This topic of Christ’s birth and incarnation immediately lands us squarely in the midst of two of the greatest mysteries we can ever face: (1) the Trinity or how God can be Three-in-One and (2) how Jesus can be both God and man.

(1) The Trinity.  How can God be three persons at the same time and yet there be only one single unified God.  There are hints of the concept of the Trinity in various passages in the OT, but by and large this topic of there being more than one person in the Godhead is seen most clearly during Jesus’ earthly life and then unpacked in the rest of the NT that helps us process the meaning and significance of His earthly life. 

We shouldn’t be surprised that the God who created each of us, along with everything else in this universe, is far bigger, greater, and more complex in His being than we are—or could ever imagine.  So, the idea of the Trinity should perhaps surprise us because it is something we wouldn’t naturally have thought of on our own, but it shouldn’t amaze us.  We should expect there to be any number of surprises when we first come to think about God and try to understand the One who has created us.

Many of the Creeds and Confessions wrestle with this topic.  The Athanasian Creed, for example, reminds us how we need to “worship God in trinity and the trinity in unity, neither blending their persons nor dividing their essence.”  In other words, we need to remember that they are three separate and distinct persons and yet a single unified God where each member is God in all His fullness. 

(2) How Jesus Christ, whose birth we celebrate later this month was both God and man at the same time.  Again, the early Creeds remind us that Jesus was both God and man—and both at the same time.  The Athanasian Creed tells us, “We believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, God’s Son, is both God and man, equally.  He is God from the essence of the Father, begotten before time; and he is man from the essence of his mother, born in time; completely God, completely man, with a rational soul and human flesh.”

Still there are no easy answers here.  We can try to state what we believe Scripture teaches as clearly as we can, but understanding it still isn’t so easy.  Perhaps the best illustration of Jesus’ two natures is that we as human beings are both body and soul.  We have physical bodies—that is how God has made us.  Because we have physical bodies, we can see each other, and we can move physical objects around with our arms and legs.  But we are more than physical machines.  There is more to us than simply material, physical bodies.  We also have a non-material part of us: our minds, wills, and emotions.  Perhaps we can use biblical terms like soul or spirit to describe the non-material part of our being.  So, if we are composed of two parts of our being: physical bodies and the non-material parts of our mind, will, and emotions, perhaps it is not too hard to imagine that Christ could be both God and man and that these two natures somehow work together in perfect unity and harmony. 

Again, all this is beyond our mental ability to understand how Christ has two natures.  But then God doesn’t call us to try to understand it, He simply calls us to accept it and worship Christ as the perfect God-man, who can do things no other being in this world can ever do.  Jesus is unique, and He is unique because He is a perfect God-man who has a unique role in securing our redemption.