In John 1:14, we read, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as if the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
The plain meaning of these words, “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,” is that our divine Saviour really took human nature upon Him, in order to save sinners.
He really became a man like us in all things, sin only excepted. Like us, He was born of a woman, though born in a miraculous manner.
Like us, He grew from infancy to boyhood, and from boyhood to man’s estate, both in wisdom and in stature (Luke 2:52). Like ourselves, He hungered, thirsted, ate, drunk, slept, was wearied, felt pain, wept, rejoiced, marveled, was moved to anger and to compassion.
Having become flesh, and taken a body, He prayed, read the Scriptures, suffered, being tempted, and submitted His human will to the will of God the Father.
And finally, in the same body, He really suffered and shed His blood, really died, was really buried, really rose again, and really ascended up into heaven.
And yet all this time He was God as well as man!
This union of two natures in Christ’s one Person is doubtless one of the greatest mysteries of the Christian religion. It needs to be carefully stated. It is just one of those great truths which are not meant to be curiously pried into, but to be reverently believed.
The Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, the very and eternal God, and of one substance with the Father, took man’s nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin of her substance, so that two whole and perfect natures, that is to say, the Godhead and the manhood, were joined together in one Person, never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, very God and very man.
This is a most valuable declaration. This is, as we read in Titus 2:8, “sound speech, that cannot be condemned”.
