Page 73 - Lift Him Up (1988)

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The Birth of Christ an Unfathomable Mystery, March 2
The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him
Immanuel.
Isaiah 7:14
, NIV.
We cannot understand how Christ became a little, helpless babe. He could have
come to earth in such beauty that He would have been unlike the sons of men.
His face could have been bright with light, and His form could have been tall and
beautiful. He could have come in such a way as to charm those who looked upon
Him; but this was not the way that God planned He should come among the sons of
men.
He was to be like those who belonged to the human family and to the Jewish
race. His features were to be like those of other human beings, and He was not
to have such beauty of person as to make people point Him out as different from
others. He was to come as one of the human family, and to stand as a man before
heaven and earth. He had come to take man’s place, to pledge Himself in man’s
behalf, to pay the debt that sinners owed. He was to live a pure life on the earth,
and show that Satan had told a falsehood when he claimed that the human family
belonged to him forever, and that God could not take men out of his hands.
Men first beheld Christ as a babe, as a child....
The more we think about Christ’s becoming a babe here on earth, the more
wonderful it appears. How can it be that the helpless babe in Bethlehem’s manger is
still the divine Son of God? Though we cannot understand it, we can believe that
He who made the worlds, for our sakes became a helpless babe. Though higher than
any of the angels, though as great as the Father on the throne of heaven, He became
one with us. In Him God and man became one, and it is in this fact that we find
the hope of our fallen race. Looking upon Christ in the flesh, we look upon God in
humanity, and see in Him the brightness of divine glory, the express image of God
the Father (
Selected Messages 3:127, 128
).
In contemplating the incarnation of Christ in humanity, we stand baffled before
an unfathomable mystery, that the human mind cannot comprehend. The more we
reflect upon it, the more amazing does it appear. How wide is the contrast between
the divinity of Christ and the helpless infant in Bethlehem’s manger! How can we
span the distance between the mighty God and a helpless child? And yet the Creator
of worlds, He in whom was the fullness of the Godhead bodily, was manifest in the
helpless babe in the manger. Far higher than any of the angels, equal with the Father
in dignity and glory, and yet wearing the garb of humanity! Divinity and humanity
were mysteriously combined, and man and God became one. It is in this union that
we find the hope of our fallen race (
The Signs of the Times, July 30, 1896
).
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