John 1:1
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.John 1:14
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us
(and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father),
full of grace and truth.
Philippians 2:5-11
Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men;
and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross.
Wherefore also God highly exalted Him, and gave unto Him the name which is above every name;
that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth,
and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Dear Heavenly Father, we do rejoice in Your presence. We who were once sinners, and yet because of Your great love, and the grace of Your beloved Son, our Lord Jesus, and the work of Your Holy Spirit, this morning we come not only into Your presence, but to behold Your glory in the face of Jesus Christ.
How we do praise and thank You for all Your mercies and grace, which You have so bountifully showered upon us, that we may come and listen to Your Word. We ask You, Lord, that You will break Your Word to us, that we may not only hear it with our ears, but that we may really receive it in our hearts.
We do pray that it will truly be life and spirit to us, as You have said. So we do commit this time into Your hands and trust Your Holy Spirit to do this work of glorifying Your beloved Son. We ask in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
For quite some time, the Lord has been exercising my heart concerning one thing, and that is the life of Christ Jesus. The One whom we believe in is the Lord Jesus. The gospel that we receive is none other than God’s Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Our faith is not based on some teachings, or doctrines, forms, systems, rituals, or ceremonies. Our faith is based on one Person: Christ.
Our whole Christian life is none other than a living knowledge of Christ Jesus. Therefore, it is most essential for each one of us to really know Him—not just knowing Him in our mind, but knowing Him in an experiential way.
You remember this is the one passion that is in the Apostle Paul. In Philippians 3, he says, “To know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; that if by any means I may attain unto the resurrection from the dead.”
And I do hope that this is not only the passion of Paul, but that it will be our passion: to know Him. To know Him actually is everything.
You know, the genius of Christianity is not found in other things, but it is all centered upon one Person, our Lord Jesus.
Now, brothers and sisters, we are living toward the end of this age. This age is coming very quickly to a conclusion. In our time, you find all kinds of strange teachings around us, and these teachings and doctrines will sway people to and fro.
And how are we going to stand against all these strange teachings that are around us unless we are rooted and grounded in Christ?
What is the will of God? What is the supreme will of God? What is the eternal purpose of God? His will is none other than that His Son may be all and in all. This is God’s supreme will. And if this is His will, then it ought to be our will also.
So how important it is that we know our Lord Jesus—know Him in a real way, know Him in life, know Him in His fullness. And this should occupy all our attention.
You know, the device of the enemy is to try to distract us from Christ and to occupy us with many other things. Sometimes the enemy tries to distract our attention from Christ so that we may be occupied with some teachings. Whether these teachings are real or false, nevertheless, you find that our attention seems to be diverted to teachings instead of focused upon Christ Himself.
And sometimes you find that he will try to divert our attention to some people. We may attach ourselves to some people. These people may be spiritual giants, perhaps people who are greatly used by the Lord, or they may not be so. But anyway, you find the enemy trying to attach us to people, and by doing so, he will detach us from Christ.
This is the device of the enemy, and how easily we will be distracted. So, dear brothers and sisters, it is the burden of my heart that in these days, let our attention be focused upon one Person, Christ Jesus. Let us look away from everything and just look unto Him, the Author and Finisher of the whole thing.
Now, brothers and sisters, Christ is inexhaustible. The Apostle Paul mentioned the unsearchable riches of Christ. And the Apostle John tells us that if everything our Lord Jesus did while He was on earth were written, this world would not be able to hold all the books written about Him.
So, dear brothers and sisters, it is impossible for us to exhaust Christ. It is impossible for us to know Him in such a way that there is no more to know of Him. In our lifetime, we have to pursue after Him diligently. And even if we pursue after Him diligently, we will know only a little bit of Him.
In eternity, we will continue to know Him. He is limitless, and the knowing of Him is without limit. How thrilling that is! Do not think that you know all about Him now. What we know today of Him is just the beginning.
So it should stir our hearts that, as long as we have breath, let us pursue after Christ. Try to know Him. Know Him in a deeper way. And thank God, in eternity we will not be at leisure. We will be occupied with Him through eternity, and there will always be something new, something to learn. How inexhaustible is our Lord Jesus!
So, God willing, we will try to meditate together on some events in the life of our Lord Jesus, and hopefully we may learn more of Him.
To begin with, of course, we begin with His birth. You know, our life begins with birth—or, to be more exact, with conception. When we are conceived in our mother’s womb, life begins. Before that, we were nonexistent.
But this is not true with our Lord Jesus. His birth, in one sense, is the beginning of His life on earth, but His birth is the incarnation.
Now, what is the incarnation? Incarnation is the manifestation of God in human form, in the form of Jesus Christ. That is incarnation. In other words, before He was born, He was already there.
John 1:1
In the beginning was the Word.
The beginning in the Gospel according to John is much further back than the beginning we find in Genesis 1:1. We do not know how much further back, but it is much further back.
Genesis 1:1
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
In other words, that beginning is the beginning of the heavens and the earth. But even before that beginning, God was already there. So here you find in the Gospel according to John, “In the beginning.” That beginning is God. God is the beginning.
He was there before there was creation, because He was the Creator. He was there before time and space ever began. He is the beginning. God is the beginning.
And here it says, “In the beginning was the Word.” In that beginning there was the Word: the Logos, the speech, the expression, the utterance, the manifestation, the revelation.
And the Word was with God. This Word has His own personality. This Word was with God, coexisting with God in the beginning; and yet this Word was God. He was one with God.
Now, brothers and sisters, the Trinity is always a mystery. No matter how we try to explain it, it is unexplainable. It is the mystery of the Godhead.
This Word existed from the very beginning. And, as a matter of fact, it is this Word that created the heavens and the earth. God created by His Word. He spoke, and it was done.
But one day, this Word became flesh. That is incarnation. That Word came into this world and became flesh. That Word took upon Himself a human form, and His name is called Jesus.
In Luke 1:35, we are told that the angel told Mary, “The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee; wherefore also the holy thing which is begotten shall be called the Son of God.”
In the fullness of time, God sent His Son into this world, to be born of a woman, to be born under law, that He might deliver us and redeem us out of the curse of the law, that we may receive sonship. Now this is incarnation: the birth of our Lord Jesus.
Brothers and sisters, the concept of incarnation was conceived in the mind of God even before the foundation of the world. Now again, it is beyond us, but we try to explain it with human words within our understanding.
May we say that in the beginning was God? In the beginning was the Trinity. There was nothing else—no universe, nothing but God. He is the self-existing One, always there from the beginning.
May we say “one day,” though there was no day there, no time yet? But may we say that there was a council held among the Godhead?
God the Father loved God the Son so much that He wanted to express His love to Him. You know, love always seeks for a channel—doing something, giving something to the one whom one loves.
Here you find that God is love, and God the Father loved His Son so very much. He wanted to give His Son all things. He wanted to create the heavens and the earth. He wanted to create all things and give them to His Son as His gift, as His expression of love to His Son.
And of all the gifts that God would give to His Son, there is none more excellent than man. He wanted to give man to His Son as His companion, as His helpmeet, to be together, to share in glory and responsibility.
Now, God had this in His mind according to His good pleasure. Nobody tells Him what to do. But that is His good pleasure. He loved His Son, and He pleased Him.
When He began to think of doing these things, being omniscient—being One who knows the very end from the very beginning—He knew that after He created the universe and after He created man, man would fall into temptation and rebel against Him. Man would be deceived into frustrating His gift to His beloved Son.
So what should He do? Should He do nothing? At that moment, the Son stepped forward and said, “Father, if this is what You want, I want what You want. Go ahead. Create all things. Create man. I am willing, one day, to come into this world that You have created. I am willing to come into this fallen world and give Myself to redeem man and the whole universe, that I may give all back to You, to express My love to You.”
And it was decided that it should be done. So, brothers and sisters, you find that the concept of incarnation was not new. The concept of incarnation was there in the mind of God before the foundation of the world, even though the fact of incarnation did not come until we do not know how long afterward.
There is not only the concept of incarnation; there is also the promise of incarnation. Since the beginning of human history, you find that promise of incarnation has been given.
You remember the story in the Garden of Eden: the first man God created, the first woman God built out of man, the first couple whom God placed into the Garden of Eden—the garden of pleasure. How God created a beautiful garden, with all these beautiful trees and fruits for the food of man.
And there was in the center the tree of life. God’s desire was that man should eat the fruit of the tree of life, receiving His life, divine life, into them; and by so doing, they would be fit to be the life companion of His beloved Son.
But unfortunately, we know the story: how the woman was deceived by the serpent and ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the forbidden tree. Man rebelled against God and fell into sin.
Then God began to work. He came into the garden. He came to seek after Adam: “Adam, where art thou?”
And then you remember God began to give His judgment. When He gave His judgment to the serpent in Genesis 3:15, He said:
I will put enmity between thee and the woman,
and between thy seed and her seed:
He shall bruise thy head,
and thou shalt bruise His heel.
Now, brothers and sisters, when the woman was deceived by the serpent and sinned, you find an alliance was formed between the woman and the serpent. But God, in His mercy, put an enmity between the woman and the serpent. In other words, He put hatred between the woman and the serpent.
Instead of the woman being thankful to the serpent because the serpent opened her eyes, she found that when her eyes were opened, she saw that she was naked. So here you find that the woman began to hate the serpent. Instead of being his willing ally, you find God put hatred in the woman to hate that serpent—Satan, the enemy.
At the same time, God put that hatred of the serpent toward the woman also. In other words, God broke that alliance in His mercy. And that enmity would continue throughout the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent.
Now, strictly speaking, who is the seed of the woman? You know, in biblical genealogy, all the generations are followed according to the male line. In other words, Adam begot Seth; Abraham begot Isaac; David begot Solomon. All the genealogy in the Bible follows the male line.
Because of this, when Adam failed, all those who are born of Adam receive that Adamic life which has been poisoned. Sin dwells in that life. So everyone who is born of Adam is already a sinner before he commits anything.
We were born sinners, and that is the reason why we sin. You do not need to go to school to learn how to sin, because you were born a sinner. We were born of Adam. So everyone who came from the line of Adam is under sin and the curse, because we inherit his life and inherit the sinful nature that is in that life.
But thank God, even there, when man first fell into sin, God gave a promise: the seed of the woman. One day there would be a man born into this world, not by man, but by the power of the Holy Spirit. He is the holy thing. He is the Son of God. He would be born of a virgin, a woman.
And because of this, He does not inherit the sin of His father, because Adam is not His father. God is His Father.
In Galatians 3:16, it says God promised to Abraham, “In thy seed shall all the nations be blessed.” Now, “thy seed” is in the singular number. So the Apostle Paul says, who is that seed of Abraham? That seed is Christ Jesus. Christ is the seed of the woman.
And the seed of the woman shall crush the head of the serpent. One day He would come, and on the cross He would deal such a fatal blow to Satan, the enemy, that He would destroy his power and put him to death. But the serpent would bruise His heel. In other words, He would be crucified.
Some interpretations say that this refers to the church: the serpent will persecute the church. But whatever it may be, we find that it is the seed of the woman that has been promised. Even immediately after man fell into sin, we find the promise of incarnation. It is through incarnation that redemption can be brought into this world.
Throughout human history, as you read the Old Testament, you find many promises concerning incarnation—how God would come into this world. For instance, our Lord Jesus, as we have already mentioned, is the seed of Abraham: “In thy seed all the nations shall be blessed.”
And He is also the seed of David. You remember in 2 Samuel 7, God promised David that he would have a son, and he would sit upon his throne, and his kingdom would know no end.
Who is that son? If you read the history of the family of David, you find that Solomon sat on the throne, that is true. Then after Solomon, his son. But you find that at some time there was no son of Solomon, no son of David, sitting on the throne. Even today, you do not find the son of David sitting on the throne in Jerusalem.
But who is the Son whom God promised to David? You remember when the angel came to Mary, he said, “Thou shalt bring forth a son, and He shall sit upon His father David’s throne. He shall reign over the house of Jacob, and His kingdom shall know no end.”
In other words, Christ Jesus is the Son of David. He is the promised One. He is the incarnate One who has been promised.
The book of Isaiah is full of these promises. For instance, in Isaiah 7:14, God said:
Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son,
and shall call His name Immanuel.
Immanuel means “God with us.” In Isaiah 9, you find that unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given. The Child who is born actually is a Son given. God gave His Son to this world, and His Son was born into this world as a Child.
For unto us a Child is born,
unto us a Son is given;
and the government shall be upon His shoulder:
and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of His government and of peace there shall be no end.
So, brothers and sisters, you find in the Old Testament many, many promises concerning incarnation. Then, of course, one day came the fact of incarnation. Not only was the concept of incarnation conceived before the foundation of the world, and the promise of incarnation given throughout human history, but one day you find the fact of incarnation: Christ was born.
I believe we are all familiar with the birth of Christ, so we are not going to labor over that. But what we desire to meditate upon is the mystery of incarnation.
Now, brothers and sisters, incarnation is a mystery. A mystery is something that is in the heart of God, something that needs to be revealed. And even after it is revealed, probably we will know only a little bit of it.
When you look at the birth of Christ, do you ever think that it is a mystery? We are all familiar with the story of the birth of Christ: born in a manger, the angels singing, the shepherds coming to worship, the wise men coming to worship. We are all familiar with these stories.
But, brothers and sisters, we become so familiar with this story that we fail to really grasp the mystery of incarnation. You know, it is a tremendous thing.
The mystery of incarnation is revealed to us through two passages especially in the Word of God, and these are the passages that we read at the beginning.
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.And the Word became flesh.
That is the mystery of incarnation. We contemplate His glory as the glory of an only begotten Son with the Father, full of grace and truth.
Now, how can this be? How can God become man? God, who is infinite—how can the infinite become finite? God is unknowable—how can the unknowable become known?
This is explained to us in Philippians 2: “Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, subsisting in the form of God, did not esteem it an object of grasping to be on an equality with God.”
Now, brothers and sisters, who is this “He”? This “He” is the Word. This “He” is the Son of God, who existed before the foundation of the world, coexisting with God. He is equal with God, and this is not something He had to grasp. In other words, that is His right.
He subsists in the form of God. Now, the word form in Greek is morphē. This word is only used twice in the New Testament. It is used here in Philippians 2, and it is again used in Mark 16:12.
You remember in Mark 16:12, after the resurrection of our Lord Jesus, two disciples were on the way to Emmaus. There was a man walking with them, and they did not recognize Him. The Bible says the Lord Jesus appeared in another form and walked with them.
Now, that is the word form used in that passage. This Greek word, on the one hand, tells us something deeper than what we would normally call a form. Today, when we think of a form, it is an appearance, a manifestation. That is a form, and that form can change.
Our Lord Jesus could change His form, and when He changed form, they did not recognize Him. But this word in Greek has a deeper meaning than merely a manifestation. That word, morphē, in Greek means the essence, the nature of a being.
So here you find our Lord Jesus subsisting. In other words, He always has the nature and the essence of God. That is what He is.
But when He is existing in the form of God, His essence and nature are manifested in the full expression of His deity. Here you find our Lord Jesus, in the beginning, subsisting in the form of God. He is God. He has all the essence and nature of God, coequal with God. Whatever God is, that He is.
Not only that, but He manifests Himself in the form of God—a form that is glorious, a form that lives in light unapproachable, a form that is unknowable to human beings, a form that is beyond human comprehension.
That is God. That is the form of God: unlimited in His glory, unlimited in His power, unlimited in His wisdom, unlimited in everything. All the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him. That is the form, and in that form all the angels worship Him.
He subsists in that form, but one day He emptied Himself. Now, brothers and sisters, how can God—the infinite, the omnipotent, the omniscient God—become a man?
Man is so limited. The Bible says that all the nations are like a drop in a bucket, like dust in the balance. Now, who are we as individuals? If all the nations are just a speck of dust, who are you? We are so tiny, so limited, so restricted, so poor.
How can God become man? Impossible. The only way for God to become man is that He has to empty Himself.
But remember, this emptying of Himself is not emptying Himself of His essence and nature as God. That is impossible. God is always God. What He could empty Himself of was that form.
He could empty Himself of the form of God—that is, His manifestation in all the glory of God. That He could lay aside, put aside, in order to take upon Himself another form, and that is the form of a slave.
Now, brothers and sisters, let me repeat, because this is very, very important. When our Lord Jesus emptied Himself, do not think that He emptied Himself of His deity. That is impossible. Emmanuel is God with us. In other words, His deity is still there.
It is not that, because of incarnation, He laid aside His deity. Not so. What He laid aside was the form of God—that manifestation as God, a manifestation beyond human comprehension and beyond human touch.
He laid down that form in order to take up another form, the form of a slave. And with that form, you find all the essence of deity there, yet in a hidden way. It is not manifested. What is manifested is a slave.
Now think of that. From that form of God, He emptied Himself to the form of a slave—a true slave, a love slave, a slave to God His Father. That is the form He took while He was on earth, in the likeness of man.
Dear brothers and sisters, truly, what is the likeness of man? The likeness of man should be in the form of a bondslave to God. See, that is where all the problem began: when man rejected the form of a bondslave.
Now, a bondslave is a love slave. A slave is someone who has sold himself and lost all his rights. But a bondslave is a slave of love. In other words, it is not by obligation; it is because of love. He wants to be a slave forever. He wants to give up all his rights, and he accepts his master as having every right over him all his life.
Now, that is a bondslave. Brothers and sisters, in spirit, that is what man was created to be in his relationship with God. Man should stand on the ground of a bondslave to God. That should be his form.
But here you find man rejecting that form. Man wants to be God himself. Man does not want to obey God. He wants to have his own rights. And the result is that man fell into sin.
But here you find that God sent His Son into this world, and He is the Man. He took the form of a bondslave to God.
What He emptied was not His deity, brothers and sisters. What He emptied was all those glorious attributes attached to deity. In other words, as God He is omnipotent; He is almighty. But when He was born into this world, He said, “I can do nothing.”
“I can do nothing. Whatever My Father does, I do. I can say nothing. Whatever My Father says, I will say.”
As God, He is omnipresent; He is everywhere. But as man, you find that when He was in Jerusalem, He was not in Cana. He was limited. As God, He is omniscient. He knew everything from the beginning to the very end, from the end to the beginning. But as man, He said, “I do not know. The angels do not know. I do not know; only the Father knows.”
In other words, you find that He laid aside the form of God and took upon Himself the form of a bondslave. Now, that is incarnation. Dear brothers and sisters, what an emptying that is!
I do believe that if we see this, there will arise within us worship that we never knew before. What God has done for us!
And being found in fashion as a man, He became obedient—obedient to the Father even unto death, yea, the death of the cross. And now His Father highly exalted Him and gave Him a name that is above every name, and at that name every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord.
This is the mystery of incarnation. Even so, we are just touching it. It is still a mystery, and it shall always be a mystery to us—for us to marvel at, to wonder at—that God can become man. And what an emptying that is!
What is the meaning of incarnation? What are its implications and applications to us? First of all, when you think of incarnation, brothers and sisters, you see the love of God. Incarnation shows us the love of God.
For God so loved the world,
that He gave His only begotten Son.
Brothers and sisters, why should God love us so? The first man God created was Adam. But after Adam fell, all the men and women born of Adam were sinners.
We frustrate the plan of God. We defy Him. We rebel against Him. We stand with the enemy of God instead of being His instrument. That is what we are.
And yet, brothers and sisters, God will not give us up. He would even come to the extent of becoming a man in order to identify Himself with us. Now think of that.
We are so unlovely. He could just forget about us. And yet you find that the love of God is so everlasting, so persistent. He is seeking after us, and eventually He comes Himself to become a man.
Because we partake of flesh and blood, therefore He took upon Himself flesh and blood, to identify Himself with us in order to deliver us from death. Now, what love is behind it?
This is something for us to ponder. God should distance Himself from us and keep us far, far away. And yet He drew near to us, to become one of us, in order to save us. Tremendous love.
This is the kind of love that you cannot explain. It is beyond our understanding. But we are the recipients of such love. Can we fail to love Him?
Incarnation not only tells us of the love of God; it tells us of the mind of Christ. What is the mind of Christ?
If the Son wanted to keep His own rights—to sit on the throne with His Father, to receive the worship of the angels, to govern and rule over the universe, to live in glory and honor—that is His right.
But that is not the mind of Christ. The mind of Christ is to lay down His rights, lay down His glory, lay down His honor, even lay down His omnipotence. He is willing to lay down everything as God and humble Himself to be a bondslave, to be a man.
How humble that is! Without that mind, incarnation is impossible. Brothers and sisters, the Apostle says, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.”
When you think of incarnation, it reminds us of the humility of our Lord Jesus. And because He humbled Himself, therefore let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.
Naturally, we are high-minded. We are nothing, but we think ourselves something, somebody. He is everything, and yet He considered Himself nothing.
How we need to learn the lesson of humility. God gives grace to the humble; He resists the proud. Humility is the mind of Christ.
You know, humility and humiliation are two different things. Humility is an inward attitude. Humiliation is an outward act. Humility is something that comes from within voluntarily. Humiliation is something that is put upon you from outside.
Brothers and sisters, because we are not humble, we are often humiliated. But if you are humble, you are beyond humiliation.
The reason why you feel yourself humiliated is because you are not humble. Do not blame people who humiliate you. You need it. You need it to develop the spirit of humility.
Every time you think of incarnation, remember this: the mind of Christ.
Furthermore, incarnation reminds us of the exceedingly great power of the Holy Spirit. How can a woman, without a husband—a virgin—conceive? The power of the Holy Spirit overshadowed her and brought forth the holy thing, the Son of God.
Brothers and sisters, this is the power of the Holy Spirit. The power of the Holy Spirit is almighty.
And the same power that gave birth to Christ is the same power that regenerates us into new birth. How can we be born again, brothers and sisters? Not by man, not by man’s will, not by the will of the flesh. You cannot will yourself to be born again. Nobody can will it for you to make you born again. It is the power of the Holy Spirit that you are born again.
And not only that, you find the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is the power that is working in us today. Believe that power of the Holy Spirit. Receive it.
What is the meaning of incarnation? What does incarnation do for us? Brothers and sisters, it is through incarnation that God is able to reconcile the world to Himself.
Now, it is true that the work of redemption was not finished until Christ was crucified and then said, “It is finished.” But how could He be crucified if He were not born to be a man?
So you find that redemption and reconciliation actually begin in incarnation. It is because the Son was willing to empty Himself and the Word became flesh that there is the possibility that we might be reconciled to God.
By the blood of our Lord Jesus, we are reconciled to Him—not only we, but the whole world. All created things are being reconciled to God through the blood of our Lord Jesus. That is reconciliation.
But reconciliation is also restoration. In other words, it is not merely being reconciled in the sense that our sins are forgiven and we are received back. Brothers and sisters, reconciliation is also restoration.
The first Adam failed, and God raised up the second Man: Christ. In the birth of Christ, we find that God raised up another Man.
The first man failed God’s purpose, but the second Man is the Man of God’s heart. So here comes a Man into this world. He is a Man of God’s own heart. He is the Man that God had in His mind from the very beginning.
This is the Man that God desires. This is the Man to whom God will give all the dominion of all things. And here comes this Man. But He is never alone.
He comes into this world not only to demonstrate to us what kind of man God desires, but also to bring many sons into glory. In other words, through Him, He will recreate a new race.
He will recreate us to be like Him, that He may be the firstborn among many sons. Brothers and sisters, here you find that reconciliation is so complete that it is not only having our sins forgiven, but we are reconstructed, as it were, into that man whom God had in His mind to give to His beloved Son as His helpmate.
And all these are there in incarnation. He came into this world not just to seek and to save the lost. He came into this world to recreate us and conform us to His own image, that He may receive us as His life counterpart, that the will of God concerning man may be fully realized.
Brothers and sisters, this is the meaning of incarnation.
So let us meditate on His birth. His birth is more than something that people today celebrate once a year. His birth is something that we need to meditate upon every day.
What love! What mind! What power! What work we find in the incarnation.
Dear Heavenly Father, though we desire to consider Your Son, we have knowledge only with our finite minds—limited knowledge. We can only understand so much.
But, Father, we do desire to know more of You. Do be pleased to reveal Your Son in us. Show us the meaning of incarnation. Show us how much it cost You, how much love is behind it.
Show us what You would have us to be, and whatever it brings us into. Oh, show us all these things, that we may not, in a sense, be not knowing what incarnation—Your birth—really means to us.
We ask in that precious name. Amen.