ABBY TERESA BRANTON's Page

The Great Mystery of godliness which the Apostle Paul reminds us of is "God manifested in flesh" (I Timothy 3:16), and throughout the Bible, Christ is represented as a Person having two natures, one divine - the other human.  In His incarnation He became the possessor of a true humanity in union with His eternal deity.  As God, He did not enter a human body or join Himself to man.  He became Man, that is, He belonged to the stock of humanity when, as the Word, He became flesh (John 1:14).  Of the unity of two natures in one Person, Dr. Louis Berkhof writes:

• "Christ has a human nature, but He is not a human person.  The Person of the Mediator is the unchangeable Son of God.  In the Incarnation He did not change into a human person; neither did He adopt a human person.  He simply assumed, in addition to His divine nature, a human nature, which did not develop into an independent personality, but became personal in the Person of the Son of God."

At His incarnation Christ added to His already existing divine nature a human nature, and became the God- Man.  At our regeneration, there was added to our already existing human nature, a divine nature and we thus became partakers of the divine nature (II Peter 1:4).  Thus, like Christ, every true Christian is divine-human.