Dec 11, 2019

The True God Became True Man

1 Min Read

In this brief clip, W. Robert Godfrey examines how only God becoming one with us could pay the debt of sin.

Transcript

The great theological reflection on this is Anselm, late in his life, Archbishop of Canterbury in the Middle Ages, who wrote his great treatise Cur Deus Homo, "Why God Man?" Why did God become man? And his answer was that man owed the debt, but only God could pay it. And so, to be able both to pay the debt and to be the owner of the debt, God had to become man. That's a help. Why did God become man? Why was the Word made flesh? Because we, in our helplessness, could never help ourselves, because our debt only grew, and only the infinite God becoming one with us could pay the debt and rescue us and help us. And the difficulty of wrapping our minds around how the infinite becomes finite, how the divine becomes human, is something that the church and critics of the church have wrestled with. And it's good to wrestle with it. We'll talk a little bit about it. We'll try to see some of the depths of it, but how wonderful the Bible is in its ability to be simple. The Word, the Word that already was in the beginning, the Word that was with God, the Word that was God, the Word became flesh. That's the truth. That's the truth. The true God became true man. You've got to talk about these things carefully. The true God became true man as one person, and He had a name: Jesus.