Aren’t You Thankful?

Dec 25, 2010 by desiringvirtue

As a mom it is so difficult to imagine being the mother of the the Lord. The difficulty is not so much in the “mother” part, but in the God incarnate part. How does God become a man? How does the infinitely Holy One put on the clothes of human flesh? How does the Creator lie helpless at a mother’s breast? It is simply amazing… every aspect of it. This is the miracle we celebrate at Christmas.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” ~John 1:1-5

Taking the advice of a recent Girl Talk post, I reread the chapter in Knowing God titled “God Incarnate.” First of all, if you haven’t read Knowing God, you must… trust me, you must. Second of all I am so thankful that I reread this chapter (makes me want to reread the whole book…)! Packer covers a lot of material in this chapter, but one of the best parts is this paragraph:

“The Word had become flesh: a real human baby. He had not ceased to be God; he was no less God than before; but he had begun to be man. He was not now God minus some elements of his deity, but God plus all that he had made his own by taking manhood to himself. He who made man was now learning what it felt like to be man. He who made the angel who became the devil was now in a state in which he could be tempted-could not, indeed, avoid being tempted-by the devil; and the perfection of his human life was achieved only by conflict with the devil. The epistle to the Hebrews, looking up to him in his ascended glory, draws great comfort  from this fact.”

And the passages he is referring to in Hebrews:

“He had to be made like his brothers in every way… Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted… For we do not have a hight priest who is unable to sympathize with your weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are- yet was without sin.Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” ~Hebrews 2:17-18; 4:15-16

Aren’t you thankful? Isn’t it amazing that the Lord knows the pull to sin that we feel. The one who can never sin, knows how our flesh pulls us toward sin every moment of the day. We don’t have a God who doesn’t sympathize with us! He knows how we struggle, but he gives us the power we need to overcome sin-the same power he used to overcome it! I am so thankful for this aspect of Christmas. Aren’t you?

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