The Bible reveals God’s doings, His deeds and activities. First, according to His plan, He created the universe and all things in it. God’s deeds also include incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, descending as the Spirit, and, in the future, Christ’s second coming, the kingdom, and the new heaven and the new earth with the New Jerusalem. God is by no means inactive. On the contrary, He has accomplished a great many things. If it were not for God’s activity in creation, the universe would not have come into existence. The universe came out of God’s activity.
Incarnation is an even more impressive matter than creation. Through incarnation God became a man. As a man, Christ accomplished the work of redemption, dying on the cross for our sins. In His resurrection He brought His humanity into God. How marvelous!
Christians often say that the Son of God was incarnated. This, of course, is true. However, John 1:14 does not say that the Son of God became flesh; it says, “The Word became flesh.” John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” This Word, according to verse 14, became flesh. This indicates that God Himself became a man. First, the Word became a man. Then in resurrection Christ, the last Adam in the flesh, became a life-giving Spirit. In John 1:14 and 1 Corinthians 15:45 we have two important uses of the word became: the Word became flesh, and the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit. First, Christ became a man in order to accomplish redemption. For this, He died on the cross and was buried. Then in resurrection He became a life-giving Spirit. Our God today is the life-giving Spirit.
God has passed through a marvelous process. He became a man by being born of a virgin in a manger. For this reason, Isaiah 9:6 declares that unto us a child is born and that this child is called the mighty God. That child born of a virgin was the mighty God. This means that the mighty God actually became a child. Do you realize that one day our God became a child? The unique God, the only God in the universe, became a child! We may even speak of this child as the God-child. Of course, this term is not found in the Bible. However, the fact of God becoming a child is clearly revealed in Scripture. To speak of the God-child is not heresy; it is a divine fact. We are considering two crucial times the word became is used. The first is that the Word became flesh, God became a child born in a manger.
As we have indicated, the second crucial time the word became is used is in 1 Corinthians 15:45, where we are told that the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit. Who was this last Adam? No doubt the last Adam was the man Christ Jesus, God incarnate. Through resurrection He became a life-giving Spirit.
As Christians we all must recognize that the Word, which was God, became flesh. The very God actually became a child. We also must recognize that Christ, after His crucifixion and in resurrection, became a life-giving Spirit. Some Christians, however, oppose this teaching and say that it is heretical. They ask how Christ, the second of the Trinity, could be the Spirit, who is the third of the Trinity. But according to 1 Corinthians 15:45, Christ as the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit. Is not the life-giving Spirit here the Holy Spirit? To deny this is to hold the heretical view that there are two life-giving Spirits.