It’s Christmas Eve. Today millions of believers around the world will be finding ways to celebrate and remember the Father’s great gift of his Son to the world he created. Such an act reveals or continues to confirm a number of things about the Father that we must remember in both good times and bad. The first revelation is the depth of God’s love for people – both the saved and the lost. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son” (Jn.3:16).
The incarnation of God – Immanuel, God with us – is a greater miracle than the creation of the universe. How does the infinite become finite? How does the one through whom, for whom, and by whom all things were made and hold together (see Col.1:16-17) shrink himself down, lay aside the powers of deity, and entrust himself to any part of humanity that has demonstrated its moral failings over and over again? It’s a remarkable thing that God would become part of his creation and play by the same rules as mere man with so much on the line. God loves but he is also a daring God.
Perhaps, it was necessary. I love Philip Yancey’s analogy in his book, The Jesus I Never Knew. He tells the story of taking care of fish in his aquarium. He talks about how he lovingly prepares a place for his fish to live, how he creates a safe and perfect environment for them, how he cleans the water, adjusts the temperature and feeds them every day. He is their protector, provider and sustainer. And yet, each day at his approach they run and hide with no seeming awareness of his good intentions. Yancey explains that he would have to become one of them to communicate who this great shadow is that hovers over their world from time to time and the good will he has in his heart toward them In essence, that is what Jesus did for us. However fearful we may have thought God to be, Jesus said, “If you have seen me you have seen the Father.” Jesus shrunk himself down, took on bodily form, and spoke our language so that some, at least, might stop running and hiding from the very one who loves and cares for us.
Even more remarkable is the fact that the Father, Son, and Spirit all knew that this Christ-child was born to suffer a tragic and painful death. The death of Jesus was no surprise. John tells us in Revelation 13 that Jesus was the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” Every animal sacrifice, every Passover lamb slaughtered since the Exodus pointed to the stark reality that an innocent one would have to die for the sins of the guilty so that man could be reunited with his God once again. Knowing what awaited him, Jesus was still willing to be born into a world bent on his destruction.
On top of that rests God’s greatest gamble of all – free will. I believe free will is a necessary extension of love. God is love and love is never satisfied until love is returned. And for love to be love, it must be chosen not programmed in. For God to be loved by man, man must also be able to reject him. That is apparently true for the angels as well. The rejection of God is the door through which all evil comes into the world. To disallow evil is to disallow choice which is to disallow love. The irony is that in order for love to exist, God must allow free will to hurt the very ones he loves. Jesus would experience both love and hate, both tender embrace and the nails of Calvary. But to reclaim those who would return God’s love, heaven was willing to subject Jesus to the free will of man and for Jesus to face life on the same playing field as the rest of us.
On that field he was born into a poor, working class family in an obscure village in Israel. His mother and father were subjected to suspicion and shame due to the unlikely circumstances of Mary’s pregnancy. He wasn’t born into a palace surrounded by the best Jewish doctors available but in a stable with no friends or family at hand. When threatened to be slaughtered by Herod, angels didn’t take out the wicked king, but instead the little family, carrying the hope of the world, became refugees to Egypt where they hid for several years. He was loved by many but judged and hated by many more. He found friends but also betrayal. Jesus became like us, entered our aquarium, and eventually took our place on a cross. On the night of that entrance angels declared, “Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord” (Lk.2:11).
The Christmas story is truly the risk of love and God becoming one of us so that we might finally understand who had been moving over this aquarium we call earth. May we run to him rather than hiding from his presence on this Christmas Eve.
