We may wonder what God was thinking when God sent the Son into the world to save the world, but how else was God going to persuade us than by knowing our lives inside out, unless the Word became flesh and lived among us (John 1:14), unless God assumed our nature and became one of us, unless God took upon himself our faults, our weaknesses, our sin? For God knew that he could not save what he did not assume.
In God’s way of thinking, this is how the plan was to be put into action. This is how God would decide to get close to us again. This is how God would invite us to return to him: condescending to us and arriving in this world in the form of a baby, in the womb of a peasant girl named Mary, walking and teaching and, yes, dying, on this earth in Jesus (Luke 1:26-38).
No, it doesn’t add up. But perhaps that’s not the point. Rather, the point has to do with who God is and how God acts. The point is that this is how God chose to save us: by becoming one of us.
Call it a crazy kind of love, I know. Call it risky, daring. Call it sacrificial, costly. Call it compassionate, vulnerable. Call it what you must, but call it for what it truly is – God in the flesh, God with us in a way that would reveal to us the power and mystery of the God who will draw to himself all creation. Indeed, the whole world!
That’s Christmas in a nutshell, after all!
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
What kind of love? Self-giving love! The way of love at Christmas is self-giving.
How may we receive such self-giving love? If you have not, may we invite you to do so, to experience what Charles Wesley calls “second birth”?
May God’s love in Christ find a home in your heart.
Merry Christmas!
Pastor Andy Kinsey
In God’s way of thinking, this is how the plan was to be put into action. This is how God would decide to get close to us again. This is how God would invite us to return to him: condescending to us and arriving in this world in the form of a baby, in the womb of a peasant girl named Mary, walking and teaching and, yes, dying, on this earth in Jesus (Luke 1:26-38).
No, it doesn’t add up. But perhaps that’s not the point. Rather, the point has to do with who God is and how God acts. The point is that this is how God chose to save us: by becoming one of us.
Call it a crazy kind of love, I know. Call it risky, daring. Call it sacrificial, costly. Call it compassionate, vulnerable. Call it what you must, but call it for what it truly is – God in the flesh, God with us in a way that would reveal to us the power and mystery of the God who will draw to himself all creation. Indeed, the whole world!
That’s Christmas in a nutshell, after all!
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
What kind of love? Self-giving love! The way of love at Christmas is self-giving.
How may we receive such self-giving love? If you have not, may we invite you to do so, to experience what Charles Wesley calls “second birth”?
May God’s love in Christ find a home in your heart.
Merry Christmas!
Pastor Andy Kinsey
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