ON DECEMBER 25 the Christian world again will celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, into this world. Students of the Scriptures and of the physical geography of Palestine, of course, are well aware that this is not the actual date of the birth of Christ in Bethlehem of Judea. The date of His birth is not definitely known. It is known, however, that this significant event did not occur in the month of December, but that the church decreed the twenty-fifth day of December as the anniversary of this miraculous meaningful occurrence.
Although this is so, nevertheless it is good that we contemplate once again the significance of this phenomenal event and its meaning to mankind.
The simple, but inspired, record declares that Mary "brought forth her first-born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn." While this was occurring, shepherds, watching their flocks in the fields surrounding Bethlehem, suddenly were startled by an angel appearing and announcing, "Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord" (Luke 2:7-11).
In making this announcement the angel gave to men a revelation of supreme meaning and import, for the incarnation of Christ is the most stupendous, the most significant, and the most influential fact in the history of the world. We do well to study it and ponder over it continually. What does it mean to us individually and to men as a whole?
1. The Incarnation is a revelation of God to men. In John 1:14 the disciple in speaking of Christ, the Word, declares that He was made flesh and dwelt among men in order to give them a revelation of grace and truth. The purpose of this revelation was to enable men to know, to understand, and to appreciate God. "No man," says the apostle, "hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him" (verse 18).
Man in his unfallen state had the privilege and pleasure of speaking with God and of having fellowship with Him face to face. God visited Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and communed with them and they with Him. The entrance of sin tragically changed this face-to-face fellowship. Man in his sinful state, being unable to look into the face of God and live, was driven from Eden, and God was compelled to hide His visible presence from him.
Sin perverted man's conception of God and of His character. His mind was dark-
ened and his understanding corrupted. As time proceeded and the human race became more and more sinful, God was more and more misunderstood, and soon in the mind of man He was degraded to the image that man had of himself. All the corruptions and villainies of degraded sinful men were credited to God, and soon men completely forsook their allegiance to Him.
Through the centuries of Old Testament times, God did everything that He could, by means of the revelations that He gave to men through the patriarchs and prophets, to help them to know and understand Him. A fuller revelation, however, was imperative, and this Christ came to give. Although the ineffable majesty and glory of God had to be veiled in humanity, Christ gave to men a perfect revelation of the character of God—a revelation of His purity and perfection, His love and long-suffering, His mercy and grace, and of His transforming power. "To know God is to love Him." The mission of Christ was to bring to men this conception of Him.
Before His incarnation Christ was with God, the Father. He was the very image of His greatness, majesty, and character (Heb. 1:3). To manifest this, He came into the world. The Scriptures declare that God, who in relation to sinful man dwells in thick darkness, remote from sense and above thought, has, through the manhood of Christ, come forth to touch men. The incarnated Christ was named, "Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us" (Matt. 1:23). "God was manifest in the flesh" (1 Tim. 3:16), says the apostle Paul.
The Incarnation was the expression of the truth that "God is love," a truth which by implication carries with it the divine passion, for what is love without self-imposed pain and sacrifice? He who sits upon the throne of the universe is love. He came and ministered to fallen men that we might be blissfully aware that love is wedded to omnipotence.
In the incarnation of Christ we see what God actually has done. Here we have not merely a hope or a fancy; not a vague expectation, not a promise, but an accom-plished fact as solid and unchangeable as heaven itself. God gave His Son to become one with us and to pay the penalty for our sins that we might be reckoned His sons. This event, having occurred, does not justify any person in his indifference to God. He has given to all men a revelation of Himself.
2. The Incarnation made it possible for Christ to share in our humanity. When Christ was born into this word He not only came in flesh but He became flesh (John 1:14, R.S.V.). He began an altogether new mode of existence. Before coming to this earth He was wholly divine. But He united His divinity with humanity; He became man. He became what He had not been before. He not only took human bodily form but accepted its limitations as the mode and manner of His existence while on earth.
At His Incarnation, Christ did not take upon Himself the humanity of the most perfect man, but He "was made in the likeness of men," that is, in the likeness of all men—the best and the worst of men. He was made in your likeness and mine. In His humanity He shared with us in our disappointments and sorrows, in our heartaches and griefs, in our perils and our pains. "As the children are partakers of flesh and blood," the apostle Paul declares, "he also himself likewise took part of the same. ... In all things it behoved him to
be made like unto his brethren" (Heb. 2: 14-17). In all points He was tried as we are tried and tempted as we are tempted (Heb. 4:15). He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He was oppressed and afflicted, and ultimately He was brought to the end of His earthly life by the hands of wicked men in the crudest, most humiliating death that any man has ever died.
The practical benefit of all this to us is that having experienced all the tragic consequences and results of man's sin and transgression, Christ knows how to succor us (Heb. 2:18). This Divine Being who became man is now our Mediator and constantly ministers to us the grace and the help that we need in every vicissitude of life. The exaltation of His humanity to heaven is the consolation and the source of strength of all who acknowledge and accept Him.
3. The Incarnation has linked Divinity with humanity and heaven with earth. One of the tragic and terrible consequences of sin is the separation that it caused between God and man. "Your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear" (Isa. 59:2), declares the prophet. Not only did man's transgression cause a gulf of separation, but being possessed of a carnal, sinful nature he naturally is at enmity with God. He hates the things that God loves and loves the things that God hates.
How hopeless and tragic was the condition of man! How amazing and marvelous, however, was that which God did to save him from his awful plight. In the person of His Son, He stepped down from heaven to this sin-cursed earth, took upon Himself all the weaknesses and frailties of the human family. Wonder of wonders, He did even more than that! He made Himself the substitute of all men, the substitute for you and me. And taking upon Himself our sins and condemnation, He, in His death, paid the penalty for all our guilt in order that we might be reconciled to God and God to men.
"God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself" (2 Cor. 5:19), said Paul. Christ came to a world that was completely out of harmony with God, a world in rebellion and revolt, a world separated from Him because of sin. After His resurrection this was a completely reconciled world. The penalty for human sin and transgression had been paid; all that now remained was for men and women individually to accept the gift and be reconciled to God.
At the resurrection of Christ from the dead, His humanity was glorified, and with that glorified body He ascended to heaven where He is now the Mediator between God and man (1 Tim. 2:5). Because of His sinless humanity He is able to bring help to the most degraded, helpless, and hopeless, with the result that man's hopes and aspirations may rise to the heights of His divinity. In and through Him all men now have the opportunity and privilege of becoming "partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust" (2 Peter 1:4).
4. The Incarnation is a revelation of the possible greatness and blessedness of man. When Christ was born into this world, He subjected Himself to the laws of heredity. "When the fulness of the time was come," the apostle Paul states, "God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law" (Gal. 4:4). Having clothed His divinity in humanity, He was of Himself weak where we are weak and frail where we are frail. Though there was in Him a union of the divine and the human nature, He voluntarily, for the time being, laid aside the prerogatives and powers of His divinity and met life as individual men and women have to meet it. "I can of mine own self do nothing," He said (John 5: 30). And again He declared, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself" (verse 19). Christ conquered and lived victoriously and radiantly because His confidence and faith called God, the Father, to dwell with Him and in Him.
In living victoriously over sin in all of its forms and over all human besetments Christ, clothed in the likeness of sinful flesh and meeting trials and temptations as men meet them, "condemned sin in the flesh" (Rom. 8:3). Having ascended to heaven, He will now, by His Spirit, do this for everyone who is prepared to yield himself to Him and depend upon Him.
Through the Incarnation we are now able to enfold Christ to our inmost soul with a wondering, yet triumphant, sense of possession and with a trembling, yet endearing, intimacy of touch. Referring to those who through the grace of God are regarded as His saints, the apostle Paul glowingly writes, "To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27). Yes, He dwells in our hearts, and His purpose is to reproduce Himself—the beauty of His life and the attractiveness of His character—in us.
God's ideal for our lives and our characters is, therefore, no longer an ideal that mocks, eludes, and disheartens us. It can be wondrously realized. By the fact of His dwelling with Christ while He was in the likeness of sinful flesh God has demonstrated that there is none so wicked, so low, so outcast, or so lost, but that He is willing and anxious to dwell with that one, to help him triumph over sin, and someday to transport him to dwell eternally with Him. At this Christmas season may the Lord help each of us as Christian workers to enter into a fuller understanding and appreciation of all that was involved in the birth of Jesus our Saviour and Lord into this world.
