The Life of the Incarnate One

   In our last lesson we studied the need of man for an Incarnation and the promise that our heavenly Father gave concerning the coming of the Incarnate One.
   Galatians 4:4 tells us "when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His son born of a woman (the incarnation). When Christ was born almost 2000 years ago, the time was ripe for His coming.
   The civilization of Greece had rendered a great service in preparing the way for Christianity, by furthering it with a world wide language, the most beautiful, the most flexible, the most expressive the world had ever known.
   When Christ appeared, the political power of the world was in Roman hands. Rome had conquered and united under a single government, all the part of the world bordering on the Mediterranean. Never had peace so generally prevailed, never had life and property been so safe, never had travel been so easy.
   The Romans were great road builders. In their effort to conquer the world and to civilize it, they built roads for their armies. Ship lines had been established with the East. These roads and lines became the means of carrying the gospel to the world.

The Universal Cry for the Incarnation

   We see in this that God in His providence had brought about these conditions that the good news of Redemption might be quickly heralded to the world.
   On the other hand, the most deplorable picture of depraved morals in the entire range of history is presented by the Roman world at the time that Christ was born.
   In the entire world there was nothing to give hope, or relief to darkened humanity. In the midst of this condition of depravity and failure there was a cry from the depths of the heart for relief and release.
   The hope of a redeemer lay in the very atmosphere of the age. The Jewish prophecy that had been silent for four centuries (from Malachi to Matthew) was revived, and had awakened an expectation for the Messiah. Even the pagan mind, living in the midst of corruption and slavery, was looking for a deliverer.
   The wise men from the East, who had followed the star, represented the universal eastern longing for a redeemer.
   The eyes of the world in its expectation were turned toward Palestine. In the fullness of time, Jesus the Christ was born in Bethlehem in Judea; the response to the age-long heart cry of universal man, under bondage of spiritual death.
   Only God knew what man’s need demanded, and only God could meet that demand. It was the incarnation. Yet man in all ages has longed for the Incarnation instinctively. Christ was God’s answer to the universal heart hunger of mankind.
   There are three things which natural man has desired. He has desired for fellowship with God; he has desired to possess the life of God; and he has desired the strength of God.
   Primitive man hungered for an Incarnation. Every ancient human religion has tried to answer that cry. Dr. Turmoil in his book, The Blood Covenant, gives the following, which reveals primitive man’s hunger for an Incarnation.
   "Beyond the idea of an inspiration through an interflow of God-representing blood there has been in primitive man’s mind (however it came there) the thought of a possible intercommunion with God by blood. God is life. All life is from God and belongs to God. Blood is life, blood therefore, as life, may be a means of man’s inter-communion with God."
   "As the closest and most sacred of covenants between man and man; as indeed an absolute merging of two human natures in one, is a possibility of an interflowing of common blood, so the closest and most sacred of covenants between man and God; inter-union nature with divine, has been looked upon as a possibility through the proffer and acceptance of a common life as in a common blood flow."
   "Man has counted blood, his own blood in actuality of by substitute, as a means of inter-union with God, or with gods. He has considered that the outflow of blood toward God is an act of gratitude or of affection, a proof of loving confidence, a means of inter-union with Him."
   This seems to have been the universal primitive conception of the race; an evidence of man’s trust in the accomplishment fact of this inter-union with God, or with the gods by blood, has been also the universal practice of man’s inter-communion with God or with the gods by his sharing in food-partaking of the body of the sacrificial offering, whose blood is the means of the divine inter-union, with a human.
   Every primitive people have drunk the blood of sacrificial victims, in seeking oneness with God.
   The gods of the Greeks and Romans are incarnations. Their gods were immortal, superior human beings. Many times the kings of ancient civilizations were believed to be the descendants of gods, and they were worshipped as incarnations.

The Present Hunger for Incarnation

   How desperately man needed an incarnation. How long and bitter had been the years of separation between man and God. Man born into a world ruled by Satan did not by nature know his creator.
   Philosophers have sought in vain to know His nature. The Incarnation of Jesus Christ has given the world a true knowledge of the nature of God.
   From the time that man died spiritually, God and man had been separated. Spiritually dead man could not know the nature of his creator without a revelation from Him.
   God had been conceived as the weird, as the cruel, as the grotesque, as the immoral, as the aloof, as impersonal energy, but never had he been conceived as a God of love, as a heavenly Father!
   Even Israel, which possessed a clear revelation of God, as it was possible to give to a spiritually dead people, had no true conception of God until Christ came into the world. Outside of Christ, there exists no true revelation of Almighty God. The fullness of such a revelation is resident in Christ.

Israel’s Need

   The product of Israel’s conception of God was the Pharisee, proud, bitter, unkind, arrogant, and self-seeking. Israel had such a false conception of God, that they did not recognize Him when He stood in their midst.
   John 1:14 "And the Word became flesh and pitched His tent among us. And we gazed upon His glory, a glory as an only begotten from the Father" (Rotherham).
   It has been our tendency when thinking of Christ’s coming to earth as a man, to dwell upon His self-denial, or His sufferings in coming from earth to glory. Yet, as we come to know Him better we believe that it was a joy to Him who so loved man and so desired man’s fellowship to dwell on earth among men that He might give to alienated man -- man who had never known Him, and a creator’s true conception and love that He possessed for a human being.
   How clearly Christ realized and appreciated this phase of His mission can be understood by what John said: "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him (John 1:18).
   How different was His life from the lives of the greatest philosophers and religious teachers before Him. The philosophers had come as seekers of truth, Christ came as the revelation of truth (John 14:6).
   He revealed the creator to be a God of love, a Holy God that could be approached.
   John the Baptist who had been so stern with others, in the presence of Jesus fell back saying: "I have need to be baptized of thee" (Matthew 3:14). This man, the best of men, felt his deep need in the presence of the Incarnate One, yet the most sinful man felt drawn to Him. Publicans and sinners drew near to Him (Matthew 9:10; Mark 2:15; Luke 5:30, 15:1).
   They were not afraid of His holiness; they were drawn by His love. Children sat upon His knees (Mark 10:13). This Incarnate One showed an interest in children. Christ was the first one who had ever appreciated childhood. There had never been any place for children in any pagan nation. It was only after a child had become a man and of military value to the state that any value was placed upon his life.
   There had never been a strong and pure love for children. Christ alone achieved the elevation of childhood. Our present day appreciation of children is due to the fact that the "Word" became flesh and dwelt among us.
   In the same manner, the elevation of women was achieved. Their privileges and freedom, the blessings they enjoy are due to His life and teaching.

A God of LOVE

   Here was one who showed by His life and words, what the heart, back of the universe is like. Creation itself can only bring us to the realization that there is an omnipotent God. It cannot reveal His nature to us. We do not ask to know the omnipotence of our creator; that would frighten us. We do not desire to know His omniscience; we could not understand that. We do not ask to understand omnipresence; our imagination could not grasp it.
   We want to know the real nature of our creator. His attitude toward us, whether or not His is indifferent toward humans or interested in us.
   We know now what God is like; we know now His attitude toward us, because He dwelt among us as a man. God is like Christ. The heart of the Creator is like the heart that broke on the cross.
   A certain Yale professor said: "The question to my mind is not the divinity of Jesus, but whether God is like Jesus."
   Is it not wonderful that a man lived among us in such a manner that when we think of God we think of Him in terms of Jesus Christ? We may transfer every moral quality of Jesus to God, and it does not in any measure lower our conception of God. On the contrary the highest conception that we can have of Him, is that He is like Christ. If we try to think of God in any other term, than that of Christ, we lower our conception of Him. The life of Christ has written across this human realm of ours that "God is love" and nothing can erase it. The heart cry of man for an Incarnation has been answered in Jesus. God was manifest in the flesh. God lived as a man among us and we know His nature. We find Him in Christ to be all that we want Him to be.
   Christ not only revealed Him to us as a God of love, but also as a Father. No other religion has had a Father-God.
   What excitement was caused among the Jews when Christ called Him Father! In John 5:18, they sought to kill Him because He call God His Father.
   From the following scriptures, we know that the revealing of God to man as a Father, was the center around which Christ moved (John 6:46, 7:29, 8:19, 10:15, 14:20).
   Let us now look at the life of the Incarnate One. He had become man in the fullest sense of the word. Yet, He differed from other men. The difference between His life and the lives of those around Him did not lie in the fact that He was any less human than they. It lay in the fact that He did not belong to the realm of spiritual death.
   "For as the Father hath life in Himself, so He hath given the son to have life in Himself" (John 5:26). Christ was the first man from the time of Adam’s treason and fall, that had been able to make a statement like that. He stated that He possessed the life of God.
   Satan had no dominion over Christ, because Christ was not spiritually dead. He walked in oneness with His Father-God. He lived in the realm of His omnipotence. Disease had no dominion over the body of Christ, because disease was an offshoot of the fall and spiritual death (Genesis 3:14-19). For the same reason the body of Christ was not mortal. The word "mortal" in its literal sense means "subject to death, or doomed to die." Man’s body became doomed to death when he entered spiritual death (Genesis 2:15-17) through his disobedience and the fall (Genesis 3). Christ was free from spiritual death, hence, free from all the results that accrued therefrom.
   Therefore, as He walked this earth, His body was not subject to death. The body of this Incarnate One was neither mortal nor immortal. He possessed a perfect eternal human body, the kind of a body Adam had before he died spiritually (Genesis 2:17). It was impossible for man to have taken the life of Christ, before His time had come.
   On the cross Christ died physically, because He had first died spiritually.
   When He was made sin (2 Corinthians 5:21) for us, His spirit underwent a change. Spiritual death was laid upon Him, when He died as our substitute, and His body became mortal, as did Adam’s when he died spiritually.
   The Bible teaches a spiritual death (Genesis 2:17, Ephesians 2:1-4), a physical death (Genesis 3:14-19, Hebrews 9:27) and a second death (Revelation 21:8).
   Christ born the son of God via the Virgin birth was free from the dominion of death, because He was free from sin, and free from Satan’s dominion and Lordship.
   How utterly free and rich was the life of the Incarnate One as he walked this earth among fallen men. Though tempted in all points, as was Adam, yet the Incarnate One remained free, and this qualified Him to die in our place. In His death for us he gave to us the freedom that He possessed. By faith in Him we are free from Satan’s dominion.

Click for Chapter 19