Musings on the Incarnation

“Christmas” is nice, but I think “Incarnation” is better. Yes, “Christmas” does have historical roots, but I’m not sure it makes us stop and think the way the word “Incarnation” can. Yes, I agree, “stopping” is seldom done, as is “thinking”, but we can keep trying.

There is something about “And the Word was made flesh and tabernacled among us, and we saw His glory” (John 1:14). Have we also seen His glory? Have I? Have you?

Hebrews Chapter Two unveils the Incarnation in its many-faceted mystery, which quite frankly, even though I see it I don’t pretend to understand it. God’s love is so utterly unlike who I am that it overwhelms me, to think that God in Christ would die for me, His enemy (Romans 5:6 – 11), is more than I can comprehend.

Christ came to “taste death for every person” (Hebrews 2:9). He came to deliver us from the “fear of death” (Hebrews 2:15). He took on “flesh and blood” (Hebrews 2:14) and was made like us “in all things” (Hebrews 2:17).

Then there is the enigmatic suffering which Jesus Christ experienced, He was “made complete…through sufferings” (2:10); “through death” He rendered the enemy “powerless” (2:14); He “made propitiation for the sins of the people” (2:17); He faced temptation “in that which He has suffered” (2:18).

In Hebrews Chapter Two we also see that Jesus came for His brothers and sisters, and that through Jesus Christ the Father is bringing “many sons [and daughters] to glory” (2:10). In 2:11 we see that Jesus Christ calls us “brethren” because those who He is sanctifying are from His Father (see also John 15:16; 17:6, 14 – 26).

As Athanasius wrote in the fourth century, “He became as we are, so that we might become as His is.” Jesus is calling us back to our Father, ever calling us, ever sanctifying us. John writes, “By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world” (1 John 1:16).

We now call out to God, “Abba, Father!” (Romans 8:15, Galatians 4:6).  As Paul writes (Galatians 4:7), “Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.”

The Incarnation continues in the sons and daughters of the living God. The Creator has come to re-create us into His image. That which was marred is being restored. That which was dead is brought to life.

Is the Incarnation continuing in me?

In you?