The Hypostatic Union


“Now the Word became flesh and took up residence among us. We saw his glory – the glory of the one and only, full of grace and truth, who came from the Father.”  John 1:14

“who though he existed in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking on the form of a slave, by looking like other men, and by sharing in human nature.”  Philippians 2:6-7

 My mind is blown!  When I saw that we were studying, “Firm Foundations” I expected a simple study that went over basics I had covered over and over again during my walk with God.  Instead, we dive deep.  Last week we covered Faith, the Trinity,  Holiness, Love and Justice.  This week we've looked at the consequences of sin, the required payment for our sins, the doctrine of total depravity and now, the hypostatic union.  This stuff is DEEP, friends!

 The concept of the hypostatic union looks at how Jesus was fully God and fully man at the same time.  “How can this be!?” you ask.  Well, if you have a great answer for that, I’d love to hear it! As the artist I featured a couple of days ago, Shai Linne, puts it in his song, Hypostatic Union:

I know it’s deep but when you peep you’ll find it’s dense

Jesus both God and man- two hundred percents yeah

Fully divine, fully human

Introducing the hypostatic union

 So, Jesus was 200%. He had to be a man in order to pay for the sins of man, but He had to be God in order to be perfectly sinless and in order to overcome death and rise again.

 Jesus existed before time began, infinitely, eternally.  He existed outside of time and is not bound by it.  He created everything in existence.  I guess, if you really want your mind to explode,  He created Himself.  What I mean by this is that in John 1:3 it tells us that,  “All things were created by him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created.” If Jesus was fully man,  which I believe He was,  then He was created.  And everything that was created, was created by Jesus, so therefore, Jesus created Himself.  I think I'm confusing myself more rather than figuring anything out.

 A few questions to ponder:

     If Jesus was fully man, during that time did He only exist in our time and not outside of it? But if he's not bound by time, then couldn't He exist in both places simultaneously? But then would He be fully anything if He was part here and part elsewhere? Ouch! My head hurts!

Here's the Thing: I believe this is a concept that is too much for humanity to fully comprehend.  Again, that's where faith comes in .  If we could understand it, it would make it simple, unimpressive.  But God is so much more than that! He is infinitely impressive and beyond comprehension.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

At least it's not bad news

Image
  Radical tumor removal is not always possible because of the critical brainstem or diencephalic locations of some tumors. Tumor progression and eventual death are likely in such patients. Stereotactic radiosurgery for pilocytic astrocytomas part 1: outcomes in adult patients Kano et. al.  So my posts are usually preceded by a scripture verse, often an encouraging one. Today I needed to give you an insight into what I've been experiencing. From the time I was diagnosed with a brain tumor, about a year and a half ago, I was reassured that it was a "WHO grade 1 benign" tumor. I, mistakenly, took this to mean that it wasn't a big deal. Even when I was told in June that it had grown "slightly," I thought that meant they'd zap it with radiation and that'd be the end of it. Guess what, I was wrong. When my June MRI revealed growth, I was referred to the Tumor Center for treatment. Fearing a long, drawn-out process, I was relieved when they scheduled all my...
Read more

The Next Crazy Thing

Image
Buckle in! This is a processing post so it is likely to be long and wordy and emotional and probably flawed in many ways. I thank you for your patience and anyone who makes it to the end gets bonus points in my book 😏.  Let's start with the info. I've been having progressively more intense, more frequent, and longer lasting migraines. Since my eye surgery in May, I've also been experiencing a great deal of nausea, almost daily. Sometimes meds help (with either), sometimes they don't. In addition, since the eye surgery, my double vision has intensified. My depth perception is shot, I'm regularly missing things I grab for, mistaking curbs for cracks in the sidewalk, bumping into walls or counters. Those are the three things that neurosurgery told us to watch for with regards to the shunt functioning properly: headaches, nausea, and vision changes. Now the vision changes were probably because of the surgery and the nausea was probably  because of the migraines, but th...
Read more

When "Wait and See" Wouldn't Sound so Bad

Image
    Ten days after I received the call letting me know that they found something on the MRI I was sitting in the office of a Neurosurgeon.  I have no doubt that God orchestrated the circumstances that had brought me there, including a friend who is also dealing with a brain tumor recommending this clinic. But how could any of this be real? Only a couple of people knew what was going on, but there wasn't much to know before this appointment. All we had were a few key phrases on the MRI Study Result and our dear friend, Dr. Google.  I went into the appointment with the impression that the doctor would either recommend watching and waiting, doing another MRI in six months and seeing if anything changed, or taking it out right away.  In previous encounters where the option was to wait or do something I have vastly preferred doing something, but this time it was different. I had read about the potential complications of surgery and I was scared.  Not to men...
Read more