I am just beginning a series on knowing who we are in Christ. An accurate sense of our self-image or our identity is a critical element in our walk with Christ.  God has gone to great lengths to reveal who we are in his Son and so that knowledge must be essential. The very first thing God reveals about us in his written word is that we are made in the image of God.

As Genesis unfolds, we soon discover that God not only had a burning desire to create a universe but, at least on one planet, he had a desire to create living beings made in his own image. Since God is love (1 Jn.4:8), I believe his very nature prompted him to create man so that he could multiply his expressions of love and receive love as well. A mother’s yearnings to have children must be slightly akin to the yearning that God felt to create us.

I must admit that the idea of being made in the image of God is a bit mind-boggling. Theologians have debated exactly what that means for millennia.  Whatever it means to be made in God’s image, it certainly means that we have enough characteristics in common with the Creator to communicate with him, to give and receive love from him, for his Spirit to take up residence within us, for deity to put on flesh and live as one of us, to think as the Father thinks, and to be called his children and his friends …not his pets.

The Psalmist declared, “What is man that you are mindful of him…you made him just a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor” (Ps.8:4-5). Of all creation, including powerful and majestic angels, only man is said to bemade in God’s image. Scripture implies that we have even greater standing in heaven than his awe-inspiring angels. Although we were made a little lower than the heavenly beings, Paul reveals that those of us who are in Christ will actually sit in judgment over angels (I Cor. 6:3).  In addition, the writer of Hebrews tells us that the angels were created to minister to or serve those who will inherit salvation (Heb.1:14). That includes you.

This blog will come out on Christmas Day.  It is a day for reflecting on the amazing truth that God has made us in his own image and, in doing so, values each of us enough to give us the gift of his Son, wrapped in flesh and destined to be a sacrifice. We tend to view Christmas through the lens of Hallmark movies and Christmas cards that depict the nativity as clean, bright, and serene. You know… a peaceful Mary and Joseph with contented cows lowing in the manger and antiseptic, bright sheep bleating in the background.  The shepherds are there along with the three wise men in clean, royal robes looking as they just caught a limo from the Bethlehem Hilton.  Our view of the birth of Jesus is quite sanitized.  As we do that, the cost of God, putting on flesh and being born to a virgin in a small village in Israel is often overlooked.

The cost of his entry into this world began nine months earlier. It began with fearful encounters with angels who had to calm Mary and encourage Joseph.  The birth of the great King began with scandal as this unwed virgin first had to break the news to her fiancé that she was pregnant and later face her family and friends who were “surprised” at how quickly she became pregnant after a hurried wedding.  Joseph’s first response was a plan to divorce her since she had clearly violated her vows with him.  It took the visitation of an angel in a dream to convince him that she might have been telling the truth when she shared her outlandish story of being impregnated by the Holy Spirit. I suspect Joseph questioned his dream from time to time in the following years that they were married. In her ninth month, Joseph was called from Galilee to Bethlehem to register in a census. It seems that things back home must not have been that good for her to feel compelled to take that journey with her husband.  Most probably, the birth of Christ was in Spring rather than the winter since shepherds would not be in the fields at night with their sheep, except in the lambing season of March and April.  Still it was a hard trip and even a dangerous trip for the little couple  nine months pregnant.  There is no evidence that any family members from Nazareth travelled with them, which again suggests that the pregnancy of Mary had not been celebrated back home.  After the birth, they remained in Bethlehem instead of returning to their hometown which again points at a scandal back home that they did not want to try to explain away once more.

The wise men showed up two years after the birth, when they had first seen the “King’s star.”  Mary and Joseph were in a home in Bethlehem by then, not a stable. The wise men’s visit with Herod was not very wise and their audience with him set in motion the death of many innocent Hebrew boys as a result.  Before Herod acted to protect his throne from the threat of this rival king, Joseph was warned in a dream to pull up stakes and disappear into the nation of Egypt.   God had funded the trip with gold, frankincense, and myrrh but they were still a hunted couple on the run in a foreign land where Hebrews were not particularly welcome.  There was more, but I want you to think of the cost of God coming into this world on our behalf… even on the front end. Thirty years later, the ultimate price would be paid for our ransom but this who entry into the world of man came at a great cost to one who had sat on a throne in glory hearing only his praises sung by angles before entering into a world of insult, danger, poverty, and pain.

Jesus not only died for you, but was born for you. Born into scandal he became a political refugee before his second birthday and his parents feared discovery by Herod for years after his birth.  Mary and Joseph did return to Nazareth after their stint in Egypt, but I’m certain that questions still remained about Mary’s pregnancy, the birth of this child, and where they had been for two years.  First century Palestine was not as relaxed about pregnancy outside of marriage as we are.

The only conclusion is that you are of amazing and extreme value in the eyes of God. Made in his image might mean many things, but it certainly means that you have great significance, even greater than the angels themselves. Not only did God make you, but he redeemed you even after we, as a race, had rebelled against the king.  So, this Christmas celebrate Jesus, but also celebrate who you are in him…crowned with glory and honor and made just a little lower than the heavenly beings.