Trinitarian Christianity and Numbers 23:19 - Was Jesus a man? In a discussion about the trinity, I was asked about Numbers.  I was completely stumped. 

Numbers 23:19


  God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he
  should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he
  spoken, and shall he not make it good?


"If Numbers says that God is not a man, how can Jesus be God?"  Is the question I was presented and I had no answer.
This is not a very good Trinitarian objection for a number of reasons. First, the incarnation occurred at a definite point in history. As the Nicene/Constantinopolitan creed states, "[He] was made man." At the point Numbers became canonical, the Son of God was not yet incarnate. 

But perhaps more fundamentally, we should not read the Bible in a rigidly literal way that misses the effect of what is being said. It's pretty clear what the point of the statement is: God isn't like sinners. God isn't like you people who go back on your covenants and can't be trusted for your words because he is fundamentally different. 

Christians often refer to the things that prompt us to sin as, "The World, the Flesh, and the Devil," but Jesus had literal flesh, he came into the literal world, and was tempted by the literal Devil and he never sinned. That's the problem with this form of literal reading. The "flesh" that prompts sin in humans is the fallen nature of humanity, but is unfallen and perfect in Jesus. The "world" is not the planet itself, but the system of fallen sinners who form a sinfully willing collective that drives people, places, and things towards brokenness and godlessness. And the Devil can only tempt by deception and suggestion, something that leaves fallen humanity vulnerable, but divine humanity (Jesus) triumphant. 

To say God is not a man that he should lie, is not to deny that God became man in the person of Christ, but to deny that God is like man in his fallen state. The fallenness is implied just as it is when the Bible speaks of worldliness, fleshliness, and temptation from the Devil.