the Fourth Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Grace for Today
John 1:14
‘The Word was made flesh’
Read Luke 1:1-56
No human mind can ever comprehend, nor earthly tongue describe, the great mystery of godliness: ‘God was manifest in the flesh.’ That baby born at Bethlehem is himself the eternal God. Though he was dependent upon the milk of his mother’s breast for life, he is God who formed the breasts that nourished him. Through Mary held him in her arms, he is God who upholds all things by the word of his power. Though he learned to walk and talk, and grew like any other child, he is the omniscient, immutable God. Though he lived as a man in willful, voluntary, perfect obedience to the law, he is God who gave the law to Moses. Though he died under the penalty of the law as a man in the place of sinners, that man who died is God!
Why was Christ born? Why did the Son of God assume manhood? ‘This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners’ (1 Timothy 1:15). Athanasius said, ‘Christ became what we are that he might make us what he is.’ The Son of God became the Son of man for this purpose: that the sons of men might become the sons of God. A.W. Tozer put it like this: ‘The awful majesty of the Godhead was mercifully sheathed in the soft envelope of human nature to protect mankind.’
Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, became a man because it was not possible for God to save sinners in any other way. In order to be our Savior, it was necessary for God himself to become one of us, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. Were he only God, he could never suffer the punishment of sin as our Substitute. Were he only man, he could never satisfy the infinite wrath and justice of God against sin. But he who is both God and man in one glorious person both suffered and satisfied the penalty of the law as the sinner’s Substitute.
Though I can neither understand nor explain the wonder and mystery of his person, I can and do trust that man who is God as my only, all-sufficient Savior. Since God became a man and suffered in the place of men, he is able to save all who trust him.
