Of all the ways Jesus could have come, He came in such a humble way. He didn't come with force or as a triumphant king. He didn't come with some special appearance that everyone would recognize Him. He chose weakness and humility.
He was born to an unknown virgin teenage girl in a small town in a manger. He grew up as a normal Jewish boy. As Isaiah wrote, there was nothing about Him that made Him stand out as the Messiah. The people around Him struggled with who He really was because He chose to come in humility. The Jews rejected Him because He wasn't what they expected the Christ to be.
So why did Jesus come in this way? Why not come in power? Why weakness?
The incarnation shows us the nature of true salvation. When we look to the first coming of Christ, He came to show us something about how we need to come to God.
Throughout the Bible, over and over, God chooses the weak and the humble. He looks for people who have nothing to offer, and He uses them and works in their lives. Christ came to rewrite everything we know about a relationship with God.
See, we think that it's the strong who get in. It's the powerful. It's those who have it all together. We live our lives to become great, because we believe that our greatness is what makes our lives valuable and what makes God accept us.
Jesus came to show us that true salvation is not about strength but weakness.
Jesus came to show us that true salvation is not about strength but weakness. It's not about our ability to make it on our own but rather our humility to confess that we can't. He came to show us that the way to God is faith in His strength over our own.
This is the beauty and wonder of Christmas. When we look at this baby in a manger, we don't just need see a familiar story. We need to see the awesome radical message of the gospel: Christ emptied Himself and became like us, so that we could be emptied of ourselves and become like Him.
