Note that this survey is speaking to people, 96% of whom believe Jesus rose from the dead and 92% believe that salvation is found only in Jesus and 96% believe in the Trinity. But nearly a quarter (22%) said that God the Father is more divine than Jesus with another 9% not being sure. Also, 16% said that Jesus was the first creature created by God with another 11% not being sure.
The Bible does not teach that Jesus was created and it certainly never teaches that Jesus came into existence to come at Christmas. It always teaches that Jesus was fully human and fully divine. Somehow Jesus came into this world as a human but never lost any of his divinity. He would even say that he and his Father were "one" (John 10:30).
It cost something for the Jesus, the son of God, to become a son of man. People would never fully understand him while he walked on this earth and today we still don't. That was one price he bore in becoming God incarnate - being misunderstood.
Our little minds can hardly fathom what it must have been like to leave the glory of heaven for the goriness of a human birth. Perhaps C. S. Lewis caught this part best when he wrote this in Mere Christianity:
The Second Person in God, the Son, became human Himself: was born into the world as an actual man—a real man of a particular height, with hair of a particular color, speaking a particular language, weighing so many stone. The Eternal Being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before that) a baby, and before that a fetus inside a Woman’s body. If you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug or a crab.
We often think of what it cost him to go to the cross. To fully understand him, perhaps we should first seek understand what it cost him to go to a stable in Bethlehem.
for the journey...
Tim
The poll can be found at http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/october-web-only/new-poll-finds-evangelicals-favorite-heresies.html
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