“For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven.” These words, which we say in the Nicene Creed, explain how the God the Son, who is truly God and has existed forever in glory with his Father, became the man Jesus of Nazareth. God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, “came down from heaven”.
This is something that Jesus frequently spoke about with his disciples and his opponents. “I have come down from heaven”, he said in John 6:38. Jesus also said, “He who sent me is true… I know him, for I have come from him, and he sent me” (John 7:28-29). It is truly mind-boggling to think that Jesus, a man who walked among us, could speak naturally of having been with the Father in heaven before he came to us.
In his prayer before going to the Cross, Jesus said, “And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed” (John 17:5). Jesus is God the Son who came down from heaven.
Jesus’ prior existence in heaven with his Father was glorious and perfect. He did not have to come down, but he did it for us – that God might share himself with us by revealing what he is truly like – and for our salvation – for it was only through the death of the incarnate Son that we could be saved from God’s righteous anger at our sin.
I urge you to stop, and give a serious length of time to reflecting on the life-changing truth that the Son of God “came down from heaven”.