One of Us

We’ve been talking lately about the incarnation. That’s just a theological term that explains the poetic way John tells us the Christmas story. “The Word became flesh.” God is incarnate. He came to live with us. The eternal God set foot on mortal soil and took on temporal flesh.

In short, God became one of us.

And he lived like us, loved like us, felt like us, breathed like us. He knew what it meant to lose someone close and have his heart torn open. He found out what it meant to suffer.

That incarnate life that Jesus lived was powerful, because it presented not only a picture of who God is to us, but what he means to us.

Jesus entered human history and came with a message: “This is what God is like.” John said when you see Jesus, you see God. And the picture we sometimes have in our minds of the Old Testament God, the Father God, the creator God, is a judgmental God. A God who hurls thunderbolts at us from 2,000 miles away. But Jesus came near. And when he did, he came in love. And he came fully revealing who that Old Testament God really was.

Maybe we’ve got our stories mixed up. Maybe our theology is off by a few degrees. But Jesus is the true representation of God no matter what. What we see in Jesus, that’s the reality of God. Jesus loves you. God loves you. Period.

The message you hear from Jesus, that message that explained God, was often in the form of “You have heard it said…but I say.” Whatever you heard about God from religion, Jesus has another thing to say. Whatever you heard about God being angry, he’s not. Whatever you heard about gloom and doom and you better get nervous! Don’t. Because Jesus had something else to say about it. And that thing was overwhelmingly love.

In the Old Testament, our relationship with God was broken. In the Christmas story, it’s restored. The incarnation is all about getting together. It’s about relationship.

Why is that so important? Because the incarnation is not just a word we use to explain how Jesus portrays God. It’s also a word we use to explain how we portray Jesus. Incarnational ministry. Another theological term. Want a simple definition? We show up. That’s it. We become present in the world the same way Jesus did. We build relationships.

Culture’s view of Christianity is changing. Less people today claim to be believers than five years ago, ten years ago, twenty years ago. It may be because of the poor presentation some of us have made over those years. It may be that we created a battlefield out of culture, rather than a neighborhood. Instead of building bridges, we circled the wagons.

The Christian life is an invitation, not a threat. Does my incarnation in the world make people want to know more about Jesus? Does it draw them closer to a loving God? Does it make them feel loved and respected and belong? If not, then I’m not doing it right.

And Christmas time is the best time to get this thing right.

How are you portraying Jesus to your little circle of the world? Do you fear the culture around you, or do you see it as an opportunity to make a positive impact?