Highlighting the relevance of the incarnation, the Athanasian Creed transitions seamlessly from Christ’s person to His work. During the whole of Jesus’ earthly ministry (and into eternity), Christ the God-man, secures salvation for His elect. He acts as man, because it is man who needs salvation. But, for a mere human, however infused with divine help, the call of duty is too great. Only God could provide man’s remedy. In Christ, God and man meet, and sinners are saved.

When you set out to know someone, you usually want to know where they came from and what they are like. Such information is far from trivial. Instead it becomes the blood that pulses through the heart of the relationship. When we ask the typical “get-to-know-someone” questions about Christ, we find the answers are given in the doctrine of the incarnation (a word that simply means “in flesh.”) Incarnation describes what happened when the second person of the Trinity left the bliss of heaven for some thirty-three years to enter, as one of us, the mess of the human condition.

The historic Christian doctrine of the incarnation can be expressed in a few simple phrases which the Western church codified in the Athanasian Creed, (hereafter: Ath. Cr.) around the sixth century.

Christ Is True God

Jesus of Nazareth is of the same substance as the Father, equal to Him in deity (Ath. Cr. 31,33). Christ is not a lesser God. When the second person of the Godhead became a man God didn’t compromise Himself and change into something lesser than He was. Christ is “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15). “In him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (2:9). He is the “brightness of [God’s] glory and the express image of his person…” (Heb. 1:3).

God reveals Himself as a triune being: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, “the whole three persons are co-eternal, and co-equal” (Ath. Cr. 26). In the incarnation Christ did not shed His glory as a snake sheds its skin; He veiled His glory in humanity. Those who see Jesus see God (John 14:9).

Christ Is True Man

Jesus isn’t almost like us. He didn’t come as close to experiencing full humanity as God could come, without going all the way. He had a real body and soul (Ath. Cr. 32) because He was really human. Jesus’ conception was extraordinary (Matt. 1:20); the rest of His development was mundanely human. The Bible describes His birth in very typical fashion. “…When the fullness of time had come God sent forth His son, born of a woman… (Gal. 4:4). He was nourished from Mary’s body. He matured through the same phases as others. He was subject to pain, pleasure, hunger, thirst, fatigue, disappointment, suffering, and death. He thought, reasoned, and felt, as a man. The Bible puts it plainly, “In all things He had to be made like His brethren” (Heb. 2:17) because only as a real man could Christ be “in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15).

Christ Is One Person with Two Natures

The relation of Christ’s natures to His person is mysterious, but it is important. If we fail to recognize the unity of Christ’s person we might see Him as divine with some human characteristics, or as human with some divine characteristics, or as a confused combination of the two. Jesus is one Christ with both human and divine natures which do not bleed together. In Christ, God became a man, while continuing to be God.

To help us understand, in a similar way each of us are whole persons consisting of body and soul (Ath. Cr., 37). A single, whole, person is both mortal (because of His body) and immortal (because of His soul). Likewise, as a human, Christ could be born. As God, He could say, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58).

Highlighting the relevance of the incarnation, the Athanasian Creed transitions seamlessly from Christ’s person to His work. During the whole of Jesus’ earthly ministry (and into eternity), Christ the God-man, secures salvation for His elect. He acts as man, because it is man who needs salvation. But, for a mere human, however infused with divine help, the call of duty is too great. Only God could provide man’s remedy. In Christ, God and man meet, and sinners are saved.

Rev. William Boekestein is pastor of Covenant Reformed Church in Carbondale, Pa. He is co-author of Why Christ Came. This article first appeared on Ligonier.org, and is used with permission.