GOD LEARNED OBEDIENCE

What truly is the meaning of Christmas? When you boil everything down, when you are done analyzing all the side stories, what is that one truth that explains the central, amazing, breathtaking, truth about Christmas? The answer comes only when you look at the babe in the manger and understand who He is. Do this and you have finally cracked open the nut of Christmas and discovered its true essence. And what is the true essence of Christmas? We answer in one word: IMMERSION, theologians call it INCARNATION. Now it is self-evident that God must be separate from His creation. A being cannot both create something and be created at the same time. Sorry pantheism. The creation is not God and God is not the creation. To be sure, God as the Creator can change the creation at His whim … but only from the outside. His power can move mountains and can suspend the laws of nature. He can influence kangaroo courts to convict an innocent man. But God cannot be part of His creation and change it from within while at the same time being its Creator. God cannot be the Creator and the created at the same time and the same relationship. That is inviolable logic. Thus, it is impossible for God to change the internal makeup of rational beings from within. That would require a human mind, a human soul. God can move man externally, but He cannot change man internally. In order for God to change mankind internally (which He always promised to do) He must do it in a way that is different from the way a chess player moves pieces. A chess master can move pieces at his will but his sway over the pieces changes nothing about the nature of the pieces themselves. A rook is a rook no matter where the master moves him. Let’s say, however, the chess master wanted to change the nature of the rook, that is, he wanted to change how the rook feels, or change what the rook desires to do or not do? To accomplish this the chess master must take on the nature of “rook-ness.” He must experience “rook-ness” in order to change the essential nature of a rook. Simply put he must become like the rook in order to change the rook. So now let’s turn to God’s plan to change the very nature of a sinful human race. Let’s say He desired to change the way men thought and dreamed and acted? In order to do that He must truly get under the skin -into the very soul - of mankind. He must experience “man-ness.” For this to happen God must enter humanity. That is, He must IMMERSE Himself into mankind. He must experience INCARNATION (becoming flesh).

This idea of immersion, however, presents all kinds of theological problems. God cannot “de-God” Himself to become a man, as was true of the “gods” of ancient Greece. God can only become a man while remaining God. But is this possible? Can God take on the attributes of man without violating His attributes as God? Can God become finite and yet continue to be infinite? Can God become a mortal and yet be the immortal God? These questions racked the the brains of the early church fathers and they continue to stretch our imaginations today. In answering these knotty questions the church rose to the challenge in a mighty way. In the 5th Century she developed the biblically grounded idea that God became a man in Jesus yet in doing do He retained the attributes of true deity. According to the Council of Chalcedon these natures existed in one person “inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, and inseparably.” That is simply an ancient way of saying that each nature operated in its own realm while neither swallowing up or being swallowed up by the other. But did this dual nature make Jesus two persons? The church answered, not at all. The ancients emphatically said that Jesus was one person, with one mind, one will and one seat of emotion. In saying this the church was coming face to face with the profound mystery of Christmas. The baby in the manger was truly God and truly man and yet was one person. Mysterious and inexplicable? Yes. Illogical? The church, following Scripture, said no.

This is what Christmas is all about. That lowly babe in that humble manger is in all points God. He is also in all points man. He had a truly human mother, with human genes, with human emotions, with human limitations, with human … well, with human everything. He is also the eternal God and thus has all the fullness of deity. As such Jesus has all the intrinsic attributes of humanity and all the intrinsic attributes of deity. But He was but one person and shall always be one person. At this point questions fly like paint ball spray. As God, He can do all things. As man, He cannot do all things. As God, He is completely independent. As man, He is dependent. These paradoxes cannot be reconciled by the sheer analysis of the mind. Only when we look at the life of the God-man as painted in picture form in the gospels can we see the union of these two natures written in majestic calligraphy. When we read the gospels we see what the immersion of God into humanity looks like. We see two natures, divine and human, coming together in a picturesque and complementary unity. When you read the gospels you sense you are reading about someone totally unlike you and yet someone totally like you. Divine and human. The union of these two natures assuages our souls yet also makes us feel uneasy. Jesus is like us but He is different. We both love Him and fear Him. But we don’t exactly know why.

As we look at the text in Hebrews 5:8 we see the biblical writers coming face to face with this mystery. It says that Christ “learned obedience.” As God, Jesus need not learn anything. But as a child He must learn His ABC’s like every other child. As a young man He must learn to square up a table, as any carpentry apprentice might do. In Jesus God takes upon Himself a human nature and does very human things. So He must learn obedience. At the same time He remains God. He walks on water.

In Jesus Christ God immersed Himself into our world that He might change us from within. As a man He identified with our humanity, perfectly. As God He had the power to fix humanity, perfectly. As man He could identify with our lowly bodies. As God He could transform those lowly bodies into perfect bodies. And it was at the cross that these two natures conspired together to effect one great salvation. Jesus died as a true man so that He might die the death we deserved. He took our place. He was our substitute. As God He offered up a perfect and eternal sacrifice to the Father that was sufficient to save every last human being and infinitely more. His death was infinitely more valuable than any human death could be. The humanity of Christ and the deity of Christ were both necessary for the work of saving souls.

This immersion of God into man’s experience is the essence of Christmas. The union of the human and the divine is the one truth that ought to make men universally rejoice. This divine immersion into the human has forever changed the world. It is only when a person has not yielded to the mystery of the Christmas story that there can be no true rejoicing in Christmas. Nor can there be any true change. Those who can’t see the sublime mystery of God being immersed into our world can only look at the manger with a sentimental affection. But they miss the very essence of Christmas. On the other hand, those who have embraced and believed the immersion of God into our world are the most blessed among men and they truly exult in the essence of Christmas. God immersed Himself into our world and learned obedience when we had none. Believe in this mystery and be saved.