The Incarnation

By Alex Croutworst

During Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ! This is the incarnation: God coming to earth as fully man and fully God. In Matthew chapter 1:18-21, we read about the birth of Jesus Christ. The angel appears to Joseph to tell him that Mary’s baby will be named Jesus, because He will save people from their sins. The name Jesus means “Savior.” This is what Jesus DOES for us. Jesus saves us from our sins.

As we continue reading in Matthew chapter 1, we see in verse 23 a quote from Isaiah 7:14, “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” The name Immanuel means “God is with us” or “God with us.” This name shows us that Jesus is WITH us. He is guiding and helping us. Even at the end of Jesus’s time on earth before He ascends into heaven, He promises to give His followers the Holy Spirit. That’s why He says in Matthew 28:20, “ ‘And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’ ” We receive the Holy Spirit of God when we repent of our sins and trust in Jesus as our Lord and Savior.

So, why is the incarnation important for followers of Jesus Christ? The writer of Hebrews says it clearly in Hebrews 2:17, “Therefore he [Jesus] had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.”

Jesus became human in every way (expect He did not sin) in order to represent us as our high priest, the final high priest! If the incarnation did not happen, Jesus could not have died for our sins on the cross. He could not have risen from the dead on the third day to defeat sins and death SO THAT we can have a relationship with a holy and righteous God. He could not have ascended into heaven and be seated at the right hand of God. And because He ascended into heaven and left earth, He sent the Holy Spirit to indwell us so that we can carry out God’ work on earth!

The incarnation is essential. That’s why we celebrate the birth of Jesus, the one who saves us and is with us!

Take some time to meditate on these scriptures that focus on the character of God:

· Humility of God – Hebrews 2:5-7

· Generosity of God – John 3:16-17

· Plan and Purpose of God – Colossians 5:15-20, Galatians 4:4-5

The Resurrection

By Jon Walker

A Devotion on 1 Corinthians 15

I Corinthians 15, sometimes known as the “resurrection chapter”, is Paul’s beautiful and logical explanation of the hope found in the resurrection of Jesus. A chapter that speaks to both head and heart. Making the appeal for the historical truth of the resurrection while showing its immense meaning for those who trust in Jesus for their salvation. It’s one of the longer chapters in the new testament but well worth the time read. Before going any further, read through 1 Corinthians 15, asking that God would give insight and understanding of His word.

Read 1 Corinthians 15

Context.

I Corinthians is a letter Paul wrote to a church he helped start in the Greek city of Corinth. This city was known in some ways as an ancient Las Vegas or Amsterdam where you could have “experiences” not available in other places. The phrase “to live as a Corinthian” was used in the ancient world to describe someone without moral rules. In short, it had a reputation. Plant in the middle of that: a church. From the letter Paul wrote it’s clear they really struggled to grow up in their faith and live holy amidst their culture. For most of the letter Paul is addressing how they treat one another, their bodies and their church. But he is now addressing a belief that was creeping into their church. It was being taught and believed by some that resurrection doesn’t happen. They still wanted Jesus but without His being raised from the dead. Paul’s point: that doesn’t work. At all. You cannot have a meaningful Jesus without the resurrection. That belief doesn’t logically hold together and it undermines every hopeful element of trusting in Christ. Without the resurrection all of Christianity falls apart and with it is held together. To better understand this there are three larger truth that we can see in an overview of 1 Corinthians 15.

The resurrection of Jesus happened. (verses 1-11)

To be a Christian is not to merely adhere to a set of ideals or teachings. Yes, we follow Jesus but we follow a resurrected Jesus. The claim of scripture that we all must make a decision about is that the resurrection happened. A real event, at a real moment in human history, witnessed by real people who saw the real resurrected body of Jesus with their own eyes. Touched him with their hands and trusted with their hearts. The resurrection sets Jesus apart and above any other. Merely our good teacher and He’s just another among many religious voices. But the resurrection proves the promise that His death does what scripture says: that it is the payment for and cleansing of the sin of anyone who believes.

Question: Do you trust the resurrection as a real event that means what God says it means?

The resurrection is our hope. (verses 12-57)

This is longest section and primary thrust of this chapter. Did you notice all of the “if/then” language when you read it? Paul uses a bit of compare and contrast to drive home just how different life is with or without the resurrection. Without it we are hopeless, stuck in our sin, pitiful and make God out to be liar as we await the (as one writer put it) “bully that always wins, death.” But with the resurrection it could not be more opposite. We have hope in the forgiveness of our sin, no fear of death and joyful expectation beyond this life. Hope in a biblical sense is not some empty sentiment to say to ourselves when times are hard. No, it’s the certainty of the fulfillment God’s promises based upon His perfect character.

Action:

1. Take a moment and make two columns. On the top of one write “If No Resurrection…” and the other write “If Resurrection.. Then fill in these two columns using verses 12- 57. For example “If no resurrection…then we only have hope in this life (v19)” or “If resurrection then…death does not win (v 55).

2. Take a look at the resurrection column and spend a few moments thanking God in prayer for all He does through it.

The resurrection gives our life meaning (v 58).

The resurrection means that we have boundless hope in death. But it doesn’t mean that we mentally escape here and now. If you are reading this then God still has you here for a reason. Part of what compels us to press on in this life, seeking to glorify God in all we do is the fact that this life isn’t all there is. What happens now does have eternal impact. This is shown in the final verse of the chapter when it begins with a “therefore”. Meaning that the instruction in verse 58 is the natural outpouring of the hope explained in verses 1-57. As C.S. Lewis said “If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.” Yes, it is good that we trust the historical account of the resurrection and grow to understand the hope it provides but if we simply shelve those truths in our mind without it moving our heart to action then we have still fallen short.

Be encouraged that because of the resurrection of Jesus, this life isn’t the end and may that strengthen you to live for Him, in the difficulty of the here and now because one day you will see Him face to face.

Question: Do I treat the resurrection like an intellectual fact only, has it led me to live out what it says in verse 58?

The Ascension

By Wendy Wood

The Ascension shouts “Jesus is Alive!”  The ascension is the most overlooked aspect of the gospel but is vital to our faith.  After His death and resurrection, Jesus took His rightful place at the right hand of God.  As the Exalted One, Jesus continues to uphold and fulfill every aspect of His atoning work. Jesus is alive and actively completing the work that redeems God’s people as His own possession.  We need to remember and meditate on the living Christ in heaven.

There are two amazing truths that I want to focus on in this devotion.

First, Jesus intercedes for us.

“Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through

 him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.”    Hebrews 7:25

Jesus saves to the uttermost!  Uttermost means to the highest degree.  Jesus’ mercy and grace and forgiveness are to the highest degree. It’s not that we are just barely saved or that there is just enough grace to cover our sin.  Jesus’ sacrifice and on-going application of His grace is to the highest degree, more than enough to save us!   Jesus’ death on the cross took our punishment and removed the wrath of God from all who put their faith and hope in Him.  But He also continues His work as our Savior and Lord.  He always lives to make intercession for us.  Jesus prays for us.  Jesus pleads to God the Father on our behalf as our Savior and Lord. Dane Ortlund says, “Intercession is the constant hitting ‘refresh’ of our justification in the court of heaven”.  This is the on-going work of applying the saving grace He provided on the cross.  He is continually applying the grace we need moment to moment as He talks to the Father on our behalf.  He always is praying for us.  

How does this apply to your daily interactions?

• How does this change your thinking in the difficult moments of the day for you?  

• How might it change the way you think and feel about a disappointing conversation or a difficult moment with your spouse, child, boss, or friend?

• How might you respond differently when you are tempted to be angry or anxious?

• How does this encourage you when you are alone?

Second, Jesus is our advocate.

“My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”     1 John 2:1

Jesus not only prays for us all the time, but when we sin, He is also our advocate. Where an intercessor stands between two parties, an advocate takes one party’s side and they approach the other together.  An advocate is someone who speaks in favor of you or recommends you publicly.  Jesus continues the on-going work of salvation every single time we sin.  It’s not that God the Father continues to need His wrath removed from His children, but the heart of Christ (and God the Father) is so for His children that He continues to work on our behalf.  Jesus continues to extend the mercy and grace we need actively throughout our lives.  When we sin, Jesus is right there speaking in favor of us as His own.  We are encouraged to grow in our holiness at the beginning of 1 John 2:1.  “I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.”  But God wants us to truly know His heart for us.  God continues to rescue and move toward us even in our sin.  God the Father continues to provide for us.  When we sin, “we have an Advocate, Jesus Christ the righteous.”  If you are in Christ, you are covered by the Righteous One and He speaks on your behalf.

How does this apply to your everyday life? 

• When you sin, do you realize Jesus is your advocate, right then and there?

• Are you tempted to try to hide sin and not run to His throne for grace and mercy?

• How does this encourage you to repent quickly when you sin and to work to put off that nagging sin in your life?

• How might this change your response when your spouse, child, boss, or co-worker sins against you?

Jesus always lives to make intercession for  you.  And when you sin, Jesus is your advocate.  Celebrate how much Jesus loves you and the way He saves you to the uttermost because He is alive today and forever!

Jesus Prays for Us

John Piper: Solid Joys Devotionals

He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. (Hebrews 7:25)

It says that Christ is able to save to the uttermost — forever — since he always lives to make intercession for us. In other words, he would not be able to save us forever if he did not go on interceding for us forever.

This means our salvation is as secure as Christ’s priesthood is indestructible. This is why we needed a priest so much greater than any human priest. Christ’s deity and his resurrection from the dead secure his indestructible priesthood for us.

This means we should not talk about our salvation in static terms the way we often do — as if I did something once in an act of decision, and Christ did something once when he died and rose again, and that’s all there is to it. That’s not all there is to it.

This very day I am being saved by the eternal intercession of Jesus in heaven. Jesus is praying for us and that is essential to our salvation.

We are saved eternally by the eternal prayers (Romans 8:34) and advocacy (1 John 2:1) of Jesus in heaven as our High Priest. He prays for us and his prayers are answered because he prays perfectly on the basis of his perfect sacrifice.

Posted at: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/jesus-prays-for-us

The God of Heaven Became Human WHAT WE STILL AND WILL BELIEVE

Article by David Mathis

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. (Apostles’ Creed)

Just one brick in the wall of Christianity. That’s what the young pastor claimed about the virgin birth. No need to stand by unnecessary barriers to the Christian faith. If someone takes that brick out, he said, it doesn’t mean the whole wall falls.

Indeed the wall may not fall right away. But who starts taking bricks out of walls he wants to stay standing? The wall may stand for our lifetime, but what about the generations that follow? Why bequeath them a faulty wall? And besides, this pastor, now a former pastor, went on to prove that abandoning the virgin birth is rarely the end of one’s removing of bricks.

It is, in fact, vital that the church affirm, as it has throughout the centuries, that Jesus “was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary” because the Gospels so plainly teach it. Believing in the virginal conception is essential, as believing anything God tells us is essential. He could have brought his Son into the world in a different way, but he didn’t — and he’s told us how he did it. Will we pretend to cry, “Lord, Lord,” and not believe what he says?

“Believing in the virginal conception is essential, as believing anything God tells us is essential.”

The Apostles’ Creed confesses, “We believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.” Who Jesus is — according to the Scriptures, and captured in this time-tested, careful summary of the early church — is not disconnected or unrelated to the virginal conception. Yet before getting to his birth, the creed makes three massive claims about Jesus that may sound so familiar we’re prone to overlook their significance. Consider the simplicity and depth of the church’s long-standing confession of Jesus as “Christ, his only Son, our Lord.”

Jesus, the Christ

“Jesus Christ” — his given name and his messianic title have been associated so closely now for two millennia that we often treat them like his first and last name. “Christ,” of course, is Greek for Anointed One (Messiah in Hebrew). For a thousand years before the first Christmas, God’s people waited for a coming Messiah — the Christ — who would fulfill God’s promises to and through the great king David.

Through the prophet Nathan, God announced to David, “Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever” (2 Samuel 7:16). David’s throne established forever meant either one descendant after another, with the dynasty never ending, or one singular offspring in David’s line ruling forever. David, through divine guidance, came to take it as the latter, and even spoke of a descendant who would be his superior, his lord, to whom God himself would say, “Sit at my right hand” (Psalm 110:1). God would not only make this descendent king without end but, shockingly, also “a priest forever” (Psalm 110:4).

Through Isaiah and the prophets, God’s people grew in their anticipations and longing for this great child to be born, this son to be given, on whose shoulders would be their government and whom the people would call, remarkably, “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6).

Of the increase of his government and of peace
there will be no end,
on the throne of David and over his kingdom,
to establish it and to uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time forth and forevermore. (Isaiah 9:7)

How they might call him “Mighty God” would be discovered in time, but to pine for a long-expected, coming Christ was doubtless to anticipate one who would be human, and no less. Like his forefather David, he would be a human king. To be born in David’s line would mean to be born of a woman. When we attribute Christ to Jesus, while implying far more, we are not expecting anything less than one who is truly man.

FULLY HUMAN

And so he was. He was no spirit pretending or just seeming to be human. As the Gospel of John captures it so memorably, “The Word became flesh” (John 1:14). He was human, all the way down. Born of a human mother, he was swaddled as a frail infant, exposed to danger in this fallen world, grew in strength and wisdom and stature (Luke 2:40, 52), and “learned obedience through what he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8). He ate, drank, and slept — grew tired (John 4:6), became thirsty (John 19:28) and hungry (Matthew 4:2) and physically weak (Matthew 4:11; Luke 23:26). He died (Luke 23:46). And he rose again with a truly human, now glorified, body (Luke 24:39; John 20:20, 27).

“‘Jesus is Lord’ is at once both the most basic and highest of declarations.”

But not just human in body; also in soul. He plainly exhibited human emotions, marveling (Matthew 8:10), being troubled (John 11:33–35; 12:27; 13:21), and being “very sorrowful, even to death” (Matthew 26:38). So also he demonstrated a human mind as he grew in wisdom (Luke 2:52) and acknowledged nescience (Mark 13:32) — and a human will in his lifelong submission to his Father’s (John 6:38), culminating at Gethsemane (Matthew 26:39).

The true and full humanity of the Christ was never in question for his disciples and those who walked with him on the streets of Galilee and Jerusalem. They saw him, heard him, touched him (1 John 1:1). He plainly was nothing less than human. Yet those strictest of monotheists, who would eventually worship this man, came to see, in time, that he was more.

Jesus, God’s Only Son

Christ is one thing; God’s “only Son” is quite another. This Jesus is not only true man, the church came to confess, but also true God. But not as modern cynics might assume. Confessing Jesus as God’s own Son — as God himself in the triunity of the Godhead — was not a project undertaken by his apostles and subsequent generations as their veneration of a great teacher grew out of proportion.

Rather, when this true man rose from the dead, as an objective fact of history, with more than five hundred witnesses (1 Corinthians 15:6), the final piece was now in place. From centuries of prophecy and a life of intimations and shocking revelations came the verdict: this man was not only Christ but indeed truly God, God’s own Son.

FULLY GOD

Long had God himself pledged to come (Psalm 96:11–13; Micah 5:2). Isaiah, as we’ve seen, saw “Mighty God” in this child born and son given. And now, with eyes open by his resurrection, we see it “in all the Scriptures” (Luke 24:27, 44), and on every page in the Gospels, from the litany of unexpected details surrounding his birth, to the surprising authority of his teaching, to the growing whispers with each sign he performed.

The Jewish religion maintained a clear ontological divide between God and man. Only God was Creator; only God deserved worship; only God stilled the seas; only God would judge the world. Yet again and again, the words and acts of Christ demonstrated that this man’s true identity defied the categories. Not only was he manifestly man, but he was demonstrably divine. Somehow the one true God himself had come among them as one of them, as man. He was indeed one — one essence the church would come to say — and also three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Jesus, Our Lord

One towering last mark of the divine identity in the Jewish mind was the title Lord. The first and foremost confession of their faith was that Yahweh is Lord. Yahweh — that holiest of names, God’s own personal, covenantal name, revealed to Moses at the bush. So holy was the name that for fear of mispronouncing it, or somehow dishonoring it with unclean lips, the people would supply Lord (Hebrew adonai) when reading aloud God’s name in the scrolls.

This makes the early attribution Jesus is Lord — by Jews, of all people — so stunning. Jesus is Lord is at once both the most basic and highest of declarations. And not only, against the backdrop of the Hebrew Scriptures, is this a clear and resounding confession of Christ’s deity but also a testimony to his singularity of person.

He is the one Lord of his people. And their one Lord is a singular person. As both truly man and truly God, he is not two persons. Rather, he is one spectacular person with two full and distinct natures, divine and human — as the great creed of A.D. 451 would claim, “without confusion, change, division, or separation.”

One Spectacular Person

This singular person — fully God and fully man, in one spectacular person — is the one who dwelt months in Mary’s womb, and was born in Bethlehem. Unlike any other man, he is God. And unlike any other man, he was “conceived by the Holy Spirit” (Luke 1:31, 35; Matthew 1:18, 20).

God could have chosen to bring his Son into the world in another way. But he didn’t. He saw fit in his unsearchable wisdom, for our joy and for the glory of his Son, to do it the way he did it at that first Christmas. And we marvel. Wayne Grudem captures what many have observed throughout the centuries,

God, in his wisdom, ordained a combination of human and divine influence in the birth of Christ, so that his full humanity would be evident to us from the fact of his ordinary human birth from a human mother, and his full deity would be evident from the fact of his conception in Mary’s womb by the powerful work of the Holy Spirit.

The glory of his virginal conception is no brick to remove and toss away. This is not only a stubborn, objective fact of history and divine revelation, but also a precious glimpse from the Father as to who this Jesus is. He is the Christ, and fully man, and he is God’s only Son, and fully divine, and all in one united, unconfused, and undivided person, who is our Lord.

The servants of their Lord happily receive it, and gladly proclaim it, along with a host of other surprising truths an unbelieving world finds just as unpalatable.

David Mathis (@davidcmathis) is executive editor for desiringGod.org and pastor at Cities Church in Minneapolis/St. Paul. He is a husband, father of four, and author of The Christmas We Didn’t Expect: Daily Devotions for Advent.

Posted at: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-god-of-heaven-became-human