What Is Incarnation?
Incarnation simply means to embody or personify something. Let me use a real life illustration:
 
When you think of Michael Jordan what do you think of? Baseball? Not really. Golf? Probably not. You think of basketball, of course. Think about it though. Michael Jordan gave baseball a try. Why don't you think of baseball when you think of him? He also plays a lot of golf, but why don't we associate him with golf? We associate him with basketball because Michael Jordan embodies basketball. He doesn't just play basketball, he is basketball. Michael Jordan could probably accomplish more at basketball in his sleep than I could with conscious effort.  because most of his life has been living, breathing, and playing basketball, his entire body, mind and will have been trained for the game. Here's the simple difference between Jordan and me; people are surprised when Jordan misses a basket while they are surprised when I make one.
 
Jesus was the incarnation of God. As a real and genuine human being, Jesus fully embodied God. He embodied the will, love, character, and mind of God. Jesus didn't just do God's will.  He IS God's will. Jesus didn't just act lovingly toward people. He IS God's love. Jesus completely embodied God even when he was asleep, or fixing a meal, or telling a joke. In other words, Jesus completely embodied God even when he wasn't doing anything.
 
Incarnation Is Essential to God's Mission
The church is God's sent people. Jesus summarizes this truth in several passages, but one is important to our discussion. John 20:21-22 says:
 
" Again Jesus said, 'Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.' And with that he breathed on them and said, 'Receive the Holy Spirit.'"
 
We are sent as Jesus was sent. How did the Father send Jesus? Colossians 1:19 says, "For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him." Jesus was sent fully embodying God.  He was sent to show humankind what real human life can look like and accomplish as he embodied, demonstrated and announced God's fullness and reign. This is the central tenet of his message and ministry.
 
The flow of Matthew's Gospel makes this very clear. Jesus enters public ministry after living the fullness of God in his life in quiet obscurity for thirty-something years as a common blue-collar worker. God inaugurates his ministry at his baptism with a divine seal of approval (Matthew 3:13-17).
 
Next, Jesus is sent into the wilderness, giving the devil home court advantage. Yet, the fullness of God in Jesus reverses the Adamic episode from Genesis.  What Adam failed to accomplish within the security of God's garden, Jesus accomplishes in Satan's territory (Matthew 4:1-11).
 
After his temptations, Jesus enters public ministry. But it is a ministry that is embedded in a geographical location. In other words, Jesus lives what he teaches, becoming a light in the darkness.  And what does he live and teach? He lives, models and teaches the good news that a new way of human life under God's reign is available to all (Matthew 4:12-17).
 
It is this embodied teaching that wins his first disciples and contributes to his growing popularity. Again, it's because he doesn't just announce, but embodies and demonstrates this life consistently through love and power (Matthew 4:18-25).
 
Next follows Jesus' first major teaching about this new kind of life. In what most people call the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus unpacks what an incarnational life as the fullness of God looks like. What follows is a simple outline of Jesus' sermon regarding life as the embodied fullness of God under his reign.
 
Matthew 5:1-12: The kingdom is available to ordinary people.
Matthew 5:13-16: As they live it, they become the light and salt to the world.
Matthew 5:17-20: The key to life in the kingdom is not external righteousness (legalism) or removal of the Law (licentiousness).  Rather, it is the formation of a inward reality ; the Law on our hearts.
Examples of this inward reality:
Matthew 5:21-26: Kingdom life goes beyond not killing someone. It's living in God's love so that I'm never angry inwardly in a way that dehumanizes other people.
Matthew 5:27-30: Kingdom life goes beyond not committing adultery. It's living in God's love so that I never lust after someone in a way that sees people only as objects for self-gratification.
Matthew 5:31-32: Kingdom life goes beyond legalities in divorce.It's living in God's love so that I never view my spouse heartlessly as an object to be used or discarded.
Matthew 5:33-37:  Kingdom life goes beyond how to make oaths. It's living in God's love so that my word alone is always trustworthy.
Matthew 5:38-48: Kingdom life goes beyond proper retaliation. It's living in God's love so that I naturally forgive offenses done against me.
Matthew 6:1-4: Kingdom life is being confident in God so I'm not interested in accolades for my deeds.
Matthew 6:5-15: Kingdom life is being confident in God so I continually pray for God's will and care and character.
Matthew 6:16-18: Kingdom life is being confident in God so I'm not interested in fasting or other spiritual activity for attention.
Matthew 6:19-24: Kingdom life is being confident in God so I don't place my security on accumulating wealth.
Matthew 6:25-34: Kingdom life is being confident in God so I don't worry about managing the circumstances of my life. Rather I can devote myself fully to living in God's Law and righteousness regardless of what happens to me.
Matthew 7:1-6: Kingdom life is living in God's love so I never manipulate people by being judgmental.
Matthew 7:7-12: Kingdom life is living in God's love so I respect people's dignity with requests and never resort to any form of pressure or manipulation.
Matthew 7:13-14: Warning about rejecting life as Jesus' apprentice
Matthew 7:15-23: Warning about developing outward appearances and not the inward reality.
Matthew 7:24-29: Warning about the practical consequences of failing to follow Jesus' teaching.
 
After the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus takes his students on a whirlwind tour of embodying, demonstrating and announcing the reign of God (Matthew 8:1-9:34). In all of the episodes, they watch and learn.
 
Then comes that fateful day. As Jesus compassionately ministers to the crowds, he tells his disciples, "Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field" (Matthew 9:35-37). Then comes the next verse, "He called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness" (Matthew 10:1). Jesus commissions his students to begin embodying, demonstrating and announcing God's reign like him. As they prepare to go out on this experimental journey of incarnational living, Jesus tells them, "As you go, preach this message: 'The kingdom of heaven is near.' Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give" (Matthew 10:7-8).  And so, the next phase of God's mission begins.
 
Jesus says, "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." The entire mission of God is concretized in incarnational living. Without it, there really is no true mission.  Let me explain.
 
Incarnation Versus Simply Doing
As we have been examining, Jesus naturally, easily and routinely embodied, demonstrated and announced God's kingdom. his is the mission of God that Jesus was sent to accomplish and that he sends his people to accomplish. 
 
Embody. Demonstrate. Announce. In this progression, one naturally produces the other.  Because Jesus embodied the fullness of God and his reign, he completely demonstrated it.  And because he completely and easily embodied and demonstrated the fullness of God, he was able to announce it with complete authenticity.
 
Many Christians long to participate in God's kingdom. However, because they have not been trained to embody the reality of God's goodness and love, they must attempt to represent God's reign from an inward nature other than the fullness of God and a life completely yielded to and participating in God's reign. This makes them incapable of naturally and consistently responding to any given situation with God's fullness.
 
Now think about what this does to one's attempt to demonstrate God's fullness.  Demonstration should be the natural by-product of embodiment.  But if one attempts to demonstrate something that isn't part of one's nature (embodiment), then its demonstration is sporadic at best.It isn't authentic.
 
And this naturally affects one's ability to announce God's fullness. What do we call someone who declares something that isn't true in their own lives. A hypocrite. The announcement becomes inauthentic and insincere if it's not backed up by consistent demonstration and embodiment. And this is both the popular and academic critique of Christianity in general.  Christians don't really live what they say they value.
 
Ultimately, this changes the Christian message. People can only genuinely announce what they experience or live. The average Christian has experienced God's forgiveness of sins, but not full deliverance from sins as declared by Scripture (Galatians 5:16, 24). The average Christian has experienced the initial touches of God's grace, but not the teaching and training of God's grace into a new kind of human existence (Titus 2:11-12). So they announce what they can naturally demonstrate; forgiveness of sins. This is a subtle, yet significant drift from Jesus' gospel.
 
Please don't misunderstand me at this point. God's forgiveness of sins is a beautiful, wonderful and essential gift. But forgiveness of sins is not the good news or gospel Jesus preached. Mark 1:14-15, says "After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. 'The time has come,' he said. 'The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!'" The gospel Jesus preached is that there is a new way of being human; completely submitted to and participating in God's reign ; that is available to anyone who would receive it. Forgiveness of sins is the doorway to this new life, but it is not the totality of this life.
 
The fullness of God available to humanity is the gospel (Ephesians 3:16-19). The reign of God is the gospel (Matthew 4:17). The goodness and love of God recreating human existence and creation is the gospel. Deliverance from the influence of darkness and participation in the influence of God's kingdom of light is the gospel (Colossians 1:13).
 
Obviously, the gospel speaks of a radically different way of being human. So fully engaging in God's life and mission as Jesus did requires us to become a different kind of people than we are now. This is why spiritual formation is necessary to incarnation.
 
Incarnation Through Spiritual Formation
Dallas Willard describes spiritual formation this way, "Spiritual formation for the Christian basically refers to the Spirit-driven process of forming the inner world of the human self in such a way that it becomes like the inner being of Christ himself."[1]
 
Spiritual formation is the process of re-training one's thoughts, feelings, will, body, soul and relationships in cooperation with God's Spirit. This is the process Paul refers to when he says "work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you" (Philippians 2:12-13) or when he says to put off the old self and put on the new self "created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness" (Ephesians 4:22-23). It is also what Peter is referring to when he says to "participate in the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4).
 
But you may ask, "Isn't a Christian naturally Christlike since Christ lives in him or her?"  If this were so, then Paul wouldn't have spent so much time in his letters addressing false ideas and practices in the early church. In other words, Christlikeness doesn't just happen naturally.  Paul continually instructs Christians to live a particular way. Why? Because a person must train oneself into the incarnational life of God's fullness.
 
Spiritual training is a constant theme in the New Testament. Paul tells Timothy to train to be godly (1 Timothy 4:7). He tells the Corinthian Christians how he trains so not to be disqualified himself (1 Corinthians 9:24-27). After telling the Philippian Christians to work out their salvation (Philippians 2:12-13), Paul then describes the intense effort and focus required in this training (Philippians 3:7-15).
 
Jesus teaches spiritual training as well. He states in Matthew 12:33-35:
 
Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.
 
Jesus is teaching that one's essential inner nature determines the kind of life one lives.  Notice at the end of this passage Jesus states "The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him." How does a person store good up inside of oneself so that the natural and easy response to every situation is goodness? God has given the answer through a 2000-year training program called spiritual disciplines.
 
Spiritual disciplines are the practical way of engaging God's grace. They work through indirect effort by allowing us to do what is currently under our control with the hopes of enabling us to do something that is not in our control.
 
A great illustration of how spiritual disciplines work is in the movie, The Karate Kid. Daniel-san learns karate through indirect means ; painting fences, waxing cars and scrubbing floors.  The simple motions of these mundane activities train him into a person who can naturally and easily do karate. Let's transfer this truth to Jesus' metaphor. A person cannot consistently bear good fruit through direct effort.  But a person can store up good within or train oneself to be godly inwardly so that good fruit is the natural by-product. 
 
One of the common reactions to spiritual disciplines is the accusation of legalism. That's because we are all too aware of spiritual disciplines practiced improperly. However, in our context of spiritual training, we must realize that spiritual disciplines do not earn salvation or anything else from God. They are not done to please God.  Nor are they signs of spiritual maturity. 
 
Rather, spiritual disciplines teach us to interact with God's grace and Spirit through simple activities. They make space for God, enabling us to hear, see and experience him throughout daily life. They create the environment for God to work in us and transform us. They create a lifestyle of intimate interaction with God, which is an essential componentto embodying, demonstrating and announcing the fullness of God.
 
Let me put it this way. When Michael Jordan spent years of training for basketball success, do you think anyone accused him of being legalistic? No way! They knew that hours of practice, a healthy lifestyle of eating, sleeping and exercising and intentional focus was the way to success. People understand this truth in all areas of life ; musically, academically, vocationally. And yet, when we apply it to spiritual growth, it moves from practicality to legalism. That's simply ridiculous. If this is taken to its logical conclusion, then all of the commandments and exhortations in the New Testament documents are legalistic.
 
If one desires to be a person who naturally, easily and routinely embodies, demonstrates and announces God's fullness and reign, then one must be engaged in a lifestyle of practical spiritual training that enables this to happen.
 
Incarnation Through The Holy Spirit
If the Christian is to train into godliness, then what is the role of the Holy Spirit in all of this?
 
In both the Greek and Hebrew, the word "spirit" means "essence." The Spirit of God is the living essence of who God is. The Apostle John describes God as love (1 John 4:8, 16), light (1 John 1:5), and life (1 John 5:20).
 
The Holy Spirit is actively engaged in God's mission as well. Jesus states that the Father will send the Holy Spirit to his apprentices as another Counselor like Jesus (John 14:16, 26). In other words, the Spirit is sent as Jesus is sent. He is sent as the essence of God ; love, light and life ; to continue God's redemptive mission of re-creating humankind and creation.
 
This is crucial as we examine John 20:21-22 again:
 
Again Jesus said, "Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." And with that he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit."
 
Notice that as Jesus commissions his students to be sent as he is sent, he gives them the Holy Spirit. It is impossible to be sent as Jesus ; into his incarnational mission as the embodied fullness of God ; without the Holy Spirit. Jesus himself embodied, demonstrated and announced the God's fullness and reign through the Holy Spirit (Luke 4:18-19).  And this is true for the Christian. In Ephesians 3:14-19, Paul prays that Christians are empowered by the Spirit so that Christ dwells in their hearts and that they experience the immeasurable love of Christ in order that they "may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."
 
In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul describes a practical aspect of the Spirit's empowerment; spiritual gifts. As God's people, committed to God's mission, live in a community of love and service to one another, the Spirit of God (his love, light and life) energizes their love and service "for the common good" through unique manifestations (1 Corinthians 12:7).
 
In Galatians, Paul provides another practical aspect of how the Spirit empowers God's people toward the fullness of God. He says, "So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature." Living by the Spirit is learning how to bring one's whole life into harmonious synchronization with the essence of God (his love, light and life) who is working at re-creating humanity and creation into the goodness of God. As one does this, the natural by-product or fruit of such a life is an ever-deepening incarnational character of God; love (Galatians 5:22-25).
 
The way one lives by the Spirit (bringing one's life into harmonious synchronization with the essence of God) is described above a lifestyle of spiritual disciplines. Spiritual disciplines become the contact points between our lives and the essence of God. They are the practical means of synchronizing our minds, feelings, wills, bodies, souls and relationships with the essence of God. As we engage in a life of spiritual discipline, the Spirit of God meets us, empowers us, and ultimately transforms us.
 
Incarnation Through Community
Jesus was brilliant. He was brilliant at living life. He was brilliant at embodying God's reign.  And he was brilliant at training others at living life and embodying God's reign. In other words, he was not only a Master at Life, but a Master at training others to live life like him.
 
In training and preparing people to experience incarnational life, Jesus gathered people into community. He trained them together so that together they would ultimately re-present God's mission as he presented it.
 
Remember, Jesus was the fullness of God, who exists in an eternal, loving Tri-community.  This cannot be embodied in an isolated individual. Love requires a giver and a receiver.  Therefore, Jesus' mission to embody, demonstrate and announce God's fullness requires community. That's why Jesus gathers a community of apprentices at the beginning of his public ministry. That's why Jesus states at the end of his earthly mission, "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another" (John 13:35). Together they train into God's love and live out God's love. Love can only be experienced in community.
 
Conclusion
A missional community is God's sent people; sent as Jesus was sent. Jesus was sent into God's mission by incarnating a new form of human existence as the fullness of God, completely yielded to and cooperating with the reign of God. Participating in God's mission requires us to embody, demonstrate and announce God's fullness and reign as Jesus did.  To do so, we must train ourselves to be godly, to be formed into the kind of people who can incarnate God's fullness naturally, easily and routinely. \This training occurs through a lifestyle of spiritual disciplines that practically brings our lives into synchronization with God's Spirit through grace-endowed indirect effort. This allows God's Spirit to ultimately transform us.  And all of this is experienced within a community of apprentices that train into and live out the embodied Trinitarian love of God in their real lives.
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[1] Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart (Colorado Springs, CO: Navpress, 2002), p. 22.