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Faith · Who Christ Is

The Word Made Flesh

The eternal God became actual flesh, true God and true man

It is the most staggering sentence in any book: "the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us" (John 1:14). The One who was "in the beginning with God," who "was God," by whom "all things were made" (John 1:1-3), did not send a messenger or wear a disguise. He took on real skin and bone, hunger and tears and a human death. The infinite entered His own creation as a baby who had to be fed. The early church never got over this, and never let it be softened. They guarded it from both sides at once: He was not a phantom only appearing to be human, and He was not a lesser, created god. He was God among us.

In the beginning was the Word

Before there was a manger, there was the Word, and the Word was God. John opens his Gospel exactly where Genesis opens, "in the beginning," and tells us the Word who spoke creation into being is the same Word who would be born in Bethlehem. The first believers read it plainly. Justin Martyr, reasoning with the Jewish teacher Trypho around AD 150, found the Son on every page of the Old Testament, the divine Word who is also God:

"God begat before all creatures a Beginning, a certain rational power proceeding from Himself, who is called now the Glory of the Lord, now the Son, again Wisdom, again an Angel, then God, and then Lord and Logos."

Justin Martyr, c. 150 · Dialogue with Trypho

Tertullian, writing in Latin around AD 200, used the picture of light from light, a ray from the sun: distinct, yet of one substance, never severed from its source.

"That which has come forth out of God is at once God and the Son of God, and the two are one. He is Spirit of Spirit and God of God, made a second in manner of existence, in position, not in nature; and He did not withdraw from the original source, but went forth."

Tertullian, c. 200 · Apology 21

And the Word became flesh

Then the unthinkable. The Word who was God "became flesh." Not flesh in appearance, but in truth, conceived in a real womb, born of a real mother, the virgin of Isaiah 7:14. Tertullian again, in one tight sentence, holds the whole mystery together:

"This ray of God, descending into a certain virgin, and made flesh in her womb, is in His birth God and man united. The flesh formed by the Spirit is nourished, grows up to manhood, speaks, teaches, works, and is the Christ."

Tertullian, c. 200 · Apology 21

Paul says the same in a hymn the church may have sung before he ever wrote it down: He "was in the form of God," yet "made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men" (Philippians 2:6-7). And Hebrews: "as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same" (Hebrews 2:14).

Why God had to become what we are

Why such a descent? Irenaeus, who as a boy had heard Polycarp, and Polycarp had heard the apostle John, gives the early church's answer in a line that has never been improved upon. God became man so that man could be lifted into the life of God:

"The Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself."

Irenaeus of Lyons, c. 180 · Against Heresies

This is the heart of it. He took our humanity not to admire it but to rescue and remake it. He entered death so that death would have to give us up. "Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood," Hebrews says, He shared in them "that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death" (Hebrews 2:14-17). The incarnation is not a doctrine to file away; it is God reaching all the way down to where we actually are.

Not a phantom, not a demigod

The first believers fought a war on two fronts, and both errors are still with us. On one side were those who said Christ only seemed to have a body, too holy to truly bleed. Ignatius of Antioch, on the road to his own martyrdom around AD 107, crushed that lie in a sentence: "He suffered truly, even as also He truly raised up Himself; not, as certain unbelievers maintain, that He only seemed to suffer" (Epistle to the Smyrnaeans). John drew the same line: "every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God" (1 John 4:2-3). On the other side, centuries later, came those who made the Son a high creature rather than God Himself. The church answered with John's own words: the Word "was God," not a god. Take away either half, the true flesh or the true deity, and there is no salvation left. A phantom cannot die for you; a creature cannot save you.

Why it matters that the flesh was real

If the body was real, then everything that hangs on it is real too. A real body was nailed to a real cross and really rose, which is why the church could feed on Him in the Lord's Supper as a true partaking, "the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh," as Justin put it, and why our own bodies have "the hope of the resurrection," in the words of Irenaeus. The manger, the cross, the empty tomb, and your own coming resurrection are all one piece of cloth, and the first thread is this: the Word became flesh. Make Him a ghost and the whole garment unravels.

Where this lands

"God with us" is not a slogan; it is the name the prophet gave Him, Emmanuel (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23). The God who made the stars learned to walk. The Word who needs nothing nursed at a breast. This is the faith the martyrs died for and the apostles handed down, undiminished: fully God, fully man, one Christ. Not explained, but confessed, and worshiped. "Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh" (1 Timothy 3:16).

Study the passages

Read them in context. Links go to BibleHub.

Related: The Lord's Table, What Christ Did on the Cross, Born Fallen, Not Born Guilty, and The Witnesses. Early-church quotations are verbatim from the Ante-Nicene Fathers (public domain), with their approximate dates shown. Scripture from the King James Version, linked to BibleHub. Offered as the documented testimony of the church that first received it, not as private opinion.