There’s of course more to the Incarnation
than meets the eye:
When God decided to “work for our redemption,”
He surely had many other–and easier–options
to get the job done.
The Trinity could have preserved the distance
between the Divine and humanity,
but God had something else in mind:
For our redemption,
God decided to close that distance:
The Trinity decided that the Son of God
would become human
so that God would literally be one of us
and be truly with us–
in short, Emmanuel.
There’s something very radical and subversive
about this decision.
God decided not to follow the rules
of being God,
of remaining infinitely above
His creatures.
Not only did God’s compassion
make Him turn and look down upon us;
it also made Him decide to send us
the gift of His only Son.
Through the Incarnation,
not only did the Son of God become one of us
but He will also continue to remain one of us
for all eternity.
The Son of God taking flesh
and becoming one of us–
that is such an undeserved gift!
It is also a gift that God will never take back.
It is an irrevocable gift
for all eternity.
By becoming human,
God has thrown His lot with us.
“To throw one’s lot” means
to join us voluntarily and to share our fortunes–
the good as well as the bad.
It means to allow whatever happens to us–
no matter what happens to us—
also to affect what happens to God.
We know from the life of our Lord Jesus
that God has kept His word.
When you think about it,
what God has done
in the Incarnation
is that He has issued us a blank check.