“And the Word became flesh…”

It’s been a while — I’m surprised I even remembered the password to this account. Hah. I’ve been pondering a few things lately and just felt it was easier and faster to process some of it through typing than writing in my journal…

With the Christmas season upon us, I’ve been meditating in the book of John.

He tells us in the beginning of his gospel that “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.  Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome.” He continues to go on to describe how “the word became flesh and dwelt among us…” I took a world religion class wayyy back once and while I’m not scholar by any means, it feels like every religion on this earth is trying to describe how the chasm that exists between God and man is closed. Yet, only in Christianity has God taken the initiative to bridge this unbridgeable gap Himself.

The incarnation… the reason for this Christmas season — the moment when God, without compromising an ounce of His divinity, became fully man. Here in the incarnation, God who was unknowable in all of His transcendence became knowable in His immanence. Can we truly understand what it meant that He knew equality with God? Can we fully grasp from what height He descended to be with humankind? HE IS GOD — dwelling in unapproachable light, enthroned with no worthy contender to speak of. He was and is the one and only. There was none like Him. And then, something utterly inscrutable and unfathomable happened. God, who existed from eternity past, He who is limitless, without any bounds, put on limitation and stepped into time. The fullness of God was now dwelling in the fullness of man. The Creator had become the creature. The transcendent, infinite One, now an infant. The invisible made visible. He put on flesh and came in the form of a man…

Without the incarnation, there remains a chasm, a gulf between God and man that we could never cross with all of our weak efforts to do right. Yet here, in Christ, God became Emmanuel… God with us.

At the time Jesus made His appearance, Israel was waiting with eager expectation for a Messiah who would deliver her once again from oppression of her enemies, vindicate her, and declare before the whole world that Israel was, in fact, the chosen people of God. Israel lived with hope of the deliverance from her present enemies. The Old Testament anticipated an emancipating King, who would establish justice once and for all. These scriptures from the Old Testament became like a red carpet rolled out through the prophets on which now Christ has made His glorious and unconventional entry into human history as the Messiah, and in the greatest scandal of all time, has saved us to the glory of God. They never expected the way in which God would choose to deliver. He came in weakness, choosing to demonstrate perfect meekness. He was held captive to every kind of indignity. He was everything the Jews expected and more, but only those with eyes to see could understand it. He came not to deliver Israel from her current enemies, but to deliver from the plague of sin that has infiltrated human nature and branded us guilty before a just and holy God. He came to demonstrate the vast love of God, and make room for us in the divine fellowship of the Trinity.

In Christ, God has done something scandalous, something incomprehensible. And that’s the catch. The incarnation is not for analyzing but for worship. It is it to leave us in awestruck wonder of what God has done in Christ by the Spirit. Though He was rich, for our sake, became poor so that we, through His poverty, might become rich. That we may have life and have it in full abundance. The incarnation begs not for analyzing or critique but for adoration and worship. The right response to the incarnation is not to overlook it (as we often do since we focus so much on the death and resurrection of Christ – which both are also equally important, don’t get me wrong) but the right response to incarnate Christ is utter and total gratitude. It takes humility to see God in such a humble state as an infant lying helpless in a manger. How low one would need to go to approach God wrapped in swaddling cloths in a shelter only fit for animals. Could this truly be our God? Only in humility can we genuinely see God in the way that He has revealed Himself to us. The incarnation begs that we stop, close our eyes, and in uninterrupted meditation, think on what God has done in Christ… and say with wholeheartedness, “thank You.”