In the previous chapter, we traced the agonizing, magnificent survival of the Old Testament church. Despite the relentless rebellion of Israel, the devastation of the exile, and the fierce assaults of Satan, God sovereignly preserved the promised seed line. All of that history, the wars, the prophets, the tabernacle, and the waiting, was building toward a singular, explosive moment.
In Chapter 6, the Scots Confession arrives at the climax of human history: the Incarnation of the Son of God. If the Christian faith has a beating heart, it is found in the miraculous reality that the infinite God of the universe took on human flesh and stepped into our broken world.
The Confession teaches that at the appointed time, the eternal Son of God was miraculously conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin, taking on a true human nature; and that Jesus Christ is very God and very man, possessing two distinct natures perfectly united in one person, a truth which directly refutes all ancient and modern heresies concerning His identity.
VI. Of the Incarnation of Christ Jesus
When the fullness of time came, God sent His Son, His eternal wisdom, the substance of His own glory, into this world, who took the nature of manhood of the substance of a woman, to wit, of a virgin, and that by operation of the Holy Ghost, and so was born the just seed of David, the angel of the great counsel of God, the very Messiah promised. Whom we acknowledge and confess, Immanuel, very God and very man, two perfect natures united and joined in one person. By which our confession, we condemn the damnable and pestilent heresies of Arius, Marcion, Eutyches, Nestorius, and such others, as either deny the eternity of His Godhead, or the verity of His human nature, or confounded them, or yet denied them.
The Fullness of Time
The chapter begins with a profound phrase borrowed from the Apostle Paul: “When the fullness of time came.”
The arrival of Jesus was not a divine afterthought or a sudden reaction to an out of control world. It was the precise, calibrated culmination of God’s eternal decree. The Roman roads were built, the Greek language had unified the Mediterranean world, the Jewish people were desperate for a deliverer, and the prophetic countdowns had reached their end. The stage was perfectly set.
Into this world, God sent “His eternal wisdom, the substance of His own glory.” This phrase deliberately echoes Hebrews 1:3, reminding us that the Son is not a created being. He is the exact imprint of the Father’s nature.
Yet, this eternal God “took the nature of manhood of the substance of a woman.” The Confession highlights the virgin birth as an absolute historical and theological necessity. Because Christ was conceived “by operation of the Holy Ghost” rather than by ordinary human generation, He bypassed the inherited corruption of original sin. He took on true human flesh from Mary, but He did not take on fallen human guilt. He was the perfect, spotless Lamb, the “just seed of David” who could finally crush the head of the Serpent.
Two Natures, One Person
The theological core of this chapter is found in the declaration that Jesus Christ is “Immanuel, very God and very man, two perfect natures united and joined in one person.”
It is helpful to note that when the Confession uses the word “very” here, it is utilizing an older English definition rooted in the Latin word for truth. It means “truly” or “veritably.” The Reformers are declaring that Jesus is truly God and truly man.
This is known in theology as the Hypostatic Union. It is a mystery that stretches the limits of human comprehension, but it is the anchor of our salvation. We must avoid the faulty habit of trying to explain this with mathematical formulas, as if Jesus were some kind of mixture of parts. Rather, the Confession emphasizes that He possesses a complete divine nature and a complete human nature. He lacks absolutely nothing of true deity, and He lacks absolutely nothing of true humanity.
He possesses a divine nature, meaning He is omnipotent, eternal, and worthy of all worship. He also possesses a human nature, meaning He got hungry, He grew tired, He wept, and He possessed a physical body capable of dying. These two distinct and complete natures are perfectly united in the single person of Jesus Christ, without confusion, change, division, or separation.
Guarding the Mystery: The Ancient Heresies
To protect this glorious truth, the “Six Johns” deliberately list and condemn four “damnable and pestilent heresies” from the early centuries of the church. They understood that if you alter the identity of Christ, you destroy the Gospel. We must briefly understand these errors, because they continually resurface in modern cults and false religions:
- Arius (Arianism): Arius taught that Jesus was not eternally God. He famously argued that “there was a time when the Son was not,” claiming Jesus was merely the first and greatest created being. This heresy was condemned at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325. If Jesus is not truly God, His sacrifice cannot have infinite value to save us. Jehovah’s Witnesses hold to an explicit form of Arianism today. In addition, modern heterodox theologies like Eternal Relations of Submission and Authority flirt with Arian tendencies by making the Son somehow eternally subordinate to the Father as a necessary facet of His existence as Son.
- Marcion (Marcionism): Marcion fundamentally severed the unity of God, teaching that the harsh Creator God of the Old Testament was an entirely different deity than the loving Father of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. By severing this connection, Marcion made the Son the emissary of a completely alien God, destroying the continuity of the Scriptures and the true identity of the Son.
- Eutyches (Eutychianism): Eutyches taught that the human and divine natures of Christ were blended or “confounded” together into a new, third kind of nature (like a drop of honey dissolved in the ocean). Because this view effectively allows the divine nature to swallow up the human nature, it carries strong Docetic tendencies, meaning it severely de-emphasizes the genuine, physical humanity of Christ. If this were true, Jesus would be neither truly God nor truly man, making Him an entirely different species incapable of mediating for us.
- Nestorius (Nestorianism): Nestorianism is complicated, but the core issue with Nestorius and any form of this error is a denial of the personal unity of the Son. Although it takes a variety of forms, it tends to treat the Son as some kind of union between two distinct persons rather than two complete natures perfectly united in one person.
The Scottish Reformers fiercely condemned these errors because they knew the stakes. They rested their eternal souls on the historic, orthodox understanding of Immanuel.
Conclusion
The Incarnation is the ultimate proof of God’s love for His elect. As patristics scholar Donald Fairbairn has noted, Christ had to be who the Bible says He is in order to save us the way the Bible teaches us He does. That is, He must be one of us, but He must also be God. He did not shout instructions from the safety of heaven. He did not send an angel to do the bloody work of redemption. He came Himself.
For the persecuted believers in 1560 Scotland, and for us today, the Incarnation is a wellspring of deep comfort. We do not pray to a distant deity who is ignorant of human suffering. We pray to a High Priest who has walked in our dust, felt our grief, and endured our temptations. Jesus Christ is “Immanuel,” God with us, and because He joined Himself to our humanity forever, we are guaranteed to be joined to His glory forever.
Key Terms
- Incarnation: The act of the eternal Son of God taking on human flesh and a true human nature, being conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary.
- Hypostatic Union: The theological term describing the miraculous union of Christ’s two distinct natures (divine and human) within His one unified person.
- Immanuel: A Hebrew name meaning “God with us,” applied to Jesus Christ in prophecy and fulfilled at His birth.
- Heresy: A false teaching that fundamentally denies or distorts a core, essential doctrine of the Christian faith; it is a willful and high-handed rejection of what the Church confesses to be true regarding a matter of salvific significance.
- Docetism: An early Christian heresy teaching that Christ’s physical body and human nature were an illusion or merely appeared to be real, rather than being a genuine, physical reality.