"And Became Man"

In the Nicene Creed, we confess what the “One Lord, Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God” has done “for us men and for our salvation.” He came down from heaven and he was incarnate “by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became man.”

The Son of God became man. In the words of the Definition of Chalcedon (AD 451), he is “perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man.” We carry the corruption of sin. We are not perfect in humanity. He is perfect in humanity and truly man. In Jesus we see humanity “holy, innocent, unstained” (Hebrews 7:26).

When we think about the humanity of the Son of God, we need to avoid two errors: (1) we cannot think or suggest that the Son is not perfect in humanity and truly man and (2) we cannot think or suggest that in Christ, there are two persons or two sons, one human and one divine.

First, we cannot think or suggest that the Son is not perfect in humanity and truly man. There was pastor and teacher from Laodicea in the 4th century named Apollinarius who taught that in the incarnation, the Son of God occupied the rational soul or mind of Jesus of Nazareth. The Word assumed human flesh, but not a human mind.

Gregory of Nazianzus, another pastor and theologian in the 4th century, helps us to see the error in Apollinarius’s thinking:

What He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved. If only half an Adam had fallen then that which Christ assumes and heals might only be half as well; but if the whole of Adam’s nature fell then it must be united to the whole nature of the Begotten One, and so be saved as a whole. (Letter 101.5)

Second, we cannot think or suggest that in the incarnation, there are two persons or sons, one human and one divine. There was another pastor and teacher in the 4th century, Diodore of Tarsus, who taught that God the Son joined himself to Jesus of Nazareth, so that the incarnation is a union of two persons, the Son of God and the Son of Man.

In the same letter I just quoted, Gregory helps us to see the error of Diodore’s thinking: “Whoever imports two ‘sons,’ one from God the Father, a second from the mother, and not one and the same Son, loses the adoption promised to those who believe aright. Two natures there are, God and man, but not two ‘sons.’” (Letter 101.5) As the Apostle John writes, “See what kind of love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God, and so we are” (1 John 3:1). What kind of love? The very love of God the Father for his only begotten Son, who became man.

We need to avoid these two errors. The council of Chalcedon articulates what we should affirm:

One and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, acknowledged in two natures which undergo no confusion, no change, no division, no separation; at no point was the difference between the natures taken away through the union, but rather the property of both natures is preserved and comes together into a single person and single subsistent being; he is not parted or divided into two persons, but is one and the same only-begotten Son, God, Word, Lord Jesus Christ.

The Son of God became man. He is perfect in humanity and truly man; he is perfect in divinity and truly God. There is only one “he,” one person, a single subject, the Son of God. Leo the Great articulates this truth more poetically:

In this preservation, then, of the quality of both natures [divine and human], both being united in one person, lowliness was taken on by majesty, weakness by strength, mortality by the immortal. And in order to pay the debt of our fallen state, inviolable nature was united to one capable of suffering so that (and this is the sort of reparation we needed) one and the same mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, could die in the one nature and not die in the other. In the whole and perfect nature of the true man, then, the true God was born, complete in His own nature, complete in ours. (Letter 28.3)

The Son of God became man for us men and for our salvation. He became man so that he could die, for the creed goes on to say, “he was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate.” I will consider this phrase in my next note.