One Wonderful Result of The Incarnation

John 17:20-26: ²⁰ “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, ²¹ that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ²² I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— ²³ I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

1 John 1:3: We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

Donald Fairbairn, in his book “Life in the Trinity”, describes one of the beautiful results of the Incarnation. He believes that the Orthodox Christians in the East have their theology right but missed the implications of “God becoming man so that man could become like God.”

 Jesus is reigning forever as Incarnate God – Fully God and Fully Man. 

The implications of this are: 

1) that His Essence matches the same Essence as God the Father.

2) At the same time, His essence matches ours (as He is fully Man).

3) As a result, for us who have been united with Christ Jesus, we have access to participate in the Fellowship of the Triune God: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. This access is granted because Jesus is both God and Man. We have been drawn into the Triune community of God; this fellowship is discussed here in John 17 as well as in 1 John 1. We are being made one with the Father as Jesus is one with the Father. (We will never take on the Essence of God but we will spend all of eternity being more and more united to Him!)

Because of Who Jesus is and what He has done, we have access to relationships with God the Father and the Holy Spirit. Not only to have a relationship with God but to share in the same relationship that God the Father has with God the Son and with the Holy Spirit for all of eternity. What a wonderful Lord we serve!