Thoughts on the Incarnation
This time of year inevitably evokes thoughts of Christ. All over the earth, Christmas is a time to dwell on the mystery of the incarnation. Believers and unbelievers alike will most likely find themselves pondering the life of Jesus at some point or another during these yearly festivities and rightly so, for it is in memory of His coming, His incarnation, and His birthday that people stop to dwell on this mystery—Immanuel, God with us.
But I always wonder if we truly grasp the implications of the incarnate Lord. To stop and think, to ponder, to consider or reflect is not sufficient to truly grasp the weight of God’s redemptive plan for all of mankind. Eternity’s cumulative expression is voiced now in one little helpless baby boy. This is a miracle, not merely a historic happenstance to be remembered once a year at Christmas. The reality of this miracle is as powerful now as it was to those shepherds and wise men on that evening in Bethlehem over 2,000 years ago.
Imagine with me for a moment what this means. A baby born to one of the weakest clans in Israel, to a poor family of the least tribe, said to be conceived by the Holy Spirit, born in an oppressed nation during an era of foreign domination at the hand of pagan Rome, considered by His peers as an illegitimate child, He was forced to flee with his humble family because a murderous tyrant was seeking His head. Fast forward through His life as a young child and teen. As a young man He had no reputation, no prospects, no wealth, and considered Himself homeless for He had nowhere to lay His head. He was ostracized by the religious leaders of His day in a country where religious status meant everything, and He came claiming Messiahship—as the savior of Israel—only to be scorned, rejected, mocked, and eventually crucified as a trade-in for a murderer; all of this simply because He was being obedient to His Father.
The company He held was with the most despised class of people; namely, prostitutes, the sick, tax collectors, sinners, and vagabonds. All the hopes of Israel, from her first prophet all through her turbulent history, spoke of this man. All Israel’s expectations for a king for thousands of years and here Jesus is, claiming to be that man. One begins to wonder that had we been His contemporaries, would we have clung to our confession of Him as we do now, post cross and resurrection.
Do we really understand what He did? The cross was not a brief moment in time for Him. The cross was His entire life, from humble birth up until His extravagant passion. At every moment in His life He was driven by one thing—the will of His Father and joyfully submitting His life as a living sacrifice.
Christmas is not just a celebration of His birth, but of the nature, character, humility, and culmination of that birth and the life of exemplary love that followed it. As we celebrate Him this Christmas season, let us think and pray over what His incarnation means. And we will likewise declare with the apostle Paul, “Let this mind be in you which also was in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:5-11).
