Christmas: On taking human form

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
But emptied himself,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness,
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death
even death on a cross
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above all names
That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow
in heaven and on earth and under the earth
And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord
to the glory of God the Father.

---

God's opening salvo in our redemption was the biggest surprise of all: the Word of God, God's self-revelation, took human form.

I know the whole "Garden of Eden" thing is a source of argument among Christians, whether it should be understood as historically true or symbolically true. I hope you'll pardon me for not getting embroiled in that particular argument today, but just mentioning this: regardless of how you view the historical angle, there is still much common ground on the theological angle. What brought about the fall was grasping at equality with God. That was the core temptation in eating the forbidden fruit: not knowledge but status.

Paul's writing (some think he was quoting an early hymn) focuses exactly on this angle. We thought equality with God was something to be grasped even though we did not by nature have it; Christ by nature had it but did not claim it. We sought to exalt ourselves to gain our own status; Christ rejected his status in order to be with us. We let ourselves imagine that God exalted himself to keep himself above us. In our redemption, God showed us that the reality of the matter was the opposite: God humbled himself in order to reach us.

God is not too proud to be born into a poor family, not too proud to be put into a trough instead of a crib, not too proud to become human. Our original distrust of God is built on the fact that he is something we are not: that he is above us. The first action in redemption was to take away our cause for distrust: now God lays aside his glory and comes among us as one of us.

This turns our original temptation on its head. If we want to be like God, we reject status and exaltation; we choose humility and service. We accept being human. Christ, in taking our humanity upon himself, gave us back our own humanity as a gift.