If You Get Christmas Wrong, You Get Everything Else Wrong

Truth be told, I cannot help but like every day of the church year (some favourites include the Ascension, the Baptism of Jesus, Good Friday etc). That said sometimes I want to think that Christmas is the whole Gospel. It certainly is a major part of it. And yet, sometimes it seems like it would almost be fitting if it was the whole thing, although I know it is not.

When the Son of God becomes man he embodies all of humanity. He stands in and with all flesh and every human being. Jesus is the new head of humanity, the new Adam. Everyone can look at the manger and know that God's disposition toward us is grace and unification in Christ. God has brought man and God together in Jesus Christ, and his judgment is not disposed to condemnation. Which is why Calvinism seems to be quite a distortion of the Gospel. To deny a universal atonement seems to not only undercut Jesus' death, but also the incarnation. How can Jesus not die for all of humanity since he bears the same flesh as all humanity?

So, that is one of the ways I celebrated Christmas... by not being a Calvinist.

But I also had a few other thoughts. The incarnation doesn't just mean Jesus' conception and birth, but really the whole person of Jesus. At least that's how Athanasius seemed to use the term - which also seems why Eastern iconography depicts Mary holding the manly-faced baby Jesus. So in a certain sense I also think it is fitting to view Christmas in this way. Not simply the manner in which Jesus was born, but that he was born and that God took on our flesh in a peculiar way. I know some people downplay this because Paul doesn't make much light of Jesus' birth... however the Gospels do mention it, and furthermore, Paul presupposes it. Jesus was made like us in every way and identifies with us in every way also, including, growing up, being submissive to parents, temptation and even death.

And it doesn't end there. He is still our brother in the flesh interceding for us at the right hand of God with our own humanity. Because of this we identify in his resurrection and ascension. He not only embodies us in his life, death and resurrection, but he also embodies us in our glorification at the right hand of the Father. Because he is glorified, we too are glorified in our flesh, and we await the resurrection of our lowly bodies. So Christmas is a celebration of the incarnation which is the whole unification of God and man in Christ. (Paul's apostleship would also be proof of the ascended incarnation. The qualifications of an apostle was to see the resurrected body of our Lord, which is what Paul saw on the road to Damascus, well after the ascension. And it is also said Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.) The incarnation is here to stay.

All that to say, if you get Christology wrong, you're probably going to go wrong elsewhere with the gospel. I think that is why the Church fathers fought so hard for a robust Christology in the creeds and the life of the Church, and all those things like Monophysitism, Nestorianism, Arianism etc are called heresies. If you get Christmas wrong, you get everything else wrong.

1 John 4:2-3 By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God.