In the coming of the Eternal Word to the earth for the purposes of redemption, He did not lay aside the essential fact of His Deity. He simply changed the form of manifestation. It would seem clearly evident that the Son of God had forever been the One in Whom God took form, and therefore the One through Whom God was revealed. The Son is always the manifestation of the Father.
What the form, what the manifestation was in the past, it is impossible to declare, for it is beyond the comprehension of the finite and the limited. This alone is certain that He was the Word, the Speech, the Method of communication of the Eternal God. For the redemption of man He laid aside that form, whatever it may have been, and took a new form for manifesting the same God, a form upon which men might look, and through which, in the process of time, they might come to know the Eternal God.
If it were possible for a moment to penetrate the mysteries of the past, the Son would be seen within the mystery of the Trinity, as the perpetual Medium of Divine expression, just as the Spirit is the perpetual Medium of Divine consciousness. In the coming to the level of man, and in the taking of a form possible of comprehension by man, it was necessary to bring the illimitable into the range of the limited. He passed from the heavenly to the earthly, from the infinite to the finite, that is, as to the form of expression. This is impossible of final explanation. It is however a mystery revealed, upon which the whole superstructure of Christianity depends. It would seem as though the eternal heavens were for a period emptied of the manifestation of God, though never of His presence, while for the work of redemption, God was manifest in the flesh. The Word passed from government to obedience, from independent cooperation in the equality of Deity, to deoendent submission to the will of God.
By the way of the Incarnation there came into existence a Person in all points human, in all essentials Divine. In all points human, that is to say, fulfilling the Divine ideal of human nature, not descending to the level of the degradation of humanity, resulting from sin. The Man of Nazareth was perfect as Man. He was moreover perfect as God, lacking nothing of the powers of essential Deity, save only the heavenly form of manifestation.
Adapted from The Crises of the Christ, Book I, Chapter IV, by G. Campbell Morgan.
