Sermon for Midweek Advent 2, December 10, 2025

Advent Midweek 2 (Our Coming King)

“True God and True Man”

Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer, Enfield, CT

December 10, 2025

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

          Our Advent series this year is based on the Second Article of the Apostles’ Creed. Over these Advent Wednesdays, we are looking at various aspects of Jesus, Our Coming King. Today we consider that Jesus is “True God and True Man.”

          We confess in the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.” Last week we heard what it means for Jesus to be our Lord who redeems us from the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death. This week we consider that the Lord Jesus is at the same time both fully God and fully man. And that’s a lot for our finite minds to process!

          God the Son is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. The Scriptures confess that there is one God in three persons. This is the greatest mystery of the Christian faith. We read in Matthew 28:19, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Paul speaks a Trinitarian blessing in 2 Corinthians 13:14, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” And the blessing that God Himself gave to Aaron and the priests in Numbers is distinctly Trinitarian in nature as well, “The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace” (Num. 6:24-26 ESV). And we dare not forget the call of the seraphim in Isaiah 6 praising the thrice holy God, ““Holy, holy, holy is Yahweh of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”

          God the Son is true God with the Father and the Spirit. This means that the Son has no beginning. He eternally receives life from the Father. John 1:1-2, “In the beginning was the Word—God the Son—and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” The writer of Hebrews reveals to us, “He 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. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Heb. 1:3 ESV). The Nicene Creed also confesses that the Lord Jesus is “begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father.” This confesses the Biblical uniqueness of God the Son as the Second Person of the Trinity.

It is this divine, eternal Son of God who entered human history, born as a man with a body and soul, yet without sin, in fulfillment of God’s Old Testament promises (Heb 4:15). The announcement to Mary by the angel reveals His divine nature, “And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High” (Luke 1:31-32 ESV). Luther simply says it like this in the Small Catechism, “I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord.” The Reformer simply confessed what the Bible teaches us about God the Son, the eternal Word, who became flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth (John 1:14).

But the incarnation, the “becoming flesh” of the divine Son of God, was not like anything anyone had ever known. God the Son was conceived in the womb of a virgin named Mary, from the village of Nazareth in Galilee by the will and act of God apart from a human father. This is what the Bible teaches and so it is what we confess. From Luke 1, “And the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’ And Mary said to the angel, ‘How will this be, since I am a virgin?’ And the angel answered her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God’” (Luke 1:30-35 ESV).

No, we don’t get the biology of it all. The Lord had promised through Isaiah that the virgin would conceive and bear a son, Immanuel, God with us in the flesh. In the fullness of time, God the Holy Spirit fashioned from Mary a true human body and soul for the Son of God. The Athanasian Creed puts into the best words we can use to confess the truth of the Incarnation, saying, “Therefore it is the true faith that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is at once God and a human being. He is God, begotten from the substance of the Father before all ages, and a human being, born from the substance of his mother in this age. He is perfect God and a perfect human being, composed of a rational soul and human flesh. He is equal to the Father with respect to his divinity, less than the Father with respect to his humanity. Although he is God and a human being, nevertheless he is not two but one Christ. However, he is one not by the changing of the divinity in the flesh but by the taking up of the humanity in God. Indeed, he is one not by a confusion of substance but by a unity of person. For, as the rational soul and the flesh are one human being, so God and the human being are one Christ.”

As the confession of the Triune God is a mystery of faith, so also is the confession that Jesus Christ is true God and true Man, our Lord. But why is it so important that Christ be both God and Man? Jesus needed to be fully human in order to fulfill humanity’s obligation to keep God’s Law. Jesus the God-Man is the perfect substitute for us. Romans 5:19, “For as by the [Adam’s] disobedience the many were made sinners, so by [Jesus’] obedience the many will be made righteous.”  

As true Man, Jesus suffered and died to pay the penalty of our sins. Since it was humanity that had broken God’s Law, only a human could suffer that penalty in humanity’s place. Hebrews 2:14, “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil.” Jesus, true God and true Man, took upon Himself our sins and sinfulness as if they were His own and paid the penalty of death for us, as St. Peter has written, “knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot” (1 Pet. 1:18-19 ESV). Having died to win our forgiveness, Jesus overcame death as true Man so that we, too, can be raised from death. 2 Timothy 1:10, “Christ Jesus . . . abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”

But just another human would never has sufficed to be our Savior, for another human would have been sinful and unable to be perfect, unable to satisfy God’s demands. The man Jesus also had to be true God. Jesus, true God made flesh, has provided a sufficient ransom and atonement for the sins of the world by His death on the cross. Perfect God and perfect Man, Jesus, the perfect substitute for humanity in His life and death. In the Formula of Concord we read, “We also believe, teach, and confess that it was not a mere man who suffered, died, was buried, descended to hell, rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and was raised to God’s majesty and almighty power for us. But it was a man whose human nature has such a profound close, indescribable union and communion with God’s Son that it is one person with Him.”^[1]

The man Jesus is the true, divine Son of God who reveals God to us, for there is no other God than this God who took on our flesh. John 14:9, “Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father’” (John 14:9 ESV). Jesus, true God and true Man, is with us always He intercedes for us before the Father, rules over creation and the Church, and has the authority to judge and forgive. Jesus loves you with an everlasting love.

It is Jesus, “true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary,” who gives you His righteousness in exchange for your sins and grants you forgiveness and eternal life because He has taken away your sins and suffered your punishment and death as His own. This Jesus is your Lord. He is the King who has come to save you and will come again to take you to Himself in resurrection glory. Amen.

^[1] Paul Timothy McCain, ed., Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions (St. Louis: Concordia, 2005), 492.