On this Christmas day, I think it would be good to reflect for just a moment on

the Incarnation. God became man and took on human flesh. This is a great theological

wonder and mystery.

Malcolm Muggeridge wrote this to describe the importance of the birth of Christ.

“Thanks to the great mercy and marvel of the Incarnation, the cosmic scene is resolved

into a human drama. A human drama in which God reached down to relate Himself to

man and man reaches up to relate himself to God. Time looks into eternity and eternity

into time, making now always and always now. Everything is transformed by this

sublime drama of the Incarnation, God’s special parable for man in a fallen world”

God reached down to us by sending the second person of the Trinity to earth to

become part of the human drama and human dilemma. God stepped out of eternity into

time to become part of the human community. What an incredible act of love and mercy.

C.S. Lewis explains that God had to come down that He might lift us up. “In the

Christian story God descends to reascend. He comes down; down from the heights of

absolute being into time and space, down into humanity. . . . But he goes down to come

up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him.”

God did not just come to dwell among us and comfort us. He came that He might

raise us up through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Although we

celebrate the birth of Christ today, we also look to the death and resurrection of Christ

that we celebrate at Easter. Romans 5:8 proclaims: “God shows his love for us in that

while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” 1 Peter 2:24 says that Christ “bore our

sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for

righteousness: by whose stripes you were healed.”

One this Christmas day, we should pause to reflect on why Christ came to earth

and what He did for us on the cross.