The Incarnation - Jesus Our Emmanuel The New Testament understanding of who Jesus is: fully God and fully man. This belief is the distinctive sign of true Christian faith. The baby born in Bethlehem was God. The Word was with God (Jn 1:1a). In relation to God the Father, the Word is a distinct Person. And the Word was God (Jn 1:1b). He was not a creature but divine in himself. All things were made through him (Jn 1:3). Here we see the Word creating. In him was life (Jn 1:4). No creature has life in himself except God and we have life only through him. The baby born at Bethlehem was God made man. Many heresies involved either reducing Christ's full humanity or claiming that aspects of his divine nature (such as many of his divine attributes) ceased to exist. In the face of these heresies, the fourth ecumenical council at Chalcedon in 451 stated, "He did not lose any elements of his deity but was now God plus all that man is" (see CCC par. 467). Jesus Christ was one person with a divine nature and a human nature. (It helps me to think of him as the Word who personally took to himself the human body of Jesus rather than a human being who also happens to have a divine nature.) While on earth he learned what it was like to be a created being. For we have not a High Priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning (Heb 4:15). As a man he could be tempted by Satan, one of his own creatures. He was made like us (see Heb 2:17), susceptible to temptation, so that he could help us when we are tempted. (We don't have to go it alone, he didn't go through that for nothing. He wants us to approach him boldly so that he can minister mercy and grace when we are tempted and when we sin.)

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