God In Flesh Appearing - Understanding The Incarnation

God in Flesh Appearing
Understanding the Incarnation The center point of history was when the One who was God became flesh and was born as a baby to live among us. We call this the incarnation. Php_2:1-30 contains perhaps one of the clearest presentations and descriptions of the incarnation of Jesus.

5 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped (Php_2:5-6).

While John 1:1 tells us of the One who existed in the beginning and who was God, now we are given to understand that the mode of that existence was not something less than God. He existed in the form of God.

Jesus had an existence prior to His birth. We cannot say that about ourselves. Until we were conceived in the womb, we had no earlier existence. But Jesus did. He existed in the form of God. He is the One who was in the beginning with God because He was God (John 1:1).

Jesus had every right to continue in the form which He held from all eternity. He had been in the beginning with God and He was God, yet He determined not to continue to grasp and hold to the form of that equality.

...6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. (Php_2:6-7).

Jesus Christ made an active choice not to remain equal with God. He did not regard His equality with God as a thing to be retained. This choice involved the emptying of Himself. What does this mean? In what sense did Christ “empty” Himself? Several views have been presented. The Kenotic View.
This term comes from the Greek phrase in Php_2:7 that says Christ emptied Himself. The Greek word for “empty” is kenow. This is the view that says Christ emptied Himself of His relative attributes (omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence) while retaining His imminent attributes (love, holiness, truth). This view has certain accompanying problems. The Scriptures teach that Christ knew all men (John 2:24-25), that He demonstrated His power over nature, demons, and death, and that He was able to see Nathanael from afar (John 1:46). These all reflect a continuation of those relative attributes of God.

Furthermore, if God divested Himself of that which makes Him God, then He ceased to be god when He became incarnate. Since Christ continues to be incarnate, He is no longer God and therefore no longer answers prayers. The Lutheran View.
The Lutheran Church teaches that the divine attributes of Christ communicated themselves to the human attributes. This is the basis for seeing the real physical presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. The Divine attributes of Jesus|c (Communication)|The Human attributes of Jesus| The problem with this view is that it does not deal with the limitations that Jesus experienced as a man.

He increased in wisdom and stature (Luke 2:52).
There were things He did not know (Matthew 24:36).

God has no such limitations. He cannot be hungry or tired. He cannot grow in knowledge or wisdom. He cannot die upon a cross. The Reformed View.
The view of the Reformers is that the second member of the Trinity took His human shape from His mother, affected by a supernatural virgin birth. The human nature that was taken was sanctified in its very inception and thus kept from the pollution of sin (Hebrews 9:14). The Divine Attributes of Jesus|c|Continue as one Person|b|The Human Attributes of Jesus| This view is reflected in the language of the Westminster Confession of Faith when it describes Jesus... The Son of God, the second person in the Trinity, being very and eternal God, of one substance and equal with the Father, did, when the fulness of time was come, take upon Him man's nature, with all the essential properties, and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin; being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the virgin Mary, of her substance. So that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion. (WCF 8:2).

How does this help us to understand the “limiting” verses relating to the knowledge and the weakness that Jesus experienced? Buswell suggests that the God-man experienced two levels of consciousness in the way something can trigger your memory so that you can call to mind your third grade teacher whom you had forgotten. In the same way, Jesus was consciously man, but there was another level in which He was, at the same time, fully God.
Thus, in the same passage in which Jesus admits that He does not know the day or the hour of His return (Matthew 24:36), He goes on to place Himself on a level above the angels.
Notice the progression. It goes from man to angels to the Son and then to the Father. The writer to the Hebrews spends the entire first chapter of his epistle pointing out all the ways in which Jesus is better than the angels.