Dec

24

The Invasion of God

December 24, 2007 |

Posted by prognosko · Filed Under Christmas 

I’ve often thought of Christmas as being important because it leads to Easter, and without Christmas you can’t have Easter. While this is true, it misses something very important about Christmas that, without which, Easter would be meaningless. The prologue of John’s Gospel tells us that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. … And the word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:1,14). The writer of Hebrews makes John even clearer when he writes “therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (2:17).

What, then, is Christmas? First, it is about a virgin conceiving a child by the Holy Spirit. It is God intervening, invading the world. He did this because he had to. Not for himself, but for us, because we were helpless. Isaiah describes us as “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined” (9:2). In Ephesians, Paul says “we were dead in our trespasses” (2:5). Because we were dead in our trespasses, we were completely unable to save ourselves.

Christmas is also about how God invaded the world. He did not descend from heaven on a cloud. The Word became flesh, being made like his brothers in every respect. It means that God became a man. More accurately, he took on humanity. Jesus was still God, as he was in the beginning, but he now became his own creation. He was hungry, he was tired. He stumped his little toe and it hurt. He burped and farted. And they stunk. In every respect. Jesus was the God-man, God incarnate.

Yet even though he was like us in every way, the author of Hebrews makes one important clarification in 4:17: For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. He was tempted, yet without sin. Jesus was born to die “to make propitiation for [our] sins”. Were Jesus not God incarnate — were he not fully God — he could not have been without sin. Were Jesus not fully man, like us in every respect, then he would not have been an appropriate sacrifice for our sins. Gregory of Nazianzus said “What he has not assumed, he has not healed”.

Christmas is a celebration of God’s incarnation in Jesus to be the God-man, worthy to be the sacrifice for our sins. When we worship, we bow not just before a baby, but before our Creator, our Redeemer-Savior, our Priest, our Brother.


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