Quotes about Incarnation

Forgiveness is the reason for the crucifixion, and the crucifixion is the reason for the Incarnation.

The incarnation of Christ is a major stumbling block for Muslims.

Discipleship isn't a random assortment of facts and propositions and behaviors, discipleship is something that is you to the core and is completely incarnated in you.

The point [of the gospels] is not whether Jesus is God, but what God is doing in and through Jesus. What is this embodied God up to?

The New Testament says the Word became flesh. Sacramental theology is all about discovering, in fear and trembling, how to allow that Word to go on becoming flesh.

14And the Word became flesh, and lived among us. We gazed upon his glory, glory like that of the father's only son, full of grace and truth.

And with all this we lift up our eyes and realize that when the New Testament tells us the meaning of the cross, it gives us not a system, but a story; not a theory, but a meal and an act of humble service; not a celestial mechanism for punishing sin and taking people to heaven, but an earthly story of a human Messiah who embodies and incarnates Israel's God and who unveils his glory in bringing his kingdom to earth as in heaven.

We in the West, perhaps ever since Chalcedon or even Nicaea, have read as the main text what the gospels treated as presupposition. In all four gospels, Jesus is the embodiment ("incarnation") of Israel's God. But this is not the gospels' main theme. Not even, I think, John's. The main theme is that, in and through Jesus the Messiah, Israel's God reclaims his sovereign rule over Israel and the world.

As we shall see, it is only when we take fully into account the gospel writers' belief that Jesus was involved in the ultimate battle against the ultimate forces of evil that we can begin to see how their combination of kingdom and cross—and, looking wider, of incarnation, kingdom, cross, and resurrection—makes sense.

To see apologetics only as technique is an insult to the gospel and to the high importance of what God is saying and doing in Jesus. From the humblest pun to the greatest double entendre of all time—the incarnation—the Bible is full of stories, parables, drama, ploys and jests that serve the ultimate purpose of the gospel and are shaped by the truth and logic of the message of the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ.

But I must see to it that the Son of God is exhibited in my human flesh. "Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit" (1 Corinthians 6:19), that is, your body is the Bethlehem of God's Son.

Yet this grand and glorious God, for the purpose of redemption, becomes a man. The untraversable line between Creator and creature is crossed. The Word becomes flesh. The feet of God touch earth! The voice of God is heard on earth! The Lord comes as the Second Adam, the Word of Life, the Final Priest, and the Sacrificial Lamb. He satisfies God's requirements, he atones for God's anger, and he defeats death.