God In a Manger

The power of the Messiah’s humility might be the most surprising thing about Christmas.

Christmas has become such a monumental event that it’s almost too big to define. If you set in the mall long enough, you might wonder if anyone really knows what Christmas is all about. I don’t believe that the average person really understands what the ‘incarnation’  really means.

In theological terms, we use the word “incarnation” to describe this event. Or we try to simplify the phenomenon the season commemorates by merely saying, “This is when God became a man.” Then we turn from the manger, thinking, Ah, now I understand—and go on with our 

But we don’t understand, not even a little.

Unless you understand who “little baby Jesus” was and what He was up to before the day of His birth, you’ll never understand what Christmas is all about.

The apostle Paul wrote some amazing Christmas commentary that often flies under our Advent radar, yet tells us more about the real meaning of Christmas than many verses more commonly associated with the season:


Philippians 2:5-7 (KJV) 5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: 7 But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: 

The word “incarnation” comes from the Greek word keno (from which we get the theological term Kenosis), which refers to an “emptying.” It describes someone of great position who is brought low, voluntarily laying aside his high rank and becoming as nothing in comparison with his prior dignity. Compare this to the President of the United States or another leader of a wealthy country leaving behind all authority, rank, power, and bodyguards, and moving to an impoverished Third-World country as an unknown homeless vagrant. In choosing to subsist in near-starvation and subjecting himself to the perils of roving bands of thieves and murderers, he would be “emptying” himself.

But this analogy doesn’t even be close to what Paul is talking about. When he says that Jesus “existed in the form of God,” he uses the Greek word morphe. It means that what you look like on the outside corresponds perfectly to what you really are. You are in essence what you are in appearance. Jesus didn’t just look like God; He was always God. As Paul tells us, before that amazing day when everything changed—before becoming a tiny fetus within a young woman—Jesus was in every way and eternally God.

The Baby in the manger was a Being of another kind and place who took on a new nature—a human one—yet without changing who He was innately and eternally.

And that is what Christmas is really all about.