Knowing God by J. I. Packer - “God Incarnate” (Chapter 5)

Knowing God by J. I. Packer
“God Incarnate” (Chapter 5)

Hard to Believe?
          ⦁ Atonement
          ⦁ Resurrection
          ⦁ Virgin Birth
          ⦁ Gospel Miracles

The Greatest Mystery
“The really staggering Christian claim is that Jesus of Nazareth was God made man—that the second person of the Godhead became the “second man” (1 Cor 15:47), determining human destiny, the second representative head of the race, and that he took humanity without loss of deity, so that Jesus of Nazareth was as truly and fully divine as he was human.”

Who Is This Child?

1. The baby born at Bethlehem was God.

⦁ “In the beginning was the Word” - the Word’s Eternity
⦁ “And the Word was with God” - the Word’s Personality
⦁ “And the Word was God” - the Word’s Deity
⦁ “Through him all things were made” - the Word Creating
⦁ “In him was life” - the Word Animating
⦁ “And that life was the light of men” - the Word Revealing
⦁ “The Word became flesh” - the Word Incarnate

2. The baby born at Bethlehem was God made man.

Athanasian Creed: “Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man . . . perfect God, and perfect man . . . who although he be God and man: yet he is not two, but one Christ; one, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh: but by taking of the manhood into God.”

Born to Die
“the New Testament knows nothing of an incarnation which can be defined apart from its relation to atonement. . . . Not Bethlehem, but Calvary, is the focus of revelation, and any construction of Christianity which ignores or denies this distorts Christianity by putting it out of focus” - James Denney
 
Made Less than God?

⦁ Philippians 2:7 – “emptied himself”?
⦁ The Kenosis Theory
⦁ A Better Explanation

He Became Poor

⦁ A laying aside of glory
⦁ A voluntary restraint of power
⦁ An acceptance of hardship and servanthood
⦁ A death that involved physical and spiritual agony