I find myself returning to the Nicene Creed this Advent season
As we draw near the end of 2025, we say goodbye to celebrations of the 1,700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed. Certainly, the church will continue confessing this great statement of faith beloved by so many, but we have perhaps heard enough about the history of its creation (No, Emperor Constantine didn’t write it!) and its role in Christian doctrinal disputes (Take that, Arius!) to last quite a while.
Yet, I find myself returning to it this Advent season. Unlike the Apostle’s Creed, which in its brevity summarizes the Incarnation as, “He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary…”, the Nicene Creed takes a moment to dwell on this miracle of miracles and adds some crucial information.
“For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven;
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and was made man.”
The addition of these phrases has a tremendous impact on how we perceive Christ’s Incarnation and the nature of our relationship with him.
For Us
After several lines emphasizing the coequal nature of the Father and Son from all eternity, the Nicene Creed introduces the vast shift of the Son’s assumption of humanity with the phrase, “For us men and for our salvation…” No, not for some incomprehensible divine power trip, but for humanity’s sake: for the love of those made in his image.
God’s glory is seen under its opposite, even as our good is accomplished in a seemingly evil act: the execution of the only fully righteous man.
Christians will sometimes emphasize the fact that God was glorified in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ and his redemption of humanity, and that is certainly true. Scripture makes clear that God seeks his own glory, but we run into trouble if we pit the glory of God against the good of humanity. In fact, Christ’s Incarnation was glorious because it benefited humanity, and the cross is only good because of what it accomplished. As Martin Luther wrote in his theses for the 1518 Heidelberg Disputation, the true theologian “comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross,” as opposed to the theologian of glory, who finds the cross offensive. God’s glory is seen under its opposite, even as our good is accomplished in a seemingly evil act: the execution of the only fully righteous man.
Scripture makes clear that Christ was made Incarnate for our salvation, that in taking on our flesh, he might redeem human flesh, defeating death and granting us his resurrection life. “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, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery” (Heb. 2:14-15).
He Came Down
The Nicene Creed also tells us that Christ “came down from heaven.” Here again, we find a potential theological minefield. The Apostle Paul says of Christ that “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men…” (Phil. 2:6-7). Some have misunderstood this passage, believing it teaches the Son of God somehow ceased to be God when he became human. I remember hearing a preacher say (hopefully on accident) that when Christ came to earth, he “emptied himself of divinity.”
In fact, it was the prerogatives of divinity that Christ surrendered to live on earth as a man. As Paul goes on to say, “he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (v. 8) His coming down from heaven was not simply a change of location, but a willingness to live as a man in perfect fulfillment of God’s will, even when it meant dying a horrific death.
The one who was in heaven had to descend to us that we might ascend with him, as he told Nicodemus. “No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man” (John 3:13). Paul concurs, writing, “He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things” (Eph. 4:10). The significance of this statement is exactly what Jesus tells Nicodemus next: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:16-17).
By the Spirit
The creed tells us this was accomplished “by the power of the Holy Spirit,” emphasizing the full Trinitarian participation in the work of redemption. This is the same spirit that regenerates us now, bringing us into union with Christ and communion with the Father. “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you” (Rom. 8:11). For we are joined with Christ as flesh with flesh, and his Spirit indwells us. Therefore, all that is ours is his, and all that is his is ours.
The Word “became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14) so we would have “the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (v. 12-13) We do not embrace the flesh and reject the spirit, nor the other way around, but by both flesh and spirit we are saved. For by the quickening of God’s Spirit and the atonement accomplished in Christ’s flesh, we receive the same rights as natural-born children. “And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God” (Gal. 4:4-7)
He Became Incarnate
To be made incarnate is to be enfleshed: to take a body unto one’s self. God is Spirit (John 4:24) and therefore has no body. Our flesh comes with limitations that do not confine divinity.
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). But to the people of Jesus’ day, there was nothing glorious about flesh.
As the historian Tom Holland has noted in his book Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, the strangeness of the Christian story “for the vast majority of people in the Roman world, did not lie in the notion that a mortal might become divine.” [1] After all, Roman emperors were doing that. The general assumption of philosophers in the Greco-Roman world was that the physical body was at best a limitation to be overcome and at worst an active evil. No one would have thought it was a good idea for a god to take on human flesh.
Jews rejected the idea that men might become gods, for they believed in one all-powerful deity. The idea that this God, who for centuries they had proclaimed “is One,” could in fact be Trinitarian, and that the Second Person of this Trinity could become human, was utterly offensive and blasphemous. “That such a god, of all gods, might have had a son, and that this son, suffering the fate of a slave, might have been tortured to death on a cross, were claims as stupefying as they were, to most Jews, repellent.” [2]
He Was Made Man
It is a sign of our long Christian history that we no longer consider it a radical thing for God to be “made man,” in the words of the Nicene Creed. No other religion dares put forward such a counterintuitive idea. But when the Son of God took on a human body, he dignified all human bodies. The divine was not changed by the human, but the human by the divine. He was able to give himself to us completely without losing anything of his eternal nature. Saint Athanasius, one of those who influenced the development of the Nicene Creed, wrote the following about this glorious exchange.
“For he was incarnate that we might be made god; and he manifested himself through a body that we might receive an idea of the invisible Father; and he endured the insults of human beings, that we might inherit incorruptibility. He himself was harmed in no way, being impassible and incorruptible and the very Word and God; but he held and preserved in his own impassibility the suffering human beings, on whose account he endured these things.” [3]
No, Jesus did not stop being God when he became man. No, we do not become divine ourselves by union with him (as some misunderstand Athanasius’ words to suggest). Rather, we are brought into communion with God and become godlike as we are sanctified by the Spirit. To be godlike is different than being “like God,” the original temptation the serpent placed before Eve. (Gen. 3:5) Indeed, it is the very opposite: a complete surrender to the will of God, as opposed to rebellion against it. Christ accomplished that perfect surrender, so that even we who are so imperfect, because we are united with him, might be counted perfectly righteous.
As Paul writes, “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:6-8). Yes, it was for our sake and for our salvation. Thanks be to God.
[1] Tom Holland. Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World. New York: Basic Books, 2019. 5.
[2] Holland, 6.
[3] St. Athanasius the Great of Alexandria. On the Incarnation. Popular Patristics Series. Translated by John Behr. Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011. 107.
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