we can dwell with him as friends, and we need him to do something in us, that is make us holy. And from here on in, we're thinking about how it is that Jesus deals with our plight, how it is that Jesus saves. We're going to think about what Jesus did and spend a few weeks on that, and then we will think about well, how can a person benefit from what Jesus did? So we're thinking about it in these terms: redemption accomplished, and then redemption applied. So we're thinking about the Jesus who saves. And today we're thinking about the person of Christ, what sometimes is called Christology. And we're going to think specifically about the incarnation. Let's think about the incarnation in Scripture. Firstly, what do we mean when we say incarnation? Here's a definition: God the Son, the second person of the Holy Trinity, took on a human nature without subtracting from himself any of his divine attributes. Now that's what we're going to dig into today, and then God willing, we'll see next week why that matters for us. Namely, that in so doing, he became qualified to be a suitable and compassionate and sufficient Savior. So here we're carried to the first Christmas, to the manger, to the baby Jesus. Actually, more accurately, we are carried to the womb of the Virgin Mary. Jesus' conception. That is the point at which God became man. The word incarnation, it means in fleshing. So here is the point at which the Word, God the Word, God the Son, became flesh. So God the Son, the second person of the Holy Trinity, he took on a human nature without subtracting from himself any of his divine attributes. And from that moment on, from the moment of his conception, Jesus Christ was fully God and fully man in one person and will be so forever. Now when we think about this, the glory of the incarnation, it can't be separated from the glory of the Holy Trinity. So the doctrine of the Trinity tells us that there is but one true God, and he exists in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The incarnation, well, that is, God the Son, the eternal and divine Son, the second person of the Trinity, who is fully God, he became a man. That is the incarnation. Such that Jesus has a human nature, and he is truly and fully God. Fully God and fully man. Now, these are very, very deep truths. They are wonderful things as well. Today we're really just doing half a job. We're going to look at Scripture's witness to the incarnation and see how the scriptures describe it to us, and then we'll do some kind of reflecting on that with some help from church history. And then, like I say, next week, God willing, we'll think about the purpose. Why does it matter? So, Bible text describing the incarnation. We just read in John 1, didn't we? And the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And the disciples could say, as they looked at the man Jesus, we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. So they could look at the man Jesus and see the glory of God, you know, God in a body. Or Philippians chapter 2, verse 7, just to turn over, second side of the handout. The Apostle Paul speaking of the incarnation, well, he says of God the Son, he made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. Or Hebrews chapter 2. The Lord Jesus was made a little lower than the angels. Shorthand for made man. We read in Hebrews 2, 14, since the children have flesh and blood, that's us. He too shared in their humanity. He shared in, he still shares in our humanity. Verse 17. For this reason, and this is for the reason of our salvation, he had to be made like his brothers in every way. So he's making a new family in which we are his brethren, and he had to be made like us in order to save us. Hebrews 10, verse 5. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me. Incarnation, God in a body. And the Bible obviously also describes the humanness of Jesus. Here is birth, for example. When the time had fully come, God sent his son, born of a woman. It was a real birth, wasn't it? Blood and guts, the whole nine yards. We read in the Gospels about Jesus' development. So Luke 2, the child grew and became strong. He was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him, and Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men. For he developed in his human body and in his human soul. He had human limitations. When you read through the Gospels, we read that Jesus was hungry and tired. He experienced the agonies of Gethsemane. He suffered and he died upon the cross. We read about, and the best word I could come up with was his ordinariness. So in Matthew 13, we read about what happened when he went home, back to his hometown. And people said of him, you know, isn't this the carpenter's son? Isn't his mother's name Mary? Aren't his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? Aren't all his sisters with us? Where did this man get all of these things? You know, his teaching and his miracles. And they took offense at him. He seems so ordinary. We know his family. They couldn't conceive of him as being any more than just a man. And he really was a man. And we will see why that matters. Note though, even just for a moment, that his incarnation was doubted. So 2 John 1, verse 7, even in Bible times, we read this: For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Christ in the flesh. Such a one, says the Apostle John, is the deceiver and the Antichrist. So some were saying Jesus was not a proper man. Now at the same time as we read about the incarnation and Jesus' humanity, we obviously also read of Jesus being God. There are many Bible texts which in different ways show to us the deity, the divinity, the godness of Jesus. There's so much we could say here. Not even going to try to be comprehensive, but we read of things like this: He is the radiance of the glory of God in the exact imprint of God's nature, sustaining all things by his powerful word. That's Hebrews 1.3. Hebrews 1, same chapter. It's of the Son, he says, your throne, O God, is forever and ever. John 1.1, you might have John 1 still open in front of you. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. There is the eternal Son in the beginning. There is the Trinity, the Word is with God, and there is the divinity of Christ. The Word was God. John 1.18. No one has ever seen God. The only God who is at the Father's side, that's God the Son. He has made him known. And when you read through the Gospels and you think about what Jesus did while on earth, he does all of the things that distinguish God as God. He shows the creators control over his creation. Heals the sick, calms a storm, raises the dead. He reveals God. He shows God. John 1.18 that we just read. He rescues, obviously, by his death on the cross. That is a distinguishing mark biblically of the one true God. He declares the future. If you ask the Bible, what are one of the distinguishing marks of God? Well, it's actually, it is that. On one occasion, he, for example, predicts one aspect of his betrayal. He then says to his disciples, I've told you that ahead of time so that when it happens, you may believe that I am. He claims the Old Testament name of God as if to say this proves who I am. Now there is huge mystery here. It's very simple, isn't it? You read the Gospels. Jesus is a man. He shared our humanity. Jesus is God. He is fully God. He is God the Son. Human nature, divine nature coexisting in one person, the Lord Jesus Christ. It's both very simple, and our minds are absolutely incapable of plumbing its depths. So what we're going to do just for a few minutes is to consider the person of Jesus. We're going to consider some Christology. And particularly think about the fact that Jesus had a divine and a human nature, yet he's one Christ. And we're going to do that standing on the shoulders of some giants. Particularly, we're going to think about a man called Cyril. Cyril of Alexandria. He was the hero of a great church council that took place in the year 451 AD at Chalcedon, near modern-day Istanbul. Cyril and his colleagues summarized the Bible's teaching about the incarnation and especially about how the godness and the manness, the humanity of Jesus, related. They had to do it because many different heresies, false teachings were swirling around the church in the 400s to do with this particular point. And they produced this summary of scriptural teaching, which for 1500 years has been the standard Orthodox teaching on the person of Christ. So, for example, when the Westminster Confession was written in the 1640s, so the Westminster Confession, that's if you like our church's doctrinal basis, they, the people who wrote it, like all other Reformed confessions, they just drew directly and simply upon the definition of the Council of Chalcedon. Now I'm going to read this for us. Don't worry if you don't understand this very much. It should lead us to worship and wonder and further study. It's also good for us to know where our theology comes from. That is, we are part of one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. So we're part of a family of true Bible doctrine that didn't begin in the 1960s. The one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, the Church of the Faithful for all of the ages and around the world. And this is part of our family DNA, if you like. So listen to this. Therefore, following the Holy Fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body, of one substance with the Father, as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us, as regards his manhood, like us in all respects, apart from sin. As regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood, begotten for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the Godbearer. One and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation, the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and only begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ. Even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the creed of the fathers has handed down to us. Now I wonder what you make of that. You feel yourself sort of going deeper and deeper and deeper, don't you? What can we learn from Chalcedon? Just got some headings over on the back of the handout. It's a bit annoying there on the back, by the way. It would be quite helpful if actually were there alongside it, but there we go. So we're thinking here about the fact that the Lord Jesus is fully God and fully man. What do we learn? Well, some negatives. No mixing of the natures. Christ is not some hybrid in which the divine and the human natures were mixed. If that were the case, he would be neither truly God nor truly man. And at the time that Cyril and his friends came up with this definition, there were people who taught that. Also, there was no dividing of the natures. If the natures in Christ, the divine and the human, were divided or separated. I mean, just try and imagine that. I wonder if it is that how we think of Christ, by the way. You end up actually with a divided Jesus. He only has the appearance of unity, being one person. Really importantly, this happens with there being no change in God. God the Son took on a humanity he did not have before, yet, since God cannot change, we must affirm that he did not change. Wayne Gruden summed it up like this: Remaining what he was, he became what he was not. And this is one of those points where you stop and you think, and we just have to acknowledge our creaturely smallness. So remaining what he was, fully God, he became what he was not. He took on frail human flesh. I read before a little extract from Philippians 2 7. It's worth reflecting in this context on that phrase. He emptied himself. What does it mean when we read in Philippians 2 that Christ Jesus emptied himself? Some people have said, particularly in the last 150 years, he gave up his godness, or at least some of his godness, some of his divine attributes. And actually that's a heresy. God the Son cannot change. He cannot lose his godness. His humbling, his emptying was not because of what he gave up, it was actually because of what he took on. Namely, a human nature. Imagine a Ferrari or a supercar of your choice. It is very shiny and it is beautiful. And it then drives through a field of mud and comes out the other side and it is caked with muck. That Ferrari is in some way humbled. But it is not humbled because it has lost something. It is humbled because of what it has taken on. So the Lord Jesus Christ, he humbled himself, he lowered himself, not by giving something up, but by what he took on. He became like us. Consider this, too, as we reflect on this extraordinary thing, that there is no change in God at the moment of the incarnation. Even as a man, even as a baby, the Lord Jesus was upholding the universe. So Hebrews 1:3 says of Christ, he upholds all things by the word of his power. Even as he was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary, even as he lay as a helpless baby on that Bethlehem night, he was sustaining all things by the word of his power. Here's how John Calvin reflected on this. He said, For even if the word, in his immeasurable essence, united with the nature of man into one person, we do not imagine that he was confined therein. Here is something marvelous. The Son of God descended from heaven in such a way that without leaving heaven, he willed to be born in the Virgin's womb, to go about the earth and to hang upon the cross. Yet he continuously filled the world, even as he had done from the beginning. It's wondrous, isn't it? Very simply, the definition of Chalcedon, reflecting the teaching of the Bible, teaches us that Christ is two natures in one person. And that does fit with how the Bible presents him to us. For example, in Romans chapter 1, verse 3, we read this phrase. Means we can attribute certain things to a particular nature. When we read that Jesus calms a storm, well he does so according to his divinity. Or just consider this question. How old was Christ when he began his teaching ministry? How old was he? So Luke 3 would say to us, he was about 30 years old. John 1.1 says that the word was with God in the beginning. How old was he? Well, so according to the flesh, he was about 30 years old. According to his divine nature, he is eternal. He has neither beginning nor end. But it is not a nature that does anything. It's a person. It is the person of Christ, in whom is united a divine and a human nature. It's not a human nature who walks and breathes and speaks and dies. It is the Lord Jesus Christ. So we would say things like on the cross, God the Son died according to his human nature. In the Virgin's womb, God the eternal son, who has no beginning, began according to his human nature. Now that is a hard thing for us to get our heads around. But it does fit with the way Scripture presents the person of Christ to us. We don't see a kind of split personality Jesus who flicks a switch and suddenly does stuff as God and then flicks a switch and does stuff as a man. Rather, we see the single person Jesus in action. So for example, in Matthew 8, Jesus is tired and he's sleeping in a boat. Just like you and me, he gets tired. He knows what it is to be just dog tired and fatigued. But that same Jesus, that same Christ, a moment later when the disciples wake him, he speaks a word of command and the storm ceases. And that's the Christ seamlessly presented to us in the pages of the Gospels. Now, what I've said today is both very simple and absolutely impossible for our minds to grasp. Next week we're going to think about why it matters for our salvation that, for example, Christ was born, Christ was born of a virgin, Christ obeys as a man. That's what we're going to dig into next week. But even today, as we've looked at the person of Christ, I hope it leads us to praise and worship. No other God has done this. Stooping down, taking on frail humanity, the word became flesh and dwelt among us. Athanasius, he was about a hundred years or so before Chalcedon and before Cyril. And he wrote a wonderful book called On the Incarnation. It's a good Christmas read. Just a couple of quotes with which to finish before we discuss. He has been manifested in a human body for this reason only, out of the love and goodness of his father for the salvation of men. In short, and this is towards the end of this lovely book. In short, such and so many are the Saviour's achievements that follow from his incarnation. That's to try to number them is like gazing at the open sea and trying to count the waves. Now, we've got about uh ten minutes before uh coffee. Why not turn to a neighbour and just share an encouragement? See if we can brew any questions, and then we'll we'll share some of those encouragements and questions in about two minutes' time. So talk to a neighbour and then we'll see. Perhaps we'll still start off with any a couple of questions. Anyone like have a question that they would like to ask? Thank you for asking about that. So basically, definition of Chalcedon, about halfway down, describes Mary the Virgin as being the God-bearer. Now, what what do we make of that? The the reason why uh our fathers in the faith said that of Mary was that if Mary did not bear God, you have essentially split the two natures of Christ. If she is simply, if she simply bore Christ in his humanity, how is it that there is one undivided person? Now, down the centuries, some Protestants have disliked that term, speaking of Mary as the God-bearer. Because obviously, one of the one of the terrible lies of Roman Catholicism is that Mary kind of becomes divinized herself. And you know, here is she's not just the mother of God, but she's like a co-redemptrix, she's almost like a second redeemer. The funny thing is that the the Reformed have simultaneously rejected that while insisting that for reasons of like an integral uh integrity in the person of Christ, she must be the mother of God. Or rather, they've always preferred this phrase, the God-bearer, Theotopos. She bears God. So it's an odd idea, but for Christ to be fully God and fully man in one person, Mary must be the bearer of God, according to his human nature. So it is it is a strange way of thinking, perhaps, and it's to see to us it seems unfamiliar language, but it is what it's worth saying that all the way down the centuries, uh, even those bits of the Reformed Church that have had the biggest problem with Roman Catholicism and the way they've uh turned Mary into a sort of a figure of idolatry, have simultaneously affirmed that she must be and is also the God-bearer. So it's it's a it's a it's a funny coming together with Christology and other other things, other ideas and other doctrines. Any other got any questions? Yeah, so how do we so our our existence, we come into being at a fine at a particular point in time, we are given a body and a soul. Um how did it work with Jesus? And the answer is in the incarnation it was exactly the same. So Jesus was given a human nature, and he must be like us, so with a body and a soul. So it's not that his soul is eternal, so that the soul is a human thing. It's part of humanness to have an end-souled body. Is the soul the same as or a spirit? Well, in terms in terms of in terms of our uh human identity, yes, the Bible would use various words to speak about the non-bodily bit of us. You know, soul, spirit, heart, in the Old Testament, even our you know, guts, even these are these are the non-material bits of us, funnily enough. So part of being a human is it's we are we are not soul over here, body over here. Weirdly, this is one of the terrible, terrible lies that's been floating around for the last few years, isn't it? That your body can be one thing, and your mind, soul, heart, whatever can be something totally different. We're in souled bodies or we're embodied souls. You know, at the moment of death, you know, the Christian soul goes to be with Christ, our bodies in the grave, but that is a temporary and an unnatural thing. That, if you like, is a legacy of the fall and of Adam. And yeah, the resurrection of the body and our eternal state being with Christ will be bodily again, ensoled bodies or embodied souls. And you know, we see this uh in Christ as well, in his incarnation. Yeah, go on, Ben.

SPEAKER_00 31:33

This is a matter of topic. So in John 14, 28, Jesus says the Father is greater than I. And at the end of John's Gospel, I believe, he says, he says, Um, I'm returning to my Father and your Father from my God and to your God. Somewhere else in the New Testament it says, Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. So God is described as the God of Jesus. So is that in terms of his human nature, though, the the Father was still his God? He was subservient to the Father in Mexico.

SPEAKER_01 32:00

I think so. I think I think those those sorts of texts are describing God the Son according to his humanity. I think so. It is you're right, it's a big it is a big topic. That I think would be the headline answer, I think. Yeah. Any other questions just before we pray? So when we read of Christ's ignorance of the day of his return, Mark chapter 13. Uh tell you what, let's keep that for next week. Let me let me let me pray. Um Heavenly Father, we've spoken this morning of amazing and wondrous things. Uh, we remember that with all of the puzzles, that most simply and most wonderfully, it was because of your love and goodness that your Son was manifested in a human body, he became like us. We thank you that we have a sympathetic and all-sufficient Saviour in the Lord Jesus. Encourage our hearts as we experience human frailty, which he knows full well, and also human sinfulness, which he does not know, yet has atoned for. As we meet now to worship in your triune name, would that do us good? Would that strengthen us in our trusting and obeying? Let me ask that for his name's sake. Amen.