This week on Things Unseen, we're thinking together about what helps us to meditate lovingly

on our Lord Jesus Christ, and we began to do that because I think of a slight suspicion

that many of us feel we're scarcely able to reflect on him for any length of time.

One Monday I suggested that some Christians have long found that there are basic building

blocks that help us. Christ is one divine person in whom there are two natures, a divine

and a human nature, united in that one person. Yesterday we're thinking about our Lord's

divine person. Today I want to think with you about the fact that he has two natures.

The divine person of the Son of God has always had a divine nature. He is all the qualities

of God. He's, as the shorter Catechism says, infinite and eternal and unchangeable in

His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. He's the Lord of creation.

He's the Lord of providence, the Lord of history. And not only so, but as the divine Son,

our Lord has always had a perfect union and communion with the Father and with the Spirit,

always face to face with God, dwelling in unimaginably great, mutual love and joy with

the Father and with the Spirit. It's knowing this that makes John's statement at the beginning

of his gospel so utterly amazing to us. The word became flesh and dwelt among us.

The eternal word took on human nature, conceived as a male child in the womb of a young virgin

named Mary, in the remote region of the Roman Empire that had been renamed the Provence

of Palestine. In one sense you can almost sympathize with the

early Christian apologist Tartullian when he wrote, I believe this because it's incredible.

Although he should really have said he believed it, although it was incomprehensible.

We can say it and believe it. We can describe it. But we know we can't fully comprehend it,

far less explain it. And then we remember, God is God and we are not God. So this is hardly

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