This is another area where the ancient ecumenical creeds, and especially the Athanasian Creed, can be extremely beneficial to us. In our walk through a small section of the Athanasian Creed, we’ve come to this statement: and he is man from the essence of his mother, born in time;
As you might remember, we just talked through the idea that Jesus is God from the essence of the Father and that he has been coming (or proceeding) from the Father for all eternity past.
To put it into slightly other words, there was not a moment in all of eternity past when the Son was not coming from the Father. I believe that to be true. I also believe it to be true that there was a moment in time when the Son of God became the Son of Mary. Paul puts it like this: “But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman” (Galatians 4:4a, NIV).
The Son of God has been God forever. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. But the Son of God has not always been a human being. There was a moment when he was not a human and then, in the next moment at his conception, he was a human. This, unlike his pre-incarnate existence, which had been occurring prior to any human existence, occurred within the time of human existence.
Along the same lines, the Son of God—in time—is from the essence of his mother—Mary. What makes him a human being? Something about his connection to, and coming from, his mother. The Son of God is a human being because he has taken upon himself humanity. And, in the good pleasure of the triune God, this has been done through the Son of God’s being born of a woman.