God’s work in the new birth is similarly beyond our ability to understand. We bow before him as he does something within us which we must just accept and wonder at. We see the results in the new nature that we possess; we see that sin has been dealt a mortal blow. We find new sincere desires within us, a new understanding of his word, a new will to obey, but how all this came to be there, we have only a shadowy conception of. It is real, the results of it are tangible, but we do not know how God accomplished it. The works of the Spirit are mysterious. We thank God for doing what only he can do, but we do not overestimate our ability to understand his wonderful works. He must explain them to us in due time.
The Creator of all things and the sustainer of all things enters into the human race. There could be no more astonishing event than that the eternal Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, should take human nature. God is one, but he is in three persons, having one totally united equal divine essence. The three divine personalities, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are all equally God, equally powerful, possessing equally those divine attributes, and yet that God, the second person of the Trinity comes to join with the human race. Now the Lord Jesus Christ is the eternal second person of the godhead. Second does not mean that he is in any degree inferior to the Father; they are absolutely equal, equally eternal, equally God. But the second person of the Trinity was not changed into a man; God could not change in any way. The eternal God, who is perfect, could not change in the tiniest degree when Christ entered into the human flesh, because if God changed he would no longer be God, perfect, upholding all things, all powerful, all knowing, all wise. For Christ to be contained in every sense in a human body would be to limit God, and that is impossible. No, it is mysteriously wonderful. The second person of the Trinity assumed human flesh and joined himself to human nature, but without compromising, without parting with, without surrendering up the tiniest degree of his divine nature. He is still God, and yet he took upon him human nature. That means to say, he took upon himself a body and a soul. Some people think – because some heretics have taught this in centuries gone by – that Christ took on a human body but the soul of that body was the God part of him. But no, it is more complicated than that. Christ, the Son assumed a human body and a human soul. He was a complete human being. The human nature of Christ included body and soul, and therefore the Lord Jesus Christ could commit his soul to God when he was crucified while his body continued on earth, and was put in a grave, and the body and the soul could be separated, even though his Godward part, his divine aspect, was still connected with both of them. God cannot be separated, but the human aspect of Christ could be divided into body and soul. That body and soul were soon to be reunited at the resurrection for all eternity. Almighty God affected a difference in himself in joining himself to human nature, but without taking away from that Godward part of him.
Why did the incarnation take place? We must consider the following reasons:
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Christ came to make a substitutionary atonement. He came to be our substitute, our representative, to suffer and die on the cross of Calvary to truly bear the punishment due to us for our sin. He had to take our place in human form. He had to be like us capable of suffering as we should have suffered to pay the price for us.
He had to come because only Christ, coming as the God man, could live a life perfectly pure and holy to earn righteousness for his people.
The Lord Jesus Christ had to come for the sake of revelation. God's revelation must be delivered from him. In the centuries that preceded him, God had communicated to human beings largely by proxy, by revelations and visions to individuals in a mysterious manner. But the time was coming when God must appear himself, and when Jesus Christ became incarnate he became the leading signature the living autograph on his own word.
In the incarnation Jesus Christ had to come to make himself the visible King to his people. We are not divine and even when we are born again and even in the eternal glory we will not be able to see God’s divine essence which is invisible. But we are not to have an invisible God; the purpose of our creation is that we were made with faculties which God or a member of the Godhead in his wonderful condescension would enter into and share. We shall have a visible king, a visible God one who identifies closely with us and is recognisable to us.
Jesus Christ had to come, because it was necessary that God would express all his attributes. Even Almighty God cannot express before the human race all his attributes without an incarnation. Take the love and mercy of God: we see supremely how far God’s lovingkindness and tender mercy will go when Jesus Christ enters into human flesh in order to identify with us and love at close quarters. How far would the love of God go? It isn't until Christ suffered humiliation for his people on earth and suffers and dies on a cross for them and bears that almost infinite agony that you see how great is the love of God.
The Lord Jesus Christ had to be incarnated because he was to be resurrected. Here we are in human bodies and we die and what happens then? Well, we believe that our disembodied souls go to be with Christ, and we believe that ultimately there will be a general resurrection and our bodies will be reconstituted. It was necessary for the Lord Jesus Christ to come so that he could also be visibly resurrected to demonstrate the reality of the resurrection to all who trust in him, and to comfort them concerning what the future held for them.
He has to become a man and to teach us our relationship with himself as Almighty God. If somehow – and it is impossible - you could have your soul saved without Jesus Christ having become a man, and suffering and dying and making an atonement, what would you think about your relationship with God? It would surely be very distant, a relationship with a remote being. Instead, you see him moving among the disciples; you see him speaking with them, man-to-man. You see him dealing with him in tenderness and compassion, and then it dawns on you: Almighty God will deal with me in a deeply personal close manner.
He entered in to set the supreme example. What better example could we have as Christian people than the record of the Son of God and how he behaved? How did he react under provocation? I too should react like that. How dare I live in any way, which is distant or remote from that example? We see his concern for souls, his overriding attitude towards the lost, the example of God himself.
He had to come in order to be a perfect high priest not only to offer himself but to give us the assurance that he knows how to help. Hebrews 2:16 tell us that he had to be made like his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God. Because he suffered, being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted. He knows what it is to be tempted. He had perfect insight of what it was like to be tempted, even without coming, but he had to come to demonstrate to us that he had a perfect insight. There was never any possibility he would fall, but he put himself through it all to be a perfect high priest, so that we know he understands our vulnerability.
Jesus Christ came, among other things, to demonstrate, especially in these days of the Charismatic Movement, that suffering and affliction is not in itself any sign of the anger of God towards us personally. They say, you mustn't suffer at all. You must have instant healing. At a stroke the Charismatic Movement is exposed as unbiblical because Jesus Christ, the perfect Son of God who had the infinite favour of the Father and the Holy Spirit, yet suffered terrible affliction and trials, infirmities and weaknesses.
It was necessary that Jesus Christ should come to defeat the devil personally in human flesh. He had to prove the prevailing power of righteousness over all the devil's lies. Jesus Christ became a man subjected himself to the limitations of flesh while walking in the world and adopted all the vulnerability of human nature, so that he could demonstrate for us as our representative that obedience to God and perfect righteousness is more powerful than anything which a fallen devil possesses. It was necessary for the judgement of Satan that he should have that great victory even having taken upon himself certain limitations. He was divine and he could have exercised his divinity at any time in a very powerful way, but he chose to live as a man with human limitations for the duration of his term on earth so that he could demonstrate the power of righteousness over all that the enemy of souls has.
Jesus Christ had to come to break the reign of the curse so that one day he could restore the whole world created by him. The human race has fallen into sin. Because of human sin God has had to judge the world, and biology is fallen and disease and death has come in. Christ has entered into this world in human flesh, to live his perfect life so that he could reverse the curse of the garden of Eden. He lived a perfect righteousness in order that the curse can justly be reversed and taken off and then he has the right after the judgement of all things to take the fabric of the world, the atoms and the molecule, and recreate a new heavens and new earth without the curse.
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