"He Was Incarnate"

The Nicene Creed is a theological confession. It’s about God. It is also a soteriological confession: we confess what the “One Lord, Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God” has done “for us men and for our salvation.” The Creed is a summary of what the Apostle Paul calls “the doctrine of God our Saviour” (Titus 2:10).

God our Saviour is the God who “for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven.” How do we know that God is for us? Because he came down from heaven and “he was incarnate.”

The word incarnate means to be “enfleshed.” It refers to our material substance. Squeeze your forearm. You’re squeezing flesh. As you know, flesh gets bruised, tired, strained, and weak. One day you will die and your flesh will decay and return to dust.

The word “flesh” in Scripture points beyond our physical flesh. It refers more broadly to our weakness, our need, our mortality, our corruptibility.

The Son of God did not simply come down to us. He was incarnate. Enfleshed. As the Apostle John declares in John 1:14: “The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.” He did not sin, but he took on the weakness and vulnerability and mortality of our flesh. As the Apostle Paul writes, he “made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:7-8)

John not only says that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” he adds, “and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.” Flesh is not associated with glory. In fact, in the ancient world it was associated with dishonour and shame. But we see the glory of the eternal Son in the flesh of the Son.

And in his glory, we see the hope of glory. Paul, in the same letter to the Philippians, goes on to write, “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself” (Phil 3:20-21).

The Son of God was incarnate. He suffered in the flesh and was raised in glory in the flesh. So, yes, when you squeeze your forearm, you are squeezing flesh that will one day decay and return to dust. But you are also squeezing flesh that will one day be restored and transformed in resurrection glory: “It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory” (1 Corinthians 15:43).