I'm on board with the idea of the Incarnation. Jesus really is God in the flesh, come to save His people from their sins. We did not reach for Him. He came to us, meeting us where we are in all our unsavoriness and in a messed up world.
That's pretty amazing when you think about it. The Lord of glory, the Creator God, slumming it for us. We're not just talking about a bad section of town. Jesus slummed it in the cesspool of sin, experiencing miseries and wrath and an alienation that we don't have the capacity to get our minds around.
While I do agree with the idea of Jesus' incarnation, I'm not sure what I think about the idea of mine (or yours). Before you accuse me of megalomania, let me explain.
One of the popular tenets of evangelism is that we meet people were they are. We incarnate ourselves in their lives, rather than have them make an appointment to meet us so that we can explain the gospel to them. We not only tell them about Jesus, we show them Jesus.
In a real sense we are Jesus to them, because what they see in us will introduce them to Jesus. It is reminiscent of what God says to Moses in Exodus 4:16, where He tells Moses that Aaron will be Moses' mouth and Moses "shall be as God to him." Christ in us, the hope of glory, shines forth. The idea of our being "living epistles" in 2 Cor. 3 seems to back this up.
But our incarnation is not the same as the Incarnation. Meeting people where we are, being present in their lives as Jesus to carry out the Father's will and to love them and have compassion on them as He did and teach them the way of truth, all feels right and proper. But Jesus' incarnation was miraculous. He veiled His glory. The true and full humanity He donned met people as the unsullied Savior come to seek and save the lost.
People nowadays play loose with the idea of "miracle." The Philadelphia Eagles mounted an improbable, impressive, bordering on impossible comeback in their Giant-killing Dec. 19th "Miracle of the New Meadowlands." But that wasn't really a miracle,not in the technical sense of the term.
Now, Jesus being born of a virgin, as a baby, the infinite having an address--that's a miracle. It was supernatural. But our incarnation--a miracle? I think the answer we have to give is "yes." What happens as we belong to the kingdom of God, born again, in whom Jesus dwells by His Spirit, that has to qualify as a miracle. Because it's not natural; it's supernatural.
Perhaps Peter gives us the best way to reconcile Jesus' incarnation and ours. In 1 Peter 2:21 he says, "For to this you have been called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might walk in His steps." That speaks to the heart of incarnation, suffering for the sake of the gospel. Being with and among people, not being surprised at suffering, but also being expectant of being used as an instrument of redemption.
The disconnect comes a couple of verses later in 1 Peter 2:24: "He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree... By His wounds you have been healed." That we don't do. We are not Jesus to others as their savior, as a sacrificial substitute for them. But that is exactly where we point them.
