The Necessity of the Incarnation

 

The question and dispute concerning the necessity of Christ's incarnation can be further divided into three separate questions which are as follows:

First, would the Son of God have become incarnate even if man had never sinned?

Second, was it absolutely necessary for the Son to take on our human nature, or could the salvation of men been accomplished some other way?

Third, was it necessary that the Mediator be both God and man?

Would Christ have become incarnate even if man never sinned?

If man had never sinned, there would have not been any need for Christ to have become incarnate (contrary to the opinion of some of the scholastics, such as Alexander of Hales and William of Ockham), for the following reason: In Scripture, the end of Christ's incarnation is said to be the salvation of men from sin (Matt. 1:21; Matt. 20:28; Lk. 1:67-79; Lk. 2:30; John 1:29; Gal. 4:4-5; 1 Tim. 1:15; Heb. 2:14). Therefore, if man had never sinned, Christ would not have become incarnate. 

Was the Incarnation the only possible means of man's salvation after the Fall?

This question is not about God's decree, for all would rightly grant that once God had decreed the incarnation, it would by necessity have been done, since the decree of God is immutable (Isaiah 46:10). 

Rather, the point under dispute is whether or not the incarnation was necessary for the justice of God to have been satisfied and the salvation of men to be accomplished. The Reformed church affirms this proposition as biblical and true. 

[1]. The Surety of the covenant of grace, who is Christ, ought to have been man, in respect of God's justice, which requires that sin should be punished according to the same nature in which it was committed, for Ezekiel 18:4 says "The soul that sinneth it shall die". 

[2]. The Scriptures clearly teach that one of the ends of Christ's incarnation was so that He might be subject to the law (Gal. 4:4). The law requires that man love God with all His soul, body, mind, and strength (cf. Deut. 6:5), in short that man should love God with his entire nature. Now Christ could not have done this, if He had not taken human nature to Himself into the unity of His person. 

[3]. It is also required that the Surety should be God, since the Scriptures teach that man's salvation is a prerogative of God alone (Is. 41:14; Is. 43:11). 

[4]. It is further required that the Savior be God-Man, for, as Herman Witsius says "And therefore it behoved our surety to be man, that he might be capable to submit, obey, and suffer; and at the same time God, that the subjection, obedience, and suffering of this person, God-man, might, on account of his infinite dignity, be imputed to others, and be sufficient for saving all to whom it is imputed. Moreover, a mere creature could not support himself under the load of divine wrath, so as to remove it, and rise again when he had done. "Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath," Ps. 90:11; see Nah. 1:6. It was therefore necessary for our surety to be more than man, that, by the infinite power of his Godhead, he might support the assumed human nature, and so be able to bear the fierceness of divine wrath, and conquer every kind of death" (The Economy of the Covenants, Vol. 1, pg. 200)

"Nonetheless he made the things of the flesh his own so that the suffering could be said to be his." (Cyril of Alexandria, Letter to the Monks of Egypt)