Incarnation/God Becoming Incarnate (Abenoja)

- Central Christian doctrine that God became flesh, that God assumed a human
nature and became a man in the form of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the second
person of the Trinity. Christ was truly God and truly man.
- The doctrine maintains that the divine and human natures of Jesus do not exist
beside one another in an unconnected way but rather are joined in him in a personal
unity that has traditionally been referred to as the hypostatic union.
- The union of the two natures has not resulted in their diminution or mixture; rather,
the identity of each is believed to have been preserved.
- The word Incarnation (from the Latin caro, “flesh”) may refer to the moment when
this union of the divine nature of the second person of the Trinity with the human
nature became operative in the womb of the Virgin Mary or to the permanent reality
of that union in the person of Jesus.
- The term may be most closely related to the claim in the prologue of the Gospel
According to John that the Word became flesh—that is, assumed human nature.
The essence of the doctrine of the Incarnation is that the preexistent Word has been
embodied in the man Jesus of Nazareth, who is presented in the Gospel According to
John as being in close personal union with the Father, whose words Jesus is
speaking when he preaches the gospel.
- For what purpose did Christ become a man? It was in order that grace and reality
might come to us (John 1:14). What is reality? Everything in the universe is vanity.
Nothing is real except God. Without Him, whatever we have is vanity. God has come,
by the incarnation, to be our reality.
- What is grace? The Word incarnate was “full of grace.” Verse 17 goes on to tell us,
“For the law was given through Moses; grace and reality came through Jesus Christ.”
Many Christians consider material blessings as God’s grace. From this verse,
however, it is clear before the coming of the Lord Jesus grace was not available to
man. There may have been material blessings in the Old Testament, but there was
not grace. When God became a man, grace came. Grace is God as our enjoyment.
When we receive Him, we have reality. This reality becomes our enjoyment, which is
grace. Grace is God Himself as our life, our light, our holiness, and our righteousness.
To enjoy God in such an all-inclusive way is to enjoy grace. Before Christ came, such
an enjoyment of Him was not possible. Now that He has become incarnate, He can
be man’s reality and grace.

Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Incarnation-Jesus-Christ
https://www.ministrysamples.org/excerpts/GOD-BECOMING-INCARNATE.HTML