Part 1 of 2…Immanuel; God with Us!
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God…And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:1, 2, 14
Incarnation, by simple definition is, “God in the flesh!” The scripture explains it, and for years we have sung about it. Perhaps you’ll remember some of these old hymns:
- Come Thou Almighty King (“Come, Thou incarnate Word…”)
- Hark! The Herald Angels Sing (“…veiled in flesh the Godhead see;hail the incarnate Deity; pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus, our Immanuel…”)
- One Day (“…one day when sin was a black as could be, Jesus came forth to be born of a virgin, dwelt among men, my example is He!”)
- We Saw Thee Not (“We saw Thee not when Thou dids’t come to this poor world of sin and death, nor yet beheld Thy cottage home, in that despised Nazareth…”)
So how do we explain such a miracle in time? Certainly numerous questions come to mind when we consider incarnation. “How can God become flesh?” “What is the natural, logical property involved with incarnation?” Read the words of God as we consider this holy phenomenon. Paul writes in Colossians 3:9, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form…” Earlier in Colossians, Paul confirms the supremacy of Christ, “He is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation.” (Colossians 1:15) Jesus the Christ was not 50% god and 50% man. He came to earth 100% divine and 100% flesh. Though the ‘logical properties’ may be unknown to us, for the believer we have blessed assurance that this mystery of Godliness is great. We believe that He still came to earth, and everything we need to know about salvation and reconciliation with God is found in Christ Jesus. We wasn’t born in palace as would be expected of royalty, his birth was in a lowly stable. Royal recognition was gone and He came to experience royal rejection even by His kinsmen (Mark 3:21). But still…He came. The video below is a song from Donna Douglas and Pam Thumb that proclamations our faith. Listen to the message as you read the words.
Do we truly understand the sacrifice Jesus made in becoming our Immanuel? “He left all heaven’s glory to fulfill the Father’s plan.” A plan that was necessary for our salvation. We might sing about it and we might know it’s ramifications, but do we truly appreciate it? There was no out, no substitute as we read in Hebrews 9, “For this reason He is the mediator of a new covenant, so that, since a death has taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were committed under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance. For where a covenant is, there must of necessity be the death of the one who made it. For a covenant is valid only when men are dead…” (NAS) But as the song continues, “…the hope of what He offered so out weighed what must be done.” We have a means by which we are saved; through the incarnation of Jesus Christ. His death, burial and resurrection.
