The Origins of Jesus

Concern over Jesus’ origin was a big deal in the early church! Where, and what, was Jesus before the incarnation (His birth through the virgin Mary)? This question has to do with Jesus’ preexistence, which means that Jesus existed in reality before He entered our world.[i] Jesus was up there before He was down here.

If Jesus did not exist with God, He would be a creation of God. This would undermine Jesus’ statements of His own deity and equality with God (see Day 5). But the most immediate consequence of not believing His preexistence has to do with God’s love. As scholar Douglas McCready wrote, “The doctrine [of preexistence] . . . means Jesus finds His identity on the side of God before He finds it as a human . . . [and] explains why the incarnation is an expression of God’s love for fallen humanity.”[ii]

The fact came to earth as God in human form is a distinctly Christian teaching. And this teaching—God dwelling with humans and giving Himself up for reconciliation—is foundational to the Christian ethic of love.

Early church father Athanasius of Alexandria fought for this doctrine in his famous work On the Incarnation:

You know how it is when some great king enters a large city and dwells in one of its houses; because of his dwelling in that single house, the whole city is honored, and enemies and robbers cease to molest it. Even so is it with the King of all; He has come into our country and dwelt in one body amidst the many, and in consequence the designs of the enemy against mankind have been foiled . . . For the human race would have perished utterly had not the Lord and Savior of all the Son of God, come among us to put an end to death.[iii]

Jesus Himself affirmed that He existed before the foundation of the world. Because Jesus existed with God before He existed on earth, He is the expression of God’s love in human form.

Respond

How does thinking of Jesus existing with God from the beginning change your ideas about Him?

[i] Douglas McCready, “He Came Down from Heaven: The Preexistence of Christ Revisited,” JETS 40, no. 3 (September 1997): 419–32, https://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/40/40-3/40-3-pp419-432_JETS.pdf.

[ii] McCready, “He Came Down from Heaven.”

[iii] St. Athanasius, On The Incarnation, 17–18.