God With Us
- Joshua Budimlic
- 38 minutes ago
- 9 min read
Without a sturdy, eternal perspective that rests in the perfect will of the Lord, the story of human history swiftly decays into a rather dark one. In his monumental book, Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis considers the legacy of humanity in this way: “All that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—[is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”
Severed from intimate fellowship with a good and loving God, human history is not just dark, miserable, and unintelligible—it is utterly nightmarish. When humanity fell into sin, ushering in the Fall, the entirety of creation fell with us. Our relationship with one another, with the world around us, and with our Creator above all became broken and marred from its original, beautiful purpose. Every blade of grass, the very soil in which it grew, each beast that ate of it and roamed the Earth, down to the very hands that tended the Earth—all became stained and corrupted by the cancer that is sin.
Though in the very beginning, it was not so.
As the newly formed cosmos began to stretch out its infant limbs of white-hot stars and cool ocean depths, “the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature” (Genesis 2:7). Leading up to the sixth day of creation, the Lord surveyed His work sunset after sunset and simply said, “it was good.” However, with the creation of both man and woman, His image-bearers, God proudly declared, “it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). The jewels of God’s handiwork—man and woman, male and female—crowned with the weighty task of reflecting His glory and exercising dominion across the universe, were now complete. It was within this perfect setting, one of righteousness and beauty, that our first parents walked with God “in the cool of the day” (Genesis 3:8).
Unfortunately, we all know what happened next.
Satan entered the Garden, and with him came lies, destruction, and sin. Adam and Eve exchanged fellowship with the immortal God for the empty vessels promised by autonomous mortality apart from God—lies yielding only corruption, sin, and death. The original sin of our first parents condemned humanity to a sure death that wasn’t merely physical, but spiritual also. For though Adam and Eve lived several hundred years after the Fall, they did “surely die” in the end (Genesis 2:17). Apart from fellowship with God for whom we were made, the flesh decays and the soul withers.
But why did God withdraw from Adam and Eve? Why must humanity be reconciled with God to begin with? Because He is holy, holy, holy; utterly good and infinitely above all created things—He cannot entertain fellowship with the mere murmur of sin. The Light has no dealings whatsoever with shadow.
Suddenly and decisively, man’s relationship with his Maker fell into ruin. God was no longer with man, not as He had been. Heaven went dark, and a black curtain of death was strewn across the cosmos. And yet, amidst the encroaching shadow descending upon mankind like a brewing storm cloud, the Light continued to both shine and speak:
“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15).
In the cool of the Garden long ago, God made a promise to mankind. Even as the lights one by one began to go out across the universe, the Lord whispered of a great Light to come: an offspring born of Eve who would crush the head of the serpent and “save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). A way—the Way (John 14:6)—back to God. This is the same Light which now “shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). From the lips of our Lord Jesus Himself—“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12).
Each and every Christmas season, we, as believers, celebrate this great Light which has dawned on mankind. For though we have grown old and become darkened in our understanding of God on account of our sin, the Light yet shines in the abyss, promising life for all who draw near to Him through faith and repentance. The faithful promise of God uttered in Genesis 3:15 found its fulfillment in the very first chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, wherein he writes:
“‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel’ (which means, God with us)” (Matthew 1:23).
God with us.
In 1 Kings 8:27, King Solomon asks, “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!” To which God the Son thunders in response, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me” (Hebrews 10:5).
Behold the mystery of mysteries as the infinite becomes infant: God with us. Marvel as God condescends to man in matchless humility; swaddling Himself not only in simple cloths but flesh itself. Tremble before the mighty truth that the eternal God took on a human nature while still reigning as sovereign King who rules from everlasting to everlasting in light unapproachable.
In the Incarnation, an addition was made to the Divine nature, not a subtraction. It was no mere incarceration of God into flesh, as though even an iota of His glory was diminished. Instead, a glorious Incarnation took place at the birth of our Lord, wherein Christ assumed His rightful headship of the human race as the Second and Better Adam. As the Puritan titan, John Owen, put it: “He became what He was not, but He ceased not to be what He was.”
At Christ’s birth, a glorious reversal of the Fall began to take place. Before God became man in the historical person of Jesus Christ, the material world of flesh was stained by sin and corruption. In the Incarnation, the material world was elevated once again to its rightful place as that which “was very good” (Genesis 1:31)—this reversal marks the firstfruits of a reality which will be completed when Christ returns. In becoming man, God began the weighty process in time which He foreordained from eternity past to bring all things nigh unto Himself in Christ our Lord.
In the Son of God made flesh, the Lord drew near to us in our innumerable weaknesses and temptations with utter perfection and righteousness. As the Holy Spirit says through the author of Hebrews, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).
Jesus’ life here below was no easy road. He was, as Isaiah tells us, a man of sorrows. Not since time began nor thereafter has more evil, slander, pain, and hardship befallen a man more unworthy of the slightest harm than Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Everyone in this day and age rails against the supposed injustice of “bad things happening to good people.” My friends, that only happened once, and He volunteered for it.
He who is holy, holy, holy condescended with wholly perfect love and understanding to the very messy, very human world of broken homes and broken hearts. In His humanity, God the Son draws near to lives made desolate by deep loneliness; to wordless prayers uttered by sighing hearts and groans innumerable. He is well acquainted with the sting of betrayal caused by wayward children and adulterous spouses, and the dread of hospital appointments made black by terminal diagnoses. He sees and knows those who are shattered with grief in large funeral crowds as they stand beside caskets far too small. And He knows intimately—infinitely—all the rest, whether happy or sad, that makes up His body which He bled and died for: the church.
It is in Christ’s humiliation that He serves as our great high priest and advocate before God the Father, ever and intimately aware of the weakness of our frame. For remember that the material world is not corrupt in and of itself; it was corrupted when sin entered the world. God’s embrace of the physical and material in the Incarnation gives us immense comfort amidst the messiness of our own very physical lives here below in a world that for the present time yet remains fallen. A comfort that rings true down to the very soil of the soul; an assurance that Christ will redeem it all, everything.
Christ’s understanding of our profound weakness strikes at the heart of what it means for God to be with us. Because of His human nature, Christ understands our troubles keenly and intimately, better than we know ourselves; and because of His divine nature, He can do something about it. Are you sighing under the weight of sorrow this Christmas? If you are in Christ, be encouraged—God is with you. Are you rejoicing beyond words as you enter this season? If you are in Christ, rejoice further—for God is with you.
And in Christ’s exaltation as the King of kings and Lord of lords, we are reminded that the Incarnation is not an event that has come and gone—as though that were all—but a reality that presently endures and conquers. Though the highest of heavens cannot contain Him, Christ our Lord has made Himself known through His body, the church, in our faithful, Spirit-enabled preaching of the Gospel. “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10).
Oh!—let not the glory of Christmas pass you by, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ. For Christmas is no mere day among many: it represents the turning of an age, wherein God became one of us and began the next stage of His masterplan in setting everything perfect and right. And why did Jesus come? Why, as C.S. Lewis put it, “the Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.”
The Incarnation of God the Son is the preeminent example of what J.R.R. Tolkien would call “a eucatastrophe.” Not a catastrophe (which means a spontaneous, tragic disaster) but a eucatastrophe—indeed, quite the opposite. Tolkien himself coined the phrase because, in his estimation, no word existed grand enough for what he meant. Namely, a massive, sudden turn in fortune from a seemingly unconquerable situation to an unforeseen, gracious, almost supernatural victory. In stark contrast to a catastrophe, a eucatastrophe is the happiest of all outcomes stemming from the very darkest, most evil of circumstances—a great turning of events for good when all seems hopeless.
Jesus dying on the cross at the hands of the very men He made and nursed from infancy was the greatest of all evils. And yet, His death and resurrection brought about a glory no one, man or angel, could have possibly imagined. From the perspective of man, all seemed lost; from the perspective of God, however, all was going exactly according to plan. According to the very plan which He Himself established from before the foundations of the world.
The story that began at Christmas—Jesus’ virgin birth, sinless life of submission to the will of the Father, atoning death for our sins, bodily resurrection, and glorious ascension—secured humanity’s happy ending. A true eucatastrophe. Every evil, injustice, and heartache will not only be undone in the end, but will become untrue in the light of His perfect redemption:
“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18).
Indeed, God has sovereignly determined not just a happy ending for those in Christ, but the happiest of all possible endings. A continuation—no, a great realization!—of that blessed fellowship with the Lord which was severed in the Garden long ago. The perfect realization of God with us. For in the end—or rather, the beginning of a new story, one which will never end and only ever get better—that is precisely what we see:
“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.’”
—Revelation 21:3-4
Photo by Greyson Joralemon, Unsplash
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