The Real Miracle of Christmas

The other day I read a story about anonymous people paying off layaway balances on Christmas gifts that random people had on hold for their children. One of the people who had been so blessed was quoted as saying something to the effect of, "I believe in Christmas again."

We consider these types of things (especially if and when they happen to us) to be "Christmas miracles." This morning though, I kept having the thought rattling around in my head that the true miracle of Christmas is that the Creator deigned to become the creature.

Last year I did a series of blog posts on Christmas hymns. One of them dealt with the wonder of this truth. Here were my thoughts:

John begins his gospel by saying, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."  This sets the stage for perhaps the most dramatic truth in human history, as described later in that same chapter in verse 14: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth."

John tells us that, amazingly, the Word became flesh...God became a man.  In Philippians 2:6-8, Paul says Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God and the second person of the Deity, "though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross."

What an act of humility for God to submit himself even to death, and the most painful and humiliating form of death at that.  But even apart from this, the fact that God even became a human being in the first place is the most supreme act of gracious condescension one can imagine.

When John says he "dwelt among us," the literal language is "he pitched his tent" or "he tabernacled" in our midst.  It is an allusion to the fact that before the Temple was built, God's dwelling place in the midst of his people had been in the Tabernacle, essentially a tent-temple that moved with the people.  What John is implying here (and says outright in Revelation 21:22) is that the Christ is the true Temple, the place where God and man meet.

When Moses requested to see the glory of God, God's response was, "I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live" (Exodus 33:18-20).  But so great is the graciousness of God in Christ Jesus that John can truly say, "we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth."

I am reminded of what may be my favorite lines from any Christmas hymn:

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
Hail th'incarnate Deity,
Pleased as man with men to dwell,
Jesus our Emmanuel.

May we, with John, look to Christ and his glory.  And may we, with the herald angels sing, "Glory to the newborn king!"

Other posts in last year's Advent series included:

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (part 1)

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (part 2)

O Little Town of Bethlehem 

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

O Holy Night

Joy to the World (part 1)

Joy to the World (part 2)

Did Jesus Ever Get the Flu?

This is the season of joy and laughter and celebration, but for many it is also flu season.  Over at his blog today, Russell Moore considers the question of whether Jesus ever got the flu.  He concludes that he must have, as the very point of the incarnation is that Jesus became just like us.

It just doesn’t seem right to us to imagine Jesus feverish or vomiting. But that’s precisely the scandal. It didn’t seem right to many to imagine Jesus as really flesh and bone, filled with blood and intestines and urine. Somehow that seemed to detract from his deity. It surely didn’t seem right to many to imagine the only begotten of the Father twisting in pain on a crucifixion stake, screaming as he drowned in his own blood. This was humiliating, undignified. That’s just the point. Jesus joined us in our humiliation, in our indignity.

I hope you don’t get a stomach virus this year, or the flu or the fever or a cold. But, if you do, I hope you remember, just for a minute, in your discomfort that Jesus has passed through everything you’ll ever face. He might have been racked with nausea or chills or aches, just as you are. And then he faced far, far worse.

But, as you lie there, remember the gospel of incarnation and substitution, a gospel that comes, as the old song says, to make his blessings known “far as the curse is found.”

I encourage you to read his whole post here.