“Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and they will call Him Immanuel, which means ‘God is with us.’” (Matthew 1:23 NLT)
In the opening verses of the Bible, we see the process of creation. The pre-existent Jesus, long before He would allow Himself to become a baby in a manger, was Creator and Sustainer of all that is. Jesus spoke life into existence with the power of His Word. He conceived in His mind and brought to life on the earth He formed perfectly to accommodate mankind, a man, created in God’s own image. Genesis 2:7 says: Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person.”
Then in Genesis 2:18 God said: “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him.” God brought all the wild animals and livestock, and the birds of the air, for Adam to give them all names. But none were suitable companions for the man. So, God took a rib from Adam and formed a woman and brought her to him to give her a name.
It was a glorious day in Adam’s life as he embraced God’s gift of a woman. But, the next chapter describes their failure to abide by God’s directives and how they were banished from the Garden of Eden. The point is simply this: God’s plan has always been for us to live in harmony with each other and with God in complete openness and trust. When Adam and Eve failed, they became the parents of all humanity, who then would be born with Adam’s bent to sin.
For thousands of years mankind has sought to bridge the gap between man and God, created by our sin, but have never able to find a way. Solomon, among the most brilliant men who ever lived, said in Ecclesiastes 3:11: “Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.”
God’s desire from the beginning was to have a relationship with mankind. He walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening in the Garden, not because He was lonely or in any way needed them. He wanted a relationship with them for what He could contribute, to make their lives richer, fuller, and more meaningful.
That’s why Jesus chose to humble Himself and be born as a man, certainly not because He needed anything from us, but to be a bridge over which we could come to know God. To experience firsthand what it’s like to be loved unconditionally, not for anything we could ever do to earn it, but simply because that’s who God is. Jesus was born to give us a relationship with God; to be “God with us!”
Blessings, Ed 😊
Walking With Jesus 