A. Christ, the Son of God, became man, by taking to himself a true body and a reasonable soul, being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and born of her, yet without sin.

Having established that Christ is true God and true man, we must now focus more narrowly on what it means that THE SON OF GOD BECAME MAN. And at every point we must keep in mind what so many of the early church fathers said—What Jesus did not assume, he could not redeem. For some people, the struggle there is to consider how the body is being redeemed; while for others, the expression “rational soul” is unintelligible. For still others, there is no suspicion of either body or soul when it comes to our own being renewed. The issue is simply a lack of consideration about the humanity of Christ. We spend so much time upholding the deity of Christ against Muslims or Mormons or some other group, that we overemphasize ways in which that divinity must have been present or all-encompassing in the life or work of Jesus.

His Nature 

It says that this condescension of the Word becoming flesh was BY TAKING TO HIMSELF. Let’s pause there because this language of either “taking” or “assuming” has always functioned, in classical theology, as one notch closer to a logically precise meaning, since “becoming” seems to suggest an alteration in the divine. 

In keeping with the covenantal rationale of this section, the author of Hebrews gives us another statement of necessity—this one giving us another answer to, “What specifically about Christ’s human nature is necessary for salvation?” 

“Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil … For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham” (Heb. 2:14, 16).

The human nature of Christ is for our “help” and specifically a help out of the realm of death. We can add another passage later on in Hebrews: “Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, ‘Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me’” (Heb. 10:5).

This brings us to the next words in our answer: BY TAKING TO HIMSELF A TRUE BODY AND REASONABLE SOUL. Now what about that expression? 

The Westminster Divines used this as a prooftext. “Then he said to them, ‘My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me’” (Matt. 26:38). The distinction was between a human soul versus the angelic above and the merely animal below. Our own aversion to words that orbit around “reason” is really what causes pietistic Evangelicals to stumble here. We ought to also remember the next verse in that account of the Garden of Gethsemane: “And going a little farther he fell on his face rand prayed, saying, ‘My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will"‘“ (v. 39). This is nothing less than the human will of Jesus submitted to the divine. Why? Because we did not and still need to. So Christ did this in our place.

Again, what our Redeemer would redeem, he must take on himself. In other words, will bodies be redeemed? Then our Substitute must have a body. Will minds and wills and emotions be renewed? Then Christ was designed in his humanity to have the perfect version of these. This means that the mind, affections, will, and body all had to be offered up to God in perfect obedience: 

“Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’” When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second. And by that will ewe have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb. 10:7-10).

For Bavinck, Christ assuming “not only a true but also a complete human nature.” Orthodoxy speaks of Christ being fully human, and that he is. But what if Christ alone is fully human and the rest of us are still becoming? Whatever is essential to the idea of Man, in the divine decree, must include that which is final; and of the final, that which is intellectual and moral, that which is spiritual and bodily, that which is individual and communal.

His Conception 

First, BEING CONCEIVED BY THE POWER OF THE HOLY GHOST. 

“And Mary said to the angel, ‘How will this be, since I am a virgin?’ And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God’” (Lk. 1:34-35).

Once the divine cause is granted, there is still another human nature that is a stumbling block for many, and that is of Jesus’ mother: IN THE WOMB OF THE VIRGIN MARY. 

It is that idea of the communicatio idiomatum that enables us to speak of Mary as his mother without confusing the divine with the human—in other words, without elevating Mary to divine status. 

The Incarnation, as a miracle, is no more improbable than creation itself. As Bavinck put it, 

“Those who consider the incarnation impossible must, on further reflection, also at some point deny creation. Those who accept the latter have fundamentally lost the right to combat the former … we must add that if God was able to create (and could reveal himself to) beings essentially different from him, then he must also be able to become human. For while the incarnation is certainly different from all other revelation, it is also akin to it: it is its climax, crown, and completion.”

His Sinlessness 

Going back to the problems of Jesus being carried in Mary’s womb, it is also wrongly assumed that this somehow contaminates his human nature. So our answer follows through with the two propositions in one—BORN OF HER, YET WITHOUT SIN. Naturally the issue is not just about physical space or nearness, but about the transmission of the sinful nature given that he is, at least, a product of Mary’s line, even if not of Joseph’s. But once again, if we grant the miracle, what we are granting is an act of creation. And the moment you grant that, there is no fundmental difference between that activity upon the human nature of Christ and the original human nature of Adam.

So was he made this way? Yes. In the sense that God created his human nature without sin: that is, without both Adam's sin nature or his guilt.

Again, because Adam’s sin and ours implies a double disease, Christ brings a double cure. We not only need forgiveness for all of our sins. We need a positive righteousness before God. This is what Jesus provided for us by living a life of perfect obedience to God’s law. In all this, “Christ became to us … righteousness” (1 Cor. 1:30; cf. Gal. 4:4-5, Rom. 5:18-19, 2 Cor. 5:21).

There was a subjective and objective dimension of Christ in our place as man. Subjectively, this is how we can answer the question of whether or not God understands—whether he has really been in the place we find ourselves. 

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15). 

But also objectively, a few places show us that in our place he was perfect: “For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens” (Heb. 7:26). Other passages clearly teach the sinlessness of Jesus: “He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth” (1 Pet. 2:22). And in one of the verses we look at for the imputation of righteousness, 2 Cor. 5:21, we can easily overlook what it claims about his sinlessness. Paul uses these words, that he “knew no sin.” Finally in 1 John 3:5 it says, “You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.”

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1. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, III:297.

2. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, III:277, 78.