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The Christmas Solution

Matthew 1: 18 – 25

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 18 Dec, 2005

YOU HAVE all heard it said, “God is far too great, far too exalted, concern himself with me and my petty concerns.” It's one of the great falsehoods. Yet Christmas solves one of the great theological dilemmas. But don’t imagine that this means dry, boring philosophy. It goes to the heart of how God feels about us and how we can respond to him.

People have traditionally viewed God in one of two ways — enmeshed, or disengaged. As theologians prefer to say it, he is either immanent in his creation, or transcendent over it.

Neither solution is satisfactory, because neither has room for a loving God. Only Christianity has a clear sense of a God who is both immanent and transcendent, a God both with us and above us.

Of course, we glimpse a loving God in Judaism. Those great passages about God’s Covenant love for Israel, over and over reveal God’s passion for his people. But the Gospel shifts the focus. It declares that this aspect of God is not just vital, it is in fact God’s essential nature.

God is love

When we call Jesus, Immanuel, we declare that the transcendent God of all creation is the immanent God. Our God is with us forever, to the end of the current age and far, far beyond.

THE IMMANENT GOD

A Hindu friend was severely injured in an accident some years ago. Afterwards, many of his strict Hindu frends told him it was karma, and he must somehow have deserved it. To them, the world and all its events rolls on without care for the people. Some get crushed, some are lifted and carried on.

But this man has taken in some Christian ideas. He says, “No! I believe that God cared for me. I should have been killed in an accident like that. At the very least, I should have been a quadriplegic. But I can walk, I can do much of what I did before. God was looking after me, and I am thankful to him.”

The thing is that strict Hinduism — and many religions like it — conceives of a God who is so tied to the created world that he is unable to confront it.

Imagine the enmeshed God. You look at the most beautiful object in the universe, and this God pops up, waving, and says, “Here I am!” You turn to the sewage farm, and the enmeshed God emerges smiling from the ordure and filth crying out, “Look! I am here, too!”

There is no sense of a loving God in this theology, because there is no sense of a God who hates evil and loves good. How could a God who equally made both Good and Evil choose one and hate the other? How could a God who dwells equally in all things fight on behalf of the poor and the downtrodden against the rich and the exploitative?

Hindu India tolerated the iniquitous caste system for centuries, and still finds it hard to cast off, because the assumption was that this is how God likes it. The same God is in the noblest of people and the most oppressive. Who can oppose a God like that?

The idea of a totally immanent God, the idea of a fully enmeshed God, leaves no room for a God who is passionate about justice and righteousness and love. This is a God who blandly permits everything that exists. At its extreme, this philosophy denies the reality of the physical world, You, I, everything both good and bad — we are mere wraiths inhabiting the dreams of a slumbering deity.

Some forms of Pentecostal and Catholic Christianity drift a little too far in the direction of immanence, though they don’t go nearly as far as Hinduism does. We all need to be wary of such a drift.

THE TRANSCENDENT GOD

At the other extreme are those who emphasise the transcendence of God, those who are wedded to the idea of God’s otherness.

Some strongly Calvinistic Christians head down this path. Their God is separate from the creation. He’s detached from his universe. Theirs is a God who decreed everything, a God who popped his head out of the door, shouted a few instructions, and went back into his room again, never to be seen.

My grandfather fought in Egypt during World War I. It is a hot, dry country. But the soldiers had to learn to work and fight despite the heat.

The Australian Soldiers generally scorned the Egyptians. Of course, there was a fair bit of racism in it. But they coined a term, “Egyptian PT”. Every morning, the soldiers got up early to do their “PT” — their Physical Training. It was tough, and very tiring in the heat. So “Egyptian PT” was when you lay down in a hammock and did nothing.

The weather influenced how the Egyptians lived. But there was also a feeling among Muslim Egyptians that there was no point in fighting, even though they wanted liberty from their Turkish overlords. If Allah wanted the Turks, driven out, he would see to it; if he didn’t, nothing anyone did would change a thing.

The flag–bearer of the transcendent God is Islam. One reason that Islam dislikes Christianity is that they accuse Christians of the sin of shirk — the sin of attributing a partner to God. They can’t conceive of any association between God and any creature.

They see Allah as a being who created everything, but does not relate to his creation.

If the God of Hinduism is too close to his creation to love it, the God of Islam is too far from his creation to really care.

Muslims say that Islam derives its name from the Arabic word for peace. The root of both words is similar. But the true meaning of Islam is, submission.

That is why many Muslims state their intention to do something then add, inshallah — “If God wishes.” Why discuss our plans with Allah? He has already decreed what will happen. We Christians can think of something, we can ask God what he would have us do, we can interact with God about our lives. But Islam says, “Submit to whatever life brings, because that is what God plans.”

Islamic terrorists don’t entirely subscribe to that view. But it is a basic theory, part of why Islam declined so rapidly from its early heights.

A theology without an involved God is a very hopeless thing.

THE GOD OF THE BIBLE

The Bible reveals a third option — a God who is intensely involved, and yet a God who is totally other.

The Bible’s picture of God is summed up in the passage we read:

MATT 1:18 This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹ Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

^{MT 1:20} But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ²¹ She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

^{MT 1:22} All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: ²³ “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” — which means, “God with us.”

Let’s just take this apart.

Here is a normal couple — Joseph and Mary — engaged to be married. Suddenly every plan, every picture they had for life together, is dashed to pieces.

Mary is pregnant.

Think how horrifying this is for both of them. Here’s Mary — maybe 14 years old. Nearly every moment of her day, she is guarded. They want to ensure that she arrives at her wedding a virgin. Something is horribly wrong.

Joseph is a good man, but he knows what life is about. Mary has a story about an angel of the Lord appearing and telling her she would be pregnant, and she is. She says it is the Holy Spirit; but who has ever heard of such a thing?

Yet Joseph sees something in Mary. He thinks he should just be done with her; but her story has a ring of truth about it. He is trying to work out what is the fair and honourable thing to do. And God speaks to him as well.

Someone pointed out recently that Mary had one angelic annunciation: Joseph had four.

Think about this story. Here is God, most intimately involved with human life.

Of course, Christ’s enemies are wrong to suggest, that there was any physical union between Mary and God. God decreed it, the Holy Spirit, the creative Spirit of the Universe, implemented it, and Mary was pregnant.

Then there’s Joseph, struggling with what he should do, God enters his situation, with the reassurance that he should take Mary as his wife, that it would all be OK,

Once again, the God who created all things, breaks into Joseph’s life to direct him. Doesn’t the writer of Proverbs tell us,

In all your ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct your paths?

We are not left alone in this world, if only we are willing to receive what God has for us.

There is a promise, too. The Angel tells Joseph,

²¹ She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

Jesus — Yeshua — means “Yahweh, the Lord, is Saviour.”

Once again, it is a clear statement of a loving God engaged with the lives of his people.

Both Hinduism and Islam retain vestiges of a sacrificial system. Hindus have festivals where animals are sacrificed; Muslims eat halal meat because it is meat sacrificed to Allah.

I have a friend, a Sri Lankan pastor, who finds this fact very useful in presenting the Gospel to Hindus. He tells them that their sacrifices, which reach back into the depths of history, derive from God’s own plan, as an interim measure until Jesus should come.

There’s nothing unbiblical in that! The sacrifices go back millennia before Israel’s sacrifices were given by a God who chooses to interact with his world, a God who made the world, who loves the world, who lovingly plans to redeem the world. The Bible says,

God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to a knowledge of salvation.

Islam is similar. These sacrifices come from God’s ancient provision for the world. But they are all redundant now that Jesus has come.

Within both of these extreme systems lies a kernel of truth, hidden by their philosophies. Within their systems lies a pointer to a God who cares, who redeems his people.

THE LOVING GOD OF THE BIBLE

So Christmas keeps returning us to the truth. We’re talking about the same God who created the heavens and the earth. We’re talking about the same God who could look objectively over all that he has made and say it is very good. We’re talking about that same God who is with us in Jesus.

^{MT 1:22} All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: ²³ “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” -— which means, “God with us.”

To a world longing for the presence of God, this was good, good news. To a world of people surrounded by enemies, to a world of people overcome by fears, this is a powerful word of hope: Immanuel — God with us.

At the core of the Christian message is a God who can stand back and look at the world as it is, who loves good with an unfathomable passion and who can pour out wrath against all evil; yet who came right into the centre of our human existence, who experienced the pain, the squalour and the splendour of humanity. This is a God whose very nature is Love.

Paul wrote about the very same thing in that famous passage in his letter to the Philippians:

PHILIPPIANS 2:5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

^2:6 Who, being in very nature God,

did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,

^2:7 but made himself nothing,

taking the very nature of a servant,

being made in human likeness.

^2:8 And being found in appearance as a man,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to death--

even death on a cross!

^2:9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place

and gave him the name that is above every name,

^2:10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

^2:11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.

In a magnificent sweep he brings the pre–existent Christ into human history as a man, as a slave, as an outsider for our sakes. And then he describes how God lifted his suffering servant to the most exalted place, where all worship, honour and praise are heaped on him through all eternity.

Here we see transcendence and immanence brought together, enmeshment and supremacy in the one God.

Christmas unravels the great theological dilemma: how can a transcendent God, the Creator and sustainer of the universe, be truly present to his creatures, those whom he loves?

He does it most fully and most perfectly in Jesus. He does it not by overwhelming power, but by vulnerability. He places himself in our hands so that we can know him.

CONCLUSION

Have you seen that leaflet, Do you know the Four Spiritual Laws? It talks about the separation we experience from God as a result of sin. It tells us that that is why we fail to experience the abundant life, that Jesus came to bring.

This tract points out that it is our sin which creates the gulf between us and God, and there is nothing we can do to bridge that gulf.

Yet God has acted to build the bridge from his side. In love he flung himself across the gap, the very body of Jesus forming the bridge of grace that brings us to fellowship with the Creator whom we have offended.

Only the message of Christmas, the story of the transcendent God who is with us, only that story has power to save, power to heal, power to redeem. As the song says,

Come to Jesus right now:

He will save you right now — right now!

AMEN

© Peter R. Green 2005. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)