Just a short* post to herald my return to the world of internet writing no one actually wants to read, but feels obligated to because they were tagged on Facebook. It has been too long.
As this is being written, we approach (three hours!) the Christian celebration of the King of the Universe needing a probably teenage girl to wipe His butt. Flippancy aside, I'd like to reiterate in order to maximize "sinking-in....ness"1. The One Who had glory with the Father before the world was2 took on a form that required Him to poop in his drawers, lay in a first-century dog dish, and be taught how to walk. The one who upholds all things by the Word of His power3 subsisted on breast-milk and bedtime stories.
Typically, Christianity of various stripes emphasizes the humiliation and self-negation of the Cross, as rightly it should (factions too busy trying not to hurt gay activists' feelings to have a meaningful doctrine of atonement notwithstanding). The unfortunate tendency is to allow that to deprive the incarnation itself of its weight as a divine condescension. In temporal order, and in priority in the mind of God, what was Christ's first "emptying"? His taking the form of a servant.4 What's more, the incarnation is not only a stooping of God to the level of men (an aspect of Christianity in which it differs from all other faiths, in which one must climb to the level of the higher power), but absolutely vital for our redemption.
Because of Christ, we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness.5 Because of Christ, we have a new Adam-and the free gift is not like the trespass.6 Because of Christ, we do not have the blood of bulls and rams offered repeatedly7, or a high priest who dies8, but an eternal Savior who is both man and God, priest and victim. And without the stable in Bethlehem, we have none of it.
This makes the incarnation a dividing line between (biblical) Christianity and all other faiths, including factions pretending to the title. Rome has gone back to a system of repeated sacrifices that perfect no one-when there is nothing to go back to. Modalism preaches a sacrifice of a priest that cannot continue to intercede. Islam offers a system where there is a transcendent God, a holy law, an eternal fire-and no mediation at all (for evidence of the results of THAT type of works-righteousness, witness the desperation with which the martyrs of the Jihad seek their own unique brand of propitiation.) America is presented with a worldview that denies the existence of anything to be propitiated, a marvelous display of "Romans 1-vision" if there ever was one. Christ-as-priest necessitates Christ-as-sacrifice, which in turn demands Christ-as-infant. It is true in many senses therefore, that Christ was born to die. But it is equally true that he came to live, just as we have, and as we are, yet without sin.
Truly, then, Christmas' joy is, if anything underestimated by Christians. We are utterly dependent, totally grateful, and truly worshipful for the gift of Jesus, fullness of God in helpless babe. As you go about your business this Christmas, try to see the celebration less as a tradition and a commemoration of a precious moment in a family long ago, less as a time for family bonding or a validation of the Trinity (although it is all of those things), and more as the dawn of redeeming grace and the coronation heralding the eternal kingdom.
Merry Christmas 2014
~JS
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* turned out to be a total lie
1 Not a real word
2 John 17:5
3 Hebrews 1:3
4 Phillippians 2:7
5 Hebrews 4:17
6 1 Co. 15:22
7 Hebrews 9:25
8 Hebrews 7:23-24
