The baby announced by the Heavenly Messenger tonight; our Rescuer; our Heroic Liberator; is Divine at the same time. The Angel said He is “the Lord.”
Anyone with the least understanding of Jewish tradition would know that an Angelic messenger, speaking of “the Lord,” would be referring to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Whether the Angel spoke in Hebrew, or Aramaic, made no difference. The “Lord,” is “God,” to Israel. “Hear, Oh Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord, is one,” they declared in their Congregations routinely. Hundreds of times throughout the Hebrew Scriptures God implored His people to remember that “I am the Lord.” He is the Supreme Sovereign.
Radical as it may seem the Baby in the manger is being introduced as this Supreme Sovereign. Matthew, in telling of an earlier Angelic announcement of this Child’s birth, described the event as the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy. This birth, he wrote, is what Isaiah promised when he foretold that the “virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him ‘Immanuel’—which means, ‘God with us.’” (Matthew 1:23) With this Matthew leaves no doubt. An ancient Hebrew prophet, and a First Century witness to the life of the Child, Jesus, both knew and declared that the Child was Divine.
God has come to be “with us” in a new and intimate way. He would be one of us. Mysteriously, yet certainly, He would, by the brooding Spirit who stirred life out of the primal abyss, bring an embryo into existence that was, at one and the same time, Divine and human; the always existent Second Person of the Trinitarian God, and the Son of a virgin Mother. John, the Son of Thunder declared this as fact in the very first words of his biography of Jesus. “In the beginning,” he wrote, “ the Word – another name for the Child we’re visiting tonight – was with God. He was God. This same person was in the beginning with God.” He was not some sort of appendage to God. He was and always is “one” with God. “All things,” John insisted, “were made by Him. Without Him nothing created ever existed.” This “word,” he says later in the early lines of his story of Jesus, “became flesh and lived with us.” Think of it. God has become one of us. He’s lived with us. Fully human He lived as we do. He walked dusty roads. He learned to live with other people. He worked as we do. He enjoyed life. He suffered. He was, another writer insisted, “in all ways tested in the ways we are, with this difference. He did not sin.” (Hebrews 4:15) “God is with us” in the person of the Child announced to the Sheepherders this very night.
Better still, tonight, even as I post these thoughts, the Child – Son of Man/Son of God – our Rescuer, Heroic Liberator, and Lord, is with the Father. Resurrected after His heroic death in a now magnificently glorified body He is in the “Heavens around us.” He and the Father we pray to in the words, “Our Father who are in Heaven – in the Heavens around us … always near – are one and the same person. They are of one heart. And that heart now has a human component for it enfolds the heart of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus, our Intercessor; our Advocate – the one who “pleads our case” – our Companion; our Guide – is not only with God. He is God. He is, at the same time, the Son of Man. We are fully and perfectly represented in Christ. We are “reconciled” with the Father. There is no further question about the esteem with which God sees us! Nor is there any doubt as to His understanding of the human condition. He really does know “what makes us tick.” He knows where it hurts and comes as any loving Father but with perfect attention to care for us with a compassion and perception that comes from experience. His care is unrestricted or hampered. His provision for what we need fits us particularly and generously. There is no question! The prayer of Paul of Tarsus is a prayer the Father answers out of love for His Children and the Son; His Brothers and Sisters.
NO MATTER WHAT!! we can expect to be, as Paul prayed in his letter to Ephesian Christ-followers, “… strengthened with His power by His Spirit to the very core of our being … Christ living in our hearts by faith … rooted and stabilized in love we will be able to comprehend, with all Christ’s followers, how long and wide, how high and deep His love for us truly is.” We can now be “filled w/ all of the fullness of God.” Because of the conquest won by our courageous Hero we are now restored to full collaboration with our Creator/God just as our predecessors in Eden were.
So!? Now that we’ve been restored us partnership with our Creator/Lord what’s our next step?
We live as if it’s all true … NO MATTER WHAT!!
Mother Teresa said it well when she wrote in her journal, “Even tho’ I don’t sense His presence for long periods of time I will love Him like He’s never been loved before!”
Love Him, then, “with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength,” NO MATTER WHAT!!
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