The mystery of the incarnation.
A spiritual antipasto.
The incarnation reveals an unfathomable mystery—the mystery of the eternal God stepping into human flesh to redeem humanity and unite humanity with Himself. This is not an abstract theological speculation; it’s an actual historical manifestation of God’s unsearchable love and grace. It is God’s free, decisive self-revelation in history. He did not have to. Nothing outside of him required it. In perfect freedom, He loved to, He wanted to, and He chose to. He determined to meet us in our actual condition, reveal himself, and redeem us. And so He did. He stepped into our world and met us where we were.
And now, all theological reflection—actually, any reflection of any kind—is irrevocably transformed by this one reality: divinity and humanity united in Jesus Christ, not symbolically, not conceptually, but ontologically real—divinity and humanity becoming one substance. That ought to blow your mind. This is an actual act of history, not a theological construct.
The incarnation beckons us into a profound mystery. God chose to become present and to act as this man, Jesus of Nazareth, for humanity. Imagine the eternal God, infinite and uncontainable, embracing human DNA, human cells, human neurons, human frailty. He came not in heavenly splendor (whatever we might imagine something like that to be) but in the likeness of Joseph’s son—a carpenter’s boy from unremarkable backwater Nazareth. Christ takes on fallen humanity’s condition, and He does so to heal it and to fully redeem it. This isn’t a myth or a symbolic narrative; it is the bedrock of our faith—the central truth of God’s plan for creation.
This is the unfathomable act of condescension, a moment where divine love bridged the uncrossable chasm of human sin and estrangement, where God united Himself with humanity in Jesus as the actual means of overcoming our alienation from Him. The incarnation is God’s radical and unexpected movement to us. In Christ, God makes Himself knowable—fully knowable—and fully present, such that Jesus’ entire life mediates God’s presence, inviting us to trust the visible image of the invisible God.
Consider the implications of such a reality. Jesus, as the full and perfect expression of God, transforms our understanding of God. And Jesus, as the image of God—fully and truly human—transforms our understanding of ourselves. God’s revelation in the person of Jesus Christ couldn’t be more concrete or more personal. Abstract theology is forever destroyed. The incarnation challenges all our theological assumptions, all our cultural and existential frameworks, anything that separates God from our material world.
The mystery of the incarnation also challenges our assumptions about power, glory, and presence. God’s power is revealed in His willingness to suffer for the sake of humanity. He demonstrates a power capable of identifying with human weakness, capable of absorbing all human suffering, capable of bearing the weight of humanity’s sin, capable of entering into the depths of human brokenness, capable of transforming it into redemption. Christ conquers sin. Christ conquers death. And He does so through the power of love and the total giving of Himself.
God’s glory is revealed in His self-giving, in His condescension, and in His humility. Christ’s self-emptying and submission to death on a cross is not the abandonment of His glory but its expression. It is the beauty of divine love reaching into the depths of human need. It is the radiance of divine holiness, righteousness, and love coming beautifully together in His identification with human weakness and suffering, in His willingness to bear the cost of reconciliation Himself, in His self-giving act of atonement, and in drawing humanity into His own triune life.
The incarnation reveals God’s persistent relationality—His presence with us and for us—and His commitment to His creation. God became unfathomably vulnerable to unite us to Himself. He poured the Spirit of Christ into us, vulnerably inviting us into His Triune Life. In Christ, the eternal becomes tangible, the abstract becomes personal, the transcendent becomes imminent, the glorious becomes the despised, and the perfect becomes sin. God’s love isn’t distant or theoretical—it’s incarnate, fleshly, and for you.
The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel (which means “God with us”). — Matthew 1:23 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. — John 1:14 Have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! — Philippians 2:5–8 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together... For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. — Colossians 1:15–20
This spiritual antipasto has an accompanying call to worship:
Incarnation.
There’s nothing in all the books of fiction that we’ve ever contrived that comes even close to being as fantastic as is the truth of the incarnation of Christ.