in a human way

"Whoever has seen me has seen the Father." (John 14:9 ESV)

"...that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ." (1 John 1:3 ESV) 

"You believe in Christ, and in the truth of his saying: 'He that hath seen Me, has seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, show us the Father?' You yourself kneel down before Him, saying, 'My Lord and my God,' and what is the Incarnation of the Word other than that God became man? And what profit can this be to you, unless you feel that, in Christ, God has come close to you in a human way? 

"Until the birth in Bethlehem, God spoke to you in human words, but in Christ God appears in human nature. He reveals himself to you as the Son of Man. A human heart here speaks in human language and in human motions. As the Apostle John declares, 'In Jesus we have seen and heard not only what is God’s, but we have touched and handled, actually seen before our eyes the eternal—Divine in human stature and in human form.' 

"The whole Christian faith, the entire Christian confession rests upon the clear and firm conviction, that God has not laid it upon you to lose Him in endless abstractions, but, on the contrary, He would come to you ever more closely in human form and in human language, in order through your human heart to make warm, rich fellowship possible with Himself.

"Moreover, you must understand that all this rests upon sober reality. It is not semblance, but actual fact, because God created you after His image, so that with all the wide difference between God and man, divine reality is expressed in human form. And that, when the Word became Flesh, this Incarnation of the Son of God was immediately connected with your creation after God's image."  

~ Abraham Kuyper, To Be Near Unto God (Baker Books, 1925), pp 44, 45. 

Photo above by Greyson Joralemon on Unsplash. If you'd like to study more about the doctrine of Christ (along with salvation, the Holy Spirit, and the church) please join us for this spring semester's class on systematic theology. Register at the upper left-hand menu on our home page.