son of man, how can the apostle say about him, Who while he was in the form
SERMON 186 25 consideration of something true, but they didn't have the ability to state the full truth. What they considered, you see, is that it was possible for human nature to be changed for the better, but not for the divine nature to be changed for the worse. That is certainly true; but so is this: that without in any way being changed for the worse, the Word still became flesh. Nor does the gospel say, after all,
"The flesh became Word," but it says the Word became flesh. But the Word is God, because the Word was God (Jn 1:14.1). And what is meant by flesh, but man? Human flesh in Christ, after all, was not without a soul; which is why he said, My soul is sorrowful unto death (Mk 14:34). So if the Word is God, and flesh is man, what else is the Word became flesh but "One who was God became man"?
And thus the one who was the Son of God became the son of man by the taking on of the lower element, not by the changing of the principal one; by accepting what he was not, not by losing what he was. I mean, how could we confess in the rule of faith that we believe in the Son of God who was bom of the virgin Mary, if it wasn't the Son of God but the son of man who was bom of the virgin Mary?3 Would any Christian deny, after all, that the son of man was bom of that woman; but that all the same God became man, and only in this way did man become God? The Word, you see, was God, and the Word became flesh. What we have to confess, therefore, is that the one who was the Son of
God, in order to be bom of the virgin Mary, took on the form of a servant,4 and became the son of man, while still remaining what he was and taking on what he was not; beginning to be that which made him less than the Father, and always remaining that by which he and the Father are one.5
The Word of God became man
3. Well, if the one who is always the Son of God did not himself become the son of man, how can the apostle say about him, Who while he was in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal to God; but he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and found in condition as a man (Phil 2:6-7)? It wasn't, after all, someone else, but he himself, equal to the Father in the form of God, who is of course the only-begotten Son of God, that emptied himself, being made in the likeness of men. Nor was it somebody else, but again he himself, equal to the Father in the form of God, who humbled, not somebody else but himself, becoming obedient to the death, death indeed on the cross (Phil 2:8). The Son of God only did all this in the form in which he is the son of man.
Again, if the one who is always the Son of God did not himself become the son of man, how can the apostle say to the Romans, set apart for the gospel of God,6 which he had promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures about his Son, who was made for him of the seed of David according to the flesh (Rom 1:1-3)? There you have the Son of God, which of course he always was, made of the seed of David according to the flesh, which he wasn t always. Again, if the one who is the Son of God was not himself made son of