“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

We celebrate the coming of Jesus at Christmas time; that is where we get the term “advent,” which means coming in Latin.  However, as we dig deeply into the Scriptures, we realize that Jesus, son of God, one of the three persons of the Trinity, as been with us all along. In fact, the first verse of the chapter quoted above reads: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). Is this a contradiction? How can we celebrate His coming if He has always been here? The answer seems to be that verse 14 above is referring to is the incarnation of Christ.

Easton’s Bible Dictionary defines incarnation as “that act of grace whereby Christ took our human nature into union with his Divine Person, became man. Christ is both God and man. The union is hypostatical, i.e., is personal; the two natures are not mixed or confounded, and it is perpetual.”

“Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Hebrews 2:14-15).

Notice the two little, seemingly inconsequential words underlined above: “so that.” These words explain a lot. We know that Jesus’s death on the cross was the atonement for our sins. In other words, he paid all the fines and penalties and punishments forever for all the sins of the world. He paid it all by his death on the cross. But the reason that His death had the power to accomplish this is because of his humanity. He was fully human, yet lived a perfect life, a life that none of us is capable of living in our humanity.

God demands perfection. “I am the Lord your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy” Leviticus 11:44).  Only by living a life of perfect obedience in this world can we hope to achieve eternal life. The law was given to show His expectations, which none of us can fulfill. As the scripture reads: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23); and “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23a).

It would seem that we have no hope, but then we get the Good News of God’s gift to us!  “…the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23b). “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). He was the perfect lamb, the perfect sacrifice. As prophesied by Isaiah 53:5 “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.”

We know that Jesus died for our sins so that we, by receiving, can have eternal life. But his death could not have achieved this purpose without his first coming to us in human form—the incarnation—and living the perfect life, as the perfect role model and the perfect sacrifice, once and for all.

“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times” (Micah 5:2).

In Christ,

Judy