HOW COULD JESUS BE BOTH GOD AND MAN?
The question rises softly yet urgently—how could Jesus Christ be both God and man—how could the Eternal clothe Himself in mortality, how could the Infinite walk among the finite, how could the Word take on flesh and dwell with us, full of grace and truth (John 1:14). The answer does not come in cold logic only, though logic supports it; it comes in the warm revelation of Scripture, where the Lord shows Himself as He truly is. From everlasting to everlasting He is God—and yet, in the fullness of time, He stepped into the very world His hands had fashioned (Galatians 4:4).
He is God, for the Scriptures declare that “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”—not lesser, not created, but God Himself, eternally existing, eternally radiant (John 1:1). He receives worship as only God may; Thomas fell before Him and said with trembling adoration, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28). He forgives sins with sovereign freedom (Mark 2:5–7); He commands the winds with effortless authority (Mark 4:39–41). Everything about Him bears the scent of deity, the weight of eternity, the majesty of the One seated above all.
Yet He is man—gloriously, mysteriously, perfectly man. He came not as a phantom, not as an illusion, but as a child born of woman, wrapped in swaddling cloths and laid in a manger, growing in wisdom and stature and favor with God and men (Luke 2:7, 52). He hungered in the wilderness, He grew weary at Jacob’s well, He wept at Lazarus’s tomb, He suffered under Pontius Pilate; every fiber of His earthly life was authentic humanity. He was “made like His brethren in all things,” able to sympathize with every weakness, able to stand where we stand, yet stunningly—beautifully—without sin (Hebrews 2:17; Hebrews 4:15).
This union of God and man—what the early Christians called the Incarnation—is no contradiction but a miracle, a mystery we receive with reverence. The Word did not cease to be God; He did not surrender His deity—He added to Himself something He had never possessed before: true humanity. “Though He was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor,” stepping down into our condition without relinquishing His divine nature (2 Corinthians 8:9). Two natures, unmixed yet inseparable; one Person, Jesus Christ the Lord—Son of God, Son of Man.
And why did He take on flesh—why did God walk among us—why did the Sovereign stoop so low? He came to save, to redeem, to lift us from the dust of our sins and draw us into the life of God. Only One who was truly man could bear our guilt; only One who was truly God could bear it away. He became our Mediator, the bridge over the gulf, the ladder between earth and heaven—“for there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5). The cross required deity and humanity woven perfectly into one Person, for salvation required nothing less than God entering our world and giving Himself for us.
So we bow before the Holy Mystery—Jesus Christ, God in flesh, man without sin, Savior without rival. We marvel that the Creator walked among His creation with sandaled feet, that the Ancient of Days carried a carpenter’s tools, that the One who spoke galaxies into existence allowed wicked hands to crucify Him—because love demanded it, because grace overflowed, because the heart of God beats for the salvation of His people (Romans 5:8). And as we behold Him—God and man—our hearts rest, our faith steadies, our hope rises; for in Him heaven and earth meet, justice and mercy embrace, and sinners like us find life everlasting.
Lord Jesus, eternal God who stepped into our frail humanity, draw my heart to worship the wonder of Your coming. Let the mystery of Your divinity and Your true humanity steady my faith and deepen my love. Teach me to rest in the truth that You became like us to save us and now walk with us in compassion. Hold me close, God-in-the-flesh, and let Your incarnate grace shape my life today. Amen.
