24 Dec 6 Reasons Jesus Was Born: #5 Jesus Was Born to Connect God and Man
When I was in high school, I really wanted to meet my now wife, Grace. The problem was we did not have any mutual friends who could introduce us. Then, one of her lifelong friends got seated in front of me in one of our classes. Before long, her long-term friend and I got to know one another, and she introduced me to Grace. Thanks to our friend the mediator, Grace and I have been connected doing life together ever since.
Like Grace’s friend, the mediator who connects us to God is Jesus Christ. As fully God and fully human, He alone can make this connection between God and man. This is what Isaiah 7:14 promises and Matthew 1:23 reports, “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).” With God in Heaven and sinless, and we on earth and sinful, there was no chance of us going up to God, so our only hope was God coming down to us.
This is precisely what Jesus did and what we celebrate at Christmas. John 1:1-3, 14, 17-18 says, “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 were made through him…And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son…Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.”
Theologians like to use the word incarnation to speak of God becoming human. In Latin, “in” means plus and “carne” means flesh, much like carne asada, which is perhaps my favorite meal.
The Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451), with over 100 theologians who created the Chalcedonian Creed now accepted by all Christian traditions, declared that Jesus Christ is one Person with two natures (divine and human) who is both fully God and fully man. Theologians call this the “hypostatic union” as hypostasis means “person”. In summary, all these meetings and big words mean that, at Christmas, we celebrate that God became a man to connect men to God. Apart from Jesus, this is simply impossible, which explains why His birthday is the biggest day every year for the entire globe.
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