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Jesus Before The Incarnation
What
was Jesus Doing before He was Born in Bethlehem?
Matthew Harmon
Trying
to understand how Jesus Christ can be both fully God and fully man at the
same time stretches the limits of our finite minds.
Even
the brightest minds in the first few centuries of the church struggled to
explain this reality!
But
passages such as Philippians 2:6-8 make clear the full deity and full
humanity of Jesus Christ.
As
the Son of God He has existed from eternity past, but at a specific point in
history He took on human flesh to dwell among us.
When
we try to wrap our minds around this reality, one of the questions that arises
is what was Jesus doing before he was born in Bethlehem?
While
the Bible does not provide an exhaustive answer, it does give us some
indications.
First, from all
eternity the Son has been enjoying the love and glory that he shares with God
the Father.
Shortly before His
death Jesus prays, “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with
me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me
before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24).
He
was receiving the worship of the heavenly hosts that He rightly deserves (compare Isaiah 6:1–8 with John 12:37–41).
Second,
the Bible identifies God the Son as the Creator of all things.
Referring to Him as the Word, the apostle John writes, “In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He
was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without
him was not anything made that was made” (John 1:1–3).
Paul
speaks of the same reality in Colossians 1:15-16.
These
passages (along with others such as John 1:10; 1 Corinthians 8:6) make it clear that the Son of God
created everything in the universe.
Third, before His
incarnation the Son of God was sustaining the universe.
The author of Hebrews says that the Son is “the
radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he
upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3).
Colossians 1:17 communicates the same truth when it says
that Christ “is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
The
reason that the universe continues to exist is because the Son of God sustains
it.
Fourth,
the Son was preparing to redeem His people.
In
John 17 Jesus refers to the Father giving him work to accomplish (verse 4) and a people
to redeem (verse 6).
Only
when the fullness of time came did God send His Son into the world to carry out
His mission (John 17:18, 21; Galatians 4:4).
So,
while the Bible does not speak extensively of what Jesus was doing before He
was born in Bethlehem, it does show Him as the Creator and Sustainer of the
universe Who was receiving angelic worship while awaiting the time when He
would take on flesh for our redemption.
Since 2006 Dr. Matthew S. Harmon has served as Professor
of New Testament Studies at Grace College and Grace Theological Seminary in Winona Lake, Indiana. He is also a member
of Christ’s Covenant Church, where he serves on the Preaching Team, leads a small
group, and teaches regularly in their Life Education classes.
Find out more at his blog, Biblical Theology, which is a forum for all matters pertaining to biblical
theology (and some entirely unrelated).
Follow him on Twitter: @DocHarmon
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