Matthew 2:13-23
“I’ve finally worked out why Christmas is so popular,” announced the sceptic to the preacher, at the end of a carol service.
“It’s because Christmas is all about a baby. And a baby threatens no one.”
Try telling that to King Herod!
A man wracked with insecurity. On hearing from the Magi that a new king had been born, he made up his mind to eliminate the threat.
Joseph, however, was warned by an angel. …
In words immortalised in the Authorised Version, the angels who appeared to the shepherds at the time of the birth of Jesus praised God, and said:
Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth peace,
Good will toward men.
It’s a lovely thought, and captures so much of what we all long for. What’s not to like about ‘peace on earth’ and ‘good will toward men’? It’s ‘the true meaning of Christmas’, isn’t it? If only we could do ‘peace’ and ‘good will’ all year round, the world would be a much better place.…
James K. Bruckner writes:
‘The tabernacle provided, for the first time since Eden, a place for the visible presence of God in the midst of the people.’
He adds: ‘the Gospel of John provides a window that helps Christians interpret the significance of the tabernacle in relation to the incarnation.’
Consider John 1:14-15a – ‘The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory.’
Extracts from The Fountain of Life, by John Flavel. Ch. 18, Christ’s Humiliation – In His Incarnation.
“And being found in fashion as man, he humbled himself, and became obedient to death, even the death of the cross.” Phil. 2:8.
Here is the sun almost under total eclipse. He that was beautiful and glorious, Isa. 4:2, yea, glorious as the only begotten of the Father, John 1:14, yea, the glory, James 2:1, yea, the splendor and brightness of the Father’s glory,” Heb.…
The Virgin Birth (more precisely, the virginal conception) is attested in a number of ways in Matthew and Luke:-
(1) The sharp contrast between the long series of verses that use “begot” and the statement that Joseph was “the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born” (Mt. 1:16) clearly implies that a man was not involved in the procreation of Jesus.
(2) Mt. 1:18 states, “Before they came together she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit.”…
It is one thing to affirm that Christ was (and is) both human and divine. It is another to seek to understand how these truths relate to one another.
Peter Lewis has some helpful comments on our belief that the incarnate Christ did not cease to be divine.
According to John 1:14, ‘the Word became flesh’. ‘However,’ writes Lewis, ‘we are not to think of the Son as leaving a sort of gap in the Godhead, a vacancy in the Trinity, at his coming down to earth as a man. …
Grudem (Systematic Theology, p541f) outlines a number of reasons. What follows is based on his discussion.
Whereas the Christian doctrine of the incarnation first came under threat from docetism, which denied that Christ had a real human body, Apollinarianism soon followed, with its denial that that he had a real human psychology.
Apollinaris was, by all accounts, a deeply spiritual man whose theology was in many respects perfectly orthodox. But he was condemned as a heretic by the Council of Constantinople in 381. He taught that although Christ took on a human body, he did not take on a human mind. …
The term ‘docetism’ (from the Greek dokeo, meaning ‘to seem’) covers a range of speculations concerning the person of Christ. The common feature of the Docetists was an insistence that God could not become man.
At the time of the early church, its main representatives were Cerinthus, Ebion, Marcion and Valentinus. Their teachings were examined and rebutted by men such as Irenaeus (Against Heresies) and Tertullian (On the Flesh of Christ; Against Marcion).…
