“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14; NKJV)
The awesome truth that the Word, the great God who always was (John 1:1-3), united Himself with flesh is truly mysterious and amazing. It's hard for us to wrap our minds around it. Yet here it is recorded by a man of God who was moved by the Spirit of God to write it down for us just exactly as God wanted it written.
In recent weeks I've been getting acquainted with facebook abbreviations and I must say they are handy in communicating quickly. One of the most common ones is lol, laugh out loud. Yeah, I know, most of you are familiar, but just in case.... And there's BFN, bye for now. And LYL, love you lots. And God loves us a lot!
In the spirit of fb (facebook), let me introduce HU & K. And I'm certainly not making light of what these letters represent. But isn't it helpful and edifying when a couple of words flood our minds with meaningful truth?
The HU stands for Hypostatic Union. These are the technical theological terms that have been utilized to present the truth of what happened when “the Word became flesh.” The term hypostatic presents the reality—as mysterious as it is—of God joining Himself with the human body of flesh like that which He created in the Person of Jesus of Nazareth. Hypostatic is from the Greek term hupostasis which draws attention to the natures united together in the one Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. A brief definition of the HU that represents what has been taught historically is this: The Lord Jesus Christ is undiminished deity united with true humanity, without mixture or confusion, in one Person forever. One writer has expanded upon this in stating, “Jesus' two natures are not 'mixed together,' nor are they combined into a new God-man nature. They are separate yet act as a unit in the one person of Jesus” (Matt Slick, “Jesus Two Natures: God and Man,” http://carm.org/jesus-two-natures ).
The Lord Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man united in one Person. And this, without a doubt, is a mysterious truth. But when we pause and think about what God did for us, even though we readily admit we cannot fully comprehend it, we should become overwhelmed by the awesomeness of it. He chose in eternity past, knowing all things and what would take place, to unite Himself with the very flesh He created so that He could serve us. Our great God, our Creator who has the ability to speak things into existence, chose to unite Himself with true humanity so that He could deliver us from sin and death and have victory over Satan and all evil. God chose to bring about the HU. He loves us that much!
This brings us to the K which represents the kenosis of Christ. The Greek verb form of the noun kenosis is used in Philippians 2:7 where it draws attention to how Christ “emptied” (NASB) Himself. When the Word became flesh He set aside the full and complete exercise of the function of His attributes as God to serve us. The context in which this word is found explains it:
“Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:6-8; NASB)
What an attitude Christ Jesus had! He became the servant of His creatures. He became our servant so that He could “humble Himself” and die in our place. And we are to have the same attitude in ourselves. We are called to lay down our life for others. How's that for a Christmas message? Jesus Christ was born to serve and die. And so may we serve one another and give our lives for each other.
May I remind you that we cannot do this on our own. We desperately need God's grace, the filling and enabling work of His Spirit, to apply this in our life.
May the HU and K be impressed upon our thoughts this Christmas and always. Why? Because the depth of our understanding of the Christ, who He is and what He has done for us, should cause us to love Him more and more. And we love Him because He first loved us (1 John 4:7-19).
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