God in skin and bone.
God in skin and bone.
The church’s confession has Jesus’s appearing as its foundation.
In many ways, the Word of God could be understood as an extended invitation to put your faith in the one for whom nothing is impossible, even if that means he has to tear open the heavens in order for you to get the point. This brings us to consider Paul’s letter to Titus, in which he refers to God’s “appearing” on three separate occasions: “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people . . . waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:11, 13). “But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us” (Titus 3:4–5). In each instance, the same word for “appeared” or “appearing” is found, alluding to the sudden manifestation of the Son of God in the flesh. To say that the Son of God “appeared” is to invoke the words of Paul who affirms that Christ was “born in the likeness of men” (Phil. 2:7). This, indeed, is the truth that changes everything.
Jesus’s birth signals a decisive turning point in the history of the universe, which is reflected in many of the songs we sing this time of year: “Long lay the world in sin and error pining / Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.” Much if not all of the lore of Christmas revolves around this theme. It would be a time-consuming task to tally all of the hymns and carols that refer to Jesus’s birth. This, of course, is not by accident since some of the earliest confessions of the church have had Jesus’s “appearing” as their foundation. Paul’s words in 1 Timothy 3:16, Philippians 2:5–11, and Colossians 1:15–20 are good examples. We might also look to the creeds of the early church, such as the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Chalcedonian Creed. Jesus’s “appearing,” to be sure, is not ancillary to our faith. The fact that the Son of God took on “flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14) is not a belief that should be shoved into the background. Christ’s incarnation is not a doctrine that sits on the periphery of what we profess to believe.
In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul argues for the distinctive importance of the resurrection, evening going so far as to say that “if Christ has not been raised, [then our] faith is futile [and] we are of all people most to be pitied.” The church could and should confess the same thing, however, regarding the incarnation. Christ’s unassuming birth and unflagging triumph over death are the pillars that buttress our faith. Far from being just a thing we sing about every December, Jesus’s “appearing” is central to everything that we believe. “At the very center of the Christian faith,” John Clark and Marcus Johnson write, “is the supreme mystery that the Word became flesh, that in the person of Jesus Christ, God participates unreservedly in the same human nature that we ourselves possess.” The glad tidings of Advent, and of Christmas itself, is not an announcement that belongs to a month on the calendar. This is because what is announced to us is none other than “the good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10–11).
You are no doubt familiar with this story. We’ve heard about Mary and Joseph, the census, the little town of Bethlehem, and how “there was no place for them in the inn” countless times over. But even still, despite how familiar this story is, I wonder how often we consider what it all means. What does it mean that the Son of God has taken on “flesh and dwelt among us”? What does it mean that “the grace of God has appeared”?
Man’s problem is elevated.
What’s often lost on us when we sing about Jesus’s birth is the inherent gloom that accompanies that announcement. His “appearing” occurs in a world beset by darkness, which is evident in many of our favorite carols, not the least of which is “O come, O Come, Emmanuel”:
O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here,
Until the Son of God appear.
O come, Thou Dayspring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.
Deeply rooted in our singing about Christ’s arrival is the fact that he arrives in a world that is grieving, aching, and full of mourning. “The joyful mystery of the Nativity,” writes R. Lucas Stamps, “is set against the backdrop of pain.” Jesus is born into a world inhabited by sinners, cheaters, thieves, and beggars. It’s a world that is broken and desperate for healing; creation itself is pining for his arrival (Rom. 8:22). Into a world that is enslaved by the darkness, he comes as the Light (Luke 1:79; Isa. 9:2). This is what Advent invites us to remember — namely, that Jesus, to quote R. Lucas Stamps again, “didn’t come to a people who had their stuff together. He came to a broken world longing for healing.”
This is hard for anyone to admit since no one likes to own up to how deficient, inadequate, or incapable they are. And yet, this is precisely what we confess when we sing about Jesus’s birth. We are confessing that the problem of sin is so severe that it necessitates the arrival of God in the flesh to fix it. What Advent makes blindingly clear is that man cannot fix man’s problem by himself. No man or woman, no entity or committee, and no policy or piece of legislation could ever solve the problem of sin. We are not and cannot be the heroes. The problem of sin can only be solved by God taking on “flesh and blood” just like us so that he could have that flesh torn to shreds and that blood poured out on the cross for us. Jesus’s “appearing,” his incarnation in this place of death and darkness makes all other notions of salvation unthinkable. John Clark and Marcus Johnson write elsewhere:
The incarnation is a monumental rebuke of our misguided aspirations, for it accomplishes the severe mercy of rendering absurd any notion that rapprochement between God and humanity is accomplished from the side of humanity. We do not seek and find a reclusive God; he pursues and overtakes us in our rebellion. We do not perforate his unapproachable light; he penetrates our unsearchable darkness. We do not interrogate the Jesus of history to excavate the God of eternity; that infinite and eternal God storms space and time to confront us face-to-face in the face of Christ. The incarnation scandalizes our desire for heroism without humility, for glory without grace, for human ascent without divine descent. That is because the incarnation sets before us the unsettling yet liberating reality that rapprochement between God and humanity is accomplished only and ever from the side of God. (127)
The idea that man can save himself is laughable because God had to come down to save us himself. The problem of sin is so severe that he had to “rend the heavens” so that he could be where we are and bring us to where he is. “Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down,” the prophet Isaiah prays (Isa. 64:1; cf. Ps. 18:9). The cry of God’s people was that he would “split the sky” and extend a rescuing hand to those who were suffering. And when we read about how Mary “gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger,” that’s exactly what happened. The eternal Son of God, the one who had no start and knows no end, comes down to this problematic world in order to rescue problematic sinners like you and me.
God’s standard is endorsed.
Jesus’s “appearing” is the manifestation of the one who was outside of space and time within space and time itself. This fact alone should leave every one of us speechless. As early twentieth-century Lutheran pastor and scholar R. C. H. Lenski put it, “The miracle of the ages is that the Word became flesh and dwelt among men” (26). But as Paul proceeds to say in his letter to Titus, this “appearing” of the Son of God in the flesh was precisely so that sinners could be saved (Titus 2:11; 3:4–5). It is critical that we understand just how intertwined Christ’s “appearing” and our salvation are. By this I mean that the Christ of God did not appear as an angel or some other heavenly being when he came down, nor did he manifest as an ephemeral spirit. Rather, he came down “in the likeness of men” so that he could save men from themselves. God in his grace saw humanity’s hopeless and helpless state, and, in his wisdom, he became a human so that he could rescue humanity from eternal ruin.
This is the point the author of Hebrews makes in Chapter 2 when he attests that Jesus, the Son of God, took on “flesh and blood” to redeem and reconcile the “flesh and blood offspring of Abraham” (Heb. 2:14–17). Paul similarly affirms, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal. 4:4–5). The incarnation of the Son of God, his “appearing,” is not some sort of “divine cheat code” that allows wretched sinners into the kingdom of God. God did not give us his law as a means of salvation only to devise this other means of salvation when he saw no one could live up to the law’s demands. God didn’t send his Son to this Earth to sidestep the law since no one could keep it anyway. The incarnation of God the Son isn’t God the Father “breaking the law for love.”
When Christ was born of the virgin Mary, he subjected himself to every demand of the law, fulfilling them all, leaving none of its demands undone. He was born under the law and lived perfectly according to the law so that when he died on the cross his perfect record could gifted to every sinner. Far from diminishing or sidestepping the standard of God’s holiness, Jesus’s incarnation in the flesh upholds and endorses it. By this, we understand how an infinitely holy God remains perfectly just and completely holy all the while justifying the ungodly and those damned to hell. The “appearing” of the Son of God was not some sort of contingency contrived by the Trinity. Christmas is not God seeing our sad and sorry estate, and activating a backup plan in order to save us. “What happens when God becomes human is not simply an emergency plan to tidy up the forgiveness of our sins,” notes Welsh Anglican bishop and theologian Rowan Williams. Rather, it is the beachhead of God’s initiative to show us who he most truly and deeply is. Advent reminds us that Christmas is the culmination of God’s plan to redeem the world, which was put into motion “before the foundation of the world.” R. C. H. Lenski concludes:
The Logos is the final and absolute revelation of God, embodied in God’s own Son, Jesus Christ. Christ is the Logos because in him all the purposes, plans, and promises of God are brought to a final focus and an absolute realization. (30)
God’s heart is exposed.
In a profound way, Jesus’s “appearing” answers the question, “What is God like?” Your answer to that question will reveal what you think about the faith and the Christian life altogether. “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us,” A. W. Tozer famously said (1). Accordingly, when you think about God, what’s the first image that comes to mind? Do you imagine God to be a vindictive tyrant? A grumpy geezer? An overbearing overlord? A micromanaging boss? Or a disengaged dad? It goes without saying that your faith will be enormously impacted by how you understand who God is and what he is like. The point is that Jesus appeared in the flesh to not only tell us but also to show us exactly what God is like. He arrived in this world to give us a “flesh and blood” profile of the nature of God.
[The] cradle gives us God’s thoughts of God, — what God wishes us to know and think about Himself. It shows us how accessible God is, and how He wishes to be approached by us. It shows us how near He has come to us, how low He has stooped, how truly one with us He has become. It is God, — the Son of the living God, — [the] very God who lies there. We see but helpless infancy; yet the mighty power of God is there. We see but clouds and shadows resting over us; yet on His forehead is written, “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.” The more that we can realize of God in connection with that babe and that cradle, the more we shall know of Him who said, “My thoughts are not your thoughts.” Here God speaks to us, and we to Him. These little fingers are those of Him who was ere long to touch the sick, and to heal them with His power. These hands are the hands which are soon to be pierced with nails. That head is soon to be crowned with thorns. These feet are to be fastened to the cross. These eyes are to weep at the grave of Lazarus and over Jerusalem. That body which now lies in a stony cradle, is soon to lie in a stony tomb. And yet all these things link themselves with His Godhead. The Son of the living God is here, and Jesus of Nazareth is He, — the very Christ of God. (74–75)
In Christ’s own words, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9; cf. 12:45). For those longing to understand the ethos of the Godhead, Jesus invites us to behold him. Advent welcomes one and all to gaze upon a little newborn being swaddled by his adolescent mother and to know that he is none other than Yahweh enfleshed. Jesus makes God “known” to us (John 1:18). “The Logos,” Lenski writes, “is the supreme exegete, the absolute interpreter of God” (101). The Son of God did not take on flesh to change his Father’s mind about how to deal with sinners. Rather, he took on flesh to reveal in detail the depths of God’s heart for us. He did not show up to convince the Father to be gracious or merciful; he showed up as the exact expression of God’s attitude toward the lost, the unworthy, and the undone. He appeared to show forth what had been in the heart and mind of God all along — namely, that he is “a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exod. 34:6).
Jesus is the skin-and-bone embodiment of this declaration. “The unlimited eternal activity that is God,” Rowan Williams says, “unveils itself in the form of the most dependent kind of humanity we can think of.” Rather than come down as a gavel-wielding judge or sword-swinging soldier, God comes down as a baby with feet and hands that are reaching out for his mother’s breasts. Advent announces that “the grace of God has appeared” as an infant to disclose his solidarity with our weakness and his embrace of death. The one laying Bethlehem’s manger is the Christ of God who has come for you.
Merry Christmas everyone!
Works cited:
Horatius Bonar, The Christ of God (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1874).
John C. Clark and Marcus Peter Johnson, The Incarnation of God: The Mystery of the Gospel as the Foundation of Evangelical Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2015).
R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. John’s Gospel (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1961).
A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (New York: HarperCollins, 1978).