BLOG 12/2/13. INCARNATION: GLORY AND EXCELLENCE.

BLOG 12/2/13. INCARNATION: GLORY AND EXCELLENCE

Picking up on my last Blog … Advent and Christmas have such huge implications for you and me. They are, ultimately, not about the baby Jesus or about the manger and wise men (though that was the entrance drama), but about God’s own invasion of his rebel humanity, and doing it in the flesh and blood person of Jesus. It is about God inaugurating his New Creation—his Kingdom. It is about God reconciling the world to himself through the blood of his Son.

But for us, it doesn’t even end with such a comprehension of the drama of the Word made flesh in Jesus, and dwelling among us. That joyous reality begins to get closer to home when we tune-in to what Jesus was saying at Caesarea Philippi (Matthew 16:16-19), when he responded to Peter’s dawning understanding, by announcing that it was out of this divine purpose that he, Jesus Christ, was going to call out a people—was going to built his church—and that it would be his instrument of destroying the heart of the rebellion, the “gates of hell.” It is not for naught that the church is also referred to as: the body of Christ. Jesus’ purpose was precisely that, namely, that his own incarnation as the Son of God, would be ongoing in his own incarnation in his people. His people are to be the flesh and blood demonstration of God’s New Creation right in the midst of this broken, alienated, often-traumatic human community—and Jesus isn’t talking about attending church meetings.

Paul will say to the Colossian Christians that in Christ “the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled with him, who is the head of all rule and authority” (Col. 2:9-10). Elsewhere the apostle reminds his readers that it is the purpose of God that they be recreated into the image of Christ. The incarnation of God continues in the people Christ calls to be his own: to live their daily lives: in Christ. Our Christian calling (vocation) is not to some profession or occupation—it is our calling to Christ, to be in him, to be his ongoing incarnation. We have come up with a whole subverted concept of vocation, alas!

Face it: This is humanly impossible. Absolutely! Our calling is humanly impossible. The church (as it is intended to be) is humanly impossible. Our daily incarnation is humanly impossible. So, where do we go with that?

For our purposes here, let me refer you to a most remarkable concept of our calling, our incarnation. Here it is: “[God’s] divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that them through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire” (II Peter 1:3-4).

Our calling is to be the demonstration of God’s glory and excellence, and to live out such in the 24/7 realities of life and work, in unemployment lines and concentration camps, Wall Street or Walmart—you name it. Wherever your daily lot finds you, it is there that you are called to be the incarnation of God, “the radiant display of the divine nature” (borrowed from Gregory Boyd’s definition of ‘glory’). This is where it counts.

If we miss this ultimate design of God’s incarnation in Jesus at this Advent-Christmas season … then we’ve missed the meaning of the whole celebration. “O holy child of Bethlehem, be born in us today …” Glory and excellence! Yes, amen!

About rthenderson

Sixty years a pastor-teacher within the Presbyterian Church. Author of several books, the latest of which are a trilogy on missional ecclesiology: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH, then, REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE, then THE CHURCH AND THE RELENTLESS DARKNESS. Previous to this trilogy was A DOOR OF HOPE: SPIRITUAL CONFLICT IN PASTORAL MINISTRY, and SUBVERSIVE JESUS, RADICAL FAITH. I am a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, a graduate of Davidson College, then of Columbia and Westminster Theological Seminaries.
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