Harkening the Heralds: Substance

Veil'd in Flesh the Godhead see,

Hail th' incarnate Deity!

Pleas'd as Man with Men t'appear,

Jesus our Emmanuel here.

The fourth part of Hark the Herald has barely deviated from its original, apart from an improvement to the poetry of the last couple of lines, to

Pleased as man with man to dwell

Jesus, our Emmanuel.

This section describes substance of the divine Figure when He arrives on the earthly stage, ‘in flesh’, and ‘appearing’ and ‘dwelling’ with men. Early Church heretics, perhaps even as soon as John’s first epistle, were disputing the Lord’s proper humanity. He declared:

and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world. 1 John 4:3, NKJV

Christ's humanity was essential to His becoming the Second Adam, the undoer of Adam the First’s mess, as was having a body capable of crucifixion. Such denials reflect the wider Greek view that the gods appeared as men, but could not, and would not, actually and really become one them. For example, we read in Acts 14:11-13:

Now when the people saw what Paul had done, they raised their voices, saying in the Lycaonian language, “The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!” And Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul, Hermes, because he was the chief speaker. Then the priest of Zeus, whose temple was in front of their city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates, intending to sacrifice with the multitudes. (New King James Version)

Made-up gods pretending to be humans were as fickle and capricious as the real humans who proclaimed these two evangelists as gods, for within a few verses, they tried to kill them.

Christ the Son of God became a real man, the biological son of Mary and the legal son of Joseph the carpenter, that we who are men and women might ascend beyond our fallen and tarnished humanity. What a demotion on His part! What a promotion on ours!

Harken!