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Who is Jesus?

What does it mean for Jesus to be "God enfleshed"? We will see where this idea came from, the alternative views it rejects, and why it matters for us.

Origin

The idea that Jesus is “God enfleshed” begins in Scripture. John refers to Jesus as “the Word” who “was in the beginning with God.”¹ He also juxtaposed two paradoxical facts about Jesus: “the Word was God”² and “the Word became flesh and lived among us.”³ John established that Jesus was the pre-existing Word who is both God and a fleshly being that lived among us humans. These two claims are also seen throughout the gospel narratives, where Jesus was born from a human being, ate, drank, and slept, but also accepted Thomas’s worship, calling him “my Lord and my God.”⁴

This idea was developed and made more precise during the fierce Christological controversies in the early church. Because of the paradoxical nature of Jesus being both human and God, several different opinions have grown to explain the nature of Christ. Some thought Jesus had two minds, while others thought Jesus’s divinity replaced his humanity. Cyril of Alexandria clarified that “God enfleshed” means God was born of a woman, giving Jesus not only a human body but also a human “rational soul,” so that God has truly “become a man like us.”⁵ Gregory Nazianzen agreed that Jesus’ human flesh came from Mary and didn’t “[come] down from Heaven.”⁶ Cyril opposed the division of Jesus into two beings, arguing that if Jesus is merely a human that God dwelt in to mediate “between God and men,” he would be just like Moses and cannot claim to have “emptied himself”⁷ or “come down from heaven,”⁸ as humans have no pre-existence to come down from.⁹ This was finally settled by the Council of Chalcedon, which formalized the language of “God enfleshed” by declaring Jesus to be one person “acknowledged in two natures” where the human and divine nature does not confuse, change, divide, or separate.¹⁰

What “God Enfleshed” Rejects

Claiming Jesus is “God enfleshed” excludes other alternative understandings of Jesus. Below, we see what “God enfleshed” means in terms of the ideas they reject.

First, seeing Jesus as “God enfleshed” rejects seeing Jesus as some kind of creature. It rejects Christian deism, which sees Jesus as just a wise moral teacher who showed us how to love each other. It also rejects Arianism, the belief that Jesus was the highest created being or a super-angel but not truly God,¹¹ and Adoptionism, the belief that Jesus was a normal human being at birth who earned God's favor through faithfulness and got adopted as His Son later.¹² “God enfleshed” means Jesus is fully God and was never non-divine. It rejects any notion of Jesus being a mere human, an elevated human, or a human who achieved divine status.

Second, it rejects that Jesus was not a true human but some kind of sham or partial human. It rejects Docetism, the belief that Jesus only seemed to be human and that his physical body was an illusion.¹³ It rejects Apollinarianism, which believes Christ’s divine mind replaced the human mind in Jesus, creating a partially-human Jesus with a human body but divine mind.¹⁴ Furthermore, it rejects Gnosticism, which claims that the impassible, immaterial, and divine Christ descended on the human Jesus during baptism and left before the crucifixion.¹⁵ “God enfleshed” affirms that God didn’t disguise as or possess a human, but truly entered the material world as a human being and experienced real hunger, pain, and death.

Third, it rejects the reduction of Jesus to an abstraction or subjective experience. It rejects the idea that Jesus is just a useful concept for inspiring love, peace, and self-sacrifice. It also prevents us from viewing Christ as merely a subjective experience where the Christ of faith is just a projection of the church’s belief and interest. “God enfleshed” affirms that faith is not created by human experience but by God entering human history in Jesus. It means God did not just send a message or an idea, but personally became a particular Jewish carpenter living in Palestine two thousand years ago.

Fourth, it rejects the separation or hybridization of Jesus's divinity and humanity. It rejects Nestorianism, which splits Jesus’ divinity and humanity into two distinct persons and denies the unity of the person of Christ.¹⁶ This view prevents us from affirming that God truly suffered and died. “God enfleshed” also rejects the other extreme, Eutychianism, which “[merge] or [mingles]” Jesus’ divinity and humanity, where the human nature was swallowed up by his divinity, creating a hybrid third nature.¹⁷ “God enfleshed” preserved the distinctness and unity of Jesus’ divinity and humanity.

What “God Enfleshed” Affirms

“God enfleshed” affirms four crucial points about Jesus.

First, it means anything we say of the humanity of Jesus can be applied to the divinity of Jesus, because they are not separated. This “communication of properties” allows us to say “God died” or “the Son of Man created the world.” Both natures’ attributes belong to one person.¹⁸

Second, it means God truly suffered in solidarity with us and understands our suffering. God doesn’t distantly observe our suffering, but truly experiences it intimately.¹⁹ Because Jesus experienced human limitations and pain, God knows what it is to be tired, betrayed, sad, and dead.

Third, it means salvation is possible, and we can be united to God. Because humans are corrupt in not just our bodies but also mind, God touched both to heal us completely. In saying “that which he has not assumed, he has not healed,” Gregory Nazianzen insists that through incarnation, God united Himself to every part of us to redeem them all and completely restore humanity: our body, soul, birth, growth, temptation, death, etc.²⁰

Fourth, it means us finite humans can truly know the infinite God. As John writes, “whoever has seen [Jesus] has seen the Father.”²¹ When we see Jesus, we are not looking at a messenger or projection of God, but God Himself. We can have a relationship and know the unknowable God by having a relationship with Jesus, who is God coming into the material world and human history.²²

Conclusion

“God enfleshed” means that the gap between Creator and creature has been bridged by Jesus, who is not a creature, illusion, disguise, metaphor, or hybrid, but truly God and truly man. It means God truly became human, truly experienced and understands our suffering, completely healed our nature, and made Himself truly knowable to us.