Is Jesus God in the flesh? Why is it important that Jesus is God in the flesh?

There are, then, two sides to the person of Christ. He was God manifest in flesh. "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth" (John 1:14). The Word was the Eternal Son, and the Eternal Son became man. He was thus God and man — a union of extremes which was not possible in any other, and rendering His person so unfathomable, so incomprehensible, that He Himself said, "No man knows the Son but the Father" (Matt. 11:27). But it is essential that we hold fast both His true Divinity and His as equally true humanity. For had He not been true man, He could not have been a sacrifice for sin, and had He not been God, His sacrifice could not have been available for all. Satan knows this, and hence, in every age, he has sought to undermine the one or the other of these truths, insinuating doubts sometimes concerning His humanity and sometimes concerning His Divinity. But it is the glory of the person of Christ that He is both Divine and human, that He is, in His one person, both God and man. This truth lies at the foundation of, and, indeed, gives its character to, redemption.

How vast a field is thus opened for our contemplation! Following Christ in His pathway down here, from the manger at Bethlehem to the cross at Calvary, we see the unfoldings both of the human and Divine. As we behold Him, His lowly guise, "His visage so marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men" (Isa. 52:14); as we mark Him in companionship with His disciples, and see Him weary and resting, eating and drinking, weeping with those who wept (John 11), and sleeping, too, on a pillow in the hinder part of the ship (Mark 4:38), we cannot doubt that He was man. It was, indeed, the proofs of His humanity which, meeting their eyes, confounded His adversaries, and blinded them to His higher claims.

He took up humanity into union with deity in His Person; yet His incarnation did not in the least detract from His deity nor His eternal relationship as Son to the Father but only gave to His humanity His infinite perfection. Each of His two natures retained its own proper character without any confusion. His human nature as well as His divine nature possessed each their excellent characteristics and both united to form His glorious Person as incarnate Son. Scripture never divides the Person nor confounds the natures. They are united in His Person by a unique and inscrutable bond. He is the God-man. He is God in all that God is and He is Man in all that man is, apart from sin. Such is the Son of God come in flesh — the God-man — that He might manifest the Godhead in the flesh and by His obedience unto death, even the death of the cross, might redeem us unto God.

And first all the fulness of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily. Instead of the misty speculations of men and fantastic aeons, we have the fulness of God bodily, in a real human body, and thus efficaciously for us, in the Person of Jesus Christ. In the second place we are complete in Him; we need nothing out of Christ. On the one side, we have, in Him, God perfectly presented in all His fulness; on the other side, we possess in Him perfection and completeness before God. We are wanting in nothing as to our position before God. What a truth! What a position! God, in His perfect fulness, in Christ as man; we in Him before God, in the perfection of what He is — in Him who is Head of all principality and power, before which man in his ignorance would incline to bend the knee! We are in Him, in whom the fulness of the Godhead dwells as to His Person; in Him, who is above all principality as to His position and His rights as Christ, man exalted on high.

282 "For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily," v. 9. There is here something exceedingly blessed; it is not a Pilate's What is truth? Nor yet seeking after God, if haply we might feel after Him and find Him (Paul's expression in regard of the heathen), but, as John speaks, "that which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the word of life" (1 John 1:1), that which is brought home to the senses of men. In place of working up the feelings to seek after something, God has come down to us, poor wretched creatures that we are. But God is there. He has come down to us in our sins and miseries bodily: I do not get a heap of stories, patched up nobody knows how, to act on my senses, and work on my imagination; it is the God who saves me. But He will be always God. There is not a trouble, there is not a distress, there is not a feeling in the heart of man, that is not met in Christ (and, after all, we do want something to fill the heart, we are men, and we want what man wants), not as a doctrine merely, but bodily. We find in Him that which is to be found nowhere else. Let it be the most loving person possible, he has not loved me and died for me. But then I have not simply the love of a gracious person: there is in Him "all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." All flights of the imagination are checked, for I meet it in the Holy One, though I meet it in all my wants.

V. 9. Having warned us of this snare the Apostle at once brings before us the great positive truths that would preserve us from being turned aside by the emptiness of human wisdom. First, he turns us to Christ — "In Him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." Instead of the misty speculations of men, we have God perfectly revealed in all His fulness in Christ. There is not a single attribute of the Godhead that is lacking in Christ. Moreover, it is in Him "bodily". Christ has taken a body and become manifest in flesh, so that the fulness of the Godhead could be presented in a way that can be known by the most simple of men. It may require a giant intellect to understand even the terms in which philosophy struggles to express its speculations; simple fishermen of Galilee can see the fulness of God in Christ, and thus enter into truths that lie outside the comprehension of the greatest natural intellect. One has said, "To faith which saw through the veil of His humiliation when here, there was not a trait in His character, an act in His conduct, or an expression of the feeling of His heart going out to the misery around Him, that was not the revelation of the Godhead" (J.N.D.).

There is a strong likeness between Col. 1:19 and verse 9 of our chapter; only there it refers to that which was true of Him in the days of His sojourn on earth, whilst here it is stated as being true of Him today. It is hardly possible to imagine a stronger statement of His deity, and yet it plainly infers that He still is Man in saying, "bodily." If then we are rooted and built up and filled full in such an One as He, it would be manifestly very foolish to turn aside to the philosophizings of poor little human brains that ere long will be eaten of worms.

But here is the test, the touchstone of truth. "Every spirit which confesseth Jesus Christ come in flesh is of God." This is the simple and proper way to render the words. The true spirit confesses Christ's person. It is of all moment to understand this, because laying the stress on "coming in flesh" may overlook Who came thus. Undoubtedly His coming in flesh is very important, yet far more momentous is He who thus came. Who was He that came in flesh? persons in their senses would not say that you or I came in the flesh. Take the mightiest monarchs that founded world-powers — Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar. Take the greatest names in letters, philosophy, oratory, science, and what not. Nobody could with propriety speak of their coming in flesh. The reason is because we could not appear at all unless we came in flesh. The wonder, the truth, the infinite grace, is that He came in flesh. It was a divine person, the Son of God, the Creator. That He came in flesh is a most glorious thing morally for God and for man. Nothing in eternity past can compare with it save His death on the cross; nothing in eternity future.

The first passage is alone decisive: "And the Word was made flesh, and tabernacled among us, (and we beheld His glory, glory as of an only begotten with the Father,) full of grace and truth." I give what is more literal than our common version, and preserves the all-important connection with the tabernacle of old. In that, the glory of God had dwelt; in the darkness, not in the light; shut up, and inaccessible to man. Here now was a tabernacle — the flesh of Christ, in which dwelt the fullest glory of Godhead, and most accessible, — divine glory now to be approached and looked upon, because revealed in grace and truth. And what was the glory thus revealed? It was the glory as of an only begotten with the Father: that was its character; the glory of the Only Begotten is the very glory of God. Nothing could surely be plainer than this declaration.

What gives a more wonderful view of Christ than this truth which the simplest believer knows, or ought to know, however little able to explain it? There is nothing like it. There alone we have the truth. We know God now; and how? Not by reasoning, as if thus we could search and find Him out. We know Him in Christ as a living Person who lived once bodily in this world, who still has His body above the world. We know from God, from His Word, that in the Person of Christ "dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily," not merely in His spirit, but really in Him bodily, though He be now glorified. He had a real, true body from the incarnation; but He had all the fullness of the Godhead dwelling in Him thus.

It is clear then that Scripture, in saying that the Word became flesh, teaches us that this was a new beginning, a condition not existing before, but now become true of the One who was and is the Word. And all true Christians agree surely that the words "became flesh" refer to His becoming Man; to the Incarnation of the Word, in fact.

The second difference is in one sense a minor one. "We beheld," in that context, would probably convey to any spiritual mind that it was spiritual vision and not mere physical sight. So that it would not mean a mere incident in the lives of the beholders, but a continuous impression upon the mind, and hence is rendered in the New Translation as, "we have contemplated "His glory."