The Mystery of the Incarnation

The Adoration of the Shepherds – Matthias Stom, c. 1640.
North Carolina Museum of Art. Public domain.

The Mystery of the Incarnation has always been problematic. It makes no sense for the Eternal, Immortal God to take on flesh and humble himself to become one of his creatures. It makes no sense unless one begins to grasp the incredible love of God. It is only in understanding how much God loves us and the price he was willing to pay so that we might spend eternity with him that we can begin to understand John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son…” Yet even in understanding God’s love for us, it is still hard to get our minds around the fact that Jesus is fully God and fully man at the same time. How can that be? Quite frankly, it is a mystery that we will never fully understand and is best accepted through the eyes of faith.

The early church wrestled with this mystery. Some even thought that Christ was an “inferior” being. After all the angels were purely spiritual beings, and Jesus was some sort of hybrid between human and spiritual. Surely, the sacrificial system the prophets revealed from of old had to be superior to anything Jesus could offer. Certainly, a system revealed from God had to be better than a sacrifice offered by a carpenter’s son from Nazareth of all places.

This brings us to the lesson from chapter 10 of Hebrews that we read on the fourth Sunday of Advent this year. This passage speaks of the superiority of Christ and the perfect sacrifice he offered because of the mystery of his incarnation. The passage says that the old sacrificial system was broken because it offered the blood of bulls and goats. It says that this is impossible to take away sin and its penalties. Bulls and goats had not committed the sins that needed forgiveness. Humanity had, and so only the blood of a human could pay the penalty for human sin. That is why it was necessary for the sacrifice to be fully human. And yet one could not offer a sinful sacrifice. If the sacrifice was to be perfect, the offering needed to be perfect. And since only God is perfect and sinless, the sacrifice needed to be divine. The mystery of the Incarnation is the only solution to our sin.

Christ, in his holiness as the “New Adam,” succeeds where the Old Adam failed. The Old Adam was disobedient. He did not do the Father’s will. Jesus, on the other hand, was obedient to the end, while being tempted in every way as we are. The Hebrew passage reminds us that “God takes no pleasure in burnt offerings and sin offerings,” because they are offered by disobedient men. But Christ’s perfect offering of his own blood was acceptable because it was offered in obedience. On the night he was handed over to suffering and death he cried out, “Not my will, but thine be done!” This point is so important that it is repeated twice in our passage from Hebrews, “See, God, I have come to do your will.” —Hebrews 10:7 and 10:9  Because the Word became flesh in the Incarnation, a fully perfect human was able to offer a perfect sacrifice of obedience for the sins of the whole world. His sacrifice was so perfect that it was, “Once and for all.” This phrase is also repeated twice in today’s passage. I love that we repeat it in our Eucharistic Liturgy every Sunday, “By the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary he became flesh and dwelt among us. In obedience to your will, he stretched out his arms upon the cross and offered himself once and for all.” These two sentences have become so familiar to us that in some ways they have lost their mystery and power, and yet they clearly tie the mystery of the Incarnation to the perfect offering of Christ’s obedience.

The bottom line is that in these words we celebrate the Incarnation every Sunday. We celebrate Christmas every week. We also remember Good Friday every Sunday and remind ourselves of the once and for all perfect sacrifice of obedience that Jesus made for us. But to me, even more mysterious than the mystery of the Incarnation, and more mysterious than Christ’s perfect atonement for our sin, is the mysterious love of God. I am broken and brought low by God’s infinite love for me a sinner.

“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” —Romans 8:38-39

Merry Christmas,

†Bishop Mark