Incarnation

In my previous post, I explained why Jesus had to be human. However, he also had to be God. Our God is so amazing that our finite minds struggle to understand who is. By becoming human in Jesus, God gave us a revelation of himself that our human minds can grasp. We can know God truly, because Jesus has revealed his character and nature to us.

Imagine a man who damaged the entrance to the hole of an ants’ nest by mistake when he is hoeing his garden. He had not known the nest was there, so he wanted to tell ants the ants that he cared about them, even though he has damaged the entrance to their place of safety.
Communicating with the ants is a nearly impossible task. The ants might hear his voice, but they would understand what he is saying. They might hear the noise, but they would not understand that human language carries meaning.

The ants would see the dark shadow of the man’s foot as it approached, so he was a source of fear. From their perspective, the garden he had created was a jungle in which they lived. They simply could not understand his care for the garden. The biggest animal they knew was a dangerous beetle that tried to eat them, so they would never understand the man’s kind nature.

Even if the man could discover the method by which the ants communicate with each other, it would not help him much, because this communication method would be capable of describing his love, honesty, knowledge, etc.

The only way that the man could communicate his character and personality to the ants would be to become an ant himself. He could then show them what he was really like. He could prove that the did not want to destroy them. He could show them that they could trust them.
The thought of a human becoming an ant is absurd, but it is what God has done in Jesus. He came as a human so that we could have a true understanding of his nature and character. This is why Jesus was God.

We cannot know God through human philosophy or human religion. We can know him through Jesus, because he came down to our level. We must shape our understanding of God by the revelation we received through Jesus’ words and actions. The only way to know God truly is through Jesus.