All that God is, Christ Jesus is. All that unfallen man was, He is. Nothing that belonged to Deity or to sinless humanity was lacking in Him. The divine and the human nature are each fully manifested in His unique personality. Both God and man are equally represented in the constituent elements of the personality of the God-man. He is veritable God and veritable man in one person.

Even though the God-man is a unit in whom God and man meet in a harmonious union of natures, yet the root of His wonderful personality is God. Through all eternity, He was God. At one moment in time, He became Man. “The Son of God came from the eternities. The Son of Man began His Being.” “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1). The Deity of Christ Jesus is basic and primary. “The Word was made flesh,” (John 1:14), and there was “born this day in the city of David a Saviour a Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes.” (Luke 2:11-12) The humanity of Christ Jesus is assumed and therefore secondary though essential. In the union of God and man God is the dominant factor. “The incarnation is the humanizing of deity and not the deification of humanity.” The God-man is “God . . . manifest in the flesh?” (1 Timothy 3:16).

In the following Scriptural classic we have a very clear and beautiful revelation of the person of the God-man and the process by which He became such, and the purpose.

Philippians 2:5-8

⁵ “Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: ⁶ who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷ but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; ⁸ and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross.”

He was the Eternal Son, “existing in the form of God ” and “on an equality with God.” But in the presence of Eden’s tragedy and man’s need of redemption, He counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, but by a sublime act of self-emptying, He qualified to be the world’s Saviour. While not divesting Himself of His essential nature as God, He became the Incarnate Son, “taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men,” and submitted to the temporary non-manifestation of His divine prerogatives.

“He emptied Himself.” He did this by permitting the essential glory and majesty of His divine person to be covered and hidden for a while by the flesh, by voluntarily putting His several attributes, omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence, under temporary limitations, and by placing Himself under the sovereign will of the Heavenly Father and under the control of the Holy Spirit.

“The emptying indicates the setting aside of one form of manifestation, in which all the facts of equality with God were evidently revealed, for another form of manifestation, in which the fact of equality with God must for a time be hidden, by the necessary submissiveness of the human to the divine . . . The Word passed from government to obedience, from independent cooperation in the equality of Deity to dependent submission to the will of God” (G. Campbell Morgan, The Crises of the Christ, pp. 76-77).

“He humbled Himself.” God took man’s form, and the Lord of glory stooped to an actual union with human nature. In His humiliation, He endured every conceivable suffering, culminating in His cruel death as a condemned criminal on the Cross.

His voluntary self-humbling and self-emptying was for a purpose. “He became obedient unto death, yea, the death of the cross” that through His divine-human mediatorship, He might become mankind’s all-sufficient Saviour. 

Source: “Life on the Highest Plane” by Ruth Paxson

Lord, we are grateful for Your willingness to lay everything down to become as we are, yet without sin. Thank You, Lord!