- Christmas Lesson in the Connect360 unit “God Fulfills His Promises” focuses on Luke 2:4-7; 3:23, 31-34, 38.
Bethlehem is the place where God came to us.
It is a place of mystery and wonder—far removed from the 21st century world we live in.
It is also a place so ordinary it can seem close to everyone.
Angels appear to ordinary people—shepherds. A government gives orders and sets up laws that must be obeyed. A mother and father marvel at the gift of their first-born, a son.
Mary and Joseph got to Bethlehem as a family going about ordinary life.
The magi in Matthew’s gospel got to Bethlehem by a special knowledge and learning about the stars and planets.
The shepherds got to Bethlehem by way of a dramatic heavenly visit.
Whatever path we take to Bethlehem, the child of the manger invites us all. Consider again this incredible story and allow the Spirit of God to herald the good news in your own life.
The incarnation of Christ at Christmas—the Creator becoming one of the created.
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No other world religion can make this claim.
Due to their flawed belief systems, other religions teach ways for humanity to get to God or to appease God. We know all our good works, piled one on top of the other, could never get anywhere near God or what he requires of humanity.
So, God had to come to us. Jesus is not a person in whom humanity can take any pride or credit. Jesus is the person to whom we owe everything, and when we offer him everything, we find we lose nothing.
This God-becoming-human talk can be difficult. The early church struggled with what the incarnation meant.
Even today, this truth of our faith remains a mystery we cannot escape. Nevertheless, the incarnation is a core part of our identity as Christians. We must come to terms with and be able to communicate this truth as clearly as possible.
In the fourth and fifth centuries, the church, through ecumenical councils, penned beliefs about the Trinity and about Christ that have become the foundational pillars of our understanding about God and his relationship with people.
The Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451 had the primary purpose of combating the turmoil and controversy rampant in the church relating to the person of Jesus Christ.
Fast forwarding 1,560 years since the Council of Chalcedon, people today still struggle with who Jesus was and how it all worked together.
Historians and people today never seem to argue or doubt Christ’s humanity or existence; just his nature seems open for debate.
What came out of the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451 continues to be the way we believe and talk about the incarnation of Christ.
The word the bishops, monks, and church leaders used to describe Jesus from then on is a hypostatic union.
Union refers to the joining of the two natures—hypostatic refers to the Son of God, the logos, who became human through the work of the Holy Spirit in Mary.
Therefore, we have a perfect union between human and divine—one integral, eternal, divine person. The incarnation is just that simple and complex at the same time.
Nevertheless, this is what the world unknowingly longs for.
Jesus the incarnate Son of God is who we must accept to be Christians.
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