Some doubt that Christ became human at all. Others believe that He was fully God and fully man when He was here on earth. Then there are those who teach that while the “human form” of Jesus was here on earth, the “Son of God” was still in heaven. They believe that when Jesus “died,” the Son of God continued to live.
None of these concepts are correct. As we explain in our free booklet, “Jesus Christ—A Great Mystery,” the Word or the “Logos”; that is, the Son of God—Jesus Christ—BECAME flesh. When He was changed into flesh, divesting Himself of His divinity and laying aside His divine attributes and glory, He ceased to exist as an immortal Spirit Being. Rather, He BECAME—was CHANGED INTO—flesh.
How did this happen?
We will be attempting to answer this question by first pointing out what the Bible clearly reveals, and by then deducting from these revelations the most likely possibilities, which are presenting themselves.
We read that Christ existed since all eternity. There was never a time when He did not exist. He was always the second Member of the God Family, which always existed as two immortal God Beings—God the Father and the Son. But Christ, who was “slain from the beginning of the world,” BECAME a human being—consisting fully of flesh—so that He could overcome sin in the flesh and DIE. When He became a man, He ceased to exist as a Spirit Being. When He died, He ceased to live—He did not continue to live, while in the grave for three days and three nights.
God the Father resurrected Him from the dead as an immortal Spirit Being, with the glory that He had before He became flesh.
God is Spirit, and so Jesus Christ, before He became a man, was Spirit because Christ was God (John 1:1). The Holy Spirit is not a Person, but the power and mind of God, flowing from God. As long as Christ was a God Being, His Holy Spirit flowed from Him, as it did and does from God the Father. But in order to bestow the Holy Spirit on others, one has to be a glorified God Being. When Jesus became a human being, He did not have any longer the Holy Spirit on His own. Rather, it was the FATHER, who lived in Christ through HIS—the Father’s—Holy Spirit. (See our Q & A on the need of Christ’s glorification for the bestowing of the gift of the Holy Spirit). It was the Father’s Holy Spirit of power, which dwelled in Christ from His human inception without measure.
When Christ became a human being, the Father changed the immortal Spirit Being—Jesus Christ—into a mortal human being, thereby also becoming the Father of the HUMAN being Jesus Christ. Later, the Father “reversed” the process by changing the human being—Jesus Christ—back into an immortal Spirit Being.
How did the Father accomplish the change from Spirit to flesh in the Person of Jesus? Actually, this had to be an extremely unique and awesome accomplishment, so that Jesus became the ONLY-SO-begotten Son of the Father.
First, we read that Mary was found pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit. It was the power of God the Father Who impregnated Mary with Jesus. To put it bluntly, from all the biblical evidence available to us, we conclude that Jesus was changed into and became a sperm in the womb of Mary. Mary’s ovum was thus fertilized, as every human baby comes into existence through the fertilization of a female egg through a male sperm. In Jesus’ case, however, the sperm was not from a human father, but it was the result of a change from immortal to mortal, through the power of God the Father’s Holy Spirit.
When a human being is conceived in the womb of his or her mother, God gives that tiny little fetus a spirit—called the spirit in man. We do not know, exactly, how this is done—whether through an individual miraculous action and intervention on God’s part, or whether through an automatic “mechanism” and “procedure” which is somehow attached to or incorporated in the male sperm and brought into motion at the time of conception. In any event, this human spirit did not exist before in its individual “capacity”—we read that God “forms” or“creates” it in man (Zechariah 12:1), apparently at the time of conception. That individual human spirit, which is created and comes into existence at the moment of conception, does of course not have any “memory” of anything prior to its “creation” in the human fetus.
It appears that this concept applies to Christ as well. When God the Father placed in Christ the HUMAN spirit at the time of His conception in the womb of Mary, it did not carry with it any memory of Christ’s prior life as a God Being—as the HUMAN spirit of Christ did not exist prior to Christ’s change into a mortal human being.
At the same time, we read that Christ, when He was a man, clearly recalled His preexistence. We do not know exactly when Christ began to “remember,” but it appears that His memory came to Him, gradually, through the indwelling Holy Spirit of God the Father.
This conclusion is based on the fact that Christ told His disciples that the Holy Spirit would remind them of the things which He had told them. In the same way, it stands to reason that the Spirit of God the Father reminded Christ of prior events in His Life as a God Being.
When a human being dies, his human spirit returns to God who gave it. It is stored in heaven to be used for the purpose of a later resurrection of the person, as it retained everything of the person, including his outward appearance, thoughts, memories, experiences and actions in his life prior to death (See our booklet, The Theory of Evolution—a Fairy Tale for Adults?). But the spirit in man is not a person, and neither is the Holy Spirit.
Still, when a person becomes converted and is properly baptized, he will receive from God the Holy Spirit, thereby giving him divine nature, potentially leading to immortal divine life at the time of his resurrection. When that converted person dies, both his human spirit and his Holy Spirit return to God, and are retained in heaven, until the time of his resurrection to an immortal spirit being.
The same happened at the time of Christ’s death. His human spirit, together with God the Father’s Holy Spirit, returned to God, and after three days and three nights in the grave, God the Father resurrected Christ from the dead as an immortal glorified God Being, using the spirit in man and the Father’s Holy Spirit to create a spiritual body with all physical and spiritual memories, thoughts and accomplishments.
But in the case of Christ, even more had to be involved.
Returning to our discussion on Christ’s physical birth, recall that we said that Christ was changed from spiritual to physical. He willingly gave up His glory and laid aside His divine attributes. The question arises, what occurred at that moment to His Holy Spirit? As a God Being, He had the Holy Spirit on His own, but He did not have it on its own when He was human.
Three arguable possibilities might be discussed.
First, His Holy Spirit simply ceased to exist. This possibility must be ruled out. God’s Holy Spirit does not simply cease to exist; in the parable of the unprofitable servant, God takes back from him that what had been given to him—the Holy Spirit—to bestow it on someone else.
Another possibility could be that Christ’s Holy Spirit changed into something mortal—the human spirit perhaps—when Christ changed into a human sperm. But there is really not much evidentiary basis for that conclusion, especially if considering the following third possibility, which is in harmony with God’s usual course of action.
This possibility is that Christ’s Holy Spirit stayed with God the Father in heaven—clearly NOT as a self-conscious entity, and most assuredly NOT as the Son of God—but as God retains in heaven his human spirit after a converted person’s death, together with the Holy Spirit given to and residing in that person, so it appears that when Christ became a human being, the Father “retained” Christ’s Holy Spirit in heaven, which Christ “laid aside.”
Subsequently, when Christ died and His human spirit and the Holy Spirit of the Father (which dwelt in the human Christ without measure) returned to the Father in heaven, both the Father’s Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Christ (retained in heaven) would have combined or “merged,” and when the Father resurrected Christ from the dead, He would have done so by using Christ’s human spirit, as well as the Father’s Spirit which had dwelt in Christ without measure and Christ’s Spirit which had been retained in heaven. But it was still the FATHER who resurrected Christ through the power of HIS Spirit.
But to repeat, neither the Holy Spirit nor the spirit in man are self-conscious entities or persons. When Christ died, He was dead. There was no consciousness in Him, nor did God the Father’s Holy Spirit that had dwelt in Christ continue to “live” with consciousness, while Christ was in the grave.
Likewise, Christ’s Holy Spirit that was retained by God the Father in heaven while Jesus lived on earth did not have any self-consciousness. But based on our understanding, one can clearly see how the FALSE concept of a conscious immortal soul which keeps on living after a person dies could have entered the confused mind of man, as well as the FALSE concept that the Son of God continued to exist as a conscious Being in heaven, while the man Jesus lived on earth.
Today, as both God the Father and Jesus Christ are immortal glorified God beings, both the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of Christ dwell in a converted Christian. We read that there is ONE Spirit, in the sense that both the Father and Christ are totally UNIFIED. And we also read that true Christians are to be ONE or unified, AS God the Father and the Son are ONE or unified.
Lead Writer: Norbert Link
