The most damnable heresies
are those which deny the fundamental truth of Christmas: God became flesh (1
John 4:2). God made Himself subject to the limitations of a human life for the
purpose of reconciling broken, lost humanity back to Him. Far from standing
afar off from our hurts, God came near. He entered the fray. He surrendered to
the kind of violence we see on the news, and was miraculously raised from the
dead. He became part of the human family to redeem it. Michael Card beautifully
captured this thought in a song called “To the Mystery”: “No fiction as
fantastic and wild/A mother made by her own child/This helpless Babe who cried/Was
God incarnate and man deified/That is a mystery/More than you can see/Give up
all your pondering/Fall down on your knees!”
Christmas, rightly
understood, points us to the incredible reality that is captured in the book of
Hebrews: “Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He
Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him
who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through
fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (2:14-15). We often
wonder where God is at our greatest times of collective sorrow, testing and
suffering. We think that there is no one who can comprehend the depths of our confusing
human journey. The Scripture teaches that Jesus entered it and has suffered
alongside us. He walked through this bewildering world, to embrace our humanity
and help us make sense of it.
Jesus’ willingness to join the human
race brought light into darkness: “The people who walked in darkness have
seen a great light; those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon
them a light has shined” (Isaiah 9:2).
But Light has to be welcomed and Truth has to be received (John 1:4-12). It’s
easy to lose the essence of Christmas beneath a pile of gift wrapping paper. It’s
easy to allow relational drama to cause us to lose sight of the greatest cosmic
drama—namely, “That God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, [because
of Him] not counting our trespasses against us.”
Never forget that God came near. I love how Max
Lucado captured the scene in his Advent writing: [Jesus is] “Majesty in the
midst of the mudane. Holiness in the
filth of manure and sweat. Divinity entering the world on the floor of a stable,
through the womb of a teenager and in the presence of a carpenter.” “Thanks be
to God for His indescribable gift!”
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