The Incarnation is at the root of all of Christian belief, practice, and hope. Often, however, its emphasis is lost. When Christians speak of the incarnation they are often referring primarily to the Virgin Birth; they are thinking of the moment in time when the Word of God became man. Indeed, this is the Incarnation, but to restrict our discussion of the Incarnation to this event would be to miss the whole point and application of the Incarnation.

Incarnation means “enfleshment”, it means that the eternal Word of God became and still is in human flesh. To the apostles, this enfleshment described Jesus’ entire work and ministry, death and resurrection.

The faith of the Apostles, and especially Peter, was expressed in a new way when they could affirm, by the revelation of the Holy Spirit, that the man standing in front of them, Jesus, was the Son of the living and eternal God. At the time of Peter’s confession “you are the Christ” they presumably knew nothing of the Virgin Birth. They observed the relationship that Jesus had with the Father; they observed the way he related to the people, the words that came from his mouth, the “words of life”, and they said “to whom else shall we go?” They said “yes” to God in the flesh. In this affirmation is the recognition of God’s power to make us into a new community in the Divine.

There are two tenants of belief in Christian cosmology:

1) God created all things out of nothing.

2) God created a new creation in Christ out of the emptiness of sin.

Both of these creations were in the proceeding of the power of his Word with the result of life in the flesh