Jesus Christ is both fully God and fully man.
First I want to explore His humanity, and then I will explore His divinity - as far as the two can be distinguished.
There are so many things to consider about Jesus. He is God become man!
Where to start?
John* started his gospel by pointing out that Jesus (the Word) was with God, and was God, at the beginning of all creation. This duality of both being with God, and being God, is the same kind of duality as Him being both God and man. Jesus has always been this two-fold aspect of God.
God created us in His image, and Jesus is the image we were created in. When you think of it that way, maybe you can see that Jesus was not molded into the image of a man, but that He is the true image that mankind was molded into. When He was conceived by the Holy Spirit He did not become something unnatural to Himself, He simply manifested Himself in the exact same image that He eternally is in.
With that perspective you can see that Jesus is not man become holy, but rather man is the image of Jesus become unholy. Sin was not part of man’s natural design. Sin is an abomination that has corrupted the image of God. When Jesus was conceived holiness was not added to Him, but rather sin was not able to corrupt His holiness that was already there.
Consider Genesis 6:1-7 where we are told that the sons of God were able to take human women as their wives and produce offspring. If you interpret “sons of God” as fallen angels (Job 1:6, 2 Peter 2:4, Jude 1:6), there is this idea that beings other than human men are able to create offspring with human women. The implication is that those offspring were not made in the image of God - but are corruptions thereof. Even if you interpret “sons of God” as being men, there is still the implication that a great corruption had been bred into the human population.
Those offspring were such an abomination to God that they made God sorry that He ever created humans. They were an unholy corruption of the image that God created us in.
But Jesus is not like that. Even though Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and not by a man, He is the image that men were created in. That is to say, God made man so completely compatible with Himself that when He conceived a child with a human woman, that child came out the complete opposite of an abomination, He came out perfect!
So Jesus, even though He is something that we cannot be, is not something that we were not meant to be. He, in His humanity, is what we were meant to be. He, in His humanity, is what we would have been if we had not corrupted ourselves with sin. He, in His humanity, is what we can be again only if we wholly devote ourselves back to Him, and are reborn by His Spirit.
So how was Jesus able to be born of a human, and not inherit a sinful nature?
There are several aspects of the relationship between man and woman that can possibly help explain that.
- God said that when a man is joined to his wife, the two shall become one flesh. (Genesis 2:24)
- When God cursed the serpent He promised that the seed of the woman would destroy the serpent (Genesis 3:15)
- God told Eve that her husband would rule over her. (Genesis 3:16)
- God told Adam that the ground was cursed because of him. (Genesis 3:17)
In this progression we can see that the man, Adam, was held responsible for defiling the image of God in sin. Paul even recognizes this in Romans 5:12.
So, God held Adam responsible for sinning, even though Eve took the first bite of the forbidden fruit. Adam was directly created in God’s image. Eve was created from a piece of Adam. Adam could have remained faithful to God and rebuked or corrected Eve, but instead he surrendered to her.
I say all that to point out that God imparts responsibility primarily to the man. The man is expected to obey God first, and lead his family to do the same. The man is the one who will be held accountable first for his family’s sins. We see this here, and in Job 1:4-5, and in Ephesians 5:22-33.
And my point is that because Jesus was not directly conceived from a man, this inheritance of the sinful nature was not directly passed to Him by a human father. Instead He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and so the holiness of God, His Father in Heaven, was directly passed to Him instead.
Mary could have a sinful nature that she inherited from her father, but Jesus did not inherit a sinful nature from His Father. Instead the holiness of His Heavenly Father overcame, or overshadowed - as the angel put it,* the sin that was in His human mother.
There are some who will argue about this line of reasoning, as there are always those who will argue about just about anything related to God, but one thing I think we can all agree on - assuming we agree on the virgin birth of Jesus - is that Jesus’s conception was miraculous. His conception was outside of the natural way of life, and is a mystery to us, but we can believe that it did happen.
Furthermore, because Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit in a human woman He is fully both God (begotten of His father) and man (begotten of His mother). He is the perfect union of the Spirit of God with the image of God. He is God become man.
John 1:1 (NASB95) In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Genesis 1:26-27 (NASB95) Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
Genesis 6:1-7 (NASB95)Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.
Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. The Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.”
Job 1:6 (NASB95) Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them.
2 Peter 2:4-5 (NASB95) For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly;
Jude 1:6 (NASB95) And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day,
Genesis 2:22-24 (NASB95)The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. The man said,
“This is now bone of my bones, And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man.”
For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.
Genesis 3:15-17 (NASB95)And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.” To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you.”
Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’;
Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life.
Romans 5:12 (NASB95) Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned
Job 1:4-5 (NLT) Job’s sons would take turns preparing feasts in their homes, and they would also invite their three sisters to celebrate with them. When these celebrations ended—sometimes after several days—Job would purify his children. He would get up early in the morning and offer a burnt offering for each of them. For Job said to himself, “Perhaps my children have sinned and have cursed God in their hearts.” This was Job’s regular practice.
Ephesians 5:22-33 (NLT)For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything.
For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word. He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault. In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church. And we are members of his body.
As the Scriptures say, “A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.” This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one. So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Luke 1:35 (NLT) The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God.