As I have been writing these reflections of implications on the incarnation, a riff from a Hootie and the Blowfish song keeps running through my mind: “I only wanna be with you.” Could it be that the heart of God is so filled with sappy sentiments that the incarnation is little more than fulfilling a love song? Could God really have gone to such great lengths because he “only wants to be with us”?
There is a theological rule that says that while humans sometimes act in ways that are contradictory to their character, God always acts as God is. (It is called "Rahner's rule" after theologian Karl Rahner who put it forth.) That is, the God who is revealed through his saving work is necessarily identical to the being of God in himself, (whether he is saving us or not). In other words, “if God is truly the God of Jesus Christ, then that is what he is like eternally.” In the ministry of Jesus, the revelation of the character of God and the saving communion are both made known.
For is, this means that if God came to this earth and showed us what his face looks like, then in Jesus, God has expressed himself in our reality, which means that we have a record, a documented account of what God is like, cares about and wants from us.
And one of the very first implications of the incarnation is that God came to be with us so that we can be with him. He didn’t just come for a visit; he came to complete a mission . He came to seek and save the lost (as it says in Luke 19:10), he came to draw all people to himself (as Jesus said in John 12:32) he came so that all who call on his name could become children of God (John 1:12) and—most importantly—become conformed to the image of (God’s) son (as Paul wrote in Romans 8:29).
Over the next couple of days I will draw out some implications of the incarnation.
But let’s spend a minute looking at this first key point: God came to be with us, so we can be with him.
Consider this, if the God who created the universe and everything in it actually became a human being and live Then wouldn’t that be the very best thing that ever happened? Wouldn’t that say something incredible about us?
Wouldn’t that say that we are not just accidental beings, but instead we are beings who have a Creator and ruler who so cares about us that he meddles in our lives?
Our God came to earth to show himself to us, to reveal his nature to us and participate in created life. This means that God has walked in our shoes, experienced our world and understands personally what it means to be a creature. This means that God is not distant, God is not disinterested. In fact it is just the opposite. God is personally interested and involved with us, God loves us and wants to be with us.
Even though the Scriptures teach and our experience confirms that we have rebelled against him, rejected his commands, tried to live without him, ran from him and sought to be the god of our own lives. Even though as it say in Isaiah 59:2, “Your sins have cut you off from God” (NLT).
Even so, God came to be with us, so that we could be with him.
That’s the first part of the incarnation. God came to do what we cannot. We cannot reach him. We are not good enough, strong enough, smart enough, or holy enough to make it to him on our own. So he laid aside his divine attributes and came to us.
But God didn’t just come as a great human, a powerful rich, inspiring human, but the lowest kind of human; he looked like a lowly servant, “a slob like one of us, a stranger on the bus.” Someone that anyone could relate to. That’s what is implied in Philippians 2:6-7: “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.”
Why? He wants us—all of us—to be with him. This is first invitation of salvation. This is heaven coming down for us. We who were created to be with God, can be with God. Not because we have made it to God, but because God has come to us. God came to be with us, so we could be with him.
This is great news. Great and disturbing. Great and challenging.
You see, if God did come to us to meet us on our terms, than he has also revealed who he is as he is. And that means that we now have to acknowledge that God has a particular personality. That God cannot just be whatever we want him to be. That he has been revealed definitively in Jesus Christ and that we now have to believe in him as he is.
Writing to cynics and skeptics, the second verse of Joan Osborne’s lyrics from “One of Us” pose a challenge:
If God had a face what would it look like
And would you want to see
If seeing meant that you would have to believe
In things like heaven and in jesus and the saints and all the prophets?
Because that is exactly what happens if we believe that God has come to be with us: if we want to be with God, we have to believe in God as God is.
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