Like A Hand In A Glove
Like a hand in a glove, Jesus indwelled a human body. This is one of the most profound events in creation—God’s plan to become man. Just as a glove is crafted to fit a hand perfectly, so too was the body of Christ fashioned for Him by God the Father.
Prepared From An Existing Body

Hebrews 10:5 states, “Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me.” This body was meticulously fashioned according to a perfect blueprint in the mind of God. In fact, it was a body already designed and created at the beginning of creation because it was a human body, which we also refer to as human flesh — the body of Adam. It was prepared by God because, although it would be identical to our human bodies, it would not be formed in the same way. It would be a miracle of God.
God In Human Flesh

It would be a miracle because Jesus is God. This means He exists eternally—past, present, and future. He is the God of the universe who chose to dwell in a mere speck of the universe, in a tiny body of a man. This was not the infinite reduced to the finite, because Christ, as God, is not diminished or reduced in anyway. Rather, He was fully infinite God who chose to reside in a human body. 1 Timothy 3:16 proclaims, “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.” The incarnation of Jesus is a divine miracle worthy of infinite amazement. He was made like us, sharing completely in our humanity while maintaining His divinity.
Made Sin

Being made of human flesh reveals the meaning of 2 Corinthians 5:21, which says, “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” Being made of human flesh means He was made sin for us. Being human means He would have the human nature, including the sin nature in the flesh. Paul referred to this in Romans 7:18, “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.” To be made with a human body is to be made sin. The very essence and nature of human flesh is sinful. Jesus was made sin for us by virtue of being made human flesh. Yet, He knew no sin. Unlike us, He, being God dwelling in the body of human flesh, brought the body of sin under control and forced it to conform to the divine nature of righteousness. As God, He prevented the body from committing sin, even though it desired sin. In explaining who Jesus is, Hebrews 4:15 states, “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” He was tempted just like we are tempted with sin, because Hs indwelled the human body of sin. But, unlike us, he was without sin.
Hebrews 2:10 explains how taking on the human flesh perfected Christ as the captain of our salvation. “For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.”
He was perfect as God, and it is impossible for Him to be anything less. As God, He already knew perfectly what it meant to be human, to suffer, and to die. But for our sake, He thoroughly experienced our humanity, even to the point of suffering and death. By doing so, He removed the fallacious objection and false accusation of His critics that He did not know what it was to be human. Hebrews 2:14–16 explains further, “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham.” The body of Jesus was not of a different flesh or of a different nature. He indwelled a body that was indeed exactly human in every way. Being the seed of Abraham invokes the promise of salvation for humanity. Thus, Jesus had a body prepared for Him from that which already existed—Adam’s body. In other words, His body was just like our bodies in every way.
Divine Conception

But how was the body of Jesus just like ours if it was prepared for Him by God? He was not conceived in the normal way. The answer is found in Matthew 1:18, which states, “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.” Jesus was not conceived, as all others in humanity have been conceived. Mary conceived by the Holy Ghost. This was a miraculous event—a divine conception. In Matthew 1:20, an angel explained to Joseph, “while he thought on these things, behold, … fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.” Imagine Mary’s initial disbelief when confronted with the angel’s proclamation. “That’s not how babies are made!” she might have thought. Yet, she believed. And even more so, imagine Joseph’s shock when he heard the news of Mary’s pregnancy. He was faced with the unimaginable and impossible news of a virgin birth. But, like Mary, he accepted that “God can do anything.” He trusted the words of the angel, he trusted God, and he trusted Mary. The virgin birth is impossible by definition, but divine conception in a virgin is possible.
The Only Begotten Son

Being born of God by divine conception, literally makes Jesus unique. For this reason, He is known as the only begotten Son of God. We are born again by God and called His children, but Jesus was born human through the miracle of God. He is the only one born by divine conception.
Became like us that we might become like Him.
Became Like Us That We Might Become Like Him.

I find the relationship that God created in making Jesus a human body compelling. We can say that He became like us so that we could become like Him. 2 Corinthians 5:21 makes this claim for all who believe in Jesus and are born again: “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” For this reason, Romans 8:29 says, “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.” This ties together the statement in Hebrews 2 that Jesus is the captain of our salvation. He makes our existence possible from conception to life everlasting. He is our God, Creator, and Savior!
Miraculous Genetics

Contemplating the divine conception reveals more mind-boggling insights. Although Mary was a virgin, in that she knew not a man, she conceived. This means that the egg she carried was fertilized, which is the meaning of conception. In Matthew 1:20, an angel told Joseph, “Fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.”
This raises an important distinction. “Virgin birth” is different from being born of a virgin. Virgin birth would involve the development of an unfertilized egg, a process known as parthenogenesis. Parthenogenesis, which is the reproduction of offspring from unfertilized eggs, does not occur in humans or in any mammals. The Y chromosome, essential for male development, cannot arise from an unfertilized egg. Jesus, being a man, had to have a Y chromosome. And unlike in amphibians and reptiles, normal development in mammals requires the genetic contribution from both parents. These two facts lead us to amazing insights about the conception of Jesus by the Holy Spirit.
Jesus Had Human Chromosomes

As I mentioned earlier, Hebrews 10 says that Jesus had a human body made for Him. His body was fashioned according to the design embedded into the code of instructions found in every human cell. Since the body of Jesus was human in every way, He had human chromosomes providing the genetic code for the development of His body. He was not half human, or mostly human, or partly human; He was 100% human flesh. This requires that He had two sets of human chromosomes: one from Mary and one from God.
To be 100% human required God to match the twenty-three chromosomes of Mary with twenty-three human chromosomes. Jesus was not a hybrid. He was not a chimera, like the mythical gods of the Greeks, or like Anubis, the jackal-headed man of Egyptian mythology, or like Bastet, the lion-headed woman, or like the Sphinx, the human-headed lion. To produce something that was not truly human coded with human chromosomes, would make Jesus a hybrid, which would contradict the Scripture testimony that He was made just like us.
The twenty-three chromosomes provided by God would have been 100% human code to produce a 100% human body. This raises an interesting question to ponder. In what way are machines and living organisms similar? The answer is that they both operate by an intelligently designed, thoughtful code of instructions. Some machines are very simple with very simplistic designs and operations produced from blueprints. Others have very complex codes of instructions that can be edited like in super computers. Living cells operate by a code of instructions as well—very complicated sets of instructions, and their code of instructions are carried within them. The core process of how the code is translated into what a living cell does is called the central dogma of biology. The code determines whether cells will be independent or dependent, whether they will be heart cells or toe cells or liver cells. To make a human body for Jesus required two sets of human chromosomes coding for human traits, which raises another question.
Chromosomes For Jesus’ Body

Did God create a perfect set of human chromosomes for Jesus? But wait, would God have ever created anything less than perfect for Adam as the first human? Anything less than perfect would be unacceptable and impossible for God.
If there is only one set of perfect human chromosomes ever created, then Adam and Jesus would have received the same set of chromosomes. The alternative would be to allow for the possibility of having more than one set of perfect chromosomes. It is an intriguing question to consider; since the DNA of Adam could not be improved upon, it would be perfect for God to use in the conception of Jesus.
The code for the human body of Jesus would not produce a soul or a spirit for Him because He was already pre-existing. The code was needed only to match Mary’s chromosome number and gene types, which are called alleles. For this reason, I refer to the indwelling of Jesus in a human body as a hand in a glove.
A Theoretical Possibility

As a biologist, trained in both prokaryotic and eukaryotic genetics, I have pondered these things for many years and have shared with my classes these interesting ideas. But there is another very intriguing idea that I share which is mind-blowing. There is a theoretical possibility that could only occur by miracle. Adam was created with 46 chromosomes. Eve had a copy of those 46 chromosomes. Her X chromosome was copied twice, and God left out the Y chromosome.
God designed sexual reproduction to be purposefully complicated to ensure mixing and scrambling of chromosomes and genes. There is a process referred to as independent assortment that shuffles the genes prior to gamete formation. If I had a deck of cards with one side representing 23 chromosomes and the other side also representing 23 chromosomes, shuffling them would illustrate the shuffling of chromosomes. This is what gives enormous possibilities for the billions of variations we observe in the human population.
If this seems too simplistic to account for billions of people being different, let me explain it this way. Consider two pairs of chromosomes being labelled as A, a, B, and b. This is 2 to the power of 2, or 2 to the power of the number of chromosome pairs. Two to the 23 pairs found in the human genome is a number greater than 8 million. But there are 30,000 genes on these chromosomes that contribute to producing different traits, so that the possible combinations are over 79 trillion. This is why two people are never the same. Plus, there are several additional factors that contribute to the differences seen in identical twins. Don’t worry about the numbers, or, if you are a biologist, about some of the exceptions. The illustration still makes the point that God designed the reproductive potential for variation to exceed that number of humans on planet Earth past, present, and future.
I am making the case for this unimaginable number to emphasize the highly unlikely possibility of what I am about to say. This is strictly theoretical, but so intriguing to consider, that only God could make it miraculously happen. Theoretically and also necessarily miraculously, Mary could have been carrying the original strands of Adam’s chromosomes.
Here is how it could happen if God intervened and guided the direction of Adam’s chromosomes from Adam to Mary. When DNA splits in a cell to form two cells during meiosis, which is different from mitosis, it splits by a process called semi-conservative replication. This means that the children of Adam and Eve carried the original DNA strands of Adam, not copies of the DNA. They would be the original strands matched with copies contributed by Mary. And because of semi-conservative replication, the grandchildren, the great- grandchildren, etc. could theoretically have been carrying a strand of Adam’s original DNA—not a copy, but the original that was being passed from generation to generation among the trillions of copies. What are the chances of this occurring? Impossible without a miracle. But a miracle can make the theoretical possible.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, contributed the maternal half of DNA to the body of Jesus. Would it not be amazing, absolutely mind-blowing, to discover that God had preserved Adam’s original forty-five DNA strands and one X chromosome copy for Mary through miraculous guidance of cell division and independent assortment of genes? Jesus theoretically could have received twenty-three of Adam’s original chromosomes from Mary. It’s mind-boggling because God could do it despite the unlikelihood of such a thing happening, the unnecessity of such a thing occurring, and the impossibility of such a thing occurring by any other way but by divine intervention.

A Miraculous Fact Made known
The mere fact of the theoretical possibility leaves me in breathtaking awe. There is so much pleasure in contemplating what could be because God can. And it all makes so much sense.
I conclude this lesson, basking in the moment of euphoric awe, with a Biblical proclamation of miraculous fact. Jesus is God and was God manifested in the flesh. He was God who filled the shell of human flesh derived from the genetic code of human flesh. And in the words of Psalm 118:23, “This is the LORD’S doing; it is marvellous in our eyes.”
He is our God, our Creator, our Savior, our Redeemer, our inspiration, our hope, and so much more. He is the reason for everything in creation, and especially during this season of celebrating His human birth, let’s enjoy the awe of who He is and what He has done as we give Him all the glory and honor.
Learn More About Jesus
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Dr. Patrick Briney

Dr. Patrick Briney is an author, speaker, scientist, minister, and teacher of practical Christianity. With over forty years of ministry experience as a missionary and currently serving as first associate pastor at Mission Blvd. Baptist Church, combined with professional training in science as a microbiologist specializing in immunology and infectious diseases, Dr. Briney provides practical and relevant resources on topics such as Jesus Christ, the Bible, discipleship, science, leadership, and worldview conflict. Click here to visit patrickbriney.com and learn more about Dr. Briney’s mission to glorify God—1 Corinthians 10:31.