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To say God has a Son sounds a little strange to most people. It wouldn’t be too strange for the ancient Greeks and Romans whose gods were mixing with humans and producing all kinds of interesting creations. For us, however, it sounds a little strange and kind of hard to wrap our brain around it.

Christianity, unlike say Scientology, is not a new religion on the human scene. Generally speaking, for us as moderns the new has an attraction the old has not. C. S. Lewis even coined a phrase for it: ‘chronological snobbery’. For the chronological snob, the new is always to be preferred over the old. As a consequence, for many in the West the Christian story is a very old hat and not worth as much as some of the new ideas. For many the new, and always looking for the next new thing, is better than the old truth that has been around a long time. Many are always looking for something more exciting.

Someone who was aware of the loss of wonder at the stupendous nature of the Christian story was Christian essayist, playwright and lay theologian Dorothy Sayers. She had a deep appreciation of the nature of drama. Sayers expresses her wonder with a great deal of verve as she looks back to the coming of Christ into the world and to his cross:

So that is the outline of the official story, the tale of the time when God was the underdog and got beaten, when he submitted to the conditions he had laid down and became a man like the men he had made, and the men he had made broke him and killed him. This is the dogma we find so dull, this terrifying drama of which God is the victim and hero. If this is dull, what, in Heaven’s name, is worthy to be called exciting?

Now, we may call that doctrine exhilarating, or we may call it devastating; we may call it revelation, or we may call it rubbish; but if we call it dull, then words have no meaning at all. That God should play the tyrant over man is the usual dreary record of human futility; but that man should play the tyrant over God and find him a better man than himself is an astonishing drama indeed. Any journalist, hearing of it for the first time, would recognize it as news; those who did it for the first time actually called it news, and good news at that; though we are likely to forget that the word Gospel ever meant anything so sensational.

The Incarnation

Nothing is clear in the New Testament that assures us those living in the Old Testament were expecting an incarnation. Even John’s Gospel, which has the most explicit incarnational theology, has no suggestion of such an expectation.

Given the mystery referred to in 1 Timothy 3:16 it is no surprise that the Old Testament contains no explicit presentation of an incarnation as part of the hope of Israel.

What was the hope of Israel, A returning Elijah?

Yes! A coming Son of Man? Yes!

A coming Davidic messiah? Yes!

A God-man? No!

God’s gracious love, central to the identity of the God of Israel, takes the radically new form of a human life in which the divine self-giving happens. It is novel but appropriate to the identity of the God of Israel. The reason for this is the incarnation was a mystery,

The Old Testament Scriptures per se did not offer the prospect of an incarnation as part of the hope of Israel. It was a mystery in the sense of ‘revelation that is in some sense “there” in the Old Testament Scriptures but hidden until the time of God-appointed disclosure.

1 Timothy 3:16 And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness; He who was manifested in the flesh, Justified in the spirit, Seen of angels, Preached among the nations, Believed on in the world, Received up in glory.

There is nothing like looking in retrospect to see connections for anything. The Holy Spirit has come. In the upper room before the crucifixion Jesus said, ‘But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you [the apostles] into all the truth’ (John 16:13). 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.

Galatians 4:4. 4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law

Apart from the specific circumstances which may seem to explain each Theophany at the time of its taking place, and considering them as a series of phenomena, is there any other account of them so much in harmony with the general scope of Holy Scripture, as that they were successive lessons addressed to the eye and to the ear of ancient piety, in anticipation of a coming Incarnation of God?

Not even the notion of the divine presence, whether resident in tabernacle or temple, would necessarily have implied incarnation. It is true that the trajectory of key texts relating to David and his house were suggestive of a more than merely human figure in view.
With the incarnation comes a newness in God’s dealings with humankind

The newness came through the incarnation, not through the revelation of the Son as such. What was new was not grace, or faith, or rejection, or love, or Son, or Word, but God the Word incarnate, God the Son incarnate. It was the taking of flesh as such, the act, the event in history, culminating of course in death and resurrection, that was unique, supreme, new.

The incarnation has theological implications for theological method, the question of whether God can change in some way, for the value of the created order, for the valuing of human life, for our understanding of mission, for the Christian encounter with other religions.

HOW CAN WE SEE GOD?

One of the great milestones in Christian history was the call and conversion of Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus road as narrated in the book of Acts. He encountered the risen Christ and it transformed his life. However, in what form did he meet Jesus on that day? Was Jesus embodied in some post-resurrection sense or was he a disembodied spirit? Paul’s letters make it clear that Jesus was embodied in some way. He informed the Corinthians in his magnificent cumulative argument for the resurrection that he had seen the Lord, as had other apostles (1 Cor. 15:7–8): ‘Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.’ ‘As one abnormally born’ clearly has the Damascus road in view. In fact the very term ‘resurrection’ entails ‘embodiment’

We cannot ignore the plain fact that there have been many mutually exclusive understandings of God. Many have thought of God as spectacularly great, above space and time, transcendent, but infinitely far away, not really caring what a little bit of organic material does on the third rock from the sun.

The ancient Greeks and Romans for example, have thought not of one god but of many, many gods, they have similar fears and hopes and certain domains.

There are still other views of God. Some follow something called pantheism in which everything is God and God is everything. There is no distinction between God and everything else, and in that view you can find actors coming out of a pantheistic school saying, “I am God.” Well at least part of God, I suppose, if everything is God and God is everything.

It is worth reckoning with the fact that this is not merely a theoretical discussion, because what you think about God will inevitably shape you. If God is really understood to be that which you hold to be the most important thing, the thing that you pursue, the highest good, the goal, the passion of your life, then inevitably you become like what you worship. So it’s not merely a theoretical distinction; it ultimately becomes something that shapes what kind of human being you are, too.

The same is true with making a thing god, let’s say, pleasure. If you make pleasure god, you will have many pleasurable moments. You will become a pursuer of pleasure, but there will be entailments in all of that too somewhere down the track. It’s one of the reasons why the Bible can actually go so far as to say that covetousness is a form of idolatry. That is, what you are most desirous of having, what you want the most, becomes, for you, god. That god displaces the God who is there.

But this is not what happened at Jesus’ birth.

The theological word to describe this mystery is not creation, but incarnation. The person, not the body, but the essential personhood of Jesus existed before he was born as a man. His birth was not a coming into being of a new person, but a coming into the world of an infinitely old person. Micah 5:2 puts it like this, 700 years before Jesus was born:

But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.

The origin of the Messiah who appears in Bethlehem is from eternity. Therefore, the mystery of the birth of Jesus is not merely that he was born of a virgin. That miracle was intended by God to witness to an even greater one—namely, that the child born at Christmas was a person who existed “from of old, from ancient days.” He was not merely born, as John 18:37 says; he came into the world

The Son of God According to Jesus

In dialogue and debate with others Jesus often grounded his self-understanding on the testimony of the Old Testament Scriptures.

When it comes to the inspiration, truthfulness, authority and relevance of the Bible of his world, Jesus could scarcely have held to higher views. He acknowledged Scripture’s divine origin as God’s word and words. He quoted from the Bible extensively and intensively

John 8:58 “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it and was glad.” The Jews then said to him, “You are not fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” So they took up stones to throw at him.

Almost all scholars of antiquity, even those who think he was wrong, agree that John meant to say that the pre-existent Christ was God Verse 2: “He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him. And without him was not anything made that was made.”

Christ himself was not a creature, but was involved in creating all that was created. Verse 14: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.” Christ existed before Abraham, indeed, before all creation because he was himself one with the creator God.

The word “mystery” is often used carelessly and, consequently, has been misused. when the word “mystery” is used in the sense of relation to Christ, it has to do with that aspect of Christ that can never be discovered. The apostle John attempts to lift us into the mystery of God and into the circles of deity far beyond the pursuit of man. Realms so high, lofty and noble that it is impossible to us to follow to its conclusion.

The phrase that stirs up the sense of mystery is, “And the Word was made flesh” (John 1:14). the apostle states the most profound mystery of human thought—how deity could cross the gulf separating what is God from what is not God.

Although man in all of his scientific advancement has made the world very complex, The mystery is compounded by the fact that between that which is God and that which is not God is a great and impassable gulf.

“Great is the mystery of godliness” (1 Tim. 3:16).

John Wesley: “Distinguish the act from the method by which the act is performed and do not reject the fact because you do not know how it was done.” In coming to the mystery of that which is Christ incarnate, we reverently bow our heads and confess, It is so, God, but we don’t know how. I will not reject the fact because I do not know the operation by which it was brought to pass.”

The Incarnation of Christ is shrouded in impenetrable mystery that we could never uncover with our finite thinking. But there is one thing that we can know for sure: The Incarnation required no compromise of deity. When the “Word was made flesh,” His deity did not suffer. Before His Incarnation, Christ was absolute deity; after His Incarnation, He was just as much deity as before. His deity suffered nothing when He became flesh. This mystery baffles us when we meditate upon the person of Christ.