When God decided to become human, to become one of us, so that as us He could die on the cross, putting to death the old fallen for self in payment for our sins, why didn’t He just show up as a man a few days before the crucifixion. Why did God become so small that his human beginnings was a fertilized seed in the womb of a young woman? Why did he go to the trauma of birthing, and experience the extreme vulnerability of infancy? Why did He allow himself to be parented, to know other children as peers including the bullies of the world of children? Why did he experience the life of a teenager and walk among friends who emitted the drama of teenage years? Why did He go to the trouble of learning a trade? Why did He choose to experience all these things allowing himself to be tempted in EVERY WAY likened to us? Jesus became small for us to redeem the whole human experience. God became human and clothed Himself with our frail, fallen, and broken humanity that he might reconcile us to God, and heal all that we had become so that in His resurrection we could experience all that He was. The resurrection of Christ was an amazing miracle, but the most amazing miracle of all was incarnation. When John: 316 says that “God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten son…” Is not just talking about the crucifixion. The giving of Jesus for the world began in the womb of a young virgin girl, manifested for the shepherds and Magi to see in the nativity and infancy of the helpless, vulnerable, utterly dependent little child. By the time the shepherds saw the infant come and later the Magi, the cosmic more was already won, yet still being worked out in time and space, but God had already descended into our human hell and was in the process of working His way out from the inside, one day bursting forth and resurrection victory carrying in His person a whole new humanity including you and me, one with Him, because He in the incarnation had become one with us.
