Christmas: What Was It All About?

By Neil Earle

The Two Natures

Church doctrine evolves when Christian teachers must protect or preserve some aspect of Jesus’ ministry to us that is under attack. In 451 AD church fathers had to define more clearly what the church meant by Jesus as perfect man AND perfect Son of God. Some were leaning too much either to his human side (docetism) or his divine side (monophysitism). Here was the definition worked out at Chalcedon in Asia Minor.



“…we unite in teaching all men to confess the one and only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ…perfect both in deity and also in humanness…Before time began he was begotten of the Father in respect of his deity and now in these last days for us and for our salvation this selfsame one was born of Mary the virgin…this one and only Christ, only-begotten in two natures without confusing the two natures, without dividing them into two separate categories…The distinctive of each nature is not nullified by the union. Instead the properties of each nature are conserved in one person…They are not divided or cut into two but are together the one and only begotten Logos of God, the Lord Jesus Christ” (John Leith, Creeds of Christendom, pages 35-36).

Creeds and formal doctrines are of necessity brief, defensive and technical in nature but Christians have always recognized something above the ordinary at work in the expressive power of these declarations of the faith.

“The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation,” wrote C.S. Lewis (pictured right), the great Christian thinker.” They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this” (Miracles, page 173).

This is quite a statement but of course, upon reflection, it has to be true. Before we get to the turning point event of Jesus’ Resurrection Jesus had to be born. Christians call this the Incarnation, which word is formed from two Latin words, In Carnu, meaning “in the flesh.” John 1:14 says, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory” (AV).

While the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus stand at the center of Christian doctrine the Incarnation of the babe of Bethlehem represented what Lewis called God’s planned and well-thought-out invasion of this errant cosmos from a dimension far beyond ours.

Evil’s Dark Abyss

The purpose of God was to come and save us from ourselves and the evil all around us. God chose to rescue his creation from the dark abyss into which we had fallen. We hardly need to argue that point with the news of the tragic shootings in Connecticut weighing upon us as a Decade of Disaster continues. Tom Torrance (pictured, left), the great Edinburgh theologian, had written of the stakes involved at that birth in Bethlehem centuries ago.

“But what vexes and distresses God in Christ is not simply the sickness and pain of humanity but the fact that it is engulfed in an abyss of fearful darkness, too deep for men and women themselves to understand and certainly too deep for them ever to get out of it – a pit of bottomless evil power. Mankind is entangled in sin not wholly of its own making, enmeshed in toils of a vast evil quite beyond it…It is evil at its ultimate source, evil at its deepest root in its stronghold, that God has come to attack and destroy (Mark 3:27; Luke 11:21-22).

“This revelation of the condition of humanity…is supported and redoubled by the fact that God in Christ acts towards mankind in its helplessness and distress in sheer grace, grace that is utterly free.

“Nowhere does Jesus accuse the sick of their sins before he stoops to shoulder their weakness. The astounding thing is that God does not put the responsibility upon them but takes the responsibility on himself….God comes among sinners and makes himself responsible for their condition and even takes their sin and culpability upon himself vicariously. But that in turn reveals the hopelessness of man, apart from such stupendous act of divine grace. (Tom Torrance, Incarnation, page 241).

Engulfed in a vast evil? Is that too sweeping? Think of the Decade of Disaster we have just passed through – the 9/11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, the BP oil spill, Fukushima, Hurricane Sandy, to name a few. We are slowly beginning to realize that as a human race we may have gotten ourselves into things we can no longer work our way out of.

Torrance of course adds the positive Christian perspective we should be thinking about more at this time of year: “In Jesus the word of God was translated into the form of human life in whom there was only truth and light…Jesus there was provided for mankind a way of response to God which issued out of the depth of our human existence and in which each human being was free to share, through the communion with Jesus” (The Mediation of Christ, page 78).

A series of texts makes this clear:

“Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows" (Isaiah 53:4).

“As long as I am in the world I am the Light of the world” (John 12:36, AV).

“Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).

“Whoever come to me I will never drive away” (John 6:37).

“If anyone loves me he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14:23).

Realism of Church Doctrine

There it is – communion with the Father by the eternal Spirit through imitating the attitudes and God-centeredness of Jesus Christ (Galatians 3:17). That’s what the church of Jesus Christ has been offering through all the centuries. When the church makes this clear she is fulfilling the purpose of her existence.

But to carry out this dramatic repair of the breach between man and God, Jesus had to live as both perfect man and Son of God – God in the flesh. This great Christian mystery took centuries for church thinkers to resolve. It became known as “the Creed of Chalcedon” and it is ever so carefully worded in order to preserve, protect and defend the vitally important teaching of the Incarnation (see Box).

The High Priest of ancient Israel was able to offer reconciliation for himself and for the whole people annually once a year on the Day of Atonement. But Jesus came, the propreitor of a more glorious temple and priesthood, to make atonement for the whole cosmos and to take care of sin once and for all (Hebrews 9:26). This is the “better priesthood” and “better covenant” the book of Hebrews talks so much about.

It was quite a plan, wasn’t it? Quite an “organized invasion” to use Lewis’ terms.

On our side, the purposes of God can be summed up as we being clothed ever more fully with the mind and nature of Jesus himself, a mind subjected to the overall purposes of God (Philippians 2:5). We daily are challenged to “put on Jesus Christ” and we do that through practicing the Christian virtues. Once we accept Jesus by the very faith he gives us we accept our utter dependence on him for reconciliation to God. This means we have a certain life to live, called to a life of holiness as we fulfill that task of reflecting God’s mind to all we meet – which is the real “payoff” or end result of our calling. The great teacher J.I. Packer outlined what he called “the means of grace,” those actions that characterize the followers of Jesus:

“Turn to Him and trust Him as best you can, and pray for grace to turn and trust more thoroughly, use the means of grace expectantly (the Communion, wise counsel, church attendance), watch, pray, read and hear God’s word, worship and commune with God’s people, and so continue till you know beyond doubt that you are indeed a changed being, a penitent believer, and the new heart which you desired has been put into you” (Death of Death, page 15).

On God’s side the purposes of the Incarnation can be summed up in the one word “adoption” (Ephesians 1:5). Romans 8:15-16 tells us we are already accepted as heirs of God and coheirs of Jesus Christ. That is the implication of our stunning new relationship with God made possible through the intervening sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Of course all of this was effected and made possible by Someone who would be the Mediator, “the Apostle and High Priest” of our faith, Jesus, the Son of God and Son of Man (1 Timothy 2:5; Hebrews 3:1). “Apostle” means “one who is sent forth” and the term as applied to Jesus shows why the doctrine of the two natures of Jesus is so important. It reaffirms what took place at Bethlehem and at Calvary. It gives weight and depth to the Gospel story that begins in Bethlehem. God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but that the world through him might be saved (John 3:17).

And that, dear friends, is what Christmas is all about. Have a good one and a happy and peaceful New Year, 2013.