The Cost of the Incarnation

"Most American evangelicals hold views condemned as heretical by some of the most important councils of the early church."  That statement from a Christianity Today article got my attention.  As I read the article I found that much of our modern confusion centers around things related to Jesus and the incarnation.  We are good at celebrating Christmas but not as good at understanding the implications of the incarnation of Christ.

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

Switched at Birth

Sixty years ago in Tokyo a hospital made a terrible mistake.  They sent babies home with the wrong families.  One baby born to a poor family went home with a wealthy family.  Another baby born to a wealthy family went home to a life of poverty.  The mistake was only discovered because of some health problems in the wealthy family that lead to some DNA testing among the siblings.  When one brother showed no genetic kinship to the family they began searching for the reason.

The two men spent their lives in very different ways, the poor man was a truck driver and the rich man runs his own real estate business.  Last week the a court ordered the hospital to pay the poor man - who wishes to remain anonymous - a settlement worth over $370,000, substantially less than the $2.5 million he sought.  "I feel...regret and also anger," the impoverished man said after his settlement, "I want them to turn back the clock."

Contrast this to the birth of our Lord that we celebrate today.  He, as Paul put it in Philippians2:7-8, "... made himself nothing, taking on the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  And being found in appearance as a man he humbled himself and became obedient to death - even death on a cross!"

He chose the poverty after knowing the wealth of heaven.  C. S. Lewis likened the incarnational drop of going from heaven to earth as being like that of a human choosing to become "a crab or a slug."  He chose to come live in this world of poverty with us.  He chose to die for us to make us rich in ways we never could have dreamed.  It was God's plan that he chose for himself and for us.

Today celebrate where and to whom you were born but also celebrate that you can be born again because he was born among us.

Merry Christmas,

Tim