Magyar Egyház, 2010 (89. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)
2010-10-01 / 4. szám
6. oldal MAGYAR EGYHÁZ men because he wills it. He will be seen by those he chooses, at the time he chooses, and in the way he chooses, for God can do all things. He was seen of old through the Spirit in prophecy; he is seen through the Son by our adoption as his children, and he will be seen in the kingdom of heaven in his own being as the Father. The Spirit prepares man to receive the Son of God, the Son leads him to the Father, and the Father, freeing him from change and decay, bestows the eternal life that comes to everyone from seeing God. As those who see light are in the light sharing its brilliance, so those who see God are in God sharing his glory, and that glory gives them life. To see God is to share in life. The Real Meaning of Christmas What the Incarnation means for us What is the true meaning of Christmas? Every year as the Christmas season comes around, we hear a great deal about the real meaning of Christmas. But it is not always clear just what that real meaning is. For some people, the true meaning of Christmas is the warmth and love of our families, a celebration of the home. For others, the real meaning of Christmas is love for other people — “Peace on earth, good will toward men.” And of course, many Christians think the true meaning of Christmas is that it is the birthday of Jesus. All these things, and especially the celebration of Jesus’ birth, have something to do with Christmas. But the full meaning of Christmas is something bigger - bigger than the love of our families or good will toward men, even bigger than remembering the birthday of Jesus. For when we celebrate Christmas, we are celebrating one of the greatest truths of our faith - the incarnation. We are not just celebrating the fact that some 2,000 years ago Jesus of Nazareth was bom; we are celebrating the far greater fact that in Jesus of Nazareth God himself became man. Most of us are familiar with the word ‘incarnation’ and know that it has something to do with Jesus’ being both God and man. But many of us have not reflected on the full meaning of this doctrine and on the consequences it has for us. Among Christians today you can hear a lot of strange things said about the incarnation. One common idea is that the Word became flesh to show us that we really ought to be flesh. The meaning of the incarnation, according to this way of thinking, is that we ought to be as much flesh as we can possibly be. I do not know about everyone else, but 1 at least do not feel that 1 need to become any more flesh. Nor does anyone else I know really need to become more flesh. We human beings were bom flesh. We do not need to do anything in order to become flesh — whether flesh in the good sense or in the bad. Some of the early Christian teachers in the Greekspeaking world spoke of the incarnation in quite different terms that I believe come much closer to what the scripture itself says. They said that the Word became flesh - God became man - so that we might become God. That is a spectacular statement and could easily be misunderstood. But compared to the modem notion, I think it gets us a lot closer to the truth. God did not become flesh so that we could leam to be flesh. God became flesh so that we might become more like God. Jesus did not come into the world in order to tell us, “You’re all great just as you are. Just do more of the same.” Jesus came to change us. He came to give us a life that we could not achieve of our own flesh. How does the incarnation make us more like God? To begin with, we should understand that the incarnation is not simply a call to imitate God. The Word did not become flesh just to give us a model of godlike behavior. Of course, if we are going to become like God we have to imitate certain elements of God’s character as they are revealed to us in Jesus - his love, patience, strength, perseverance, and so on. But the incarnation means more for us than that. The truth is that God became man in order to make us godlike. He came to give us something that would make us like himself. God became man because we did not have it in ourselves, in the weakness of our flesh, to become like God. St. Paul explained what the incarnation means for us when he wrote to the Colossians, “For in Christ the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness of life in him who is the head of all rule and authority” (Col. 2:9-10). In other words, everything that is in God, the fullness of deity, is in Jesus of Nazareth. And now we, through Jesus, have come into the fullness of the life of God. We have been filled with what is in Jesus. Not that we become the second person of the Trinity incarnate; not that we have the omniscience or omnipotence of God. There is a difference between us and Jesus, a difference we know only too well. Yet Jesus shares with us what he himself is. He shares with us his divine life. We may find all this easier to understand in terms of another idea the New Testament gives us: God became man in Jesus Christ, and as a result of that incarnation God has poured out his Holy Spirit on us to give us the power actually to live the life of God. He has poured out his Spirit so that there may be a body of people, the body of Christ, who truly live like God himself. Other people should be able to see us and say, “Here is a type of human being different from all other human beings. Here is a kind of life that no other human has.” What they should be able to see in us is the very life of God himself. The Word of God becoming flesh and dwelling among us The Gospel of John states these same truths in another way: “The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were bom, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:9-13). That passage describes the incarnation - the Word of God becoming flesh and dwelling among us. He was not recognized by most people, the passage tells us. He was rejected even by many of his own chosen people. But we who do receive him receive a new life, a life as children of God. We have been bom in a different way, not by natural means but by the Spirit of God. We have been bom with a life that puts us on a different plane than our natural life. That is an extraordinary truth. How many times have we heard those first verses of the gospel of John? How many times have we heard about God becoming man and our becoming children of God? It is all so big that we almost stop thinking about it. If we do think about it, we think of it as something that happens in some “spiritual” world, not here on earth where we live our normal life. Here we have enough to do, just trying to get dinner on the table for the family, or trying to get to work in the morning, or wondering when to do the Christ
