This
past weekend, Bill White spoke on the arrival of Jesus through the complexity
of the incarnation and the extreme generosity of God.
It’s
often hard to walk a mile in another’s shoes, as they say, let alone an entire
lifetime. Without even thinking, each
day we find ourselves pushing our opinions and judgments onto another person
without truly understanding their circumstances or their heart. As believers, we recognize and admit our own sinfulness
and the sinfulness of those around us, but we lack a true and deep
understanding of the entire soul behind the brokenness. We recognize our need
for an advocate, but our limited personal understanding cannot fully grasp the
implications of that need. Divine
intervention is our only hope. Yet a
superhuman Jesus who never suffered or endured temptation could not be our
sacrifice, and a fully human man could not live a perfect life in our place. We need Someone who is both fully God and
fully man to ransom us. And that is Who God sent. For that reason, the incarnation was the
greatest miracle the Earth has ever witnessed.
Hebrews
2:16-18 tells us that Jesus had to be exactly like us in every respect in order
to plead for forgiveness on our behalf.
These verses also clearly state that Jesus came to Earth incarnate for
us, not for angels or anything else. He
came to live the perfect life, free of sin, in our place. He endured suffering and temptation just as
we do so that He could help us where we are.
The
incarnation is critically important to the meaning of the Gospel; therefore, we
must be careful to never deny it. Though
we often find ourselves following our thoughts in many directions, even to
truly good things, we must always be aware of our hopes and desires. “There is no deficit so great He cannot fill
it. There is no delight so bountiful
that He can’t make it pale in comparison.”
Our imaginations need to be captivated by Jesus and His incarnation.
The
reality of the incarnation rests on three main ideas.
- 2 Corinthians 8:9 touches on the extravagant generosity
of God. Jesus forfeited all wealth and
glory that was His by right to become poor for our sakes. From nothingness, God created all of the
glory and wealth the world has ever known; He breathed it out as if it were
nothing. Yet from His throne, God
decided to confine Himself to a human experience of poverty and dependence. He surrendered His wealth so that we could
become rich; He poured Himself out so that we could be filled.
- John 1:1 and 1:14 describes Jesus’ humanity
and confined state on Earth. The human
mind cannot completely comprehend or capture the never-ending magnitude of God,
let alone the implications of confining that existence to a human life. But we know that the Creator of the universe,
the Alpha and Omega, stepped out of His eternal existence to be confined to
time and space, to be limited in understanding with a need to learn and be
cared for, and ‘became a few cells in a teenage girl’s womb’. That feeling of compression as ‘divine
consciousness wedded human form’ is unfathomable for us.
- Hebrews 5:8 exposes that Jesus, despite His divine position, had to learn obedience to His Father through suffering. He was a human, and therefore, in process just like us. Jesus came into a broken world and lived ‘under the weight’ of it to learn to trust the Father, walk by faith, and deny sin. Just as we do now, Jesus faced a constant enemy battling for His soul. He set the example for us when He turned to the scriptures, to His Father’s promise, to perform where we did not. He did what we were supposed to do so that we could be pardoned before God.
-Katie
Gural