1. One of the most iconic Christmas images shows shepherds gathered around Jesus’ manger in Bethlehem.

1. The shepherds, and later the wise men traveled to where Jesus was because they wanted to meet the Son of God who had become man.
2. We are here today for the same reason.
   
   1. We want to meet the Son of God who has become man.
   2. We want to know Jesus!

2. When you set out to know someone, you usually want to know where they came from and what they are like.

1. Such data is far from trivial. Rather it becomes the blood that pulses through the heart of the relationship.
2. When we ask the “get-to-know-someone” questions about Christ, we find their answers in the doctrine of the incarnation (a fancy sounding word for “in flesh.”)
3. Incarnation describes what happened when the second person of the Trinity left the bliss of heaven for some thirty-three years to enter into the mess of the human condition as one of us.

3. This morning we hope to better understand the doctrine using a few phrases from the sixth-century Athanasian Creed before reflecting on the incarnation’s relevance.

I. ​​The Reality of the Incarnation⤒🔗

A. Christ Is True God←↰⤒🔗

1. God reveals himself as a triune being: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, “the whole three persons are co-eternal, and co-equal” (Ath. Cr. 26).
    
2. Jesus of Nazareth is of the same substance as the Father, equal to him in deity (Ath. Cr. 31, 33).
   
   a. Christ is not a lesser God.
   b. When the second person of the Godhead became a baby God didn’t compromise himself and change into something lesser than he was.
   c. In the incarnation Christ did not shed his glory as a snake sheds its skin; he veiled his glory in humanity.
    
3. Christ is “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15). “In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (2:9). He is the “brightness of (God’s) glory and the express image of His person…” (Heb. 1:3).
    
4. Those who know Jesus know God (John 14:9).

B. Christ Is True Man←↰⤒🔗

1. Jesus isn’t almost like us. He didn’t come as close to experiencing full humanity as God could without going all the way.
    
2. Christ has a real body and soul (Ath. Cr. 32) because he is really human.
   ​
3. Jesus’ conception was extraordinary (Matt. 1:20); the rest of his development was mundanely human.
   
   a. Paul describes his birth rather unceremoniously: “When the fullness of time had come God sent forth his son, born of a woman…” (Gal. 4:4).
   b. He was nourished from Mary’s body.
   c. He matured through the same phases as others.
   d. He was subject to pain, pleasure, hunger, thirst, fatigue, disappointment, suffering and death.
   e. He thought, reasoned, and felt, as a man.
    
4. The Bible puts it plainly, “In all things He had to be made like His brethren” (Heb. 2:17) because only as a real man could Christ be “in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15).

C. Christ Is One Person with Two Natures←↰⤒🔗

1. The relation of Christ’s natures to his person is mysterious, but it is important.
   
   If we fail to recognize the unity of Christ’s person we might see him as divine with some human characteristics.
   
   a. We might see him as human with some divine characteristics,
   b. We might see him as a confused combination of the two.
    
2. In truth, Jesus is one person with both human and divine natures which do not bleed together. In Christ, God became a man, while remaining God.
    
3. By way of analogy, each of us are whole persons consisting of body and soul (Ath. Cr., 37).
   
   a. A single, whole, person is both mortal (because of his body) and immortal (because of his soul).
   b. Likewise, as a human, Christ could be born. As God, he could say, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58).
    
4. During Jesus’ entire ministry Christ the God-man, secures salvation for his elect.
   
   a. He acts as man, because man needs salvation.
   b. But, for a mere human, however infused with divine help, the call of duty is too great. Only God could provide man’s remedy.
    
5. In Christ, God and man meet, and sinners are saved.

II. The Relevance of the Incarnation←⤒🔗

A. To call the incarnation “relevant” almost sounds patronizing. But we need to recognize the intimate connection between this doctrine and our piety←↰⤒🔗

B. The Incarnation Opens Up Scripture←↰⤒🔗

1. Until we grasp Christ as God-in-flesh, the Old Testament will be to us a patchwork of stories about people struggling with the call to faith.
   
   a. The incarnation helps us to see that the Old Testament sets the stage for God to once again live with man as he did in Eden.
   b. On every Old Testament page, God promises a human deliverer who is also stronger than Satan (Gen. 3:15); both a suffering servant and an anointed king.
    
2. The reality of God-with-us is explained and applied in the rest of Scripture starting with Matthew.
   ​
   a. The New Testament is not simply a collection of ethical instruction, or even a commentary on the life of a certain Nazarene.
   b. It is the true story of what happened when God came to men that they might belong to him.
   c. The New Testament is the answer to the Old Testament anticipation of a redeemer. Only in the incarnate Christ, are all of the promises answered with a resounding “yes!” (2 Cor. 1:20).
    
3. Near the story’s last chapter, John heard these words from heaven: “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with then, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them, and be their God” (Rev. 21:3).

C. It Makes God Accessible←↰⤒🔗

1. In the Old Testament, God was accessible only through the mediation of prophets, priests, tabernacle, and temple.
   
   a. No Israelite could properly see God (John 1:18).
   b. John Calvin said the revelation of God prior to Christ was like a pencil sketch.
    
2. In Christ, God became accessible to us in a most familiar form.
   
   a. Six times in the opening of his first letter, John says, “We saw him!” (1 John 1:1-4).
   b. During Jesus’ earthly ministry, the majestic God of heaven and earth cried out to the crowds, “Come to me!” (Matt. 11:28).
   ​
3. If you want to know what God is like, study Christ. As Richard Phillips has written, Jesus’ earthly posture, tone of voice, attitude, and reaction to events were those of God. “God is Christ-like”

D. It Reveals Our Only Mediator←↰⤒🔗

1. At Mount Sinai Israel needed mediation; they were justly terrified by God’s thunderings. “If we hear the voice of the Lord our God any more, we shall die.” (Deut 5:25).
    
2. God gave Moses as a temporary mediator (Deut. 5:27) who admonished the people to look for a better one! (Deut 18:15).
    
3. Of the man Jesus, Paul later wrote, “There is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men…” (1 Tim. 2:5).
    
4. In his humanity Christ suffered our judgment for sin. In his divinity he endured that judgment to the very end.

E. It Reveals God’s Humility and Glory←↰⤒🔗

1. God in Christ willingly lowered himself to gather to himself his rebellious children.
   
   a. Even the earthly body of Christ was lowly. It was as crude as the tabernacle in the desert compared with the pyramids of Egypt or the ziggurats of Babylon.
   b. Christ also willingly compromised his reputation by becoming a man (Phil. 2:7).
    
2. Paradoxically, in Christ’s humility, God also reveals his other-worldly glory.
   
   a. Phillips explains: “Jesus saw the event of his greatest earthly humiliation – the apex of his servant obedience – as His true glorification on earth. ‘The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified’” (John 12:23).
   b. Calvin boldly states that the richness of God’s glory “is invisible until it shines forth in Christ … the majesty of the Father is hidden until it shews itself impressed on Christ’s image.”

F. It Compels Us to Godly Living←↰⤒🔗

1. “For the love of Christ compels us … those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again” (2 Cor. 5:14-15).
    
2. True godliness is lived out in a mutually loving experience with God.
    
3. With biblical warrant, we usually think of the cross as the greatest manifestation of God’s love. But if on the cross, Christ’s descent reached the pit of hell, the incarnation was his first step in that agonizing descent. This is love without limits!

G. We need to know Christ as he truly is, God and man in one beautiful, glorious person. Here’s our hope: To know Christ is to be changed by him←↰⤒🔗