Jesus Dressed Up for Christmas (Friday, Week 4 of Advent 2011)

What Did Jesus Do?

For God has done what the law could not do…
by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin.
Romans 8:3

If you read yesterday’s “What Did Jesus Do?” (WDJD for 12/22/11) you’re probably saying, “Can’t you make up your mind? First you tell us that Jesus “dressed down” for Christmas, now you’re telling us he dressed up! Which is it?” Well, I meant what I said yesterday about Jesus humbling himself to take on our flesh. But Christ became one of us in order that he should one day be the sin offering that would free us from the condemnation of the law of sin and death, to live in and through him by the law of the Spirit of life. (Romans 8:2) The thing is, sin offerings, well they have to be perfect, unblemished, as fine as fine can be. I mean, you simply cannot present any old thing to God as a sin offering. So, naturally, Jesus had to be “dressed up” for Christmas in order to become the acceptable and perfect offering for our sins years later on the cross.

Of course, Jesus really could not get dressed up, could he? He is, after all, God. His beauty, his glory, his majesty, well, that’s as dressed up as you can get! So, what do I mean when I say that Jesus “dressed up” for Christmas. Well, it is the other side of the coin of dressing down.

You see, Jesus “dressed down” his divinity, “made himself nothing” (Philippians 2:7), when he was born of Mary. But in putting on our flesh he dressed it “up,” don’t you see? By our fallen natures all of us have terribly blemished, sin-stained, downright ugg-leeeeee flesh. Flesh fit only for condemnation and death, death under God’s righteous Law.

Let me be clear. When I say that Jesus “dressed up” I don’t mean the kind of thing I used to do as a kid when I would slap a hat on my head, pull on some boots, and pick up my Fanner 50 cap gun and pretend I was a cowboy. Jesus was not pretending to be human. One of the earliest groups to fall away from the truth of Christian faith were the Docetists, so called because they believed that Jesus did not really take on human form, but only appeared or seemed to do so. Make no mistake, you and I would still be justly condemned by God’s Law if Jesus had only masqueraded as a man. If you point to “likeness” in Romans 8:3 and say that it suggests Jesus only put on something like our flesh, approximating human form without completely and truly becoming human, you are mistaken. The only difference between the humanity of Jesus and our humanity is that, where we all sin due to our fallen nature, Jesus, though tempted as we are because, after all, he was human, did not sin (Hebrews 4:15), because in him our human nature was perfected, dressed up, fitted for life in and of the Spirit.

This Christmas, when we come to the manger and behold the precious, and very human, son of Mary, we would do well to recall that he is also the very Son of God, as divine as divine can be, and that Jesus came to save us by becoming the sin offering which fulfilled the requirement of the law and set us free. Free from sin, free from sin’s condemnation. Now, that’s something to make us all “joyful and triumphant!”

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4