Thoughts on the One behind Christmas

The story of Jesus’s birth has beguiled people from all ages. It is charming. Who doesn’t love a baby. But a baby born in a manger! Beneath this historical story are some incredible facts. Who is this babe?

I’ve been posting about what Christians must believe. One thing we must believe is that God is a God of justice. The question arises, how can God be just and yet the justifier of sinners? How can he forgive and recover fallen men and women? The beginning of the answer is Christmas.

Jesus The Eternal One

When Mary was found to be with child, her betrothed, Joseph, thought to divorce her quietly when an angel spoke to him. “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet” (Matt. 1:20-22). That babe was the prophesied one, the Messiah. Consider all the prophecies mentioned in Matthew and Luke. No other child had 2000 years of prophecies about his coming.

All babes have a beginning. Jesus did not. He always existed as the Son of God. “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Col. 1:17). “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:1,14). He himself testified, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, [first and last] who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty” (Rev. 1:8)  

Ah, the mystery of Christmas. There is so much more to ponder about this babe, this eternal one who came into our world in human flesh.

Jesus, God in Human Flesh

Modern people face a confusing dilemma. Steve Jones quotes Walker Percy; ‘“… How can you survive in the cosmos about which you know more and more while knowing less and less about yourself—this despite 10,000 self-help books, 100,000 psychotherapists, and 100 million evangelical Christians?”

Jones continues, ‘Modern man resembles a castaway on a deserted island trying to interpret the message found in a bottle, written in an unknown language. Like a prisoner in an isolation cell, straining to hear a code tapped out on the cell wall beside him.’

But in the midst of the confusion, behind the tinsel and trees, Christmas has the answer. It is about God coming in human flesh, born as a babe in Bethlehem, to deliver us not only from our feeble self-help plans but our selfishness, bitterness and outright wickedness. Jesus, the eternal Son of God, took upon himself the form of a man that he might save men and women. Coming as Jesus, he was the culmination of God’s rescue plan.

Incredible? Yes. But without ceasing to be divine he became man—at Christmas. His body was not a phantom, not a mirage but a real flesh and blood human named Jesus. As a baby, “the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon hm…when he was twelve years old, they went up to the Feast” (Luke 2:40,42). He was born, he grew, he became twelve, and eventually he became thirty. “From that time on Jesus began to preach, ‘Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near’” (Matthew 4:17).

As man, he ate and thirsted and felt pain and became tired and wept. His disciples touched him. “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life” (1 John 1:1). Our eternal destiny rests upon this real man who calls us to repent and believe the message of salvation through his death for our sins upon the cross. Because this baby who grew to become the man Jesus Christ, really, truly suffered as a man on a Roman cross for you and me. Do you believe this?

An essential truth of the Christian faith that must be believed by all true Christians concerns the genuine human nature that Christ embraced. He is the eternal Son of God; truly God and truly man—two natures in one person. A mystery.

Jesus, the Virgin-Born Man

Mankind, from our beginning, has been fascinated by mystery. Are plants conscious of pain? Do werewolves exist somewhere? Is there a Loch Ness Monster? Does the Bermuda Triangle devour ships? Is there a lost continent of Atlantis? Does Big Foot wander somewhere in the western mountains? And what about time travel? Is it possible to travel back in time to right a wrong?

Every Christmas we celebrate a true mystery—a mystery that is not a figment of mankind’s imagination. It is a fact. It happened.  Mary conceived a child through the Holy Spirit without the sperm of Joseph. To announce this miracle, an angel appeared to Mary; “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.……You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High…’ How will this be,’ Mary asked the angel, ‘since I am a virgin?’…The angel answered, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be call the Son of God’” (Luke 1:28,31,34,35).

Almost as miraculous, Mary believed and accepted this impossibility. “’I am the Lord’s servant,’ Mary answered. ‘May it be to me as you have said’” (Luke 1:38).

Ponder this birth. A baby grew in the womb of Mary. A baby connected to her placenta by an umbilical cord. A child that drew sustenance from her and grew within her. Week after week. Month after month. Yet, this baby was conceived not by human sperm but by the Holy Spirit.

When Mary went to visit her relative Elizabeth who was pregnant with John, the baptizer, “the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed: ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear!’” (Luke 41,42).

We know the rest of the story. The angel assuring Joseph that Mary’s pregnancy was of the Holy Spirit. Their journey to Bethlehem. The birth in a stable.

Ponder again this mystery. The Son of God, creator of the worlds, took upon himself a sinless, virgin-born human nature that he might redeem us. What a stoop of humility! What a mystery that, as man, Christ should grow in the womb of Mary for nine months drawing sustenance from her.

“Christians believe in the virgin birth of Jesus. Materialists believe in the virgin birth of the cosmos. Choose your miracle.” “–Glen Scrivener 

Jesus, God Drawing Near

We all have natural fears. Fire. Grizzly bears. Robbers. Cancer. Some of us fear water or heights. But the scariest thing humans have ever had to fear has been God, himself. Think back to the time of Noah. Mankind had abandoned God and given themselves over to all kinds of perversion. God was angry. As a result, he sent the flood to wipe out mankind. Imagine the fear Noah’s children must have had later for water, even for heavy rains.

Then consider God’s deliverance of Israel from Egypt. They traveled through the desert to Mt. Sinai where God gave Moses the law. God warned the people not to even approach the mountain. God is fire. God is thunder. God is distant. The pattern he gave Moses of how to build the tabernacle where he would dwell between the cherubim in the holy of holies shielded from sight.

Or think of Isaiah’s vision of God, high and lifted up, whose glory filled the temple. The vision caused Isaiah to fall in fear and cry out “holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts.” But I am undone for I am unholy and live in the midst of an unholy people. “Woe is me.” God was distant and terrifying.

But now we come to Christmas. God has drawn near in Jesus, because like his relationship with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, he wants to walk with us. He wants to be near us. Imagine the privilege Mary and Joseph had. Imagine when Jesus embraced his ministry and called his disciples “that they might be near him.” Imagine them walking with Jesus, listening to him, receiving bread from him, and even touching him. After dying for them, he rose again and appeared among them for 40 days. Besides affirming his resurrection, it was almost as if he didn’t want to leave them.

God’s design to draw near us could only be fulfilled if Jesus, as the Son of God, bore our sins away on the cross. Christmas is about God drawing near. Christmas is about God showing that his redemptive plan is to make a way for God to be near us from now through eternity. What love!

To all who receive Jesus Christ as their Saviour he says, “Lo, I am with you always.” This is God’s plan. To draw near. To love us. To walk with us, now and all along the pathways of the new earth.

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