The Incarnation

According to A Wesleyan-Holiness Theology by J. Kenneth Grider, pages 302-303, "The Incarnation", the enfleshment of the Deity, is important in many ways. For one, it means that the God who had been speaking to us now visited us. The God who had spoken to us at different times in various ways by prophets spoke to us in the Incarnation by visiting us in His Son (See Heb. 1:1-3). IN what was our finest hour, God came calling.

The Incarnation means that God is conjoined (connected) to us more closely than men and women are conjoined in marriage. In marriage, the partners do not take on each other's nature as God did ours in the Incarnation. Furthermore, marriage is only for earth; the Incarnation is forever. The Incarnation was not terminated when Christ ascended. He is forever the "Godman"—better spelled without the hyphen so as to indicate the completeness of the joining of God and ourselves that occurred at Bethlehem. Christ, in heaven, is still touched by the ecstasy and the agony of our human experience (Heb. 4:15). He remembers what it was like to be a human being on earth—birthed, growing, hungering, dying. Something was added to His divine nature at the Incarnation that will never be subtracted from it. This enriches, dignifies, enables, and enhances human nature without in any way diminishing the divine nature.

The Incarnation means that we joy to a Christian mystery. God and ourselves conjoined in a human person, Jesus of Nazareth—this is high mystery. Hearing and believing this mystery, we are transformed from rebels against God to servants of God.

The church has theologized about the Incarnation for centuries, seeking to better understand it; and that theologizing needs to be dicussed here. Indeed, the seven ecumenical councils of the early centuries were called to discuss theories of the person of Christ—which basically means theories of what the Incarnation actually consists of.