In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. His name
was called Immanuel: God With Us!
Our celebration of the birth of Christ is our celebration of
God with us and we with God! God did not simply dress Himself in our “flesh” to
come and simply dwell in our midst. He is “with us” because is He is
one of us, sharing in our very
humanity! Praise be to God! He is “with us” because He has partaken of our very
nature, sharing in all that we are as human beings (except for sin): our
relationships, our joys, our accomplishments, our surprises; our sorrows, our
aches and pains, our failures, our darkness and yes, even our alienation and
estrangement. He is not simply in our midst—He is with us! He is
one
with us!
And praise God we are with Him! By the Spirit we have been
joined to Him in Christ. We are now partakers of the divine nature, sharing in
the very life of God. In uniting us to Himself, Christ has brought us to participate
with Him through the Spirit in His relationship with the Father. “Our lives are
hidden with Christ in God.”
A great theologian put it this way: “What we have in Christ
in none other than Immanuel, God with
us, but because that is God with us, in our being, our very bones and flesh and
blood, it also means we with God. If we with God is not true, then God with us
is not true. God with us means that
God almighty insists on sharing his divine life with us, on binding himself up
with us in the same bundle of existence and being and life, so that we may
share with him his divine life. That has been once and for all consummated in
Jesus Christ, so that God has for ever and ever committed himself to us and
will no more abandon us than he will abandon himself in Jesus Christ.”
Blessed be the Babe
in the manger: God with us! Amen!
