The Incarnation is the fact that God became a mere human being, but the most amazing part of the fact is that He came as a baby born from a woman’s womb.
He came to us in the most humbling and helpless of ways. Now this makes me marvel because in the New Testament Jesus is referred to as the second Adam.
We know about the first Adam, how God formed him from the dust and then blew into his nostrils and man became a living soul.
Adam was full grown and ready to go. Ready to tend the gloriously wonderful garden of God called Eden.
Adam had no clue of what it meant to be a baby, he never was one himself. He and his wife Eve were allowed to embark on their journey from the best starting place there is, adulthood.
Jesus on the other hand, the second Adam, would not come in such a manner. Instead He would come and experience humanity from the womb. He would lower Himself as far as he could possibly lower Himself. That my friend is incarnation!
God who needed nothing, is self sufficient in all that He is, became a baby dependent on His mother for survival and care. She changed His diapers, nourished Him with her milk, clothed Him, taught Him all that she knew. His earthly Father had to provide for Him and teach Him as well.
We must allow our minds and hearts to grasp the utter humanity of Christ or else we cannot grasp the sympathy of God expressed in the Incarnation.
We fail to see just how low God had to go when He left heaven to become flesh and blood. We fail to understand the message of Philippians 2 when it says,
5 Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. 6 He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. 7 Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, He became human! 8 Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that: a crucifixion.
About The Author
- Tim Atchley
- Knoxville, Tennessee, United States
- I currently serve as Senior Pastor of Harvest Church in Knoxville, Tn. I was sent out from Trinity Chapel of Knoxville in 1993 accompanied by my wife Sheila our four children Sarah, Hannah, Josiah & Isaac and a handful of bold, brave and committed believers determined to plant our first church. Pioneering is hard work but well worth the journey. That is why we desire to make disciples of Christ who will, like us, also embrace the call to plant churches.
