Have you ever asked the question, “why do we celebrate the birthday of Jesus Christ so differently from other notable births in history?”
When it is time to honor historical figures’ lives, we generally do not recall their lives as a baby. It is not our custom to post paintings on President’s Day of the infant Abraham Lincoln held in the arms of his mother in a Kentucky log cabin when we recall his life. We generally reflect on Mr. Lincoln’s contribution as an adult as he led our nation during an extremely difficult season.
But why the emphasis on the birth of Jesus Christ?
Why do we take time to reflect upon this child born in a barn to a lower-middle-class couple from a small Israeli town?
Something spectacular was taking place on that day, yet it did not catch the general population’s attention during that time. This infant child’s arrival was unlike any other in history, for God had landed on Earth as a human baby!
CS Lewis called the birth of Jesus, “an interference with Nature by supernatural power!” But He came to us helpless, as a dependent baby, hidden from the breaking news stories of His day.
Why did God choose to come to us this way?
The birth of any child, while an amazing event, is a normal part of the daily human experience. We often look for God’s work in our lives to begin in spectacular and magnanimous ways. His work, however, usually starts small and nearly imperceivable, something as tiny as the birth of a baby. CS Lewis writes in his book Miracles commenting on the birth of Jesus:
He comes down; down from the heights of Absolute Being into time and space, down into humanity; down further still, if embryologists are right, to recapitulate in the womb ancient and pre-human phases of life; down to the very roots and seabed of the Nature He has created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him. One has the picture of a strong man stooping lower and lower to get himself underneath some great complicated burden. He must stoop in order to lift, He must almost disappear under the load before He incredibly straightens out His back and marches off with the whole mass swaying on His shoulders.
This God showed up as a baby to bring us to Himself. However, most missed Him, but “to as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to be called children of God.” [John 1:12]. This is a truly amazing offer given to each of us.
What was He doing here?
I don’t think there are any of us who would not admit that the world is a broken place. The human condition seems to be plummeting towards greater darkness day-by-day. How do we fix what is wrong here? How do we change the human heart? Perhaps the biggest question is, ‘how do I change my heart?’ It seems that the more we try to hold ourselves together with our own strategies, the more quickly our lives seem to unravel.
We were created to know Him. But how can I, a broken human being, have a living relationship with a holy, all-powerful, perfect God. Timothy Keller comments on this in his book Hidden Christmas:
“A God who was only holy would not have come down to us in Jesus Christ. He would have simply demanded that we pull ourselves together, that we be moral and holy enough to merit a relationship with him. A deity that was an ‘all‐accepting God of love’ would not have needed to come to Earth either. This God of the modern imagination would have just overlooked sin and evil and embraced us.”
But He did not overlook my rebellion. He did not demand that I pull myself up by my bootstraps. He came as an infant and grew to be a man on my behalf! He willingly offered Himselffor me [and for you] by giving His life on the cross.
