Matthew 1: 18-25
The Incarnation

I. FIRST, THIS MORNING, LET ME SPEAK ABOUT THE NATURE OF THE INCARNATION. 

1. It is frequently misunderstood. Sometimes you will hear people say that "Jesus made the worlds" or will address the Lord in such a way that suggest that he did so. This is, in a sense, true, as we will see, but it tends to confuse the issue by confusing his divine nature and his human nature.. 

On the other hand you will sometimes hear someone describe Jesus as the one who used to be God as if the Lord were an ex-god. This also is a misunderstanding of the theology. Yet another view is that the incarnation merely means that God worked mightily in Jesus of Nazareth and indwelt him as no other person had ever been indwelt. The view is called "adoptionism" and is essentially the view of modern liberalism and historic Unitarianism. You see this illustrated when people make a sequence of Jesus, Albert Schweitzer, Martin Luther King, Ghandi, and Mother Teresa as being in the same succession, as being the same kind of people.. It is certainly not the Bible view or the historic view of the church. 

Still others have implied that God ceased to be God at the incarnation but transferred himself into man and gave divinity to mankind -- a kind of anthropological idolatry we might call it. Some one in the "Death of God" movement said that God became incarnate in Jesus and was crucified and died and so God ceased to exist. All of these are either incorrect or very heretical views of incarnation. Not everybody, you see, who uses the term has the Bible doctrine. 

1. The rational and internally consistent view that this is dependent upon understanding the Trinity and is very related to the insistence that there are 3 Persons in the one Godhead. The wonderful Westminster Shorter Catechism in answer to the question: "Are there more Gods than one?" says: "There is but one only, the living and true God." And then it questions: "How many persons are there in the Godhead?" And the answer: "There are three persons in the Godhead: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory." This threeness in oneness and oneness in threeness is very important if we are to understand God. The truth is in agreement with the almost universal understanding among people who believe the Bible but the Shorter Catechism's statement is a particularly wonderful definition that helps us define it accurately. 

2. We believe that there was a true incarnation of the Second Person in the womb of the virgin Mary of Nazareth the betrothed wife-to-be of Joseph the carpenter. In a way that we do not fully understand, that child who was born had 2 natures. He was God and man, 2 natures united harmoniously, unconfused and totally distinct in that one person. Since there are two natures it is usually agreed in orthodox theology that what can be said about either nature may be said of the person of the Lord Jesus - Just as he himself once said "Before Abraham was, I am." But we understand that he was speaking of his divine nature and not his human nature when he said this. It is wise to not confuse the two by speaking of Jesus creating the universe, for example but using his messianic title, "The Lord Jesus Christ" in such a case. As John said in his Gospel: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we beheld his glory, glory as of the only unique Son of the Father." (John 1: 18) Now, if we grasp this, we will be overwhelmed with the beauty of the truth. We will be like the person who ran and told everyone he knew: "I have found him about whom Moses and the prophets spoke!" 

1. It is often thought that the purpose of the incarnation was God visiting man in order to show what he was like. It certainly is a lesser purpose. The Gospel of John says: "No one has ever seen God; the only unique Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known." (John 1: 18) But the purpose was much larger and essential than just being a revelation of the Father so that men might know what God is like. 

2. The overriding purpose of the incarnation had to do with our reconciliation with God not just our understanding of God. It was to bring into existence a divine-human person who was perfectly man and perfectly God so that he might be the only person in history not imputed with Adam's sin. As the W.S.C. says in answer to q.22: " -- The Son of God became man by taking unto himself a true body, and reasonable soul, being conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the virgin Mary, and born of her yet without (imputed) sin." Therefore, this person who was born as the only person in history not imputed with Adam's sin was perfectly righteous and able to be the bearer of -- the substitute for -- another person's sins. And since he was God and of infinite value he could die, bearing the sins of billions of people who would ever call upon him. And, he being infinite in his divine person, could provide an infinite righteousness for that huge number of people, whatever it might turn out to be. 

3. Thus the Christmas event -- the birth of the Lord -- was the first step, of which the second step was his perfect life and the third step was his atoning death and resurrection and was all a part of the basis of our salvation and not merely a nice story with sheep and cows grazing while a baby sleeps in a manger. It was a first step in the greatest event and the greatest drama in history -- of him who is our righteousness before God the Father in God's role as the Judge of all mankind, as Romans 8 says, -- and of him who also "bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die unto sin and live unto righteousness; by whose wounds (we) are healed" as First Peter says. (I Peter 2: 24) The incarnation was the first step -- the original miracle in a life filled with miracles that have worked our salvation! Christmas is not just a cute story about a baby being born in unusual circumstances but it is about the ultimate truth of God saving his people. Christmas and Good Friday and Easter are all one story. (The only difference is that Good Friday speaks only of his bearing of our sins while Christmas makes possible both aspects of our salvation the bearing of our sins and providing of his personal righteousness that can be imputed to us.) As John says in what amounts to his Christmas story: "The true light... was coming into the world. ... The world was made by him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own things and his own people received him not. But to all who received him, he gave the power to become children of God." (John 1: 11-12) 

1. First of all, if this is true--which every Christian will believe on the authority of God's Word --  If it is true, and not just a traditional story like the dozens of legendary stories people tell at Christmas. -- If it is true, the Christian will do everything he can possibly do to bend the holiday to the glory of God -- a holiday that he cannot ignore or escape. We live in a secular culture that will think that almost everything I have said is medieval nonsense. They do not have believing hearts unless "belief" means having a fuzzy feeling about things unseen and legends that make the person feel good. It is no wonder that a secular culture has secularized the suppose birthday of our Lord. It has alternately and partially secularized, commercialized, and sentimentalized what was once the supposed birthday of the Lord and has really marginalized him who is the central person in history as he is the central person in God's salvation. 

It is perhaps too much to ask that Christians abandon Christmas as a lost cause. But would it be too much to suggest that they might radically adjust their own personal observance and the observance of their family so that it reflects their true belief in the incarnation? I know it has become a cliche, to say "Put Christ back in to Christmas" by which so many of the people using it mean to sentimentalize its commercialism and secularism. But this is not something simplistic like that cliche,. Would you take it upon yourself to do -- shall we say -- just 6 significant things that would bring it back toward the place where it might glorify the Lord? 

2. And, secondly, would you take time on numerous days this month and especially in the weekend on which Christmas comes to ponder the mystery of the incarnation and its relationship to your eternal salvation and then to rejoice in its eternal blessedness as far as you are concerned: Joy to the world the Lord has come Let earth receive her king Let every heart prepare him room And heaven and nature sing. "He came to his own things and his own people received him not. But to all who received him, he gave the power to become children of God." (John 1: 12)