Why Did God Become Incarnate as a Man?

Seeking the answer to the question that is the title of this essay¹ may be viewed by some as politically incorrect. Radical gender ideology, which has become a new cultural religion, tries to convince people that gender is purely a social construct, and that male and female are fungible categories. In these days when sexual difference is viewed by some as inconsequential or unimportant, and it is seen by others as valid to identify with whatever gender one chooses, Christians need to understand that in God’s design sexual difference matters. Sexual difference matters for many reasons. First of all, sexual difference matters for the well-being of individual human persons, for the family, and for the good of society. However, Christians should realize that sexual difference matters because it also reveals something about the Divine Mystery. The Incarnation shows this.

Although I hope this essay is thought-provoking for everyone who reads it, the main audience is those who profess to be Christian. The arguments presented here are theological arguments, and they may be viewed an unpersuasive by those who do not profess faith in Jesus Christ. However, by reflecting on the Incarnation, my primary intention is to persuade people of faith that sexual difference is more important than they perhaps realize. In fact, I contend that in God’s design natural sexual difference is revelatory of supernatural realities.

When the Eternal Son of God chose to become incarnate he did so as a man, a male. This is admittedly a Mystery, but it is a Mystery about which we need to try to understand something. Certainly, God did not become a man by accident. It is not as if God flipped a coin and randomly chose to become incarnate as a man rather than as a woman. God never acts arbitrarily. However, we also know that the reason God chose to become a man is NOT because men are better than women. This would be preposterous, as both men and women are created in God’s image and likeness with perfect equality and equal dignity (CCC 369). Yet everything God does is done with infinite wisdom, and He always chooses what is most fitting. So why was it most fitting that God should become incarnate as a man? What is God communicating to us by making this choice? The answer to these questions assists us in understanding not only something about the infinite Mystery of God, but also in understanding something about the mystery of human sexual difference and how it relates to the Mystery of God.

First of all, I am not saying that the Divine Nature is sexually differentiated. God is Being and the source of all that is, and the Divine Essence is beyond the categories of gender (see CCC 370). God transcends gender (see CCC 239), along with all other categories in Creation. God “is neither man nor woman: he is God” (CCC 239). However, just as a beautiful painting reveals something about the painter who created it, God intends that Creation reveals something about the infinite and ineffable Divine Nature (see CCC 40–43). All of Creation is sacramental, meaning that it is a sign of something beyond itself. In fact, Creation is intended by God to reveal to us something about the Divine Life and Love that God offers to us (see Rom 1:19-20). Among all created natures human nature reveals more about God than any other aspect of visible creation, because in the visible created order only human nature is made in God’s image and likeness (Gen 1:26–27).

In order to reveal to us the fullness of who God is, God the Son assumes a human nature and becomes incarnate as a man. As the Incarnate Son he reveals to us that the First Person of the Blessed Trinity is the Father (e.g., Matthew 28:19, Mark 13:32, Luke 23:46; John 14:6). This eternal relationship of the Father and the Son is an infinite Divine Mystery, yet Jesus gives us a glimpse into this Mystery. Jesus consistently prays to the Father and uses the corollary masculine pronouns He and Him (e.g., John 5:19–20) when referring to the Father. Jesus refers to the Father in masculine terms throughout his earthly ministry, and he gives us THE prayer for humanity to offer which begins with the words, “Our Father . . .” (Matthew 6:9–13; Luke 11:2–4). This was not Jesus bowing to social convention or cultural expectations, as he showed himself willing on many occasions to dispense with social niceties and established expectations. Instead, by teaching us to pray to the Father, which itself was novel compared to the preceding Jewish tradition of prayer, Jesus is revealing that the First Person of the Blessed Trinity is Father from all eternity in His relationship to the Son, and that He relates to us as our Father as well. What can we understand here?

It is important to note that in the order of creation fatherhood is attached to men. It is a quality that only men can have. Only men can be fathers, and even though God transcends gender, we can only understand fatherhood as we experience it through male humanity. This means that somehow, in God’s creative plan human fatherhood is meant to be a sign, however faint, of the relationship that we have with our Father in Heaven. However, we must acknowledge that God is the source of all fatherhood and no one is father as God is Father (see CCC 239). God the Father is infinitely more perfect than any human sign of His Fatherhood. There is a profound Mystery in God’s Fatherhood. Yet whoever God is as Father can only be understood in terms of male humanity. The created reality of fatherhood as it is attached to manhood is supposed to reveal something important to us about our Heavenly Father.

Let’s be clear: we are NOT making the First Person of the Blessed Trinity the alpha male nor are we projecting male qualities onto God; this would be reversing the polarity of how God reveals Himself in Creation. Rather, we are saying that human fatherhood is created to be a sacrament or sign of THE Father. This is part of the theo-logic of Creation, that different aspects of Creation reflect the Creator in different ways. In God’s design, human fatherhood is intended to be a reflection of the Father. Not only does Jesus instruct us to pray to our Father, Jesus also states, “The Father and I are one” (John 10:30), and he goes on to tell us, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). In other words, Jesus became a man because he is one with the Father. Jesus is one with the Father in Divinity, and by becoming incarnate as a man he incarnates the Father’s love because in the created order fatherhood is attached to manhood.

So, how does human fatherhood, which is attached to male humanity, reflect something of our relationship with God the Father? Why does Jesus instruct us to pray to the First Person of the Blessed Trinity as Father rather than Mother? Is this just God’s preferred gender identity that God could exchange for another identity and a corollary set of pronouns if God so chose? In order to answer these questions, we need to say something about the difference between fatherhood and motherhood in the natural order so we can understand how each of these human qualities that are attached to manhood or womanhood respectively reveal different truths about God.

The relationship of a father to his children is not the same as a relationship of a mother to her children. Fatherhood can only be experienced by a man, and motherhood can only be experienced by a woman. In God’s design the human body is sexually differentiated so that a man and a woman in their body-soul complementarity can enter into a mutually self-donating communion of love that has the possibility of begetting new life. The sex of a human person is dictated not by a self-constructed identity, but by how the body is structured for procreation, which is a participation in God’s creative activity (CCC 372).

Looking at the act of procreation itself (which our culture wants to ignore as intrinsic to sexual activity) is important in order to understand the different relationships of fatherhood and motherhood. In the act of begetting offspring a man begets externally to himself, not internally to himself. A woman, on the other hand, begets internally to herself, gestating the child from within her own substance. A husband in some ways extends beyond himself to “initiate” the act of begetting, and a wife actively receives (there is no sense in which the mother is passive because personal love is never passive) her husband’s procreative initiative into her very being.

How does this relate to God, who is beyond sexual difference? The Catechism of the Catholic Church notes that the revelation that the First Person of the Blessed Trinity is Father denotes that the Father is transcendent origin of all that exists (CCC 239). In other words, the Father is not part of His Creation, He is beyond His Creation — He transcends it. He creates out of nothing (ex nihilo), not out of His own substance. Analogous to a human father, when God the Father initiates creation, He does so in a manner that is external to Himself, Creation exists apart from Him. This is one of the reasons why the fundamental relationship between the First Person of the Blessed Trinity and Creation is that of Father and not Mother. If we were to call God Mother it would imply that God somehow creates internally, or that Creation is of the Divine substance. It is no accident that the religions who have worshipped God as Mother end up in pantheism or in nature worship, because the very image of motherhood implies internal gestation and creating out of one’s own substance. In God’s design, the Father’s transcendence or otherness is sacramentalized in human fatherhood.²

Additionally, the Catechism points out that the First Person of the Blessed Trinity is Father to us because He is loving care for His children (CCC 239). Yet we need to say more about this. A father’s love is not different in degree from a mother’s love; it is different in kind. One of these differences lies in the fact that for a human father to exist in personal relationship with his child he must choose to be involved in the life of his child. Granted, the biological relationship between a father and a child will always exist, but for a father to remain connected to his child he must make a choice to remain in the child’s life. A man can be a biological father, but he is a true father only when he chooses to enter into loving relationship with his offspring. Unlike a father, a mother exists in personal relationship to her child from the moment her child is conceived in her womb. It is true that a mother must choose to nurture and rear her child, but a mother exists in relationship with her child, both biologically and personally, form the moment her child is conceived. Once a child is conceived in the womb of his or her mother, the mother is linked to her child. Her child is utterly dependent on her for existence and cannot live apart from his or her relationship with the mother. Even if a mother tries to escape the relationship through abortion, she cannot, as cells of her baby will course through her body for the rest of her life. A mother exists in a necessary personal relationship with her child in a way that a father does not.³

So, how does this relate to God? The First Person of the Blessed Trinity is Father, and not Mother, to humanity because the love He offers to us is the result of a choice, not the result of a necessary relationship. We are not part of Him, and in truth He does not need us. However, because God is Love, and because love is diffusive, God chooses to create us, and He chooses to stay involved in our lives. Our Heavenly Father is a Father who always keeps His promises. God’s covenantal history with humanity is that of a relationship of a Father with His children, whom He loves and whom He will never leave. The relationship of children to a father is the primary analog that allows us to understand the fundamental relationship that we have with our Creator, and the fundamental distinction between Creator and creature.

So, one might ask, what then does motherhood reveal about God? After all, men and women complement each other in imaging God, and the Divine Communion of Persons is not fully imaged without both male and female humanity. While fatherhood is a sign of the fundamental relationship between God and Creation (because God creates external to Himself and because He must choose to enter into relationship with us if that relationship is to exist), motherhood is a sign of just how close God is to each of the human persons that He chooses to create. There are several places in the Old Testament where God’s love is referred to with feminine images. Through the prophet Isaiah God says, “As a mother comforts her son, so will I comfort you” (66:13), and “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you” (49:15). Jesus himself says, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how many times I yearned to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her young under her wings, but you were unwilling!” (Matthew 23:37). While a human father is a sign that God creates externally to Himself and that He must choose to enter into relationship with us, a human mother is a sign that God holds us close to His heart, as a child in the womb is near a mother’s heart, and that His love is life-sustaining. God’s loves for us is analogous to the immanent and intimate love of a mother for her child (see CCC 239), in fact God is closer to us than we are to ourselves. God’s Love for us is so mysterious, so intimate, and so intense that we need the complementarity of both male and female to reveal different aspects of this Love. It takes both men and woman in their complementarity to fully image God’s relationship with us and the intensity of God’s love for each of us. “Each of the two sexes is an image of the power and tenderness of God, with equal dignity though in a different way” (CCC 2334).

Reflecting God’s love is a gift and task for men and for women. God is the “origin and standard” for all fatherhood and motherhood (CCC 239). Human sexual difference allows men and women to be signs of God’s relationship with us in different yet complementary ways. However, we all know that as sinful human persons we often distort God’s Love and betray our vocations to be signs of that Love. In God’s design, parents are “the first representatives of God” for their children (CCC 239). Yet “our experience also tells us that human parents are fallible and can disfigure the face of fatherhood and motherhood” (CCC 239). Perhaps this is one of the underlying reasons for the growth of gender ideology. Perhaps a society that has lost its child-centeredness in preference for a life of sexual indulgence and self-gratification has caused people to doubt the value of fatherhood and motherhood. Perhaps in a society that has succumbed to sexual self-absorption, so many people have been wounded by their fathers and mothers that God’s plan for sexual difference has been obscured and shrouded. Perhaps fathers who reject their role as signs of the Father by being dead-beat dads and fathers who abandon or abuse their children have turned people against the very concept of fatherhood. Perhaps women who reject their role as signs of God’s intimacy with us and His closeness to His children have turned people off to the very concept of motherhood. Perhaps every one of us needs to repent for how we have contributed to the disfigurement of God’s Love.

Yet, even with our human failings, sexual difference still means something in God’s design and it is not arbitrary or accidental. And sexual difference, while it is biological, is also personal. We are an intimate union of body and soul, and our very being as persons is conditioned by sexual difference. Our sexuality pervades every cell of our bodies and every aspect of our being. Men and women engage with reality in different ways, perceiving, and thinking, and loving differently. Our sexuality dictates how we relate to the world around us and how we form bonds of communion with others (see CCC 2332). Genesis reveals the complementarity of gender in God’s design and the fact that men and women are equal in dignity but at the same time different (CCC 2335). There is a masculine way of being and loving and a feminine way of being and loving. Sexuality affects all the aspects of the person as an intimate unity of body and soul (CCC 2332). Catholic philosopher Mary Rousseau once wrote, “Love is thus conditioned by the gender of the person in whose heart it exists.”⁴

How does this apply to the Incarnation? Not only is Jesus’ gender central in revealing who God is, his sexuality is as central to his humanity as our sexuality is to us. He loved as a man, and as a man Jesus is “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15) signifying the Father perfectly. His manhood is the perfect sacrament of the Father. By revealing to us the Mystery that the First Person of the Blessed Trinity is Father, Jesus reveals the fundamental relationship that we have to our Creator. As the eternal Son he serves as icon of the Father and His relationship with Creation. Yet Jesus also teaches us of the immanence and infinite closeness of God’s love. When the Son of God becomes incarnate as a male human being, he affirms the sacramentality of male and female in the different but complementary ways in which they image God.

As a man Jesus presents himself as the Bridegroom (e.g., Mt 9:14–15), and his love is the love of a Bridegroom for his Bride (Eph 5:25–27). As the heavenly Bridegroom, Jesus fulfills the Old Testament prophets who spoke of God as the spouse of His people (e.g., Isaiah 54:5). By becoming a man, God the Son initiates salvation, espouses himself to humanity, and offers himself completely to His Bride pouring himself out to engender new life in Her. As his corporate Bride, the members of the Church receive Jesus’ initiative in order to bear the fruit of divine love. Thus, as a man Jesus shows us that the union that God seeks with us is a nuptial union, analogous to that of a bridegroom and a bride.⁵ In marriage it is sexual difference that allows a husband and a wife to enter into a body-soul mutual exchange of persons that is faithful, permanent, and fruitful. The love of the marital covenant between a man and a woman is meant by God to be a living sign of the nuptial love that God seeks to share with us. Without both male and female God’s love would not be fully imaged. Jesus, as the Bridegroom, shows us this.

Jesus not only reveals to us the depths of the Mystery of God, he also reveals us to ourselves (Gaudium et Spes 22), including revealing to us the importance of gender in sacramentalizing our relationship with God. God is beyond gender, but by becoming incarnate as a man, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity teaches us the inestimable value of human sexual difference as revealing something to us about God’s relationship with us and His love for us. The fundamental aspect of human existence in the world is that God made us male and female in His image (see Pope St. John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body). If we forget or reject this fundamental truth about being human, we will lose sight of our relationship to God and fail to understand His Love for us. The incarnate Son of God calls us to embrace our sexuality, not as a self-created identity, but as a gift from God Who chooses to create us in love, Who chooses to be always with us, and Who is closer to us than we are to ourselves. If we reject the gift of being made male or female in God’s image, then in place of God’s gift of Creation we will substitute an androgynous anti-creation that will lead us not to life and a communion of love with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but to the sterile depths of isolation and despair. Jesus, the God-man, our Bridegroom, has come to save us from this fate! He became incarnate so that he could give us life, and so that we may have it abundantly (Jn 10:10)! This is why God became incarnate as a man.