Most people who believe Jesus is God would say that he was born, he grew up, etc., like most of us.
After all this is what scripture says:
“He grew in wisdom, and age, and grace with God" (Luke 2:52).
They would even say Jesus really suffered and eventually died.
But when you ask: How can this be if Jesus is God?
They will invariably say something like:
Well, He did all those things in or through His human nature or His flesh only.
In other words, they would say something like he was born as a man, he grew in wisdom as a man, he died as a man, etc.
And by “he” most Christians mean the 2nd Person of the Trinity, God the Son.
It was the Divine Person who took on flesh/human nature at the virgin birth.
So whenever the NT refers to "Jesus" or "the Christ" or "Jesus Christ" what the NT writers really mean is that impersonal human nature that this Divine Person, God the Son, took on at the Incarnation.
This means that you have to read the NT through some kind of bifocal lenses, as it were.
But when you point out that the virgin birth records the genesis (origin) of the Messiah (Mat 1.1, 18), how he came to be, i.e., came to exist they will say something like: Of course, we agree that he came to be as a man.
And whether they know it or not, they're actually saying that the name Jesus and the title Christ refer to that impersonal human nature that God the Son assumed at the Incarnation.
In short, Jesus is the name of a human nature and not a human person.
However, when they say as a man that isn't the official trini doctrine.
It should really be as man because according to their own doctrine (as we shall see) the one we call Jesus was man but not a man.
For example, in a 1985 article from the noted Trinity Journal, by Geisler and Watkins, they say:
It is true that in Chalcedonian orthodoxy "God the Son" united himself to a personless [i.e., impersonal] human nature.
In other words, the Son of God had generic human nature but he was not himself a human person.
For that would make 2 persons in a person.
Which actually was an early heretical view known as Nestorianism.
So in order not to talk or debate past each other we have to understand the history of this way of thinking about the Son of God.
More than 125 years after the Council of Nicaea declared Jesus “true God of true God” and after dozens of other councils rejecting Nicea, the question of how to define the humanity of Jesus vs the Deity of the Son remained unresolved.
And that's because Nicea ended up being the pandora's box that spawned other heresies that to this day plague Trinitarian Christianity.
At the center of it all were questions about how many persons, how many natures, or wills there really were in the Son of God.
Historian Dr. Richard Rubenstein in his book When Jesus Became God says:
“What was needed to clear up [this] confusion was something that the Nicene Creed alone could not supply:
A doctrine explaining how God could be one and yet consist of two or three separate entities.
And the development of this doctrine...could not take place without new language.
It was necessary to create a new theological vocabulary….”
After all this is what scripture says:
“He grew in wisdom, and age, and grace with God" (Luke 2:52).
They would even say Jesus really suffered and eventually died.
But when you ask: How can this be if Jesus is God?
They will invariably say something like:
Well, He did all those things in or through His human nature or His flesh only.
In other words, they would say something like he was born as a man, he grew in wisdom as a man, he died as a man, etc.
And by “he” most Christians mean the 2nd Person of the Trinity, God the Son.
It was the Divine Person who took on flesh/human nature at the virgin birth.
So whenever the NT refers to "Jesus" or "the Christ" or "Jesus Christ" what the NT writers really mean is that impersonal human nature that this Divine Person, God the Son, took on at the Incarnation.
This means that you have to read the NT through some kind of bifocal lenses, as it were.
But when you point out that the virgin birth records the genesis (origin) of the Messiah (Mat 1.1, 18), how he came to be, i.e., came to exist they will say something like: Of course, we agree that he came to be as a man.
And whether they know it or not, they're actually saying that the name Jesus and the title Christ refer to that impersonal human nature that God the Son assumed at the Incarnation.
In short, Jesus is the name of a human nature and not a human person.
However, when they say as a man that isn't the official trini doctrine.
It should really be as man because according to their own doctrine (as we shall see) the one we call Jesus was man but not a man.
For example, in a 1985 article from the noted Trinity Journal, by Geisler and Watkins, they say:
It is true that in Chalcedonian orthodoxy "God the Son" united himself to a personless [i.e., impersonal] human nature.
In other words, the Son of God had generic human nature but he was not himself a human person.
For that would make 2 persons in a person.
Which actually was an early heretical view known as Nestorianism.
So in order not to talk or debate past each other we have to understand the history of this way of thinking about the Son of God.
More than 125 years after the Council of Nicaea declared Jesus “true God of true God” and after dozens of other councils rejecting Nicea, the question of how to define the humanity of Jesus vs the Deity of the Son remained unresolved.
And that's because Nicea ended up being the pandora's box that spawned other heresies that to this day plague Trinitarian Christianity.
At the center of it all were questions about how many persons, how many natures, or wills there really were in the Son of God.
Historian Dr. Richard Rubenstein in his book When Jesus Became God says:
“What was needed to clear up [this] confusion was something that the Nicene Creed alone could not supply:
A doctrine explaining how God could be one and yet consist of two or three separate entities.
And the development of this doctrine...could not take place without new language.
It was necessary to create a new theological vocabulary….”