God and man in one

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us (John 1:14).

Have you ever looked through the edge of a piece of glass? Hold a thick piece of glass up to your eyes and look into it through the beveled edge. Inside, you can see repeating images of edge lines stretching away into the distance, an optical illusion created by reflecting light.

The reason that you can see anything at all when you do this is because there is more than just glass alone—there is also light. Inside that object you are holding, two things are present—glass and the light which is passing through it. And while they are both there in your hands together, neither loses its characteristics—the glass is still glass, the light is still light.

In a similar way, Jesus is made up of two natures. In the person of Christ, there is both man and God. And it is important to note that neither His manhood nor His Godhood lose their characteristics—Jesus is both completely human and completely divine.

Tough to understand? You bet. Yet this is what the Bible clearly teaches. Jesus is not a demigod like the fictional Hercules, half god by his father Zeus and half human by his mother Alcmena. Jesus is not a diluted or watered-down God. Jesus is both fully God and fully human.

Why did Jesus need to be fully human? His mortality was necessary so that He could do things that God cannot do. God cannot stand in for humanity to keep the Law He Himself has laid down; Jesus had to be a man so that He could serve as our representative, keeping the Law perfectly in our place. God cannot suffer and die; Jesus had to be a man so that He could accept the punishment for sins that we had coming to us. But Jesus also had to be fully God. Only God is infinite, without limits. Only a life of perfect obedience lived by God could have sufficient merit to stand in for what God expects of all humanity. Only the suffering and death of God Himself could bear all the punishment for sin coming to every human being that has ever lived or ever will live. Jesus needed to be fully human so that He could stand with us and for us; Jesus also had to be fully God so that the life He lived and the death He died could be credited to us and make us righteous in God’s sight.