What doesincarnatemean? How was Jesus God incarnate?

The One Who in the beginning was the Word becomes flesh. We have learnt Who He is in Person, Who He was in eternity; now we are told what He becomes in time. It is not said that He became the Word by incarnation, but that the Word became flesh.

This immense event — the incarnation of the everlasting Word — would lead us to expect great and blessed results. Three of the outstanding effects of incarnation are brought before us in these verses: first, the revelation of the eternal relationships between divine Persons; secondly, the attitude of God toward man; thirdly, the declaration of God in His fulness.

The Word having become flesh, the apostle can say, "We have contemplated His glory, a glory as of an only-begotten with a Father". The glory they beheld was not derived from the Manhood He assumed but from His relationship in the Godhead. His glory was a unique glory, the glory of an only-begotten Son, a relationship enjoyed in communion with God as a Father. Thus, while the reality of His Manhood is stated, the glory of His Person is carefully guarded.

The Word having become flesh, we at once learn what is in the heart of God toward man. The One Who became flesh dwelt among us "full of grace and truth". He came in a character that exactly suited man. He did not come making demands from man, as in the law, but as a Giver bringing blessing in grace to the unworthy.

The fact that the Word became flesh guarantees not only that He possessed a real human body (which was denied by some of the earliest heretics), but also that having passed by angels and "taken hold of the seed of Abraham," He had become in every proper sense a Man. It is significant that it is in this Gospel, which starts with such a full assertion of His Deity, that He speaks of Himself as "a Man" (8:40). At last all that God is was revealed to men in a Man.

By incarnation the Son of the Father was amongst men, truly come down from heaven, and thereby all that was revealed in Him was made available for men, but only to be actually appropriated by faith.

That of which He had spoken had involved His incarnation, by which the fulness of the Godhead had been brought down to us, and His death, by which life has been made available for us ... Note that He ascends as Son of MAN. It was a wonder that God should descend to earth: it was no less a wonder that Man should ascend to heaven.

The confession, therefore, which is demanded by them is this — that it was God who was manifested, or who came in the flesh. For in these epistles, as we have now seen, "Jesus Christ" is God. His name as God is Jesus Christ. And it is assumed or concluded that "the true God" is not known, if He who was in the flesh, Jesus Christ, be not understood as such; and all this simply because He is God.

The very adjunct, "come in the flesh," throws strongly forward the deity of Christ; because if He were a man, or anything short of what He is, it would be no such wonder that He should come in the flesh.

Israel could not suffer beyond divine appointment, because of the sympathies of the Son of God; Jesus could not be touched beyond His pleasure, because of the incarnation of the Son of God.

A religion, which depends on the Word being made flesh, and the Son of man at the right hand of God, and sending down the Holy Ghost to make our bodies God's temples ... must be mysterious in the true, and indeed in every, sense of the word.

The Incarnation should ... suppose and reveal immense depths of thought, purpose, and moral truth.

So said the Son when incarnate here below; which could not be, if He were not one with the Father, as truly God, and therefore as competent by the sacrifice of Himself to save righteously as to create.

This is the mystery of godliness, not only of truth but of godliness: "He Who was manifested in flesh." It is the abandonment of self, of the first man, the confession of our evil, to find the salvation of God in the woman's Seed, and in the Son, not incarnate only, but in the body of His flesh through death.

These give us the history of the incarnation, and show us "that Eternal Life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us." The Epistles give us the precious truths which flow from the great fact of the incarnation and the Cross, but the Gospels show us the Person Himself, how He lived and how He died.

His essential Godhead before creation; He is the Creator; the true Light; the only-begotten of the Father (His eternal Sonship); He is the Incarnate, 'the Word became flesh;' the Lamb of God; the Son of God; the Messiah; the king of Israel; and the Son of man.