Seven hundred years before the birth of Christ it was prophesied: Bethlehem Ephratah . . . out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting. (Micah 5:2) This tells us two things about the birth of Jesus. Firstly, He was to be born in Bethlehem. Secondly, He did not begin when he was born in Bethlehem, but he began long ago. This is confirmed by Christ's words when He prayed: thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. (John 17:24) So His birth of Mary was not when He began, but when He: came down from heaven. (John 6:38)
I believe that before Jesus came down from heaven He had a supernatural body, which was transformed into a weak natural body of flesh and blood for the thirty-three years He lived on earth. Then at His resurrection, or ascension, He was transformed back to His former supernatural glory.
Many Scriptures testify that Jesus is the Son of God. The gospel writer said: the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. (Mark 1:1) John the Baptist, recognising the sign of the Spirit descending upon Jesus in the form of a dove, said: And I saw and bear record that this is the Son of God (John 1:34). Jesus commended His apostle Peter for declaring: Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. (Matthew 16:16)
More importantly there is Jesus' own witness to His Sonship. Jesus says of Himself: the Father loveth the Son. (John 3:35) After His resurrection, Jesus says: These things saith the Son of God (Revelation 2:18). He asked the blind man whom He healed: Dost thou believe on the Son of God . . . Thou hast both seen him and it is he that talketh with thee. (John 9:35,37)
It was because of Jesus claim to be the Son of God that they crucified Him, as we read in Mark 14:61-64: the High Priest asked Him . . . Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I am . . . Then the high priest . . . saith . . . Ye have heard the blasphemy.
The Jews were enraged that Jesus claimed to be God's Son, because they knew that He was claiming deity for Himself: Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he . . . said . . . that God was His Father, making himself equal with God. (John 5:18) Perhaps it could be said that this equality is in terms of quality and derivation, rather than quantity, for Jesus said: my Father is greater than I. (John 14:28)
Most importantly God the Father bore witness to Jesus' Sonship: And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. (Matthew 3:17).
That Jesus was designated the Son of God in a very different sense to that by which Christians are called children of God, is clear from the word ‘only’ in John 3:16: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.
Although God sometimes refers to men as his sons, because He created us and cares for us, we were not originally sons like Jesus in the full sense of the word, because we were created by God, rather than being born of God. In the same way that a Prince is royalty because he is the king's son, Christ is deity because He is God's Son.
What does it mean to be a son? It means that the substance of the son was derived from the substance of his parents. And so, if Jesus Christ is the Son of God, we must hold to the doctrine that the substance of Jesus Christ was derived from the substance of God his Father. All true Christians believe this is true of Christ’s Spirit, which was derived of the Spirit of His Father. But what of Christ’s body, as the Father is Spirit, not matter (John 4:24)? I believe that to say, Christ’s body was merely created, diminishes His deity somewhat. Therefore I seek a theory that will see Christ’s body born of God’s Spirit.
To construct such a theory I speculate that there is a relationship between our body and our spirit, such that the spirit defines what the body will be like. Perhaps a Spirit with a love of music will coalesce with a body with a brain in which the musical part of the mind is enlarged, although the correlation may be more detailed than this. But we are created beings, our bodies from our parent’s genes, (derived originally from dust,) and our spirit from God (Eccl 12:7). These are created separately and joined soon after conception.
But a somewhat different process must have formed Christ’s body, if it is to be not merely a creation. It may be that Christ’s Spirit was born of the Father first. And then that Spirit of Christ defined not only what His body should be like, but also, like a template, how that body should be constructed. This is possible because the Father has: given to the Son to have life in himself. (John 5:26) and Christ has the power to: transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of His power. (Phil 3:21 NASB)
Such a process could have constructed the first cell of His body, which then grew by subdivision according to its DNA, in a similar fashion to how our bodies grow. Alternatively the Spirit template could have constructed his entire supernatural body, which then stored the information of continuance in the DNA as a second stage.
So Christ’s physical body could have been born of His Spirit, which was born of God. The deity of the Son of God, both bodily and spiritually, is then apparent. So too is his perfection.
Scriptural evidence of the deity of Christ is also found in Hebrews 1:8 (quoted from Psalm 45:6) where God the Father says of Christ: Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever. God the Father is not worshipping the Son or saying the Son is the Father's God. Rather He is stating the deity of His Son. The apostle Thomas recognised the deity of Christ when he exclaimed to Christ: My Lord and my God. (John 20:28) Jesus Christ is God of men.
One of the reasons the Jews could not accept Jesus' deity was that they thought He had begun when He was born of Mary. But, when claiming His deity, He told the Jews that He was alive before Abraham, saying: Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad. Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. Jesus, by using the words ‘I AM’ instead of ‘was’ is using the name of God, which was revealed to Moses in Exodus 3:13-14. The Jews thinking that Jesus had blasphemed by using God's name for Himself reacted furiously. According to John 8:59: then took they up stones to cast at him.
We can learn of Christ before his birth from Proverbs 8. This chapter personalises ‘Wisdom’ with Proverbs 8:12 referring to: I Wisdom. Later in this chapter the One called ‘Wisdom’ says: my delights were with the sons of men. (Verse 31) An abstract concept such as wisdom cannot have emotions; only a being has emotions. Therefore where wisdom is speaking, it must be a being, and the only being could be, is the Word, which later became: Christ . . . the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:24)
And the Word or Wisdom says: before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was . . . I was brought forth. (Proverbs 8:22-24) This is speaking of the Word before Christ was incarnate and before the earth was. During the creation, Wisdom or the Word says: I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him. (Proverbs 8:30)
The Word , as Wisdom, speaking of His fellowship with His Father says: The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way. (Proverbs 8:22) In the beginning there was only God the Father, and the Word, who was spiritual only.
What was God like in the beginning, before Christ was incarnate: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:14) According to Leon Morris in his commentary on John's gospel, where John says: In the beginning was the Word, the verb translated ‘was’, is most naturally understood to imply eternal existence. That is: the Word continually was.
It is said that: the Word was with God. The Greek word translated ‘with’ literally means ‘toward’. The Word, facing the totality of God's Spirit, drew its life from its immersion in the rest of God. The Word could not act independently, because it was facing inwardly and not outwardly. The Word was almost incorporated into the being of the Father.
It says: the Word was God. This does not necessarily describe the unity of God; it could be descibing the deity of the Word.
Then the Word became a separate being, and conformed to humanity, when: the Word was made flesh. (John 1:14) We need not assume that this happened when Jesus was born in Bethlehem. I think that it is more logical to believe that Christ was clothed with supernatural flesh, when he was born in heaven.
Today Christ has close fellowship with the Father: the only begotten Son . . . is in the bosom of the Father. (John 1:18) But now Christ is before God, or in his presence, rather than being toward God, or in his substance.
Words express one's thoughts. That Christ is called the Word of God, implies that God the Father's own nature is expressed through Christ. Christ is declared to be: the image of the invisible God. (Colossians 1:15) This is why Jesus could say: he that hath seen me hath seen the Father. (John 14:9)
Words also express one's wisdom. And it was the wisdom of God, that the Word, whose delights were with the sons of men, became a man.
Before Christ came down from heaven to be born of Mary, He is described as: being in the form of God. (Philippians 2:5,6) So He had great glory. His earthly weakness, when He walked on this earth for thirty-three years was only a temporary state, and He was restored to His former glory at the ascension. We learn this from His prayer just before His crucifixion when He prayed: And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. (John 17:5)
But what form did the glory of the Son of God take before the world was? There was the spiritual glory of which we learned in the last section; then there is also a natural glory which followed. For example, when he was seen by Daniel, before his birth of Mary, he appeared to be: like the Son of man. (Daniel 7:13) I believe that not only before Abraham was, but also before Adam, he was as he appeared to Daniel. One of these glories is refered to when Jesus prays, that His future glory, will be as His past glory. When we see Christ in his future glory, he will be as he appeared to John in Revelation after his ascension; and this appearance is the same as when he appeared to Daniel as the son of man.
Although His time on earth is referred to as: the days of his flesh (Heb 5:7) this does not deny His indwelling a body, but not composed of weak human flesh, both before and after His days on earth. But this body is not of the same nature as Adam, as speaking of such nature it is written: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 15:50)
So Christ’s body must be of a different kind of flesh. It must be of a different chemistry. And in addition to this is, I believe that it is supernaturally enhanced by atomic and cellular miniaturisation, so that it contains many times as many miniature atoms, molecules, and cells as our present bodies. This miniaturisation would not have been applicable when He walked on earth.
Some think it contradictory for Christ to have both the nature of God and that of man, as God is all-powerful and man is weak. They therefore, without scriptural support, hypothesise two natures within the Son: that of God and that of man. But although we are weak, I would argue that what fundamentally defines ‘man’ in a broader sense is not weakness, but a range of qualities that may be possessed either in weakness or in power. So Christ’s power does not mean that he has not the nature of a man, but only that that nature is vastly enhanced.
Of course some of the qualities that men possess in common with Jesus Christ are also possessed in common with God the Father. God did not say to His Son, Let us make man in your image, but rather: Let us make man in our image. (Gen 1:26)
But one quality possessed by only the Father is omniscience. Only the Father knows the end of every matter from the beginning. The Son only knows what the Father has revealed to him. So He, like us, works towards goals, by obeying scriptural principles and trusting in His Father.
Emotionally men need a father. Jesus Christ also needs His Father, saying to Mary the eternal truth: I ascend unto My Father. (John 20:17) Men think and plan. So also does Jesus Christ.
I believe that there is a correlation between those qualities that men possess in weakness, and that Jesus Christ possesses in power, that makes Him both God and man. Man because of those qualities which He possesses, and God because of the power with which He possesses those qualities. There is no need to think of Him as having two natures. He has one unified nature, whence His glorified body fully contains His glorious Spirit: in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. (Col 2:9)
(Christ’s deity, properly, springs from His derivation of God His Father, rather than from His power. Even when weak as a babe in Bethlehem, He was still God, while God the Father temporarily took some of Christ’s roles in upholding the world. (Heb 1:3))
We have learned that Jesus was called God. Here we learn that Jesus is also called man. And in the eternal future He will have the nature, both of God and of man. It is commonly thought that Jesus became a man because Adam was a man. But I believe that this is the reverse of the truth, that Adam was made a natural man because Jesus was in the form of a supernatural man.
In His glorious supernatural body, Christ appeared to men in the Old Testament. The Son of God appeared to Moses in the burning bush: God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses . . . I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God. (Exodus 3:4-6)
We know that this was an appearance of the Son of God rather than God the Father because God the Father, speaking of His own face said to Moses: Thou canst not my face: for there shall no man shall see me, and live. (Exodus 33:20) Therefore when the bible says that men saw God's face or had opportunity to see Him, it must be that they saw the Son of God.
The appearance of the glorious Son of God to Daniel, was written down: I lifted my eyes and looked, and behold, a certain man clothed in linen, whose waist was girded with gold of Uphaz! his body was like beryl, his face like the appearance of lightning, his eyes like torches of fire, his arms and feet like burnished bronze in colour, and the sound of his words like the voice of a multitude. (Daniel 10:5-9 NKJV) This must have been an appearance of the Son of God, because of the similarity of this appearance to that of Christ to His apostle John on the isle of Patmos (Revelation 1). The similarity of these two appearances indicate that Christ’s state before the incarnation was the same as that after the ascension.
Although Adam was made in the image of God in the sense that he bore a similarity to Jesus, the Son of God/Son of Man, he was as far short of the glory of the Son of God, as a black and white photo is inferior to the real thing.
In Matthew 22:41-45 we read: Jesus asked them, saying, What think ye of Christ? whose son is he? They said unto him, The son of David. He saith unto them, How then doth David in Spirit call Him Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool? If David then call him Lord, how is he his Son? It was true that Jesus' parents were both descended from David, but if Christ was descended from David, how could He have been alive when David lived, 1,000 years before Christ was born?
The only answer to this question is that the child born of Mary, was not a new person, but was rather a transformation of an existing person. Thus: the Word . . . dwelt among us (John 1:1,14), when Jesus was transformed from the power of a body of glorious supernatural flesh, to the weakness of a body of natural flesh like ours, at Bethlehem, two thousand years ago.
Now we can understand how the mighty God could be born as a child according to Isaiah 9:6 written about 750 BC: unto us a Child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
It is clear, that for the Son of God to descend from heaven and be born as a child, would require a very special birth. Neither Joseph nor Mary could contribute any genes to Jesus, as new genes would make a new person, and then destroy the continuity of the body of the pre-existent Christ, with the child to be born.
I will now show how the Scriptures teach this of the birth of Christ, of which it is recorded in Isaiah 7:14: Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. The name ‘Immanuel’ means ‘God with us’, and is therefore a prophecy of the birth of Christ according to Matthew 1:22,23.
Some have suggested that because the word translated ‘virgin’ in Isaiah 7:14, was also used to generally describe young unmarried women, we need not take it that the woman was a virgin. However, it seems pretty obvious to me that the reason young women were called virgins in those days was because they were. The virgin birth is said to be a sign from heaven. If the meaning of the word ‘virgin’ is diminished, the birth no longer becomes a sign, and the prophetic verse becomes meaningless. The New Testament makes it perfectly clear that Mary was a virgin until after the birth of Jesus. For example it says of Joseph, Mary's husband: Then Joseph . . . took unto him his wife: and knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn Son: and he called his name JESUS. (Matthew 1:24,25)
Many Christians believe that Mary contributed genes to Jesus, but the bible nowhere says this. To the contrary, in Hebrews 7:3, where the similarities of Christ and Melchizedek are listed, this is explicitly denied: Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God. If Christ is said to be without mother and without descent or genealogy, Mary must have been a surrogate mother. Yet His body grew in the womb like ours, being nourished from His mother: God sent forth his Son, made of a woman. (Gal 4:4) But He began with the genetic code derived from that of His glorious supernatural body, thus preserving continuity.
The doctrine of assumed humanity, that Christ only had a Spirit before being born of Mary, is not necessary. And to say that His body was created from Mary’s genes, denies the perfection of Christ’s body if Mary was not immaculate. And it would deny His deity even if she were.
Now we can understand the announcement by the angel Gabriel to Mary, that she was the virgin chosen to bear the Christ child: the angel said unto her . . . behold, thou shall conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest . . . Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. (Luke 1:30-35) So by the power of God's Spirit, Jesus Christ's glorious supernatural body was transformed into a weak natural body, which then grew within the womb of Mary.
Further argument that Jesus did not receive genes from either Mary or Joseph is found in 1 Corinthians 15:47: The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. This Scripture contrasts Adam (the man of dust,) with Christ, the Lord from heaven. It reads more soundly if we take it that Jesus was a man in heaven, and not just a Spirit, before he descended from heaven.
What then of the Scripture that Christ was: made of the seed of David according to the flesh. (Romans 1:3) I will explain the incarnation by giving my theory of the nature of the resurrection, in reverse. Firstly Christ's supernature was transformed to the natural state, in which state he had the body of a man but with a different and superior chemistry. Then secondly, not by fertilisation of an egg, but by the inclusion of the genetic matter from the nucleus of one of Christ's cells, perhaps a heart cell, within the cytoplasm of one of Mary's cells, evacuated of its nucleus, a new body was grown within the womb of Mary, with the same chemistry as Mary's human body, but according to Christ's original genetic pattern.
( To explain the biology, DNA in the nucleus determines the pattern or sequence of amino acids that combine in the cytoplasm to make the proteins that comprise our bodies with their characteristic chemistry. DNA is copied in the nucleus to messenger RNA, which migrates out of the nucleus into the cytoplasm carrying the genetic message. In the cytplasm are ribosomes, at which the proteins are assembled. The alignment of the amino acids at the ribosomes, according to the messenger RNA sequence, is by means of another type of RNA called transfer RNA. This transfer RNA has receptors two ways: one way to the messenger RNA that determines the pattern; and the other way to the amino acids that express that pattern. In this way the transfer RNA associates a sequence of three links of messenger RNA with a specific amino acid. By combining the amino acids into chains called proteins, the DNA is expressed. Proteins are the building block of our bodies, which give it its characteristic of being a muscle cell or a brain cell etc.)
Christ's original, and final, body has different types of superior amino acids and proteins to the present human body, but for about thirty years, Christ shared our chemistry. The construction of this body was by Christ's DNA and messenger RNA, but with Mary's amino acids and transfer RNA. So Christ's genetic pattern was expressed in weak human protein chemistry.
So the nature of Christ’s body for the thirty-three years He walked on earth, was weak human like us. This is proved in Hebrews 2:14: Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself (Jesus) likewise took part of the same. But this was only for a time, and for the purpose: that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil. So, temporarily, Jesus had a body just like ours.
This is borne out by His human experiences. For example: he was hungry. And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find anything thereon. (Mark 11:12,13) When He ate, the elements of the food became the elements of his body. Weariness is another human experience and: Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well. (John 4:6)
And because His Spirit was constrained by that body, His soul became weak like ours. He knew fear, as in the garden of Gethsemane. He knew joy and sorrow. He felt compassion and anger, although only in a perfect way. His wisdom and knowledge, preserved in His Spirit, may have been inaccessible to Him on earth, just as a child, whose spirit is equal to an adult, has less mental powers.
Jesus' transformation at birth may have been like the reverse of His transfiguration when: Jesus taketh Peter, James and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart, and was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light. (Matthew 17:1,2) He then returned to a weak natural body when He descended from the mountain.
It is very important to have a good understanding of both the deity and the humanity of Jesus Christ. Even in the days of the apostle John, heresies had arisen contesting both doctrines. So serious were these heresies that John makes the true doctrine a test of faith for a Christian. Although some of my previous discussion is somewhat speculative, and may be argued against, some beliefs are essential:
Firstly, belief in the deity of Christ is essential, that He is derived from the substance of God, for 1 John 4:15 states: Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.
Secondly, belief in the humanity of Christ is essential, that He shared our weak nature for thirty-three years, for 1 John 4:2,3 states: Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist.