C.S. Lewis was very specific and direct in his attack on apostasy amongst Anglican clerics, particularly bishops. In The Great Divorce, he creates one such character: a bishop theologian who resides in hell (though he does not realize he is there). He has the chance to leave if he will only renounce his apostasy as represented by the academic books he published asserting Christ’s humanity but denying Christ’s divinity.

Even when faced with Christ’s forgiveness after his own death, he wishes to hang on to the grey nihilistic theories which he had invented and promoted, arguing he must be honest to himself; he is actually proud that he dared to write and publish the arguments while he was alive denying Christ’s divinity and resurrection.

He does not believe that there are real intellectual sins. This bishop theologian wants to hide in obscure academic arguments and question the meaning of language, the words we use, refusing to give a definition of existence, repudiating still the idea of the supernatural, denying that there is a real heaven and a hell, refusing to see God as a fact.

In a post mortem conversation with a former clergy colleague who had relinquished the “modern,” “Liberal,” views before his death, this apostate bishop, who has travelled to the fringes of heaven from hell, comments, “When the doctrine of the Resurrection ceased to commend itself to the critical faculties which God had given me, I openly rejected it. I preached my famous sermon. I defied the whole chapter. I took every risk.” His colleague comments,

“What risk? What was at all likely to come of it except what actually came, popularity, sales for your books, invitations, and finally a office of bishop for you?” The conversation continues, “Dick, this is unworthy of you. What are you suggesting?” Dick replies,

Friend, I am not suggesting at all. You see, I know now. Let us be frank. Our opinions were not honestly come by. We simply found ourselves in contact with a certain current of ideas and plunged into it because it seemed modern and successful.

At College, you know, we just started automatically writing the kind of essays that got good marks and saying the kind of things that won applause. When, in our whole lives, did we honestly face, in solitude, the one question on which all turned:

Whether after all the Supernatural might not in fact occur?

When did we put up one moment’s real resistance to the loss of our faith?

This bishop exists, subsists, in a monochrome hell of his own making, a thin world of near nothingness, when he could be really real by simply accepting he was wrong and allowing Christ to forgive him, to change him, because he has already been redeemed on the cross—the “bleeding charity.”

This bishop-theologian’s Christian atheism (the denial of Christ’s divinity, and the supernatural, leaving “god” as an idea) leads inevitably to a belief in a weak, personal, false “god,” whereby he becomes seduced by his theories and imprisoned by them.

The meaning of the incarnation of Jesus Christ is this:

Jesus Christ became like us in order that we might become like him. The incarnation was not an end in itself. It was God’s way of coming to us that we might be redeemed from the penalty of sin and then transformed from within into the image of his Son.

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. C. S. Lewis

The paradox of the God-man is better taken as a hopeful paradox, or perhaps as a puzzle, a unique and arresting claim about a being whose identity has no clear analogy with anything else in existence. This sense of Christ’s uniqueness comports with the biblical affirmation that the incarnation is singular, unrepeatable, unparalleled and awe-inspiring.

That God Almighty would visit earth as a fetus who became an infant who “grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man” is remarkable indeed.

Look at the idea that human beings are both material and immaterial, it helps explain the logic of the incarnation.

Humans have both a material and an immaterial nature, but they are not thereby two persons.
My brain weighs a certain amount, but my mind weighs nothing. This is not a contradiction, because I am speaking of two different aspects of my personhood. This analogy is not perfect, since the incarnation is a singular and unparalleled fact that differs from the merely human relationship of body and mind.

Both my body and mind are finite. There is no union of the divine and the human in my person, as in the case of the incarnation, since I am entirely human. Nevertheless, this helps explain how Jesus’ deity and humanity can coexist in the same person without contradiction. I am two substances (mind and body) that nevertheless make up my one person.

The Bible says, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9). “But [Christ] made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!” (Phil. 2:7–8).

The specific metaphysics of Jesus as God incarnate Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451. All three branches of Christendom (Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Protestant) affirm this creed. Below is a part of that creed;

“Therefore, following the holy fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin; as regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the creed of the fathers has handed down to us.”

Chalcedon responded to a variety of Christological options in order to preserve the biblical teaching in a conceptually tight and rich manner. Chalcedon affirmed the true humanity and true deity of Jesus in one person. The relationship of Jesus’ divine and human natures is called the hypostatic union, which essentially means that Jesus is one person with two natures.

The Incarnation is Necessary in order to:

To reveal God to humanity (John 1:18; 14:7–11)

To provide a high priest interceding for us able to sympathize with human weaknesses (Heb. 4:14–16)

To offer a pattern of the fullness of human life (1 Pet. 2:21; 1 John 2:6)

To provide a substitutionary sacrifice for the sins of all humanity (Heb. 10:1–10)

To bind up the demonic powers, destroy the works of the devil. (1 John 3:8)

To redeem those under law (Gal. 4:4).

The Incarnation is Necessary to reveal God the Father to man.

The revelatory importance of the incarnation is in view in John’s Gospel to a degree that no other New Testament document can rival. The prologue now makes it explicit that the Word is
identical with Jesus, the Messiah, v. 18, in contrast to Moses who could not see God without dying (Ex 33:20),

The encounter between Jesus and Nathaniel at the end of the first chapter of John throws further light on the revelation Jesus brings. Nathaniel is astonished at Jesus’ knowledge of him, as related in John 1:47–48:

When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, ‘Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.‘How do you know me?’ Nathanael asked. Jesus answered, ‘I saw you while you were still under the fig-tree before Philip called you.’

This revelation elicits a confession of faith from Nathanael in verse 49: ‘Then Nathanael declared, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.” ’ Jesus’ response is profound (John 1:50–51): ‘Jesus said, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig-tree. You will see greater things than that.” He then added, “Very truly I tell you, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on’ the Son of Man.”

‘In the Son, therefore, heaven is open to the world. He has opened the way from the one to the other and made exchange between the two possible, first and foremost through his Incarnation (Jn 1:51).
(John 14:1–5 Thomas is puzzled: ‘Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?’ (v. 8) ‘Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”?’

Do you want to know what the character of God is like? Study Jesus.

Do you want to know what the holiness of God is like? Study Jesus.

The Incarnation is Necessary To Redeem Fallen Man (us)

Paul’s letter to the Galatians contains deep Christology. In it Paul skilfully places his Christology in an eschatological framework of how the promises to Abraham are realized in Jesus Christ: ‘If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise’ (Gal. 3:29).

John Stott said, “ What is emphasized in these verses is that the one whom God sent to accomplish our redemption was perfectly qualified to do so. He was God’s Son. He was also born of a human mother, so that He was human as well as divine, the one and only God-man. And He was born ‘under the law’, that is, of a Jewish mother, into the Jewish nation, subject to the Jewish law. Throughout His life He submitted to all the requirements of the law. He succeeded where all others before and since have failed: He perfectly fulfilled the righteousness of the law.”

Stott then draws out the theological implications of the Pauline text:
So the divinity of Christ, the humanity of Christ and the righteousness of Christ uniquely qualified Him to be man’s redeemer. If He had not been man, He could not have redeemed men. If He had not been a righteous man, He could not have redeemed unrighteous men. And if He had not been God’s Son, He could not have redeemed men for God or made them the sons of God.

The Incarnation is Necessary If Christ is Going to be our High Priest

The priest in Israel played a mediatorial role in representing the worshipper to God and God to the worshipper. None was more important in this role than Israel’s high priest. The letter to the Hebrews with its Jewish orientation makes much of this role in presenting Jesus Christ as the High Priest.

Hebrews 2:16–18:
For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

Jesus in this role is the intercessor par excellence according to Hebrews 4:14–15: ‘Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to feel sympathy for our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.’

The reason why Jesus is able to so sympathize is because he is truly human.

Jesus’ humanity is a necessary condition for his carrying out not only his high priestly role as intercessor in Hebrews 2:16–18. We do have such a high priest, who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, and who serves in the sanctuary, the true tabernacle of the holy things servant and of the tent/tabernacle set up by the Lord, not by a mere human being. ‘The nature of the work Jesus came to accomplish [as high priest] demanded the Incarnation.’

The Incarnation is Necessary For Christ to be our Sacrificial Substitute

The letter to the Hebrews and the Pauline letters make clear the importance of Christ’s righteous humanity as a prerequisite for his saving work. He could not have stood in our place as our substitute without it. Moreover without his righteousness we could not stand before a holy God as righteous unless in union with him. His righteousness becomes our own.

As our high priest he perfectly represents us before God. Unlike the old Levitical order he does not have to offer a sacrifice for his own sins—he had none: Hebrews 9:14 draws out the latter point: ‘How much more [in comparison to bulls and goats], then, will the blood of Christ, who
through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!’

The accent of the superiority of Christ’s is articulated in three ways. Under the old order animal sacrifices were offered; under the new order Christ’s own body was the offering. Under the old order an earthly setting was the location for sacrifice. Under the new it is the heavens. Under the old order sacrifices were daily affairs. Under the new only one affair—that of Christ offered once for all time.

Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: ‘Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. Then I said, “Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll I have come to do your will, my God.” ’

The writer of Hebrews draws out the theological implications of Christ’s coming into the created order. Christ came into the world to do away with the old order and to bring in a new one. A new covenant has come (Heb. 10:15–16). It took the sacrifice of himself to do so and what he did was definitive and final

If both Jesus’ coming and the cross are in view in 2 Corinthians 8:9, then Paul’s powerful claim in 2 Corinthians 5:21, provides a lens through which to view just how ‘poor’ Christ was willing to become for our sakes: ‘God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.’27

2 Corinthians 5:21 ‘Paul declares that the crucified Christ, on our behalf, took the whole reality of sin upon himself, like the scapegoat: “For our sake, ‘on behalf of us’ he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.’ ”28 Our sin was exchanged for his righteousness.

The Incarnation is Necessary for Christ to Defeat the Evil One (the devil)

As we saw in an earlier chapter, in the biblical story of origins evil enters the human sphere through the serpent later identified in the canon of Scripture as the devil, the evil one (Gen. 3:1 and Rev. 20:2). We also read of a promise made that the serpent will be overcome by the male seed of a woman: (Gen. 3:15)

Eph 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

For many Westerners to speak of the evil one is to enter the realm of fantasy. Modern materialism has banished the world of spirits. So much for the biblical view of what is real. Significantly many Christians in the West are not immune from this idea, of no devil. Notional belief in the devil and his demons remains, but for all practical purposes life is lived as though there are only two realms of
Jesus had no difficulty in recognizing that evil cannot be reduced to the bad behavior of humankind. There is an enemy of God and humanity. In the parable of the weeds in Matthew 13:24–30 he speaks of an enemy who sows weeds among the wheat, and in his explanation in verses 36–43 identifies the enemy as ‘the evil one’, ‘the devil’ (esp. Matt. 13:38–39). In Mark’s Gospel in response to a criticism that his power came from the dark side Jesus argued in classic reductio ad absurdum terms (Mark 3:23–27):

So Jesus called them over to him and began to speak to them in parables: ‘How can Satan drive out Satan?

The question is also, whether any of the New Testament writers saw this combat against the devil as a rationale for the incarnation. Two important passages from two different New Testament writers come into view in answer to the question.

The first is found in Hebrews 2:14–15: ‘Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that [with this purpose in mind] by his death he might break the power [‘to render inoperative or ineffective’] of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.’ The devil’s power lies in the very human fear of death.

To quote the title of John Owen’s famous Puritan work, the cross represents ‘The Death of Death in the Death of Christ’. How the devil exercises his power is not explained but simply stated. What is clear though is that in sharing our humanity Christ enters the sphere of the devil’s rule and through his own death deprives the devil of his power.

The second text is found in the John’s writings. There were those in the area of the first readers who were denying that a real incarnation had taken place. John would have none of it. In 1 John 3:7–8 we read, ‘Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.’

Given the testimonies of Hebrews 2:14–15 and 1 John 3:7–8 Calvin rightly sums up the nexus between the incarnation, the atonement and the Christus Victor theme in his famous Institutes:
“In short, since neither as God alone could he feel death, nor as man alone could he overcome it, he coupled human nature with divine that to atone for sin he might submit the weakness of the one to death; and that, wrestling with death by the power of the other nature, he might win victory for us.… But we should especially espouse what I have just explained: our common nature with Christ is the pledge of our fellowship with the Son of God; and clothed with our flesh he vanquished death and sin together that the victory and triumph might be ours”

No incarnation, no atonement; and no victory over the evil one.

The Incarnation is Necessary for Christ to Model What True Humanity is

In the New Testament the Old Testament concept of walking in the ways of Yahweh becomes walking in the ways of the Christ. As 1 John 2:6 says, ‘Whoever claims to live in him must live as, ‘ought to walk as that one, Jesus did.’ In other words the imitation of God of the older revelation becomes overwhelmingly the imitation of Christ of the new one. Not that the imitation of God is missing from the New Testament, but generally the accent falls elsewhere. For example, 1 Peter has both ideas. In 1 Peter 1:15–16 the readers are exhorted to be holy as God is holy (cf. Lev. 19:2). Even so, when Peter addresses the matter of Christian slaves abused by their masters he appeals to the model Christ provided. Indeed in 1 Peter 2:21 the idea of walking in Christ’s footsteps is made quite explicit: ‘To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.’

The question is not whether the New Testament writers exhort readers to be like Christ, they do. The issue is whether the New Testament explicitly states that a rationale for the incarnation was to provide an ethical model.

Some think so by arguing that one of the purposes of the incarnation was ‘To offer a pattern of the fullness of human life.’ They bracket 1 Peter 2:21 and 1 John 2:6 as proof texts for this contention.
Below is a famous Pauline text that brings the incarnation to the fore and applies it to Christian behavior. In Philippians 2:5–11

‘Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind’ (Phil. 2:1–2 ‘I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you, my true companion, help these women since they have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life.’
Understandably then Paul seeks a change in the Philippians’ attitudes: ‘Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others’ (Phil. 2:3–4). Informed by Christ’s great stooping, both in incarnation and atonement, the believer is to be like-minded: that is to say, humble and other-person centered (Phil. 2:5).

The new birth and all of its effects, including faith and justification and purification and final conformity to Christ in heaven, would not be possible without the incarnation and life and death of Jesus—without Christmas, Good Friday and Easter.

1 John 5:1: “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ [that is everyone who believes that this incarnate Jewish man from Nazareth is the promised divine Messiah] has been born of God.”

Christianity is not a kind of spirituality that floats amorphously through various religions. It is historically rooted in the person of Jesus Christ. Therefore, the Scripture says,
“Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:12).

So without the incarnation of the Son of God as the Messiah, there would be no regeneration and no saving faith. there would be no justification and no purification. And without these, no final glorification. 1 John 3:3–5:

The Incarnation is Necessary for Christ to Redeem Those under the Law (Gal. 4:4).

Galatians 4:4 But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, 5 To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. 6 And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. 7 Why you are no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.

The language of cleansing and purifying fail to deal with a huge and terrible dimension of our sin, namely, that all sin is lawbreaking. We don’t only incur defilement that has to be purified; we incur guilt that has to be forgiven, and wrath that has to be propitiated, and a falling short of the righteousness that God requires.

The time of the Incarnation was most suitable. Had God become man to redeem us immediately after the first sin was committed, human pride would not have been humbled in consequence of that sin; man would not have realized, through an impressive stretch of time, the greatness of the treasure he had lost. And it was good for man to prepare, by prayerful longing, for the redemption; thus he would gain a keen awareness of the value of redemption; and of his need for it, so that, when it came, he would ardently take advantage of it. On the other hand, it would not do to have the Incarnation delayed, lest human longing turn to hopelessness and despairing disappointment. Therefore at exactly the right time, in the ‘fullness of time,’ as St. Paul says (Gal. 4:4), God became man.

If the incarnation had taken place too soon, then human pride would not have been challenged sufficiently. We would not have appreciated what was lost by the Fall. Additionally, to use Augustine’s famous words, ‘You have formed us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in You’. Without the elapse of time would our hearts have grown sufficiently restless? Would we have appreciated redemption’s cost and therefore its worth? On the other hand, however, if the incarnation were too long in coming, then despair would have triumphed. The divine timing then was exquisite. Thomas Aquinas’s

Christmas was not optional. Therefore, God, being rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, while we were dead in trespasses—sent his Son into the world to live without sin and die in our place. What a great love the Father has shown to us! What a great obedience and sacrifice the Lord Jesus gave for us! What a great awakening the Spirit has worked in us to bring us to faith and everlasting life!