How Could Jesus Be God?

A couple of alternate titles for this essay could be…

• “How Could God Ever Be a Man?”
• “How Could a Man Ever Be God?

All three questions probe the same issue. I’ll be using biblical definitions for “man” and “God,” and so you’ll see chapter and verse citations at key points in the explanation.

The Bible refers to Jesus as a man. It also refers to Him as God. Understanding how Jesus could be both a man and God starts with making sure we understand what a man is. (In this essay, I’m using man in the sense of a human being, not in the sense of a male.)

A man is the coming together of a spirit and a body. When God created the first man – Adam – it was by His breath (Genesis 2:7). “His breath” speaks of the “spirit.” The “dust of the ground” speaks of the “body.” Because of sin, man was doomed to die. At that point, the spirit and the body would be separated (James 2:26). For this reason, man’s body at death decomposes back into the dust of the ground while the spirit goes elsewhere (Ecclesiastes 12:7). This is why God told Adam when he sinned that he would eventually return to dust (Genesis 3:19).

We can see the body of man but we cannot see his spirit because the nature of spirit is to be invisible to the physical world. That is, creation exists in two dimensions – the visible and the invisible, the seen and the unseen, the flesh and the spirit. Though we cannot see a man’s spirit, we can tell when his spirit is no longer present in that body. That’s when the body starts to decay. Like a branch that is separated from the tree, time increasingly gives evidence to the separation. Rigor mortis comes within hours and foul odors within days. This process is well known. The body was not made to live without a spirit to animate it.

A body is like a set of clothes. It can even be likened to a spacesuit that an astronaut wears. All such garments are disposable, and the human body is as well. That’s why it decays. The spirit does not decay; rather, it departs. When we go to heaven, we receive the clothing appropriate to that environment. That is, as we have worn an earthly body on earth, we’ll wear a heavenly body in heaven (1 Corinthians 15:35-49).

For these reasons, when we look at a man we’re looking at his body. And his body is the clothing of his spirit. We cannot physically see the true and lasting man inside that clothing. But we’ll know when all we’re looking at is clothing because the clothing just doesn’t hold up when the man’s not there. This is because man is more spirit than he is body. In fact, he’s not a body at all – the body is just what he wears to get around on earth the way the astronauts wear spacesuits to get around on the moon. Thus a man’s spirit is eternal, but his earthly body is temporary because he only needs it when he’s here – just as a spaceman only needs his spacesuit when he’s in space.

So, if a man is a spirit in a body, what then is God? God is spirit (John 4:24) and therefore invisible (Colossians 1:15). If God is a spirit and man is a spirit, then this gives us some insight as to at least part of what it means for man to be made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27). More to the point of this essay, it helps us understand how Jesus could be God.

Man is a spirit in a body and God is a spirit. Therefore, God could become a man by putting on a body like a man puts on clothes or like an astronaut puts on a space suit.

Consider yourself to be one of Jesus’ contemporaries – whether friend or foe. When you looked at Jesus, you’d be looking at the body He was wearing (inhabiting). You couldn’t see His spirit because a spirit can’t be seen, but you’d know there was a spirit there because the body would be lifeless otherwise. ​But you couldn’t know whether that spirit behind the body was a man like you, made in the image of God, or whether it was God Himself.​ There’s no way you could know, because spirit is – by definition – invisible.

Even merely knowing that man was made in God’s image gives a hint that God could become a man (Genesis 1:26). You can say therefore that Jesus was the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15).

In this essay, I have not attempted to prove to you that Jesus is God. I’ve only answered the question, “How ​could​ Jesus be God?” And I’ve shown you that Jesus could be both a man and God depending on the context – because God is spirit, and man is a spirit in a body. Therefore, to substitute a divine spirit for a human spirit behind the curtain of a body would require no structural modification to either divinity or humanity.

One thing God could not do if He became a man would be to retain His omniscience. This is because to be an omniscient man is to no longer be a man. A man has limitations and knowledge is one of them. We know therefore that God could not become a man permanently because that would mean to permanently give up His omniscience – a possibility creation could not handle. Therefore, we can see how God could become a man, but it would have to be a temporary exercise. If God became a man, He would have to eventually return to being God. Creation could survive the Creator taking a brief sabbatical because He could give orders to His substantial staff for how things should be run in His absence – just like the CEO of a worldwide corporation could take a vacation. But such an arrangement could not be permanent. Humanity could not be a permanent experience for God. Neither could He go back and forth willy-nilly. A man lives and dies…and that’s it for his time on earth (Hebrews 9:27).

It is very important that we do nothing to diminish the humanity of Jesus. That Jesus was a man is an essential truth that cannot be compromised without distorting our view of reality. But we must simultaneously appreciate that His humanity in no way means that He could not also be God – before and after His human experience. I will demonstrate to you in another essay that Jesus actually is God. For now, I just wanted to show how God created humanity in such a way that He could live a human life on earth for a time if He so chose. The Architect of the universe made allowances in the design for such a mission.