Christ, the God-Man

Born of Mary and the Holy Spirit, and just like the dual wave-particle nature of light, Christ is the God-Man.

December’s Awakening, Day 23

The fact is that the greatest mystery of all—the incarnation—comes at the very beginning and is the central reason why we believe in God. We cannot explain it: there is the beginning of the mystery of faith. But because of the evidence neither can we explain it away: there is the beginning of the rationality of faith.

 —Os Guinness 

The Only Begotten Word of God has saved us by putting on our likeness. Suffering in the flesh, and rising from the dead, he revealed our nature as greater than death or corruption. What he achieved was beyond the ability of our condition, and what seemed to have been worked out in human weakness and by suffering was really stronger than men and a demonstration of the power that pertains to God.

 —Cyril of Alexandria

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2:5–11 NIV

            The incarnation, God becoming man and remaining both fully God and fully man, is a difficult concept to understand. One simplistic explanation is that Jesus was fully man through the physical genetics of the virgin Mary, and fully God through the spirit genetics of the Holy Spirit. Another way to look at Christ’s God-Man duality is to look at the nature of light. Light was the first thing God created and God is often equated with light. Light, matter, energy, and time are all interrelated, and light itself has a dual nature. Light is both wave and particle, inseparable, both natures always present but we can only isolate and demonstrate one nature at a time, never both natures at the same time.

Light demonstrates itself as a wave via reflection, refraction, and diffraction, and white light or visible light is made up of all the individual wavelengths of light which each have a specific color associated with them. The color of an object that we see is the wavelengths of light it reflects while the other wavelengths are absorbed. The rainbow or prism effect is light bending or refracting through rain droplets, each wavelength bending at a slightly different angle and separating out as distinct colors.  

The particle nature of light is the energy packet, the photon, which delivers its energy to a substance in this discrete packet of energy form. In photosynthesis, the chlorophyll pigment molecule absorbs these photons and becomes the mediator for all the chemical reactions which ensue to form carbohydrates. The retinal cones of the eye work in a similar fashion, photons exciting the various visual pigments creating a neural signal, with each cone-type (red, green, blue) being sensitive to specific wavelengths, giving us a perception of color—particle and wave inseparable.   

Christ as the God-Man is just like the wave-particle nature of light. Christ was fully God and fully man, inseparable, both always present, but each nature only shown or demonstrated when and how the Godhead saw fit. Christ always deferred to the Father. As a man, he was required to eat, drink, and sleep, and in every way function just as you and I except without sin as His divine nature was without sin, and that holiness completely permeated His humanity too. As God, He had the ability to forgive sin, perform every miracle, and accept worship. On every occasion and in every circumstance, Christ perfectly fulfilled the Father’s (and the Holy Spirit’s) will, never acting alone in His own divinity, and displayed accordingly, either His humanity or His divinity.