Christmas Day, 2021 - Christmas Mystery

Most of us enjoy a good mystery — a “who done it” story. The twists and turns of not knowing keep us hooked in the story. At the same time, most of us don’t enjoy not knowing or understanding. We want to know. Remember what hooked the woman in the Garden story: “You shall be like God, knowing …” (Genesis 3:5). Knowledge gives us a sense of power. If we understand something, we can figure out how it works and — maybe more importantly — how to fix it when it goes wrong. Knowing helps us deal with the chaos of human existence.

The Christmas story presents us with mystery — something we can’t explain. We can only ponder it. But, like all who have experienced a call to proclaim God’s truth, I still attempt to speak to that mystery. This three part statement reflects my thinking about the mystery.

He became what we are so that we could become what he is and do what he did.

He became what we are.

The Christmas story is about the mystery we call the incarnation. That helpless, totally dependent, vulnerable infant lying in a feed trough was God in the flesh. God laid aside the trappings that go with being God and took on human flesh with all its frailty, needs, weakness, and struggle. The God who created the universe entered into that creation, becoming a part of it. He entered our experience, making it his own. Jesus is the in-the-flesh embodiment of God.

Words fail as we attempt to express what the mind struggles to grasp. Here’s how the biblical writers expressed it.

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 came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth, John 1:1-3, 14.

Though he was in the form of God, (he) did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross, Philippians 2:6-8.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, Colossians 1:15, 19; 2:9.

He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, Hebrews 1:3.

The incarnation is a mystery — something we cannot understand or explain — something bigger than our ability to grasp. It is something we are left to ponder.

But that is not all there is to the mystery. There is a second part of the statement.

He became what we are so we could become what he is.

Behind the incarnation was a divine purpose: to share God’s life — God’s character — with us.

We were created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26). A divine spark resides deep within us. God’s finger print is on our soul. Now, God is at work to awaken that divine potential and bring it to maturity. Through the Spirit, God is growing us up into a Christ-like maturity.

Here’s how some of the biblical writers expressed this part of the mystery.

To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God, John 1:12-13.

All of us … are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, 2 Corinthians 3:18.

For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that (his Son) might be the firstborn within a large family, Romans 8:29.

He (God) chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.  He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, Ephesians 1:4-5.

Until all of us come to … maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children … but speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, Ephesians 4:13-15.

You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness, Ephesians 4:22-24. 

Seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator, Colossians 3:9b-10.

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, 1 John 1:1-2.

He has given us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants of the divine nature, 2 Peter 1:4.

This process of transformation — what we call salvation, the transformation of our hearts and minds into the likeness of Christ — is a mystery. It is not something we can explain or understand. When we open our hearts and minds to who Jesus revealed God to be, when we choose to live in relationship with God as beloved children, something happens in the depths of our being. We are transformed … changed … healed … made whole. We begin to become like Jesus deep within, in the core of our being.

This process is not possible apart from the incarnation. Jesus — the Word made flesh — revealed God to us. “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son who has made him known,” John 1:18. In him, we see, learn of, and experience God’s grace and forgiveness. “From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace,” John 1:16. From him, we learn God’s ways of self-giving, servant love. Through him, we are reconciled — brought back into relationship with — God, claimed as beloved children.

In addition, this process is not possible apart from the Spirit. The Spirit orchestrates and guides our transformation (2 Corinthians 3:18) — what is referred to as spiritual growth or spiritual formation. (I explore the work of the Spirit in my book that will be released in the spring of 2022 – Life in the Spirit: Reflecting on the Work of the Spirit in Our Lives.) The Spirit moves us beyond our old way of thinking and living, teaching us to think with the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16), empowering us to live the self-giving, servant ways of God. The Spirit who lives in us is the continuing incarnation — God-in-flesh. In the Spirit, the mystery of the incarnation continues.

He became what we are so we could become what he is.

And, now, for the other part of the thought: he became what we are so we could become what he is and do what he did.

To do what he did is to love as he loved. It is to see and embrace every person as a beloved child of God. It is to use our power — in its many forms — to serve and bless others. It is to be an agent of transformation and healing in the world — peacemakers (Matthew 5:9). It is to live the ways of God, helping to create a God-shaped world. It is to live as God’s partner in bringing the kingdom into reality on earth, here, now.

Doing what he did, loving as he loved is possible through the transforming, empowering work of the Spirit.

The Christmas story is not complete until we do what he did – until we love as he loved. As we do what he did and love as he loved, we — our lives — become a part of the mystery.

He became what we are so we could become what he is and do what he did.

It’s a mystery — something beyond our understanding, something we can’t explain. But if we could explain it, it would not have the power to attract us and captivate our hearts.

May the mystery of Christmas captivate your heart this Christmas so that your heart and mind can be transformed into the likeness of Christ!