“Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, hail the incarnate deity!”
—Charles Wesley
As Christians in the west, many of us are quick to lament that the true meaning of Christmas often gets lost in the pressure to buy the perfect gifts, set out the perfect decorations, throw the perfect parties, and create the perfect memories. This call to recenter our celebration on the birth of Christ is necessary and good, but I sometimes wonder whether we don’t need to go even farther.
The beauty and power of Christmas is deeper than the story of a baby in the manger. It’s the scandalous assertion that the baby in the manger is also God, the timeless one brought into time, the uncontainable one trapped in the body of a newborn.
Even before the last word of the New Testament was written, we have apostolic testimony affirming that the doctrine of the incarnation lies at the very core of Christianity’s theological identity (1 John 4:2). It’s part of the unique fingerprint that sets us apart from other world religions. From the first century to the twenty-first, theologians have pointed to the incarnation as a cardinal proof of the intensity of God’s love for his creation.
In 2007, Christian leader and theologian John Stott dedicated his final public address to affirming the power of the truth Jesus spoke in John 20:21: “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” The disciples were to replicate their master in action and in attitude. As Jesus humbled himself to take on the constraints of human life, so his disciples were to humble themselves to meet the poor, the sinners, and the untouchables where they were. As Stott proclaimed, “The most effective preaching comes from those who embody their message. What communicates now are people, not words or ideas but rather personal authenticity, that is, Christ-likeness.”
To many of us, this is not a new concept. Pastors and devotionals have been urging us for years to not only share the message of God’s love verbally but to live it out. For us the danger is not a lack of familiarity with the incarnation’s application. Instead we are so familiar with the application that we run the risk of forgetting why and how we came to this truth in the first place. Settling for a simplistic understanding of the incarnation’s meaning for Christianity in general and evangelism in particular puts us at risk not only of losing our credibility in the global community but of standing in the way of God’s transforming us into a greater likeness of his Son—the overwhelming purpose of our maturing relationship with God!
We cannot, for example, afford to gloss over the concerns that first led theologians to think more deeply about the incarnation’s implications for missions and evangelism. As Darrell Guder, Professor of Missional and Ecumenical Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary explains:
The reason this question [of incarnational evangelism] is arising, I believe, is the discomfort in the western Christian traditions that emerges when we look objectively at the history of missions and evangelism in the last two to three centuries. From the perspective of global mission, we have every reason to rejoice at the spread of Christianity and the emergence of indigenous churches in virtually every nation on earth. Yet, at the same time, we are painfully aware of the legacy of western cultural imperialism that accompanied that missionary movement.
As Guder goes on to write,
It is patently absurd to proclaim the good news that God the Creator is God the Redeemer, that the Judge is compassionate and merciful in carrying out justice, in ways which are unloving, manipulative, insensitive, or even violent. It is equally impossible to talk about God’s love for the poor, the outcast, the marginal, and not to incarnate that love in the ways that demonstrate that God’s kingdom is, in fact, coming now. One cannot communicate the gospel of love without letting that love become the dominant agenda of one’s own life and the life of the community.
Good theology will always lead to good witness. Jesus promises in Matthew 7:16 that his true disciples will be recognized by the good fruits produced in their lives. So as we continue to think about the miracle of Christ’s birth this holiday season, let’s take a few extra moments to not only reflect on the love shown through the incarnation—let’s also reflect on what it means for each of us to mirror the intensity of that love by incarnating the message ourselves.
The amazing fact of Christmas is not only that God came to us in human form but that he desires to transform us into his own likeness. Two thousand years ago, God took on flesh to draw near to us. Now he desires each of us to come alive in the Spirit so that we may also draw nearer to him. When we begin to absorb the power of that exchange, the incarnation truly becomes the single greatest symbol of love, acceptance, and unity in the world.