Skip to content ↓

The Heart of the Unbeliever’s Unbelief

Reading Classics Together

If you pause to think about it, you may just come to agree with me: Nobody really has a problem with Jesus’ atoning death. Not at heart. Nobody really has a problem with Jesus’ resurrection. Not at the foundation. They don’t have a problem with his miracles or coming return. They actually have a problem with Jesus’ incarnation. The problem is not Good Friday or Easter, but Christmas. As J.I.Packer says, “Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the incarnation.” We could well say that nothing in theology is so fantastic either. This, God made man, is “the supreme mystery with which the gospel confronts us.” It’s a simple truth, this, but a very important one, for it confronts us with the heart of the unbeliever’s unbelief.

“The really staggering Christian claim,” he says in Knowing God, “is that Jesus of Nazareth was God made man — that the second person of the Godhead became the ‘second man’ (1 Cor. 15:47), determining human destiny, the second representative head of the race, and that he took humanity without loss of deity, so that Jesus of Nazareth was as truly and fully divine as he was human.” (Aside: Can anyone work the long, complex sentence as well as J.I. Packer?)

Here we have two great mysteries, two unfathomable truths: the existence of one God in three persons and the perfect union of God and man in the person of Jesus Christ.

This is the real stumbling-block in Christianity. It is here that Jews, Moslems, Unitarians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and many of those who feel the difficulties above-mentioned (about the virgin birth, the miracles, the atonement, and the resurrection), have come to grief. It is from misbelief, or at least inadequate belief, about the incarnation that difficulties at other points in the gospel usually spring. But once the incarnation is grasped as a reality, these other difficulties dissolve.

“The incarnation is itself an unfathomable mystery, but it makes sense of everything else that the New Testament contains.”

Once we allow that Jesus was God, it becomes unreasonable to find much difficulty in the other controversial details of his life and his death — that his birth should be prophesied, that his conception should be from the Spirit, that his life should be accompanied by great miracles, that his death should be representative, that his resurrection should be proven, that his return should be imminent. “The incarnation is itself an unfathomable mystery, but it makes sense of everything else that the New Testament contains.”

Here, then, is our first challenge: not to convince people of the miracle of Jesus’ death and resurrection, but first the miracles of his incarnation.

Next Week

If you are reading Knowing God with me as part of Reading Classics Together, please read chapters 7 and 8 for next Thursday. If you are not yet doing so, why don’t you join us? We have only just begun, so you will not have a difficult time catching up.

Your Turn

The purpose of Reading Classics Together is to read these books together. This time around the bulk of the discussion is happening in a dedicated Facebook group. You can find it right here. Several hundred people are already interacting there and would be glad to have you join in or just read along.


  • A La Carte Collection cover image

    A La Carte (March 19)

    A La Carte: How to know if you’re using God / The soul-poison of the little word ‘should’ / True, false, or heresy? / Truthful thinking is greater than positive thinking / Unless the seed dies / and more.

  • The Phrase that Altered My Thinking Forever

    This week the blog is sponsored by P&R Publishing and is written by Ralph Cunnington. Years ago, I stumbled repeatedly on an ancient phrase that altered my thinking forever.  Distinct yet inseparable. The first time I encountered this phrase was while studying the Council of Chalcedon’s description of the two natures of Christ. Soon after,…

  • Always Look for the Light

    Always Look for the Light

    For many years there was a little potted plant on our kitchen window sill, though I’ve long since forgotten the variety. Year after year that plant would put out a shoot and from the shoot would emerge a single flower. And I observed that no matter how I turned the pot, the flower would respond.…

  • A La Carte Collection cover image

    A La Carte (March 18)

    A La Carte: God is good and does good—even in our pain / Dear bride and groom / Sin won’t comfort you / Worthy of the gospel / From self-sufficiency to trusting God’s people / The gods fight for our devotion / and more.

  • Confidence

    God Takes Us Into His Confidence

    Here is another Sunday devotional—a brief thought to orient your heart toward the Lord. God takes the initiative in establishing relationship by reaching out to helpless humanity. He reveals himself to the creatures he has made. But what does it mean for him to provide such revelation of himself? John Calvin began his Institutes by…

  • A La Carte Collection cover image

    Weekend A La Carte (March 16)

    A La Carte: I believe in the death of Julius Caesar and the resurrection of Jesus Christ / Reasons students and pastors shouldn’t use ChatGPT / A 1.3 gigpixel photo of a supernova / What two raw vegans taught me about sharing Jesus / If we realize we’re undeserving, suddenly the world comes alive /…