The eternal Son of God took on flesh and died as a man, all so that death itself would die. Today, Barry Cooper speaks on an awesome reality, recorded in Scripture, that sets the Christian faith apart from all other religions.

So often, we think of the work of Christ as something that began when He was baptized in the Jordan River around the age of thirty. In reality, however, the work of Christ began in eternity past in the covenant of redemption. In this lecture, Dr. Sproul explains how the humiliation of Christ in His incarnation and crucifixion, and the exaltation of Christ in His resurrection and ascension are both grounded in the eternal covenant among the persons of the Trinity.

SPROUL: The first part is very easy—He certainly does not change. In His being, He is immutable.

In the incarnation, He took upon Himself a human nature. He didn’t stop being God and become a human being. To affirm He did is to fall into the old kenotic heresy that was popular in the nineteenth century, which taught that God gave up certain attributes in order to become incarnate.

You hear this kind of thing among evangelicals all the time: “God, in order to understand what sin and suffering are, had to become a man and change His nature to be able to be empathetic, so He gave up His deity.” Another thing you hear is this: “God chooses to limit Himself.” Does God really choose to limit His knowledge, His power, and His omnipresence? No. God is eternally, perfectly, and immutably God.

This is one of the things we see in theology all the time. Almost every denomination has the same fundamental confession of the being and character of God, but I think the uniqueness of the Reformed faith is that when we get to page two of our systematic theology, we don’t forget what we confessed on page one. Our doctrine of God informs every other doctrine in that respect. What was the second part of your question?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: “If not, why? And how do we respond to the question?”

SPROUL: We respond by a clear statement of the nature and character of God.

WEBB: Do you want to add anything to that, Dr. Thomas?

THOMAS: Yes—the incarnation was not by subtraction; it was by addition. God is immutable. God cannot change, and the incarnation cannot involve a change in the being of God. He added to Himself something that He didn’t have before; that is, human nature. But that human nature is not a divinized human nature, nor is the divine nature a humanized divine nature. They are two separate natures. So, there is no change whatsoever in the divine nature.

THOMAS: The righteousness that Abraham had was by faith. It is the same justifying righteousness that we have in the New Testament. In Romans 4, Paul went to Abraham and David as an illustration of justification by faith alone, in Christ alone, apart from the works of the law, which involves imputed righteousness. It is not that Abraham was reckoned to be righteous in the sight of God in any different manner than you or I.

NICHOLS: When you look at Romans 4 and what Paul’s doing in Romans, there was a content that Abraham was putting his faith in—God and His promise. You see that as the pattern prior to Christ with the anticipation that this is fulfilled in Christ. Now that Christ has come and we are on this side of the cross, that content is Christ. Dr. Reeves brought out in his message (“Hope, Riches, and Power”) that the content is faith in the Lord Jesus. However, it is not faith that saves but the object of faith that saves. Chronologically prior to Christ, there is an anticipation of looking forward to Christ, and now, after the cross, it is Christ. His work is the content of that saving faith. As Dr. Reeves pointed out in his message, faith in the Lord Jesus is the litmus test so we can know that we are Christians.

REEVES: If I heard the question right, I think it is asking, “Does faith need to be supplemented with works?” The Scripture reference I pick up on there is James 2, which often troubles people. We read, “You see a person is justified by works and not by faith alone” (James 2:24). That sounds troubling, but you read his argument, and it very clearly answers this question. Looking at Genesis 22, James wrote, “Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness’” (James 2:21–23). If you look at the chapters he’s referring to, particularly Genesis 15:6 (“Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.”), Abraham was justified by faith alone.

What happened seven chapters later in Genesis 22 was that Abraham proved the validity of his faith—it worked out in his actions. So, you see that faith was active along with his works and was completed by his works. The Scripture was fulfilled, and in that sense, his faith was vindicated and justified through his works. Abraham was counted righteous because of his faith alone, which is the answer to this question. The faith that justifies will work itself out in the kind of obedience you see seven chapters later in Genesis 22.

In addition to being our Redeemer, Jesus is our perfect example for the Christian life. Today, Stephen Nichols considers a stirring sermon that B.B. Warfield preached on the humble, self-sacrificial life that Christ modeled for us.

a body capable of death, in order that it, through belonging to the Word Who is above all, might become in dying a sufficient exchange for all, and, itself remaining incorruptible through His indwelling, might thereafter put an end to corruption for all others as well, by the grace of the resurrection. It was by surrendering to death the body which He had taken, as an offering and sacrifice free from every stain, that He forthwith abolished death for His human brethren by the offering of the equivalent. For naturally, since the Word of God was above all, when He offered His own temple and bodily instrument as a substitute for the life of all, He fulfilled in death all that was required. Naturally also, through this union of the immortal Son of God with our human nature, all men were clothed with incorruption in the promise of the resurrection. For the solidarity of mankind is such that, by virtue of the Word's indwelling in a single human body, the corruption which goes with death has lost its power over all. You know how it is when some great king enters a large city and dwells in one of its houses; because of his dwelling in that single house, the whole city is honored, and enemies and robbers cease to molest it. Even so is it with the King of all; He has come into our country and dwelt in one body amidst the many, and in consequence the designs of the enemy against mankind have been foiled and the corruption of death, which formerly held them in its power, has simply ceased to be. For the human race would have perished utterly had not the Lord and Savior of all, the Son of God, come among us to put an end to death.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Athanasius' On the Incarnation.

the people to look for a better one! (Deut 18:15). Of the man Jesus, Paul later wrote, “There is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men…” (1 Tim. 2:5). In His humanity Christ suffered our judgment for sin. In His divinity He endured that judgment to the very end.

It Reveals God’s Humility and Glory

Christ prostrated Himself to the earth because we needed rescue–that’s humbling. God lowered Himself to gather to Himself His rebellious children. Even the earthly body of Christ was lowly. It was as crude as the tabernacle in the desert compared with the pyramids of Egypt or the ziggurats of Babylon. Christ willingly compromised His reputation by becoming a man (Phil. 2:7). Paradoxically, in Christ’s humility, God also reveals His other-worldly glory. Phillips explains: “Jesus saw the event of His greatest earthly humiliation–the apex of His servant obedience–as His true glorification on earth. ‘The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified’ (John 12:23).” Calvin boldly states that the richness of God’s glory “is invisible until it shines forth in Christ . . . the majesty of the Father is hidden until it shews itself impressed” on Christ’s image.”

It Compels Us to Godly Living

“For the love of Christ compels us . . . those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again” (2 Cor. 5:14-15). True godliness is lived out in a mutually loving experience with God. With biblical warrant, we usually think of the cross as the greatest manifestation of God’s love. But if on the cross, Christ’s descent reached the pit of hell, the incarnation was His first step in that agonizing descent. We need to know Christ as He truly is, God and man in one beautiful, glorious person. Knowing Christ ensures being changed by Him.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on December 14, 2020.

Jesus is the eternal Word of God in human flesh. In the opening of John's gospel, we learn that the Son of God became something He was not—a man. At the same time, He remained what He always was—the second person of the Trinity. As the God-Man, Jesus is one person with complete yet distinct divine and human natures. The biblical account of the incarnation raises one of the most important questions ever to be asked: Why the God-Man? In this session, Dr. Stephen Nichols unpacks the central role of the incarnation for understanding the person and work of Christ.

Scripture’s doctrine of divine transcendence tells us that God is set apart from creation and cannot be identified with creation. He “sits above the circle of the earth” on His throne and rules and reigns over the universe, the created order being subject to Him (Isa. 40:22–23). At the same time, the Bible tells us of God’s immanence, that though He is set apart and set over us, He is always close to us. We can hide nowhere from His presence, for He is present everywhere (Ps. 139:7–12). The Creator who is far above us as our Lord is also near that which He rules.

God’s willingness to be near His creation is seen perhaps most clearly in today’s passage, which describes the incarnation of the Word of God. The Word of God, being God Himself, “became flesh” (John 1:14). This expression stresses the humanity that the Word added to Himself in the incarnation. The Word did not merely fill a human body, taking the place of its heart, soul, and mind. No, the Word “became flesh.” He took on everything that is inherent to true humanity without surrendering anything of His deity such that the incarnate Son of God is no less human than any other human being.

In the incarnation, the Word not only became flesh but He “dwelt among us” (v. 14). Notably, this phrase is the same one used in the Greek to mean “pitch a tent,” and it is closely related to the Greek word for the ancient Israelite tabernacle, which was itself a tent (see Ex. 26). Here we have the first indication in John’s gospel that Jesus is the new tabernacle/temple for the people of God. If we want to meet our Creator and worship Him, we must do so in Christ.

John’s references to the glory of Jesus in John 1:14 confirm the idea that Jesus fulfills the old covenant tabernacle/temple. Under the old covenant, the glory of God took up residence in the tabernacle and the temple (Ex. 40:34; 1 Kings 8:1–11), and this is the very same glory seen in Christ. God frequently manifests His glory as bright, refulgent light (Ex. 34:29–35; Isa. 60:1; Rev. 21:23), so for John to say we have beheld the glory of Jesus almost certainly refers to his experience of the Transfiguration when the glorious light of Jesus’ deity was revealed to Peter, James, and John (Matt. 17:1–8). However, the Transfiguration does not exhaust the view of Jesus’ glory that John and others experienced during our Lord’s earthly ministry. Jesus also revealed His glory in His miraculous signs (John 2:11). In working miracles, Christ showed something of His glory in His authority and power.

Polycarp did not seek out martyrdom, but he was willing to die for his confession when that was the price he had to pay for his faithfulness to Christ. Other models of faith from the early centuries of the church also suffered much for the sake of Jesus and His truth, but not all of them ended up being executed for their profession. Today we will consider one of these men—Athanasius of Alexandria, who faced much opposition as he defended Jesus’ identity as the incarnation of God Himself.

Athanasius served as the bishop of Alexandria during the most intensive period of the Arian controversy. The Arians were followers of Arius, a teacher who had become famous for his denial of the deity of Christ. Arius taught that the Son of God was merely a creature. As the first of God’s creations, the Son is worthy of honor, Arius said, but He is not worthy of our full worship and adoration because He does not possess the same nature as God. Arius’ views were condemned in AD 325 by the Council of Nicaea, which formulated the core of what we today refer to as the Nicene Creed. Nicaea proclaimed that the Son of God and the Father are homoousios (of the same essence or substance). Following the teaching of Scripture, the church fathers at Nicaea insisted that the Father and Son share equally in everything that makes God who He is. They have the same divine attributes, and one is not more or less God than the other.

Despite the fact that Nicaea condemned Arian views, Arianism enjoyed a resurgence of popularity after the council. Arian church leaders who had been condemned at Nicaea were restored to their positions by the Roman emperor. In fact, at times it seemed as if the whole world had become Arian in the decades after the Council of Nicaea. Athanasius, who became bishop of the leading city of Alexandria in 328, was one of the notable exceptions to the rule. Emperor Constantine exiled Athanasius from his bishopric for refusing to change his views regarding Arius’ heresy. Over the subsequent decades, as support for Arianism waxed and waned among the highest levels of the Roman government, Athanasius would be exiled four more times for his defense of Nicene orthodoxy.

Athanasius considered the preservation of truth in the church more important than position or power. He is an excellent model of the true servant of God—one who is absolutely committed to the teaching of Scripture, which is the very truth of our Creator.

Jesus is the eternal Word of God in human flesh. As the God-Man, Jesus is one person with complete yet distinct divine and human natures. The biblical account of the incarnation raises one of the most important questions ever to be asked: Why the God-Man? In this session, Dr. Owen Strachan unpacks the central role of the incarnation for understanding the person and work of Christ.

Justification by faith alone via the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the believer and the non-imputation of sin to those who rest only on Jesus for salvation is the focus of Paul’s attention in Romans 3:21–5:21. Before we move on to Romans 5 and its focus on Jesus as the last Adam and the manner in which God constitutes a righteous status for us in Christ, it will be helpful for us to look at the work of our Savior in more detail since it is His perfect obedience that is imputed to us. Dr. R.C. Sproul will assist us in this study as we base the next week of devotionals on his teaching series What Did Jesus Do?

The obedience that Jesus offered to His Father makes up what we refer to in systematic theology as the work of Christ. However, this work was done by a person, namely, the Son of God, so we cannot separate the person of Christ from what He did. Thus, we should briefly consider Jesus’ identity as the incarnate God-man, the one who is truly God and truly human. When we speak of the incarnation, we are speaking of an event that took place in time. At a particular point in history, God the Son—the second person of the Holy Trinity— took on a human nature without subtracting from Himself any of His divine attributes (John 1:1–14). In Him the whole fullness of deity is pleased to dwell, and this will be so for all eternity (Col. 1:19–20; Heb. 13:8). Yet while the incarnation took place in time, it has its foundation in eternity past in what we call the covenant of redemption, that commitment by the members of the Godhead to one another to send the Son to bear the divine wrath in order to effect reconciliation in the Spirit between the Father and His elect people (John 17).

Paul gives us some of the most profound reflections on the incarnation in the entire New Testament. Philippians 2:5–11 tells us that the Son of God did not consider His equality with God as something to be used solely for His own advantage at the expense of others; instead, He voluntarily condescended and took the form of a servant and became “obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross” (v. 8). In this condescension, our Savior did not surrender any divine attributes such as omniscience or omnipotence, though He did veil His glory. Without giving up His glory, He chose not to fully manifest it to all who saw Him as He walked the earth. But this veiling was only temporary. On account of His work, God exalted the God-man Christ Jesus, rewarding Him for His obedience and revealing Him as the source of eternal salvation for all who believe (vv. 9–11).

Matthew 20:20–28 demonstrates that first-century inhabitants of the Roman Empire understood the proclivity for people in power to use their position for their own gain. Back then, despotic rulers commonly used their already privileged status to grant themselves even greater advantages and to seek their own ends at the expense of others. Our Savior’s words in this passage show us that such rulers are not models for leadership, especially for the Christian. Moreover, Philippians 2:5–11 tells us that Jesus Himself exemplifies Christian service.

Although the Son of God possesses the highest dignity, worth, and glory because He shares fully in the one essence of God Almighty, He “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped” (v. 6). That is to say, the Son, before His incarnation, did not see His status as an excuse to seek His own ends at the expense of serving others. On the contrary, His equality with God motivated Him to make Himself “nothing” and come to earth in the likeness of man to meet the needs of His people (vv. 7–8). This is a reference to His incarnation, the second person of the triune God taking to Himself a human nature in the person of Christ Jesus (John 1:14). Adding to Himself all that is essential to humanity, the Son of God walked the earth as the God-man Jesus Christ in order to meet our deepest need — nothing less than perfect atonement for our sin, that we might be reconciled to our most holy Creator (Rom. 3:21–26). In so doing, He provided the clearest revelation of who God is as One whose very disposition is to go to the ultimate lengths to benefit His people.

Christ’s existence as true God and true man, as well as the reality of the transcendent Lord of glory entering into history to save His people, are both profound mysteries. What we do know is that, against those who would espouse a “kenotic Christology,” the Son did not give up any of the attributes that are essential to deity in the incarnation. Instead, He manifested the form of God in the likeness of humanity. Augustine wrote, “He is said to have ‘emptied himself’ in no other way than by taking the form of a servant, not by losing the form of God. For that nature by which he is equal to the Father in the form of God remained immutable while he took our mutable nature” (ACCNT 8, p. 231).

Since Christ took on a human nature in His incarnation, does that mean that God has changed? From one of our live events, R.C. Sproul and Derek Thomas help us think carefully about the two natures of Jesus.

If you have a biblical or theological question, just visit ask.Ligonier.org to ask your question live online.

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The Word Became Flesh is the newest Christmas music release from Ligonier Ministries and is a unique production, exploring the doctrine of the Incarnation. The musical score and text by Dan and Heidi Goeller is wonderfully executed by full orchestra and choir and contains a beautiful balance of familiar hymns and Christmas carols with new choral compositions. The underscored narratives by Dr. R.C. Sproul are adapted from Scripture and are presented in an engaging, dramatic way.

Executive Producer John Duncan first met Dan Goeller while working on one of last year's Ligonier Christmas projects, The Glorious Sounds of Christmas. Dan's numerous arrangements, compositions, and orchestrations have been published by Word Music, LifeWay Music Group, Brentwood-Benson Music, Lillenas, and others. The Goeller's talents and goals are in sync with the goals and purpose of the Ligonier Music division, to exalt the name of Christ and support the teaching of the Word of God with music. As a result, the decision was made to pursue a project together.

Dan had already self-produced the music for the recording and Dr. Sproul was able to lend a unique quality to the Bible readings. R.C. brings a theological and pastoral understanding of the material which enriches the experience for the listener. The orchestra is made up of some of the best classical musicians in the country, all with extensive studio experience. The interplay between Dr. Sproul's voice and the grand music is full of emotion.

This project tells the entire redemption story culminating in the birth of Christ. It combines much of what Ligonier Ministries teaches and believes in one thrilling presentation.

Order this CD, read the liner notes, and listen to samples here.

When thinking about Christ’s birth, we often focus our attention on Luke’s detailed gospel account. But to appreciate the main point of the story—that the eternal Son of God assumed our flesh-and-blood human nature—we need to learn from the rest of the Bible why Christ came to earth. Why did Christ come? In this book, thirty-one thoughtful meditations answer this vital question, and the answers encourage us to celebrate Christ’s birth more deeply, see more clearly how it is connected with the rest of His ministry, and recognize its importance for our lives.