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THE REALITY OF JESUS' LOVE AND THE POWER OF HIS NAME.
December 2005
Who will tell them if you don't tell them that "The reality of Jesus' love and the power of his name has set humanity - you and me - Free."
Nathan Fellingham, a well known song writer put it beautifully:
There is a name that's high over all.
There is a King seated on the throne
And He's interceding for me,
So that I will be made holy,
And I know that in His love
I will stay.
What a Saviour is my Jesus,
He came down on Christmas Day
So that I may be free.
Jesus secret name number One is Emmanuel, God with us. Christmas is when humanity remembers that God has moved into our neighbourhood, entered number 48 Fellingham Road - our world - and came to be with us by becoming one of us. That is what Emmanuel means - God is with us.
But what does it mean that God is with us in the person of the new born baby, Jesus? It means that God, who created by saying "Let there be .....", became a baby who had to be taught to speak. The one on whom the universe depends became dependent on a human mother - Mary - for milk. It means that God could be dropped or hurt or harmed or left unchanged or left unfed or left to suffer as a refugee. In Jesus, God became weak, homeless, wordless, vulnerable and dependent.
What Jesus chose to do, to become a human being and ultimately died for our sins, was inherently risky. What it made possible, though was for our humanness to become part of who God is. God comes alongside us as someone who understands all that we know and experience,
As the letter to the Hebrews says, Jesus can feel sympathy for our weaknesses and help us in our temptations because he has been tempted in every way that we are.
What Jesus did was total identification with us and the result is that we can be totally identified with God. God came into our human nature in order that we might return to God and to his nature.
This Christmas may we reflect on both the risk and the reward. May we seek after God's nature and ask ourselves what we will risk in future as thanks that Jesus became Emmanuel, God with us.
We wish you a very Happy Christmas and a peaceful New Year
Modicum
Quote
"Slow me down, Lord, I'm going too fast
I can't see my brother when he's walking past
I miss a lot of good things day by day
When they come my way.
Slow me down, Lord, I'm going too fast."
© CWR: 2005
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