XII. Of the Person of the Redeemer and His Appearing in the Flesh.

When the time was fulfilled (Galatians 4:4) of which the prophets had spoken (Genesis 49:10; Daniel 9:24), God let His Son proceed forth from Himself (John 8:42; 16:28) and sent Him into the world (John 6:38), into the womb of a highly favored virgin named Mary (Luke 1:27, 28), where and by whom He (the seed of the woman, Genesis 3:15; of Abraham, Galatians 3:16-19; of David, Romans 1:3) was conceived through divine quickening and overshadowing of the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:35); became partaker of flesh and blood, and was made like unto us in all things yet without sin (Hebrews 2:14-17; 4:15), in that in the natural course of time He was born of her, as it was written, in Bethlehem (Luke 2:11; Micah 5:1), and was called Jesus because He should save His people from their sins. Matthew 1:21.

This Jesus, born of Mary in Bethlehem and brought up in Nazareth (Matthew 2:23), is the one whom we confess to be Christ, the Son of the living God (Matthew 16:16) the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14), the Word which was with God and was God (John 1:1; Genesis 1:3; 1 John 1:1), and became flesh. John 1:14; Galatians 4:4; Philippians 2:7-11. Not as though the divine essence of the eternal Word had been changed to visible, mortal flesh or a visible man (Hebrews 1:8-12), and had ceased to be Spirit, Divinity or God (1 Timothy 3:16), but so, that the eternal Son of God (Micah 5:2) continued to be what He was before (John 3:13; Colossians 1:17; Revelation 22: 13), namely God (Romans 9:5) and Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:17; 1 Corinthians 15:45-47), and became what He was not, namely flesh or man.

Therefore we confess that Jesus is our Immanuel, true God and man in one person (Colossians 2:9; 1 Timothy 3:16) and thus qualified and fitted to be a redeemer and the propitiation for the sins of the whole world. 1 John 2: 1, 2.

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