“Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

Romans 7:24B-25a (NIV)

I’ve been thinking about the two sides of me: the person I am and the person I want to be. These two seem constantly at odds inside my mind. On my good days, I somehow manage to act like the person I want to be. But let a little stress creep in or a conflict arise and the other version of myself emerges, wearing my skin. I default to a self I don’t like—someone who steals peace and creates chaos. Psychologists might call that person my “false self” or “shadow side.” Whatever you call it, it’s a powerful version of me. Few things are more disappointing than realizing too late that I’ve let that “self” take over … again.  

I suspect I’m not alone in this struggle. The apostle Paul speaks for all of us when he writes to the Romans, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do … For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing” (Romans 7:15-19 NIV). 

We all know this cycle of frustration—reaching for our better selves only to find ourselves discouraged by the return of our darker side. Knowing what we know about ourselves, we should be even more awe-struck by the glorious theology beneath the Christmas story.

What we celebrate at Christmas is more than a baby in a manger. Theologically, this takes us much deeper. The term hypostatic union might sound cold and technical, but it invites us to consider the real gift of this cosmic reality: God came to us in human form. The incarnation, the melding of divinity with humanity, offers us a profound mystery. He who was fully God held together the power of His divinity with the experience of His humanity … perfectly. And because He did, He now has power to reconcile the two natures within every person. 

When Jesus entered into our world, He became the first of a new kind of person—one who identified completely with our limitations without surrendering His divine nature. His birth did not erase the fact that He was the Word who spoke all creation into being in Genesis 1. His death didn’t negate the fact that He was the Warrior who defeated death in Revelation 19.

Fully God, fully man. If we diminish His divinity, we risk theological liberalism, focusing on His teachings and example without recognizing His cosmic power. If we diminish His humanity, we risk Unitarianism—failing to embrace His unique role as the Son, His experience of temptation, His frustration with a broken world and His suffering on the cross. But Jesus resisted sin, precisely because He felt it. He loved his enemies because He experienced their opposition. He forgave because He experienced their sins against God. He experienced life as a human, but perfectly. And because He has made perfect peace between His divine and human natures, He is able to offer us a path toward wholeness in our own broken lives. Through the perfect union of divinity and humanity, Jesus has accomplished what we all long for most: peace. 

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul speaks of Jesus as the answer to the “dividing wall of hostility” between two kinds of people. He writes: “For Christ himself has brought peace to us. He united Jews and Gentiles into one people when, in his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us. He did this by ending the system of law with its commandments and regulations. He made peace between Jews and Gentiles by creating in himself one new people from the two groups. Together as one body, Christ reconciled both groups to God by means of his death on the cross, and our hostility toward each other was put to death” (Ephesians 2:14-16). 

Paul refers here to a spiritual barrier, but these walls also exist within us. The divisions inside us, the chaos and dis-ease that define so much of our lives, are often the same walls that divide us from one another. We battle each other because we battle ourselves, and fear fans the flame. We long for salvation from stress, unanswered questions and the pressure to be something we can never be, but we’re afraid that we aren’t worthy of the salvation we’re offered. Meanwhile, we ignore the remarkable gift of incarnation. As the prophet Isaiah wrote: 

… It was our weaknesses he carried;

it was our sorrows that weighed him down.

And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God,

a punishment for his own sins!

But he was pierced for our rebellion,

crushed for our sins.

He was beaten so we could be whole.

He was whipped so we could be healed.

Isaiah 53:4-5

This is such good news! In Jesus Christ, we find the miracle of a perfect God at peace with an imperfect world. Jesus—the one who embodies peace in His very being—offers the only answer to our divided, chaotic lives. His life, in which divinity and humanity are united, shows that peace is possible for us, too. What might sound like a dry theological term, hypostatic union, is as personal as our longings and as hopeful as the empty tomb. It assures us that Jesus came not only to get us to heaven but to heal our divided lives here and now. 

Knowing that Jesus has power to tear down the “dividing walls of hostility,” we can begin to practice the peace He demonstrated. Even on days we don’t feel it we can “act” as if Christ’s work is enough to heal our divided selves. We can act as if our biggest internal battles have been won. We can act as if our recovery is complete, even if it’s still in progress, and as if our relationships are healed, even if they are still under construction. We can act as if our physical health is improving, our depression is healing, our finances are stabilizing, despite the fact that they may still need work. In short, we can know peace in this life, and Jesus—fully God, fully man—is our assurance of that truth. The same power that held His divinity and humanity together can hold us together, too. The God of peace, as Paul writes to the Thessalonians, “can sanctify [us] through and through” (1 Thessalonians 5:23 NIV)—spirit, soul and body. This makes Christ all the more worthy of our celebration.

Illustration by Matt Chinworth