Incarnate Love
TCF Sermon
December 9, 2007
Have you ever heard the phrase, someone is the embodiment of something? A good example is Adolf Hitler. People have said he was the “embodiment of evil.” Mother Teresa might be called the embodiment of compassion. Jim Elliott, or many modern-day martyrs, might be called the embodiment of sacrifice. Adrian Peterson might be called the embodiment of football talent – I threw that one in for Jim Grinnell, who we might call the embodiment of an oxymoron – an old youth pastor.
Gordon might be considered the embodiment of an aging hippie. You get the idea. When someone embodies something, they personify something – they help us to see some quality, some talent, in human form.
Embodiment might mean a person who represents an abstract quality in their being;
Joel, you might say, is the personification of a positive outlook and joy. We could cite several other examples, but to say someone embodies or personifies a character, a quality, a talent, is similar to another phrase we often hear around Christmas time. Incarnation.
I say similar, because even though we’ll often hear the term incarnation used as a near-synonym for embodiment, when we look at the biblical meaning of incarnation, it means so much more. So, while we might say that Adolf Hitler is the embodiment, the personification, even the incarnation of evil, and we’d all understand what that means, the biblical meaning of incarnation goes so far beyond that that this morning, that we’ll only be able to begin to scratch the surface.
Incarnation has several secular meanings, but one meaning truly unique to our faith – singularly Christian. American Heritage Dictionary defines incarnation like this:
1. a. The act of incarnating.
b. The condition of being incarnated.
2. Incarnation Christianity The doctrine that the Son of God was conceived in the womb of Mary and that Jesus is true God and true man.
3. A bodily manifestation of a supernatural being.
4. One who is believed to personify a given abstract quality or idea.
5. A period of time passed in a given bodily form or condition: hopes for a better life in another incarnation.
So, when we use the word in a non-religious sense, #4 is the way we will sometimes use it. But clearly meaning #2 is our Christian understanding of this word. Let’s try to unpack the meaning of this great truth, which we will often ponder during the Christmas season, but which really impacts all of our faith throughout the calendar year.
The actual word incarnation is not found anywhere in scripture, but the doctrine of the incarnation is clearly indicated in many passages of scripture. We get the word incarnation from the Latin translation of John 1:14, which says:
John 1:14 (NIV) 14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
The Word, that is, Jesus, became flesh. That’s what we celebrate during this Christmas season – the becoming flesh, at least that part that there were eyewitnesses to, that is, the birth, of Jesus. That, in a nutshell, is the incarnation, and of course His life is part of the incarnation as well. That is what we’re singing about when we sing O Come All Ye Faithful….
Yea, Lord, we greet Thee, born this happy morning;
Jesus, to Thee be all glory given;
Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing.
“Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing.”
That’s the incarnation – it’s seen in John 1:14, what one Bible commentary called one of the most important verses in the Bible. One Bible Dictionary defines the incarnation this way:
That act of grace whereby Christ took our human nature into union with his Divine Person, (and) became man. Christ is both God and man. A Divine Person was united to a human nature (Acts 20:28; Rom 8:32; 1Co 2:8; Heb 2:11-14; 1Ti 3:16; Gal 4:4); the two natures are not mixed or confounded, and it is perpetual.
—Easton’s Illustrated Dictionary
The incarnation is the union of divinity and humanity in Jesus Christ. So, while it’s not a biblical word, it’s a clearly biblical idea. It’s a vital doctrine of our faith. It’s the affirmation that God, in one of the three persons of His existence as Trinity, and without in any way ceasing to be the one God, has revealed Himself to humanity, for the purpose of our salvation, by becoming human.
Jesus, that baby born to the virgin Mary more than 2,000 years ago, that man who lived, suffered, died and rose again, that man who breathed the same air we breathe, drank the same kind of water we drink, sweated when He was hot, shivered when He was cold, had sore muscles after he worked hard, got hungry, got thirsty, laughed and cried, felt physical and emotional pain, and knew real joy, and essentially experienced all the same very human things we do, as part of our common human experience, that man Jesus, is the living, breathing Word of God. He’s the focus of our human encounter with God.
As the God-Man, He mediates God to humans; as the Man-God, He represents humans to God. By faith-union with Him, men and women, as adopted children of God, participate in His filial relation to God as Father. Holman Bible Dictionary
Wow, what a concept! It’s an idea that’s seemingly impossible to wrap our minds around completely, but because Jesus walked this earth, because people saw Him, heard Him and touched Him, and because we have these eyewitnesses who recorded these things in scripture – after all John said in 1:14 – we have seen His glory – because of these things, even though the incarnation of Jesus is a concept that’s impossible to fully grasp with our little, finite minds, God has revealed Himself in Jesus in such a way that we can grasp, we can understand enough to trust Him.
We can understand enough to receive Him as Lord and Savior. And by looking at His written Word, the Bible, which helps us see and understand His living Word, the Word made flesh, Jesus, we can begin to see and understand a little bit more about what the incarnation means in terms of understanding our faith, but also what it means to us, practically and experientially.
These key words, in John 1:14 – the Word became flesh – are a foundation for what we know about God, what we know about ourselves, what we know about our relationship between God and us. They’re the foundation for the hope of eternal life we have in Jesus. They’re the guarantee of our peace with God. Let me mention some important truths about the incarnation. First of all, the Word became flesh. Read in context with John 1:1, which says,
in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God,
we see a critical truth in this word “became.” Jesus didn’t come into existence at his conception and subsequent birth. He always was. Jesus is eternal. Some cults deny this truth, making it safe to say that they don’t believe in the same Jesus we do.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses created their own translation of the Bible to do away with any suggestion of the deity and eternal existence of Jesus. The Jehovah’s Witness New World Translation of John 1:1, rather than saying the “Word was God,” says the “Word was a God.” Just that one little word, “a” makes a tremendous difference. What’s more, in denying the deity of Jesus, they teach that Jesus is a created being. They believe He first existed as Michael the archangel then later was born as a perfect man. In fact, if you pick up a JW hymnal, you might find a song called “Jesus Sweet Michael.”
When Mormons say they believe Jesus was the son of God, they believe this in a significantly different way than we do:
Sixth LDS President Joseph F. Smith stated, "Among the spirit children of Elohim, the first-born was and is Jehovah, or Jesus Christ, to whom all others are juniors" (Gospel Doctrine, p.70).
Of course, they also believe that Jesus and Lucifer are brothers.
Twelfth President Spencer W. Kimball wrote, "Long before you were born a program was developed by your creators ... The principal personalities in this great drama were a Father Elohim, perfect in wisdom, judgment, and person, and two sons, Lucifer and Jehovah." (Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, pp. 32-33).
Muslims don’t believe Jesus was divine in any sense, so they clearly don’t believe that Jesus always existed. But what we believe, because it’s what the Word of God teaches, is that Jesus always existed.
So the incarnation wasn’t the beginning of Jesus. It was God the Son, the 2nd person of the Trinity, taking on human flesh.
Note the contrast between vv 1 and 14. Verse 1 states that the Word “was” while verse 14 says that the Word “became” involving a change in state. This is the basic statement of the Incarnation, for Christ entered into a new dimension of existence through the gateway of human birth. Zondervan NIV Commentary
As important as it is for us to understand that the Word teaches Jesus’ divinity, it’s just as important for us to understand that He was also fully human.
If Jesus is God in the flesh, then He has always been God, even though He wasn’t always God in the flesh. There was never a time when Jesus became God, because God is eternal. But Jesus has not always been man. He became man at the incarnation about 2,000 years ago, and that’s the great historical event we celebrate at Christmas.
In his gospel, John tells us about the incarnation, and about the eternal existence of Jesus. But in his letters, John also condemns anyone who denies that Jesus Christ is truly man.
1 John 4:2 (NIV) 2 This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,
2 John 1:7 (NIV) 7 Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.
Jesus’ humanity is displayed in the fact that He was born as a baby from a human mother.
Luke 2:7 (NIV) 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son.
Galatians 4:4 (NIV) 4 But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman,
His humanity is clear in that He became weary.
John 4:6 (NIV) 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well.
He was hungry.
Matthew 4:2 (NIV) 2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.
He experienced a full range of human emotions, like marvel, and astonishment.
Matthew 8:10 (NIV) 10 When Jesus heard this, he was astonished and said to those following him, "I tell you the truth, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.
He also experienced sorrow
John 11:35 – Jesus wept.
But Jesus is not only truly and fully man. He is also a perfect man. This means that He is sinless. He does not have a sinful nature, and neither did He ever commit sin, even though He was tempted in all ways.
Hebrews 4:15 (NIV) 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are--yet was without sin.
He was fully man, even as He was fully God. Because he was fully man, we have a Savior who can truly identify with us. I wonder if this truth is more for us than for Him? Did God really need to become flesh to understand the human experience? After all, He created us – which means He created the human experience and all that encompasses. I think He became flesh in part to help us understand and to help us see that He does indeed identify with us.
In our finite minds, it’s almost a credibility thing, isn’t it? His humanity gives Him credentials in our minds. We can know that He’s been where we are, experienced what we have. These are important realities of the incarnation for us. And these realities set our faith apart from all other religions.
For this reason we also find Paul writing in 1 Timothy 2:5,
"For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus."
Our purpose, our existence, is to worship and glorify God. Having a richer understanding of the Incarnation of God the Son should greatly enhance our worship. We can truly marvel and find great joy in the fact that the eternal person of God the Son became man, and our recognition of His love, His sacrifice, His worthiness to be worshipped, will be enhanced. Our faith in Him will be strengthened by having this deeper understanding of who He is.
Because Jesus is God, He is all-powerful and He cannot be defeated. Because He is God, He is the only adequate Savior. Because He is God, we can have confidence that He will empower us for the things that He asks of us. And because He is God, all people will be accountable to Him when He returns to judge the world. Because Jesus is man, He has experienced the same things that we do. Because He is man, He can identify with us more intimately. Because He is man, He can come to our aid as our sympathetic High Priest when we reach the limits of our human weaknesses. Because He is man, we can relate to Him -- He is not far off and uninvolved. Because He is man, we cannot complain that God does not know what we are going through. He experienced it first-hand. (Credit”http://www.geocities.com/athens/delphi/8449/hypo.html)
The incarnation also gives us a model of how to love, and how to represent Jesus to the world. If the incarnation means God in the flesh in the person of Jesus, then we, in turn, can personify or embody that love.
By the empowering of the Holy Spirit, we can incarnate the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to a hurting world.
Now, let’s be careful how we look at this idea of us, as followers of Jesus, incarnating His grace and love. We can and should, in a very real way, embody the love and grace of Christ, and can “dwell among” sinners as did Jesus, but we do not become little gods, as one well-known preacher has said.
It’s more along the lines of Galatians 2:20 and 1 Cor 9:22.
Galatians 2:20 (NIV) 20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
1 Corinthians 9:22 (NIV) 22 To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.
These are incarnational verses – examples of how we can embody the love of Christ to the world.
British preacher John Stott said that God’s purpose is to make us like Jesus. We’ve looked at that in recent weeks. Jim Grinnell referenced it a few weeks ago, when he read 2 Cor 3:18. We mentioned the idea of living good lives among the pagans in the sermon a few weeks ago, as well as the idea of the extreme makeover in a September sermon, where we looked at being transformed into His likeness, the same passage in 2 Corinthians that Jim referenced.
This is an idea that Scripture is filled with – changing followers of Christ into His image, and the results of those changed lives in impacting the world around us.
Stott goes on to say that Christlikeness is the will of God for the people of God. But what is it about Jesus’ life that we are to incarnate? Here are a few suggestions.
First, we’re to incarnate His humility. If we look at Philippians 2, we see what many scholars assume is an early hymn of the church. We’ll read the first part of it.
Philippians 2:5-8 (NIV) 5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death-- even death on a cross!
This is pretty clear. It says, your attitude should be the same as Jesus. As the Word so often does, it’s not just about our behavior. It goes deeper. It goes to our heart attitude, which results in Godly behavior. The attitudes we’re admonished to incarnate, to live out, to embody, to personify, are humility, and obedience. This verse refers to the incarnation. It says in verse 7 that Jesus took the nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
And it says He made Himself nothing. That implies His choice. It says He humbled Himself. These are the things that Paul wrote the Philippians immediately after he says – “your attitude should be the same as Jesus.”
So, there’s no doubt we are to emulate these things, and in that emulation, in that imitating, we can, in some small way, incarnate the humility and obedience of our Lord Jesus.
We’re also to incarnate Jesus’ life of service. Perhaps the best example is found in John 13, when Jesus washed His disciples’ feet. Here’s the master cleaning the dirty feet of His own followers. This is service that follows on the heels of humility as well. It should almost go without saying that we should also incarnate His love.
Ephesians 5:2 (NIV) 2 and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
So it’s not just love we are to incarnate, it’s sacrificial love. Overall, I think it’s safe to say that we should also seek to incarnate Jesus in His mission.
In John 20.21, Jesus said in prayer: “As you, Father, have sent me into the world, so I send them into the world” — that is us. And in his commissioning in John 17 he says: “As the Father sent me into the world, so I send you.”
These words are immensely significant. This is not just the Johannine version of the Great Commission, but it’s also an instruction that their mission in the world was to resemble Christ’s mission. In what respect? The key words in these texts are “sent into the world”. As Christ had entered our world, so we are to enter other people’s worlds. This entering into other people’s worlds is exactly what we mean by incarnational evangelism. John Stott
Incarnational ministry. It’s necessary when we consider the vastly different cultures, and the worldviews that result. It’s true in any sense of mission, whether it be overseas, cross-cultural mission, or local outreach.
Darrell Whiteman, a professor of the missions school at Asbury Seminary in Kentucky, where Randy and Deanna Harrison studied last time they were in the states, writes:
So, what does it mean to be Incarnational in our approach to cultural differences? It frequently means at least the following seven practices:
1. We start with people where they are, embedded in their culture and this frequently requires downward mobility on our part.
2. We take their culture seriously, for this is the context in which life has meaning for them.
3. We approach them as learners, as children, anxious to see the world from their perspective.
4. We are forced to be humble, for in their world of culture we have not yet learned the acquired knowledge to interpret experience and generate social behavior.
5. We must lay aside our own cultural ethnocentricism, our positions of prestige and power.
6. We will be very vulnerable; our defenses will have to go, and we’ll have to rely more on the Holy Spirit than our own knowl¬edge and experience.
7. We make every effort to identify with people where they are, by living among them, loving them, and learning from them.
8. We discover, from the inside, how Christ is the Answer to the questions they ask, and to their needs that they feel.
While this clearly applies to overseas missions in different countries, I think we can find applications even in our own city. We see this in our midst. We could take the example of Kirk & Jania Wester. They moved intentionally into the TCF neighborhood. They embody the love of Christ in their work, in their extracurricular activity, even in their choice to adopt Sanjuanna.
Incarnational ministry is certainly what many of our missionaries do. They go, and become Asians, Africans, South Americans, middle easterners. They embody the love of God. They learn the language, they eat the food, they might wear the clothes, they learn the entire culture and invest fully in it, sometimes adopting kids and marrying nationals, without compromising who they are in Christ.
Now, they cannot literally become Asians, or Africans. But in a sense, they can take on as many of the attributes of the culture they’re trying to reach as is appropriate and possible, for the express purpose of revealing Jesus to these people.
As the Father sent me, so I send you, said Jesus. As we consider the great truths of the incarnation of our Lord and Savior Jesus, especially during this Christmas season,
Let’s consider the power of incarnation in our lives. There was no compromise in what Jesus did, but there was humility in coming close to people in their sin. How can we do that? Floyd McClung reminds us that Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, was on a mission. He had an agenda.
Luke 19:10 (NIV) 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost."
So in closing, as we consider how we can be incarnational in our approach to loving the people around us, let’s remember this admonition:
Hanging out for the sake of hanging out misses the point. God sends us just as certainly as He sent Jesus. We are to go to them, enjoy them, like them for the pure pleasure of enjoying who God has made them to be, but we are also to take Jesus with us into every conversation and every friendship. Floyd McClung
Let’s live, let’s think, let’s be incarnational in our love and in our lives.
Now In Flesh Appearing – Carolyn Arends
It’s December 24
Colder than the night before
But it’s sure hot down in the kitchen
At the Union Gospel Mission
Joshua’s a volunteer
He does this every single year
Shares soup and conversation with some strangers
And all his friends just can’t believe
How he spends his Christmas Eve
He says it brings him closer to the manger
Well, this is Christmas
A hand upon a shoulder
Christmas
A little peace on earth
This is Christmas
The sweet love of Jesus
Now in flesh appearing, yeah
There’s some static on the phone
Half a world away from home
Lisa’s mom fights back the tears
"It’s Christmas Eve and you’re not here"
No one could believe her plan
An orphanage in Kazakhstan
But Lisa knew that’s where she had to go
And now she’s hugging on those kids
Teaching them what Christmas is
And though her family misses her they know
That this is Christmas …
We celebrate the Baby King
And everything He came to bring
Every time we give good will to men
So on December 25
Or in the middle of July
Any time we do what pleases Him …
Then it’s Christmas
Merry Christmas
This is Christmas
Now in flesh appearing
This is Christmas …
