Christmas, the God-Man, and the Unique Quality of the Christian Faith

This is an older entry from Thursday, November 25, 2010. Thought I'd put it up here on the new, cuter pink blog.

 

Dinners have been shared, prayers of thanks have been uttered, and the coolness of night has set in. The close of Thanksgiving brings the onset of the Christmas season, and all of its beautiful implications. A spirit of somber reflection and of quiet joy has gripped me tonight. For as long as I have believed in the doctrine of Christianity, I have been repeatedly awestruck by its God and his particular character. It’s all I can do to remind myself once more what he’s done for me, and sit in quiet wonder about the miracle and oddity of his life on earth as Jesus Christ. Christmas, I think, is the perfect occasion to bathe ourselves in the wonder of the gospel and the story of the God-Man. Redemption won by humility is the glorious conclusion of the advent.

I was most recently reminded of the wonder of Christ’s divinity when I met a young man from Morocco named Salah. A good friend of mine and I were having a night out together, and Salah was working late at the shop we’d found ourselves in. I like to speak to most everyone I come in contact with, (I get that from my mother) and so it wasn’t long before the three of us were joking and talking. I was quick to inquire about his land and culture and religion, and within minutes we were standing around discussing the divine in some detail. He had been raised in an Islamic culture. I’m not sure if he himself was strict to adhere to its regulations, but he definitely identified himself as a Muslim.

I was glad to hear his convictions and thoughts—excited by his desire to know and be known by a supreme God. I admired his devotion to prayer. Listening and learning about people’s religious beliefs is more than fascinating to me… it’s of an importance I don’t know how to explain.

Salah was interested in hearing about my faith as well: particularly about my thoughts on the divinity of Jesus as a Christian. I told him how I believed that God willingly became flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, emptied himself for our sake, and offered himself as a living sacrifice as an atonement for our sin. Immediately I saw the distain on his face. He was shaking his head in disbelief.

 “You believe that the Prophet Jesus was God and a man?”

“Yes. Fully God and fully man.”

“That’s stupid to me.”

Salah laughed. And, you know, I couldn’t really blame him. I think it’s good to become reacquainted with the oddity and miraculous nature of your Christianity if you have become numb to it. It’s good to take moments to be awestruck and confused. And in that moment, I was.

 Salah was wise in assessing that God, if there is a god, must be untouchably holy. Man, in comparison, is finite, weak, and unworthy.  Surely the power of the Eternal is beyond us-- unfathomable to moral minds. To mingle God with human flesh seemed to make filthy the name of God.  Not only was the concept of the God-man unbelievable in a practical sense, it was disgraceful and offensive to the holiness and immaculacy of Divine nature.  To suggest that the everlasting creator God would be willing to belittle himself to the point of walking with men as a man disgusted my new friend. He would not hear my bizarre opinion, because to his ears it was unthinkable and blasphemous.

While I understood his skepticism of Jesus Christ’s divinity, I was deeply saddened for my friend. What Salah simply could not accept as true about God was the very thing that made Him most glorious, beautiful, and praiseworthy in my eyes.

This is what the Bible says about my God:  “Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and grace to help us in our time of need.”  Hebrews 4:15-16

We, as Christians, believe in a God who emptied himself of all but love, bend down, and walked with men and women as one of them—teaching people and healing people in the name of the Father who loved them.  Truly, it is a mystery unfathomable: pure radiance wore flesh, the eternal stepped into time.  God, infinite in perfection, chose to be born into poverty stricken Israel to a Hebrew little girl in the 1^st century, live the life of a homeless man, and die as a criminal. He walked on earth as we walk on earth, and felt the pain of life that we feel. He asks us to do nothing he did not first exemplify in himself.  His entrance into time was for this purpose: to break the curse of death and absorb the wrath of God in our place. Jesus restores what sin had damaged in the relationship between God and his beloved creation.

In his humility we see so clearly the heart of God: rich in mercy and unfathomable love.  Think for a moment about a God for whom perfect glory was his right, but absolute humility was his choice. This choice was made chiefly for our sake… so that we could know and see the heart of this God, and even enter into his family as sons.  In his humility we witness his mercy, and praise his name for it. In this way, God’s glory was most perfectly displayed to the world through Christ’s death and resurrection.  It was the plan of God before the beginning of time: “It was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief.” (Isaiah 53:10.) When Christ was spit upon, mocked, bruised, beaten and crucified, God was not being conquered. God was conquering death itself in Christ. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says this: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” God’s sovereign, unthwarted will was accomplished despite our sin, within our sin, to rescue us from our sin. Here is the mystery and the majesty of the cross.

Not only is the sacrifice of Christ the only right response of God in his justice to save us, it is the very thing that wins our hearts affections for him. When a human soul encounters the truth of God’s love in Christ, overwhelming gratitude is awakened, deeply inlayed purpose provoked, and  we find ourselves asking the question posed in that old hymn:

“What wondrous love is this

That caused the Lord of Bliss

To bare the dreadful curse for my soul?”

The Christian is the one who recognizes Christ as his most prized treasure, and submits himself to the servant hood of discipleship under Jesus. His sufferings are redeemed-- as well as expected—and made to glorify God in him. His soul is new; untainted in the eyes of his creator.

This Christmas, we reflect upon the miracle of God’s entrance into the world as a helpless baby. We celebrate that our supreme God cloaked himself in human frailty: whose humble attitude is distinctly unique to Christianity amongst all other religions. My dear boyfriend Jake consistently reminds me of the selfless quality of the God who emptied himself for us. It stands out plainly amongst other belief systems, and Jake was initially attracted to the unique beauty of Jesus.

But Yahweh’s humility is not only exemplified in Christ’s earthly life: we see it in the way he chooses to build his kingdom and call his people throughout the entire Bible. Our God is known for using broken, foolish, uneducated people to represent his name in the world.  In most other mythologies, gods choose mortals who are valiant, strong and heroic to accomplish their purposes. But the scriptures are full of sinners and weaklings hand-picked by God to be called saints. Consider Moses, a murderer—Jonah, a coward—David, and adulterer and a murderer—the disciples: a band of mismatches from a doctor to fishermen, who would doubt and deny Jesus after walking with him for years as dear friends—Paul a religious zealot known for killing Christians—prostitutes, thieves, tax collectors. These were God’s chosen people.

It seems that God delights in saving those who seem to be beyond saving, and in lavishing his love upon the unlovely. He does not fear our messiness or ugliness. We know this because he was born in a barn and laid in a feeding trough.  We know this because we were loved immeasurably during our worst disrepair: “For while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) Do not doubt that you have ever fallen beyond the reach of the grace of our incredible God.

Though we are called to holiness, we know that our effort to be holy is insufficient to save us. We cannot make the cut, and luckily, don’t have to. Because we have a High Priest who is truly unlike any other: who saves us by his grace because of his willingness to humble himself.

Psalm 68: 19-20 “Praise be to the Lord, to our God and Savior, who daily bears our burdens. Our God is a God who saves; from the sovereign Lord comes escape from death.”

Merry Christmas to all!!