Christmas celebrates the “first Advent”, the first coming of
the Christ, Jesus. He came as the helpless, human baby we see in the manger
scenes. I have a friend who doesn’t believe Jesus is God because she thinks any
God who becomes human is a weaker God, and why would the Creator of the
Universe, the One True God, ever seek to diminish his power?
Why indeed? But what if the Creator of the Universe had
enough greatness to be both all-powerful and become human? I mean, if He’s big
enough to be the Creator of all things, surely nothing is impossible. So
becoming human needn’t be an issue of diminishing his power.
The bigger question is why do it at all? Why would God
decide to walk among us as a human? Surely he could see all he wanted of us
without becoming one of us. The reason
isn’t a secret. From the Old Testament through the New, the reason why God
became man is clearly stated. He came to save us from ourselves.
We need saving? Apparently so. Even if you are a stranger to
Christian theology, it’s pretty clear we are a mess. Humankind is broken – from
bigotry, racism, bullying, and greed (to name a few things) to all-out war, we
are broken. We can’t get along. We are at any given time jealous of, frightened
of, or angry at our neighbors, friends and family. You can just start with the
10 Commandments – ever broken one? I haven’t murdered anyone, but I have
certainly been jealous, and I was often disobedient and disrespectful of my
parents. God’s standard is the 10 Commandments. Jesus summarized the ten as
“Love the Lord Your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind and love
your neighbor as yourself.” I’ve messed up on both sides of that. We all have.
Even the best of us.
The Bible teaches that all of us fall short of what God
demands. We cannot possibly live up to His standard (which, as standards go,
isn’t that unreasonable). The Bible also
teaches God demands perfect obedience to his standard in order to have a
relationship with him. And we all fail, so relationship with God seems
unreachable. Even my best is not good enough.
How could a loving God (and we are told God is Love) set up
such an impossible standard and hold it against us? For one thing, because he is God, our
Creator. As Creator, he made the rules. He has absolute right to set the
standard. His rightness demands our meeting his standard, with justice to
follow if we fail. Yet, God is at the same time love, so he set about a plan to
save us from ourselves. That plan entailed coming as a human to live among us,
and eventually to take our place in answering God’s righteous demands. Only
another human could do so for us.
And why bother at all? Why not create us to love him
unconditionally and not mess up? He desired us to love him freely, to choose or
not choose him, rather than be his puppets. And when our first parents chose
themselves over him, why didn’t he just end it all? Because he wanted
relationship with us, he loves humans, for some reason, enough to create a plan
to save us from our selves.
The baby in the manger was God become flesh, human. Most
unexpected, most difficult to believe. That baby grew into a man, who few doubt
actually lived, Jesus the carpenter’s son. Jesus the good teacher. But few
accept Jesus the God-man. But that’s the Christmas story. God became human to
live among us. He did so to ultimately take God’s consequence for our brokenness.
He was born to die. For us.
The Bible also tells us that Jesus chose to live just like
us, setting aside his prerogatives and powers to walk among us. He had the
great advantage of being sinless, however. A perfect sacrifice can’t have the
same broken issues we have. That is the entire point of the virgin birth – not
just to be a cutesy miracle, but to create a sinless human, since our
sin-nature, our brokenness, is inherited from our fathers, beginning with Adam
and Eve. It was part of the penalty for choosing to disobey God, and live life
their own way. Our history of brokenness began, and we continue today to go our
own way, and that continues to get us nowhere. We need someone to break the
chain, and that was Jesus, coming as the God-man, sinless, to take our place
before God’s justice.
It is so easy to forget all of this (or never learn it at
all) among the beautiful decorations and music, not to mention the added lore
of Santa and his elves. The magic of
Christmas seems to have very little to do with sacrifice or punishment.
Besides, who wants to think of that? But we should. We need a savior. This
world needs saving. Jesus came to save us. That is the good news the Angels
sang, and we continue to sing in Christmas carols today. We give gifts because
the Greatest Gift came on that first Christmas day.
I love the song, “Welcome to our World” by Chris Rice. The
lyrics are set to remind us what Christmas truly is about.
“Tears are falling, hearts are breaking
How we need to hear from God
You've been promised, we've been waiting
Welcome Holy Child
Hope that You don't mind our manger
How I wish we could have known
But long-awaited Holy Stranger
Make Yourself at home
Please make Yourself at home
Bring Your peace into our violence
Bid our hungry souls be filled
Word now breaking Heaven's silence
Welcome to our world
Fragile finger sent to heal us
Tender brow prepared for thorn
Tiny heart whose blood will save us
Unto us is born
So wrap our injured flesh around You
Breathe our air and walk our sod
Rob our sins and make us holy
Perfect Son of God
Welcome to our world”
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Chris Rice /
Christopher M. Rice
Welcome to Our World lyrics ©
Downtown Music Publishing, Warner Chappell Music, Inc
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