How can Jesus be both God and man?
Jesus is one person in two natures — fully God and fully man — without either being diminished. The eternal Word, who was God (John 1:1), took on flesh (John 1:14), adding a true human nature to His deity rather than trading one for the other. As true man He could stand in our place and be tempted as we are (Hebrews 4:15); as true God His sacrifice had infinite worth. This is the historic confession of Nicaea and Chalcedon.
The statement that “Jesus was 100% God and 100% man” or “truly God and truly man” is something you may have heard in Church. But what does this profound statement really mean?
To put it simply, Jesus existed as God before He existed as a human being.
Many have wrongly understood the nature of Christ by believing that He was created first as a man and then attained divinity. The early church gave this error a name: adoptionism — the idea that God ‘adopted’ the man Jesus as His Son at some point in His life. The Church rejected it in the second century, on the testimony of the New Testament that Jesus already existed as God before He was conceived in Mary’s womb (John 1:1; Philippians 2:6; Colossians 1:15–17).
The Son has always existed as the second person of the Trinity. In the fullness of time He entered our world, taking on flesh so that He might offer Himself as a sacrifice for our sins.
This belief in Jesus' dual nature was solidified in early Christian theology and articulated in the Council of Nicaea (AD 325) and the Chalcedonian Creed (AD 451). These crucial gatherings of Christian leaders established that Jesus is both fully divine and fully human, two natures coexisting in one person without confusion, change, division, or separation.
Scripturally, this concept is supported by passages like John 1:1,14, which states that “the Word was God” and “the Word became flesh.” Additionally, Philippians 2:6-8 speaks of Jesus, who, being in the form of God, took on the nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. Colossians 2:9 further affirms this, “For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.”
It is also important to note that Jesus did not cease to be God in the incarnation; rather, He added the nature of humanity to His divinity.
In becoming man, Jesus did not become another ‘person’, but instead took on / added to Himself the human nature, which is how Jesus could be truly God and truly man.
This union of divine and human nature in Jesus is crucial for understanding His unique role in salvation history. His divine nature ensures the effectiveness of His sacrificial death, while His human nature enables Him to empathize with our weaknesses and represent us before God (Hebrews 4:15-16).
Jesus is fully God and fully man — one person, two natures, held together without compromise on either side. He alone could bear both the weight of our sin and the wrath that sin had earned.