The Beautiful Paradox: God and Man

Dannah Gresh: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth says it really matters that Jesus is both God and man.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Without ever ceasing to be fully God, without laying aside any of His God-ness, Jesus took on, clothed Himself, in our human nature so that He could reconcile us to God. And if that doesn’t move you, nothing will.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Consider Jesus, for October 14, 2026. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Have you ever had trouble deciding with your spouse or with a friend where to go for lunch? Sometimes it’s hard to agree, isn’t it? Well, in the fifth century AD, hundreds of highly opinioned church leaders tackled a much more important problem. They clarified rich truths about Jesus.

Is He God? Is He human? That was the conundrum. Thankfully, those church leaders in the 400s studied their Bibles well. They helped weed out some wrong teaching about Jesus, and we get the benefit of their careful thinking, now more than a millennium and a half later. 

This month we’re considering Jesus here on Revive Our Hearts. Nancy’s here to help us think about the beautiful paradox of Jesus, the God/man, and what difference it makes in your life and mine. Let’s listen to something she shared in the series “Incomparable.”

Jesus: Fully God and Fully Man

Nancy: Within the first few hundred years after the life of Christ here on this earth, there were several controversies that arose within the church that had to do with the person and nature of Christ. Who was He really?

They were sorting this through and wanting to make sure they got it right, so I want to give you just a real quick church history lesson. This all took place within the first three or four hundred years after the life of Christ here on this earth.

First, there was a man named Arius. He was a teacher from Alexandria, Egypt, who believed that Christ was a highly exalted being, but He was a created being who was not Himself the eternal God. So he elevated Christ, but he said Christ was not fully God. That was a heresy that has perpetuated itself many times in many different ways over the past sixteen or seventeen hundred years, the Arian heresy.

Then there was a bishop in Laodicea whose name was Apollinaris. I’m not expecting you to remember this, but I just want you to get a glimpse of some of these streams and how these heresies evolved. This man agreed that Christ was indeed fully God.

But he couldn’t see how He could be both fully God and fully man, so he taught that Christ had a human body but not a human mind and spirit. Outside He looked like a man, had a human body, but inside He was fully and only God. So Arius said that Jesus was not fully God. Apollinaris, the second one, said that He was not fully man.

Then came along another popular preacher and bishop in Constantinople whose name was Nestorius. He affirmed that Jesus was fully God and fully man, but he thought that therefore Christ must be two persons in one body, one divine person and one human person. So he denied the unity of the two natures in one body.

Then the opposite issue or heresy arose in relation to how those two natures, divine and human, were related. A man named Eutyches, again a churchman, a teacher, denied the distinction of the two natures. He said that Christ had only one nature that was a mixture of human and divine. It wasn’t fully human; it wasn’t fully divine. It was a mixture of the two.

The Church Clarifies the Mystery of Christ

Now, in relation to each of these heresies, the church leaders met and convened what were called councils to clarify the truth about Jesus. Who was He—God? man? How does this all come together?

You cannot fault them for this being a tough assignment. We’re having a hard time wrapping our minds around some of this because it’s supernatural. It’s mystery. It’s not comprehensible to human beings with finite minds. But they went back to the Scripture and under the leadership of the Holy Spirit clarified these issues.

The final one of those councils dealing with who was Jesus convened in 451 AD. They met in a city called Chalcedon, which is in modern day Turkey, and they addressed these various issues and heresies. They came up with what is known as the Chalcedonian Creed, which since that time, though you may not be aware of it or familiar with it—since that time, that creed has been accepted by Catholic, Protestant, and orthodox churches as the biblical position on the person and the incarnation of Christ.

It’s a very important document. It’s not the Bible, but it takes the biblical teaching and summarizes it in one document. Now that document, the Chalcedonian Creed, can be summarized in four, important doctrinal statements about Christ. Let me give you those four statements.

• Number one: Christ is fully and completely divine—fully God.
• Number two: Christ is fully and completely human—fully God, fully man.
• Number three: The divine and human natures of Christ are distinct—they’re not one in the same.
• Number four: The divine and human natures of Christ are completely united in one person.

Why the Hypostatic Union Matters

That means there were two distinct natures, one human and one divine, united in one person, the person of Christ. This whole concept that Christ is fully God, fully man, has distinct human and divine natures, two natures that are united in one person—that concept came to be known by theologians (I’ll give you a fancy word here) it’s known as the hypostatic union of Christ, spelled just like it sounds, hypostatic union of Christ.

I won’t go into great detail about how all that emerged, but it is one of the most profound concepts in theology and one of the most important. This is what makes Christ incomparable, the incomparable Christ, the fact that He has two distinct natures—one human, one divine—that are united in one person.

He is not two persons. He is one person, fully God and fully man, the Son of God and the Son of Man. Again, this makes Him incomparable. There is no other “god” in the history of the universe that has ever become a man, and there is no other religious leader who could claim to be God. They could claim to be God, but they weren’t God.

Jesus is the God/man. So today and I want to take a deeper look at the two-fold nature of Christ.

Now, this is a little bit of tough sledding. I acknowledge that we are in some deep territory doctrinally.

But let me say that the goal of all this is not to be able to spout off terms like hypostatic union or to name these early church fathers. The goal is to see Christ, to get to know Him, to love Him, to be ravished by His beauty. As you do, you’ll find that sin is less alluring and that life’s pressures are less overwhelming when you see the greatness and the grandness of who Christ is.

I’m not saying that we can ever fully understand it because we can’t, but we need to at least affirm that this is true—Jesus, the God/man. This is a cardinal, foundational Christian doctrine, and as I’ve said, it’s something that our finite minds can no-way, no-how comprehend or explain. This is mystery, and we need to acknowledge that when we’re trying to explain it.

Have you tried to explain it to your four-year-old, how Jesus could be God and could be man? I’ve struggled trying to explain it to you. I’ve spent many hours over these last weeks trying to think through how to make this at least a bit comprehensible, but we’re dealing with mystery.

We’re dealing with things that are beyond our reach, and the secular world sees that as a cop-out. They say if you can’t explain it, it can’t be true, but the fact is, if we could understand this, if we could put Jesus in our little box that we could figure out, then He wouldn’t be amazing anymore. He wouldn’t be incomparable.

We shouldn’t be able to figure Him out completely. We have to take a lot of this by faith. But as we do, we marvel, and we worship. He really is the incomparable Christ.

Two Natures, One Person in Scripture

The concept of Christ having two natures in one person is affirmed in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Let’s look first at the Old Testament. For example, in Isaiah 9:6, we have what is, for many of us, a familiar Old Testament prophecy of the Messiah.

“For unto us a Child is born; unto us a Son is given” (NKJV). Now, here we see a reference, a veiled reference, 700 years before Christ was born, to the fact that He would be one Person. This is talking about one Person. This is not two different people, a child and a son. This is one person, but with two natures.

“A Child is born,” speaks of His which nature? His humanity. “A Son is given,” (from heaven) speaks of which nature? His deity, the fact that He is God. So a Child is born to the virgin Mary. A Son is given. This is the gift of God from heaven. That’s His deity.

You see the same concept—two natures, one person—in Galatians 4:4, “When the fullness of time had come,” this is the time we celebrate at Christmas, “God sent forth his Son,” the One He was talking about in Isaiah 9. He sent forth his Son, “Born of a woman,” two natures.

Son of God, He is God. He is equal or the same substance as God and born of a woman—His deity and His humanity. We’ve been looking at those. We looked at them separately earlier in this series. Now we’re looking at the two-fold nature of Christ at one time.

You see this concept, the two natures in one Person, affirmed in many of our great hymns. For example, one of the great hymns that we sing and one of the earliest Christmas carols ever written, “Come Thou Long-Expected Jesus,” it has this phrase, “Born a child and yet a king,” the two natures in one Person—born a child and yet a king.

This concept, two natures, one Person, is affirmed in many of the great confessions and creeds of our faith. For example, the Belgic Confession, written in 1561, says:

We confess that He is Very God and Very Man;
Very God by His power to conquer death and
Very Man that He might die for us.

Two natures; one Person.

Now, Jesus was always the divine Son of God. He was always equal with God. He was always of the same substance with the Father, before there was time, in eternity past.

But when He was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the virgin Mary, He took on a second nature, a human nature, and He did that—don't ask me to explain this; I'm just telling you—He did that without in any way diminishing His deity. He added that human nature to His divine nature that He'd had forever.

You see both these natures in the Gospels. For example, Jesus went to a wedding. That's His humanity, His human nature, but what did He do while He was at the wedding? He changed the water to wine. That's His deity, His God-ness, His God-hood.

He went out on a boat with His disciples and fell asleep in the bottom of the boat because He was tired. What nature is that? His humanity. Then He got up and rebuked and stilled the storm. What nature is that? His deity—two natures, one Person.

Chrysostom was one of the early church fathers who lived in the late 300s and the early 400s after Christ. He said it this way:

I do not think of Christ as God alone, or man alone, but both together. For I know He was hungry, yet I know that with five loaves He fed five thousand [humanity and deity].

I know He was thirsty, and I know yet that He turned the water into wine. I know that He was carried in a ship, yet I know that He walked upon the sea. I know that He died, yet I know that He raised the dead Himself.

I know that He was set before Pilate, and I know that He sits with the Father in His throne. I know that He was worshiped by angels, yet I know that He was stoned by the Jews. . . . Some of these I ascribe to the human, others to the divine nature—for by reason of this, He is said to have been both God and man.¹

Why Jesus Had to Be God and Man

Now, the two-fold nature of Christ, fully God, fully man, two natures in one Person, was absolutely necessary for our redemption. This is not just parsing theological mysteries. This is crucial . It really, really matters. We cannot be saved apart from the fact that Christ was the God/man.

This is a plan that God put in motion in eternity past. In order to save us from our sin, Christ had to become a man. He had to be truly man to represent us and fully God in order to be able to save us. As a man, He perfectly obeyed God's law, and that's what qualified Him to die in our place as a substitute for our sins.

As one man is quoted in Oswald Sanders' book saying, “Had He not been man, He could not have sympathized with us; and had He not been God, He could not have saved us.”² He had to be both God and man.

And let me give you some even better news than that. He did this—He became the God/man for us. Remember that verse I read earlier, Isaiah 9:6, “Unto us a Child is born; unto us a Son is given” (NKJV). What an incredible demonstration of the awesome love of God!

So without ever ceasing to be fully God, without laying aside any of His God-ness, Jesus took on, clothed Himself, in our human nature so that He could reconcile us to God. And if that doesn’t move you, nothing will.

Behold and Believe the God-Man

Dannah: It’s so good to meditate on the mystery of the God-Man. Nancy will be back with more in a little bit. First I want you to let spoken word artist Blair Linne help you think through this crazy paradox, and, as she puts it, “Behold and Believe.”

Dannah: That’s Blair Linne, from a recent True Woman conference. By the way, registration is now open for True Woman '27, next year in Indianapolis. For more information, check out TrueWoman27.com. 

Blair crafted her spoken word piece to inspire amazement and wonder as we think about and worship Jesus—truly God and truly man. 

Another way to grow in that wonder is through a new devotional by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. It’s called Consider Jesus. It’s designed to be something you go through in the month of December, but we’re telling you about it now so you’ll have enough time to get your copy and be ready to dive in on December first.

And here in October, we’d like to send you a copy as a thank-you for your donation of any amount to Revive Our Hearts. Ask about Nancy’s Advent devotional Consider Jesus when you contact us with your financial gift. You can do that at ReviveOurHearts.com, or by calling 1-800-569-5959. 

So today we’ve been contemplating a mystery. Jesus is fully human and fully God. We can’t completely get our heads around it, which leads us to wonder and worship.

I want us to close by hearing from Nancy once again. She read something that was written by author and speaker Matt Perman for Desiring God. We’ve linked to the full article in the transcript of this program at ReviveOurHearts.com. Here’s Nancy, reading what Matt said, and I hope you’ll allow these words to wash your soul with comfort and hope.

Nancy:

The union of Christ’s deity and humanity in one Person makes it such that we have all that we need in the same Savior.

Because Jesus is God, He is all-powerful and He cannot be defeated. Because He is God, He is the only adequate Savior. Because He is God, believers are safe and can never perish; we have security. Because He is God, we can have confidence that He will empower us for the task that He commands us for. And because He is God, all people will be accountable to Him when He returns to judge the world.

Because Jesus is man, He has experienced the same things that we do. Because He is man, He can identify with us more intimately. Because He is man, He can come to our aid as our sympathetic High Priest when we reach the limits of our human weaknesses. Because He is man, we can relate to Him–He is not far off and uninvolved. Because He is man, we cannot complain that God does not know what we are going through. He experienced it firsthand.³

Dannah: And that’s why it matters that Jesus is truly God and truly man. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth there, reading the words of Matt Perman. We’re dropping a link to his full article in the transcript of this program, at ReviveOurHearts.com.

Tomorrow, Nancy will help us continue considering Jesus, with thoughts from her devotional book by that title. I hope you’ll be back for Revive Our Hearts.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

All Scripture is taken from the ESV.

¹John Chrysostom, "Sermons on Matthew," quoted in Robert Morgan, Sermons on Matthew, Precept Austin, last modified August 22, 2016, https://www.preceptaustin.org/matthew_sermons_-_robert_morgan.

²W. Graham Scroggie quoted in The Incomparable Christ by Oswald Sanders, p. 128.

³Matt Perman, “How Can Jesus Be God and Man?” Desiring God, October 5, 2006. [1, 2]

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.