Truly God and Truly Man

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 1:14 –

During Christmas, I often find myself thinking about the miraculous nature of Jesus as the God-man. Early on in the Church, there were a number of theories that popped up regarding the nature of Jesus’s humanity and Godhood. Unfortunately, many of these theories were quite heretical. For example, when it came to a proper understanding of how the two natures of Jesus were united in the incarnation, two heresies were Nestorianism and Eutychianism. 

Nestorianism was the belief that Jesus, when He was born, was just an ordinary, average, regular human being with no deity. It was not until His baptism that He became both God and man, when the Holy Spirit indwelled Him, and He became two different people sharing one body—Jesus, the son of Mary, and Jesus, the Son of God. If this were the case, though, then the atonement would be impossible. Jesus would be like every other Christian who is indwelled by the Holy Spirit, hardly capable of purchasing salvation for sinners.

Eutychianism denied that Jesus was two different people sharing one body and wanted to insist upon the unity of His personhood. The problem here, however, was that Eutychianism taught that the humanity of Jesus was swallowed up by the divinity of Jesus, in the same way “a drop of wine disappears into the sea.” But, if this were the case, Jesus could not be our high priest, tempted in every way we are, yet without sin. He would just be a man who became a god. If this were the case, it would also create an extreme problem wherein every Christian would need to strive to lose their humanity in order to become a god.

In 451 AD, to combat these heresies, the Creed of Chalcedon was penned: 

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 rational soul and body; coessential with the Father according to the Godhead, and 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, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; 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 has taught us, and the creed of the holy fathers has handed down to us.

Along with the Chalcedonian Creed came the doctrine we call the hypostatic union—this doctrine simply teaches that Jesus, in the incarnation, took a human nature upon the deity, but without mingling or mixing the two. It brought no change upon who He is as God. The human nature did not change the God nature, and the God nature did not change the human nature. Yet, at the same time, these two natures are not at all opposed to one another. He possesses two distinct natures in one person; thus, He is truly the God-man. These two natures work in tandem with one another.

John 1:14 tells us why this is good news. When Jesus, the Word, became flesh, He became God’s representative before humanity (showing us who God truly is) and He became man’s representative before God (purchasing our salvation). When we behold Christ, our hearts ought to be lifted in praise because the God-man has come!

I hope that you dwell on the wonder of Jesus as the God-man this Christmas and be drawn into a deeper and greater praise of Him.

Jacob Tanner is the pastor of Christ Keystone Church in Middleburg, PA. He is married to his wife, Kayla, and together they have two sons, Josiah and Owen. He is the author of The Tinker’s Progress: The Life and Times of John Bunyan.