Happy Incarnation Day – The Christmas Story

Faithful Christians would do well to always think of Christmas as Incarnation Day.

It is the day we celebrate the fact that Jesus, the Word, became flesh and dwelt among us. To be absolutely correct, it actually happened some nine months earlier in the miracle in the womb of a humble Jewish girl.

The Christmas miracle is God becoming man in the eternal and beloved Son of God, spoken of through the prophets and the Apostles. But it is told most dramatically in John 1:1-14.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it (John 1:1-5 ESV).

And then in verse 14, we read something very profound:

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

The Word became flesh.

… And dwelt among us.

That is what Christmas is really all about.

Heaven touches earth most dramatically here. The begotten Son becomes one of us, a human, in what theologians call the Incarnation, the most profound truth in all reality.

C.S. Lewis called it the “grand miracle” explaining, “…[I]t was the central event in the history of the earth – the very thing that the whole story has been about.”

It is the very center of the Christian story, of reality, for without it, nothing else is possible. The Slovenian composer, Jacobus Gallus, so beautifully explains the nature of this world-changing event:

A wondrous mystery has been proclaimed today; all natures are renewed:

God has become human: He remained what he was, and what he was not, he became, suffering neither confusion nor division.

No other religion or philosophy brings the human and the divine together like this. Only Christianity does this … and so intimately. It is the Incarnation that makes our salvation and freedom possible, breaking down the divide between the Spirit and the Flesh, bringing these two wonders together in the Person of Christ.

It is important for all believers to know the Incarnation does away forever with the first heresy to invade the Church, that of gnosticism – which held that the spirit was real and desirable while the flesh was illusory and to be shunned. The Incarnation obliterates such a view and brings all of reality – the spiritual and the physical – together in absolute harmony. Thus, there is no sacred and secular divide, no flesh/spirit dichotomy in Christianity.

The baby in the Christmas manger, and prior to this, in the womb of Mary, is Christ, the sovereign Lord of all creation and reality, fully God and fully man. Christmas proclaims this truth.

We cannot ignore that this Grand Miracle happened; God has placed it before each of us to decide for ourselves whether we will believe it actually did, and if so, what we will do with that knowledge. That is the Gospel decision that each of us must make … and it changes everything.

Nor can we ignore how the Grand Miracle happened, for the how is just as important as the what. The way God did it cannot be separated from the doing; it all goes together.

The Word left His heavenly place where He dwelt in the bosom of His Father (John 1:18), and while remaining fully God – as the second Person of the Trinity – He became fully man, fully flesh and lived among us.

God was first incarnated, not in the Christmas manger, but in the fleshy womb of a woman: humble Mary. This is a profound statement about the significance of the feminine and it is central to Christianity. Jesus entered the world in the flesh through the birth pangs in that most feminine part of one blessed woman.

Jesus, the God-Man, was born into a family.

And He remained in that family all of His life. The Lord of the Universe, upon that terrible cross of our salvation, asked His beloved disciple John to undertake the care of His dear mother until her last day.

Jesus was a family man from His first day in the womb until the cross.

The incarnation of the Word of God into real human flesh is indeed the Grand Miracle. None of the other miracles Jesus performed, including the resurrection, are possible without this one. And it all happened in the context of a real, fleshly family.

That is what Christmas is really about.

Additional Resources on the Total Lordship of Christ

How Big is Your View of the Gospel?

The Cultural Paradox of Following Jesus Christ

The Church’s Lane is the Whole Cosmos

Appreciating the Full Scope of the Lordship of Christ – and the Gospel Itself

As Secularists Prep for the Apocalypse, Christians Must Have Strong Kingdom Theology

In Our Troubled World, Take Heart and Remember That Christ is King

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