God Invades Humanity

The Christmas story is staggering in all respects, a virgin, angels, a star... but the most staggering aspect must be that God invades the realm which he had created and takes on the dirt of the earth that he had taken and fashioned and given his own breath to - flesh! God himself becomes a human; yes, real flesh and blood, without ever stopping being God.

That is the staggering nature of the Gospel, the Good News - God has come, he has invaded 'our space'!

We were on the run, we were hiding, and God came to find us and put things right.

He couldn't do it from 'out there', he had to come here.

He couldn't send someone else, he had to come himself.

• Our salvation necessitated it.
• Our restoration required it.
• Creation's renewal demanded it.

He had to be both God and man, not one or the other. He must represent, and be both sides.

He alone could bridge the gap, the distance brought about by the Fall.

He alone could save and heal. As the early church Father Gregory said "the unassumed is the unredeemed." God must assume the very likeness of our broken sinful flesh in order to redeem and heal it.

How? By the Holy Spirit - that's all the Bible tells us; or in the words of the hymn writer - "God contracted to a span, incomprehensibly made man" (Charles Wesley). Mystery. But that doesn't mean it's not true.

The first few verses of Wesley's Hark the Herald Angels Sing express it well:

Hark! The herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King;
Peace on earth, and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled!”
Joyful, all ye nations rise,
Join the triumph of the skies;
With th’angelic host proclaim,
“Christ is born in Bethlehem!”

Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King!”

Christ, by highest Heav’n adored;
Christ the everlasting Lord;
Late in time, behold Him come,
Offspring of a virgin’s womb.
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
Hail th’incarnate Deity,
Pleased with us in flesh to dwell,
Jesus our Emmanuel.

Hail the heav’nly Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings,
Ris’n with healing in His wings.
Mild He lays His glory by,
Born that man no more may die.
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.

Then there are two verses that rarely ever get sung, and they are gospel loaded, a prayer applying the truth of the incarnation to one and all who will believe:

Come, Desire of nations, come,
Fix in us Thy humble home;
Rise, the woman’s conqu’ring Seed,
Bruise in us the serpent’s head.
Now display Thy saving power,
Ruined nature now restore;
Now in mystic union join
Thine to ours, and ours to Thine.

Adam’s likeness, Lord, efface,
Stamp Thine image in its place:
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in Thy love.
Let us Thee, though lost, regain,
Thee, the Life, the inner man:
O, to all Thyself impart,
Formed in each believing heart.

Hark the herald angels sing,
Glory to the new-born King!

Loaded verses indeed! Full of Gospel truth.  He has invaded 'our space,' taken it on, healed, redeemed and reconciled it in order to reinstate us in his love.

We were made by God for God, and God's invasion of 'our space' is a declaration that God is for us.

What if Jesus hadn't come?

I found myself wondering the other day what would the world be like if Jesus had never been born, and the more I thought about it the more I began to realise it would be a vastly different place to what we know now and certainly not a better one.

Unfortunately the liberal West loves to blame Christianity for many of the world's ills and keep people ignorant of the positive and profound impact Jesus, and consequently, those who have believed in, and followed him, have had upon the world.

Let me list a few...

The coming of Jesus has transformed lives, relationships and communities.

It has brought liberty and justice, education, medicine and health care to the masses.

It has brought deliverance from false and futile religion and dark satanic practices.

It has provided relief to the poor, lifted the downtrodden and broken the yoke of the oppressed.

It has impacted politics and law and given dignity and rights, freedom of speech.

It has been a stimulator and contributor to the whole arena of science.

It has given dignity to work and the rights of employees.

It has contributed enormously to music, literature and the arts.

It has provided the biggest season of goodwill the world has ever known.

And so we could go on....

Which reminds me, not so long ago I read a report that had come out of atheistic China that said that all that is good (note that) about the West derives from Christianity and therefore from Jesus. That is some statement!

Yes, if Jesus had not come into the world it would have been a far worse and poorer place.

Praise God, Jesus did come!

God Couldn't Just Turn Up - Israel's Role in the Incarnation

The incarnation didn't just happen, as we observed in the previous post God took a long time preparing for that first Christmas, and for very good reason.

There was indeed much to be done, God couldn't just turn up. For God to come in Christ as he did, he needed to prepare the way, to prepare peoples hearts and minds that they might truly know him, his ways, and how they could relate to him.

That's where God's calling and dealings with Israel come in. To that end the story of Israel is one of the revealing of God to those whom he had created - the breaking in of God upon the hearts and minds of humanity, a humanity broken, distanced and separated by sin.

For that reason he chose Abraham, a man from a  pagan background, and no special individual. He gave him a family, and from that family chose and brought forth the people and nation of Israel, a people who were no more special than any other nation on earth, the least of all people's, and as it turned out, a stubborn, rebellious people at that.

Over a period of time God made himself known to them in different and varied ways, ways that would distinguish him from the non gods of the surrounding nations as the only true and living God, a God worthy of their praise and devotion.

Part of that was a variety of rules and religious rituals, rules and rituals that may seem strange to us today and somewhat of a palaver, but they were all a necessary part of how he revealed himself to them and how he educated them in their knowledge of and relationship to him.  They enabled them to understand exactly who he was, the difference and distance between them and God, and how they should relate to him.

It would tell of his undeserved covenant love and faithfulness, his unending mercy and grace, the nature and depths of sin, the way of redemption, forgiveness, atonement, salvation. It would tell of prophet, priest and king, and the promise of Messiah which would ultimately lead to the womb of a young virgin girl and the incarnation of the Saviour God.

God Prepares for Christmas

Preparation is a must – ask any decorator. It’s vitally important to the finished job.

The same applies to Christmas. In the run up to Christmas people prepare in many different ways and over different lengths of time, nevertheless preparation there must be, otherwise it just wouldn’t happen.

What most people fail to realise is that God took a long time preparing for Christmas, a lot of time and a lot of effort, it didn’t just happen spontaneously one idyllic night.

From the beginning, before the foundation of the earth, God had a plan to display his love, but to do so he needed to prepare a people, and bring everything together at the right time and in the right place. The plan was conceived and formulated in the blessed fellowship of that holy community, the Trinity, and there it was set in motion.

He started by calling Abraham, giving him a family, making them a nation, raising prophets, priests and kings, taking that nation on a journey so that they would get to know him, understand his ways, and be a witness to him among the other people’s and nations of the earth.

It was a long and eventful journey, but eventually we arrive at the crucial point in human history, and God finds the right person to conceive and bring forth his Son Jesus, his co-equal and co-eternal partner with himself and Holy Spirit.

The womb of the incarnation had been a long time in forming, through a family, a nation, an individual, but one day it was ready, and the time was right, that point in human history, that juncture of nations involving political, cultural and religious development.

Yes it took God a long time to prepare for Christmas.

Christmas is coming - has come!

It suddenly dawned on me last week that we are in the run up to Christmas! No, it’s not like I didn’t know, after all at church we’ve been preparing for weeks, but rather in the busyness of life I hadn’t realised it was that close – I mean, that close!

I wonder whether it was a bit like that that first Christmas, everyone was going about their daily routines as one day followed another, even as one year followed another. Of course it hadn’t happened yet, so it wasn’t on the annual calendar, nevertheless they had the prophetic promise, a promise that had been passed on from one generation to another, the promise of a Saviour. And O, how they longed and prayed for that day when he would come. But hey, life goes on, living and hoping, hoping and living, and you can get lost in it and not realise where you’ve got to, or what’s going on.

Now I’m guessing that they really didn’t have that much idea either on what that would look like as they had no previous experience, so when the promise finally came to pass they were just going about the usual business of the day, and then….. when he does turn up he looks like the rest of us, a vulnerable little baby, dependent in every way on his mother and father.

I mean, in many ways it was so ordinary, too ordinary – could this be God? In fact it was so ordinary it needed angels to announce the fact that this was not just another child just like every other one, but the Child, the promised One, the prayed for and longed for Saviour. Life didn’t pause or wait for everyone to get all spiritual, feel right good and ready, no, suddenly in the middle of the hustle and bustle of Eastern life he made his appearance, he was born – fact. Not in a synagogue, or at the Temple, or some other religious setting, not even the comfort of a home, but a simple stable. I mean what a way to wrap a present!

I wonder how many today are going about this Christmas, not realising where they are at, and missing the fact that he has come – not as superman or some powerful macho all conquering hero, but as a vulnerable little baby who cried (Yes, I don’t think ‘Away in a Manger’ is correct on this point!), and was as dependent as we were on those around him when we first entered this world. Nevertheless he is none other than the Promised One, the longed for Saviour and we don’t need to wait for another. He has come, and he came ‘veiled in flesh.’

Christmas Reflection

At Christmas we reflect on what God had to do to bring about our salvation - something so radical we would never have thought of it, and so radical that we have a job to get our heads around it - become human! As the writer to the Hebrews puts it, Jesus had to be made "like us in every way," (Heb. 2:17), and Paul writes, he took on "flesh like ours under sin's domain." (Romans 8:3 HCSB).

The hymn writer Charles Wesley expressed it, "God contracted to a span incomprehensibly made man."

God in flesh, a foreign thought indeed, but as John writes this is the heart of the Christian message for "Every spirit who confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. But every spirit who does not confess Jesus is not from God." (1John 4:2,3)

Jesus was no phantom, and no human becoming God... Jesus was truly literal God in man with man residing - "The Word became flesh and took up residence among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the One and Only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth." (John 1:14 HCSB).

Yet how frequently the church has wanted to distance Jesus from this stuff - the Roman Catholic doctrine of the immaculate conception is an example, and evangelicals have their own ways too.

The incarnation is as important to our salvation as the death and resurrection of Jesus. To put it another way, Jesus could not have been parachuted in to die for us. He had to be born in this stuff, "born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law," (Gal. 4:4).

As Gregory Nazianzen (one of the old church fathers) said many years ago, "The unassumed is the unredeemed." Jesus had to assume it all in order to redeem it all and offer it back to God.

Glorious mystery, wonderful Saviour, so great a salvation!

The Importance of the Incarnation

"For God loved the world in this way: He gave his One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16 (Holman Christian Standard Bible)

"(God) condemned sin in the flesh by sending His own Son in flesh like ours under sin's domain." Romans 8:3 (HCSB)

The incarnation is as important to our salvation as the death and resurrection of Jesus. As Gregory Nazianzen (one of the old church fathers) put it, "The unassumed is the unredeemed." Jesus therefore had to enter our very real, fractured humanity, in order to redeem it and heal every part of it, and offer it back to God.

Glorious mystery, wonderful Saviour, so great a salvation!

Joy to the World the Lord has Come

"Joy to the world the Lord has come!" What a line! Christmas is a message of JOY! Joy that is sourced in God alone, through Christ alone.

It is the joy of being loved when we didn't, and don't, and never will deserve it.

It is the joy of God being made flesh for us.

It is the joy of Emmanuel - God with us.

It is the joy of a totally sufficient Saviour.

It is the joy of his forgiveness.

It is the joy of being reconciled to him.

It is the joy of cleansing from every guilty stain that mars that relationship.

It is the joy of knowing him as our Father in heaven.

It is the joy of knowing he cares.

It is the joy of the hope he gives for all our tomorrows.

It is the joy of eternal life.

Pure Grace

LOVED
"God so loved the world" - not an abstract world, but the world of people, a world of rebellious, fallen humanity. A world running away from God. A world cut off from God. A world that doesn't want to know God - and if it did, wants to make its own more convenient God.

GIFT
"That he gave his only Son." This is nothing but pure unsolicited grace! Nothing on our part, everything on his. Nothing from us, everything from him.

THIS CHRISTMAS
Think of it that way, pure unsolicited grace towards you, towards me - undeserved, unearned, never was, never will be. No wonder this was, and still is, good news of great joy! O JOY! JOY! JOY!

May you know the fulness of the joy of the Christmas message this season.

Veiled in Flesh

VEILED
The hymnwriter Charles Wesley says in his carol Hark the Herald Angels Sing, "Veiled in flesh the Godhead see." Veiled, that's a reference to the mystery of the incarnation. The human mind cannot get it's head around that. We look and see a baby, and if it wasn't for the angels and the star, I don't suppose that either the shepherds or the wisemen would have known any different either.

INCARNATE DEITY?
"Hail the Incarnate Deity!" God in flesh? How? Simply "of the Holy Spirit." But how? We aren't told any more than that, and because we aren't told any more than that, many are stumbled. The fact is that many at the time didn't get it either - a God who was human/a human who was God? Family, friends etc. did not recognise him so human was he. The Word was made flesh.

WHY?
Its not so much the how that's important, as the WHY? Why would God do this? The answer is it was the only way he could save us. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life." He had to come to us, as there was no way we could get to him. He had to be one with us, in order to make us one with him. He had to live our life, and die our death.

WHY?
BECAUSE HE LOVES US, and he wants us to dwell within the circle of his life and love.

Staggering Truth

The Christmas story never ceases to amaze me.

God the Eternal, God the Creator, God the Sustainer, God the Most Holy One, takes on human flesh, enters our fractured, mortal, created, dependant humanity in order to redeem it and present it back to God.

As Charles Wesley expressed it, "God contracted to a span, incomprehensibly made man."

No wonder sects and cults find it difficult to accept .. but God's truth it is. Staggering truth. Essential truth.

An as the writer to the Hebrews says "He had to be made like his brothers in every respect."