What’s the best gift you’ve received? Perhaps it was your first bike, complete with a basket, bell, and fringe hanging from the handles. Maybe it was the doll you long wanted, the one that came with a matching outfit for you to wear. Or maybe it wasn’t something wrapped in a box, but an experience like a visit to Disney or to watch your favorite team play.
This time of year, gifts are on our mind. We have our lists and we check them twice. We search the stores—or these days, virtual stores—for just the right gift for all our family and friends. The Christmas season is a celebration of the greatest gift of all: God himself. Immanuel. God in the flesh.
An excerpt from my book, A Holy Fear:
What is striking is that the great I AM—the One who has no beginning or end, the One who flung the stars in the sky, the One who is surrounded by creatures who cannot look on His face, the One who could not let Moses see His face and live—wrapped Himself in human flesh and dwelt among us: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). God incarnated as a human baby, woven in the womb and born of the virgin Mary.
The incarnation is a wondrous act that, when considered, brings forth awe and wonder. Jesus Christ is the second person of the Trinity, equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit. He always is and always was. He was there before time began, when He and the Father determined to save His people from their sins. He was there at creation, when our triune God brought life into being. Paul tells us in Philippians 2 that Jesus did not consider that equality something to cling to, as a reason not to serve, but He left the halls of heaven to come to earth and took the form of a servant. He entered this world not as a king but as a baby. He lived not in a palace but in a village as a carpenter’s son. As Isaiah described Him:
He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. (Isa. 53:3)
In the incarnation, Jesus did not give up His deity, for He was fully God and fully man. As the God-man, Jesus could do what we could not do: obey the law of God. And in so doing, He became the perfect sacrifice for our sin: “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21).
The incarnation was the only way to rescue and redeem us. It was the only way to bring us back into the presence of God. It was the only way to make us His own. What wonder! What a miracle! What mystery! As John Calvin wrote:
It was his task to swallow up death. Who but the Life could do this? It was his task to conquer sin. Who but very Righteousness could do this? It was his task to rout the powers of world and air. Who but a power higher than world and air could do this? Now where does life or righteousness, or lordship and authority of heaven lie but with God alone? Therefore our most merciful God, when he willed that we be redeemed, made himself our Redeemer in the person of his only-begotten Son.[1]
What’s even more amazing is that Jesus Christ reigns in heaven in His resurrected body. He remains enfleshed. Consider the significance that God would not only incarnate to live and die for us but that He would remain the God-man for eternity—scars and all.
This Christmas, may we take time to pause and dwell on what it means that God became flesh. And may we rejoice at the gift of Jesus Christ, born to save.
1 John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 2.12.3.
