God’s Incredible Journey

The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means “God is with us.”   Matthew 1:23

Your life began when you were conceived in your mother’s womb. Before that moment, you did not exist. God used the union of your father and mother to bring you into being. Before that you were not, and without that you would not have been.

With Christ it is different. His life did not begin in the womb. Speaking of Jesus’ birth, the apostle Paul said, “He was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor” (2 Corinthians 8:9). Before he was born in the stable, God the Son already enjoyed the most marvelous life. That’s something you cannot say about any other person.

The Son of God was always there: “In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). This “Word” is the Son of God who took human flesh and was born of the Virgin Mary. The one who has always shared the Father’s glory came to us as a gift to the human race. He did not arise from us by the union of a father and a mother.

This is important because only God can reconcile people to God. The Old Testament was full of prophets, priests, and kings who were men and women just like us. They themselves shared in the problem of human sin, so they were in no position to rescue us from sin. The only way we could be delivered from sin was if someone came to us from outside the human race.

Imagine an air–sea rescue. You are in a dinghy out on the open sea, and you need to be rescued. There’s a rope in the dinghy, but you cannot use it to climb up to the helicopter. Salvation has to come from the top down. The rescuer is lowered down with a winch. By embracing him, you are lifted up to the position from which he came.

Salvation has to come from above. Only God can save. Christ has come to us on an incredible journey from heaven to earth, and in him, God is reaching out to every person on this planet, including you.

For further reading, see Philippians 2