The last statement we’ll look at together from the Athanasian Creed reads: For just as one man is both rational soul and flesh, so too the one Christ is both God and man.
Here the creed appeals to humanity’s existence in general. We, as people, exist as souls and bodies, which are united to one another in making a person.
We can, and probably ought to, think about the person of Jesus in a similar manner. He is not half-God and half-human. He is not God when he is forgiving a paralyzed person and then a human when he’s eating and sleeping—or dying. He is God and man all at the same time.
This is the Jesus of the Athanasian Creed and, more importantly, this is the Jesus of the New Testament and the Scriptures as a whole. And, he is worthy to be worshipped.
I think it’s fitting and honoring to the creed and Scripture to close our time working through the creed in order to learn about Jesus’s incarnation to let the Bible have the last word. And that last word comes from the Letter to the Hebrews.
It reads: “Therefore, since the children share in blood and flesh, he also in like manner shared in these same things, in order that through death he could destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and could set free these who through fear of death were subject to slavery throughout all their lives. For surely he is not concerned with angels, but he is concerned with the descendants of Abraham. Therefore he was obligated to be made like his brothers in all respects, in order that he could become a merciful and faithful high priest in the things relating to God, in order to make atonement for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:14-17, LEB).