The NIV 365 Day Devotional

How Could Jesus Be Both Fully God and Fully Human?

The belief that Jesus is both fully God and fully human is called the doctrine of the incarnation. It’s a mystery to us, and we may never truly understand everything about it, but there are a few things the Bible does make clear.

John 1 describes Jesus as the logos, a Greek word that means ‘‘the Word.’’ John says that Jesus, the Word, was not only with God in the beginning, but that he is God. John goes on to say in verse 14, ‘‘The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.’’ The phrase ‘‘became flesh’’ tells us Jesus didn’t just look human, he really was human, with all our weaknesses and limitations. Jesus has always been God. From the time Jesus was conceived, he was both human and divine.

Because Jesus was fully human, he experienced all the things we experience— including birth and growth, hunger and thirst, weariness and rest, as well as physical and emotional pain. As a child, he had to be fed and cared for by his mother. He wept at the death of his friend Lazarus. In the Garden of Gethsemane, he sweated blood as he contemplated his coming death. But in the midst of his fear and suffering, he resisted temptation and experienced excruciating pain on the cross for us. But through all of this Jesus was still fully God.

Jesus had to experience every part of our humanity in order to heal us from the disease of sin. He embraced our frailty and vulnerability, our suffering and pain. When our weakness is united with God’s strength in Jesus, we can be rescued from the destructive power of sin. The incarnation is what allowed Jesus to carry our sins to the cross and die, and it’s what allowed him to rise again as a new creation.

God became human in Jesus because he loves us and wants a way for us to be free from the pain and suffering of sin, so we can spend eternity with him in a loving relationship”

Taken from The NIV Telos Bible.