Tag: Incarnation

Romans 8:29 says, “For those God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” He made the ultimate way for us to be restored humans – to end our spiritual poverty, to be remade in God’s original design, to be free from the power of sin and degradation and decay. That Jesus took on our humanity and still maintains his “fully Godness and fully humanness,” is our eternal Hope. He didn’t provide salvation so we could simply escape hell. He provided it so that our humanity might be preserved according to what the Creator-Designer God fully intended His humans to be. Preserved for eternity, preserved for a new heaven and new earth, preserved for life with Him.

A book that recently challenged my thinking about Jesus and His humanity is called GENTLE AND LOWLY by Dane Ortlund. I needed this book to remind me that, to this day, Jesus Christ is still fully God and fully human, both before and after His Ascension…

As God’s Creation, humanity has uniqueness in purpose. To be human was and still is to love the Father, Master, Savior and Lord. Any exception to that Truth reveals a loss of our humanity. We were created to live in relationship, fellowship, and communion with God, just like Jesus does. In the Garden of Eden, humanity was devastated by corruption. And because of that, Jesus entered our world through the Incarnation to rehumanize us as we were truly meant to be and to replace that which was stolen by sin and death.

In the Beatitudes (Matthew 5), the first mention of blessedness goes to those who are “poor in spirit” or those who recognize their spiritual poverty and recognize their need for a Savior. That Truth opens our awareness to what being fully human means – that being our dependency on and accountability to God our Creator.

By God’s grace, Jesus came to rehumanize me and you by humanizing Himself in obedience to God the Father. He came to reveal my sinful heart, and to offer a 180-degree course correction. If I will only live by faith in Him, I will be made new. Jesus will release me from the sin problem that defeats my human flourishing. He’ll remove the deceptions that take away my true humanity, the things that degrade my status as God’s child, the things that undermine His good purposes in my life.

Although important, the matter of our faith in Jesus Christ is not all about what happens after we die. Faith is also about what happens while we live in the world as recipients of Christ’s purpose to restore in us human flourishing according to God’s design. His Holy Spirit works to sanctify us, to prepare us, to recreate us, to make us new. We are “made-new” humans, who will die (yes), but not be swallowed up by death. We will live in eternity with Him in the full reality of being humans saved by His grace. In my restored humanity, I am able to identify and reject lies, I am able to combat the assaults of worldly culture, I am able to flourish in Christ.

Truth is a Person, not a dogma, not a code for living, not a set of laws. Jesus is the rehumanizing resurrected Savior, the firstborn from among the dead. Colossians 1:18 says, “And He is the head of the body, the church; He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything He might have the supremacy.” Revelation 1:5-6 says, “And from Jesus Christ, Who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To Him Who loves us and has freed us from our sins by His blood, and has made us to be a kingdom and priest to serve His God and Father – to Him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen.”