Articles
The Mystery of the Incarnation
Speaking proleptically, the Mother of our Lord foretold in the Magnificat that her Son would puts things to rights in this world by upending most of it: “...he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty” (Luke 1:52-53). The Incarnation is the prime example of God’s tendency to reverse people’s roles, which Paul describes this way: “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God” (1 Cor. 1:27-29, emphasis mine).
Of the things which the Incarnation upended, not least was our understanding of the divine nature. Christ humbled himself by becoming human (Phil. 2:5-7), a humiliation which we struggle to understand. We simply are in no position to understand how far our Lord condescended in His Incarnation.
Confining all of the glory and power of Almighty God in the form of an infant causes strange things to happen. This is why we call the Incarnation a mystery. We do not understand how the Incarnation worked, but we confess by faith that it did work. Who can comprehend Almighty God (Isaiah 40:13)? In this vein, I present a handful of ways in which the Incarnation upended (and continues to upend) our understanding of God’s nature.
Who can understand the mystery of the Lord’s conception? How is it that the Son of God, coeternal with the Father (John 1:2) could become man born of a woman, few of days and full of trouble (Job 14:1)? Yet Mary held in her womb He was too great for “heaven and the highest heaven,” according to Solomon (1 Kings 8:27). It was a holy conjoining of divine and mortal that only God could accomplish. Angels attempted to do as much in the beginning, but it was an abomination that condemned the offending angels to gloomy darkness (Gen. 6:1-4; Jude 6-7). Yet the Holy Spirit came over Mary and produced, not an abomination leading to condemnation, but the consolation of Israel and Savior of the world (Luke 1:68-75).
Consider how lowly the Lord became for our sakes! The help of Israel was helpless. Craig Roberts captures the strangeness of the Incarnation in the final stanza of his hymn, “Immanuel, God With Us”: “Hands that lighted the evening stars / reached out for comfort in Mary’s arms.” The Word of God (John 1:1) became an infant who knew no words. Imagine the Lord to whom Israel cried (Ex. 2:23) crying out to His mother. The poet William Blake saw great significance in the Lord’s crying. Addressing his own baby, he writes, "Sweet babe in thy face, / Holy image I can trace. / Sweet babe once like thee, / Thy maker lay and wept for me. / Wept for me for thee for all, / When he was an infant small."
Mary swaddled Him who swaddled the seas (Job 38:8-9), then laid Him in manger who said, "Heaven is my throne, and earth my footstool” (Isaiah 66:1). The God who breathed life into Adam now received life from Mary’s breast.
The Lord’s childhood is also a mystery full of divine irony. The purest and most holy God had to be purified and dedicated (Luke 2:22-24). In light of this, perhaps we can better understand John the Baptist’s confusion when Jesus came to him asking to be baptised (). He who led Israel out of Egypt had to flee to Egypt to escape Israel (Matt. 2:13-15).
The Lord’s upbringing also presents us with a host of mysteries. How is it that the Lord who knows everything should be taught anything? Yet he was. He who built the world was taught how to build by Joseph. He who was with Wisdom in the beginning (Prov. 8:22) grew in wisdom. He who knew no bounds grew in stature (Luke 2:52). He to whom every knee shall bow submitted to Joseph and Mary (Luke 2:51).
The conception, birth, and upbringing of Jesus show us that we cannot subject Almighty God to human understanding. It is we who bow before Him, and not the other way around. The birth narratives of Matthew and Luke don’t invite us to try to figure the Incarnation out. They invite us instead to rejoice at the consolation of Israel and the salvation of the world. They invite us to bring out our richest gifts and lay them worshipfully at the foot of the manger.
