Emmanuel: God-With-Us

God, fully human, fully with us, fully within God’s own created order—as a vulnerable child, at the mercy of authorities who take censuses and kill potential rivals, in inadequate accommodation and facing an uncertain childhood—the incarnation is the great doctrine (teaching) of the church that we celebrate in the Christmas season.

This doctrine is one to blow our minds—God becomes human—the Creator enters the creation—the all-powerful becomes all vulnerable to the vagaries of creaturely existence. God just doesn’t watch us from a distance; God lives our life. God just doesn’t empathise with us, God knows what is to suffer as a mortal being.

The official description of incarnation is found in the Chalcedonian Definition, determined by the Council of Chalcedon (in Asia Minor) in 451 AD. It goes like this:

We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach people to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in humanity; truly God and truly human, of a reasonable [rational] soul and body; consubstantial [co-essential] with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Humanity; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, according to the Humanity; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ; as the prophets from the beginning [have declared] concerning Him, and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself has taught us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalcedonian_Creed)

But when it all comes down to it, such high doctrinal language is saying one thing: God became one of us in Jesus. Everything we experience, Jesus experienced. God was prepared to give up all the perks of divinity (being all-powerful) in order to show us just how much we are loved—in order to stand in utter solidarity with us, God’s creatures.