For the last several weeks we have been asking the questions, “Who was this child that was born? Who is this One whose birth we celebrate at Christmas? Who is this One whom we worship? Who is this Jesus?”
Already we have seen that the answer of Scripture, reinforced at Nicea, is that Jesus was and is both God and man. In the creed we confess that Jesus was “begotten of His Father before all worlds” and that He was “begotten by the power of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mary.” This One was both God and man.
But this didn’t resolve all the issues and two basic strains of thought emerged among Christians which, when pressed to their extremes, ended in heresy. There were those who pressed the deity so far that they eradicated his humanity. There were others who pressed Jesus’ humanity so far that they separated His person. It was to combat both these errors that our fathers composed the Definition of Chalcedon. And it is to this that we look today to understand what the Word of God has to teach us about Jesus.