This world is a great sculptor’s shop. We are the statues and there’s a rumor going around the shop that some of us are someday going to come to life.

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity

In between the desserts, traveling, family, Christmas lights, and baby Jesus figurines everywhere, I find myself getting consumed by the consumerism of the holiday season. As much as I appreciate the family time and break from academic discourse on Thermodynamics and Gibbs free energy equations, I can’t help but be cliché and ask what the real meaning of Christmas is. Typical theology major, right?

Christmas celebrates the incarnation of the eternal Son of God. This should not be taken lightly for two reasons: 1) magnanimity of the sentence and 2) the implications of this sentence.

As much as I enjoy your favorite rendition of “Deck the Halls’, lets strap some theological boxing gloves to deck the heretic for this one.

“God from God, light from light…”

Christmas is significant because not only is a child born, but this child is supposed to be the Son of God and this Son of God is supposed to be as Godly as God the Father?

It took nearly three centuries of heretical accusations, doctrinal clarification, and one infamous slap from St. Nicholas himself to finally have this:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God All things came to be through him and without him nothing came to be… (v. 1-3)

And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, ad we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son full of grace and truth. (v. 15)

-Gospel of John, NAB

 

Be understood formally as this:

We believe in one God, Father, all-sovereign, maker of all things seen and unseen; and in one Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, begotten from the Father as only-begotten, that is, from the substance of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, homoousios with the Father, through whom all things came into existence…

-Creed of the Synod of Nicaea, 325 AD

Some of the earliest discussion of the nature of Christ began 150 AD by Justin Martyr. Questions on the nature of Christ and what this whole ‘Christian’ thing really meant were being asked from the beginning. It was a significant question, and therefore a big deal for everyone. Early Christian apologists, bishops, and church fathers took years to fully define and clarify what the life of Jesus meant for humanity. And it was answering this question that brought one of the many forms of Christianity to be called Proto-Orthodox, or the forerunner of the organized, structured Christian community that produced the Creed above.

The creed formally declared that the Son of God, is God. The Son of God is eternal, begotten not created. The Son of God is made of the same Godly stuff as God the Father is. The Son of God is not a creature, but identified as the Creator. The Son of God then became a man, Jesus Christ. The Son of God did not enter a human, but became a human.

But the Church additionally clarified this a century later to clarify that Jesus is fully God and fully Man. Language is important. He is fully God and fully man:

…one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ…

Chalcedonian Creed of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, 451 AD

Christianity was a messy thing in its early years. Throughout the Mediterranean, there were communities with their own set of scriptures, traditions, and interpretations. So it is quite astonishing that this Christian phenomenon and its future existence all hinged on the identity of a single infant child. It could be called a Christmas miracle in itself.

“For us men and our Salvation came down…”

But what does this mean? Why is it significant that God the Son became incarnated? Why is baby Jesus so important?

CS Lewis put it very poetically in his book Mere Christianity:

The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.

It was not enough for God to give covenants and prophets, judges and a detailed Mosaic law to His people. It was not enough to give animals sacrifices for the remediation of sins. Though the people may have lived, they were spiritually dead.

The created sons of God were just that, created. It was not enough to be just created. No, no, God had another plan. CS Lewis continues:

It is just this; that the business of becoming a son of God, of being turned from a created thing into a begotten thing, of passing over from the temporary biological life into timeless ‘spiritual’ life, has been done for us. Humanity is already ‘saved’ in principle…We have not got to try to climb up into spiritual life by our own efforts; it has already come down into the human race.

God becoming man in Christ opened the ultimate gift of life, of completion, of loving and being loved. The eternal Creator has entered into His own creation for its sake. We have access to God Himself, the source of everything.

If we will only lay ourselves open to the one Man in whom it was fully present, and who in spite of being God, is also a real man, He will do it in us and for us.

Beyond the Starbucks seasonal coffees, beyond the excitement of wrapping and unwrapping presents, or a white Christmas, God has come to conquer sin, spiritual death, and our selfishness in a small, vulnerable, baby.

What a time to be alive.

So let’s be consumed by this reality. It is not something, but someone that will satisfy that hunger for purpose and life. Material goods, and good company can only do so much. Christmas commemorates new life in us.

This world is a great sculptor’s shop. We are the statues and there’s a rumor going around the shop that some of us are someday going to come to life.

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity