Jesus' Evangelistic Example

     I wrote this last Christmas, but the challenge of it is still with me.
     I have been meditating on Paul’s description in Philippians 2:5-8 of what happened at Christmas.  Here's how the ESV translates it:  “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”   We call this the incarnation. Jesus took on humanity; he became flesh; became one of us.

     I am astonished at the extent to which Christ went to bring the message of God’s truth into the world. Jesus is eternally God and the essence of who he was didn’t change when he came to earth.   He veiled and limited the exercise his divine essence, setting aside his “rights” as God and came here to be “God with us.”

     What did that entail? Jesus lived in Heaven; a place so incredible that Paul tells us that the natural mind cannot even imagine what it is like (1 Corinthians 2:9).   Think about the sounds of the music in Heaven, or the scent of divine air.   Envision the most beautiful landscape that you can, and then remember that your imagination falls woefully short of what Heaven is really like.

     From that place of wonder and beauty, Jesus came here to be the first true missionary.   He temporarily left Heaven and took on human flesh, becoming one of us (limitation).   The first breaths into his human lungs drew in the stench of that stable.   The first sounds he heard were of animals and the commotion of an overcrowded town.   The dust from the straw irritated his newly opened eyes.

     He grew up like an ordinary Jewish boy in Nazareth.   He dressed like the people around him.   He talked like them too.   He attended synagogue with Joseph and Mary; sang their music and listened to the Rabbis teach from the Scriptures that were his own words to mankind.

     He certainly had a right to something different.   It wasn’t fair that Jesus had to go through all of this change and humiliation. But the verses I quoted early demonstrate why he did it.   He did not “count equality with God a thing to be grasped.” Seriously; did Jesus really feel that coming here to be like us was more important than retaining his rights?   Was it that important to stoop so low as to become like us just so we could spend eternity with God?   The answer is a resounding YES!   It was that important. “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…” 

     God had such a desire in his heart that the people of the world would love him and worship him, that he practiced “incarnational" evangelism.   God became like those he desired to reach.   Had he come in all of his glory straight from Heaven to earth, it would have overwhelmed everyone.   They would never have been able to get past the differences to see the truth and the hope that Jesus offered.

     I’m so glad that Jesus loved me enough to give up his rights and become like me so I could become a child of God through faith in him.   It is my goal this Christmas (and in 2012, when it arrives shortly) to demonstrate the same kind of “incarnational” thinking.   How can I penetrate my world with the truth of the gospel?   What can I do differently so that I can take God to the world in such a way that they will be able to listen long enough to hear the core of truth that make us truly different, not complicated by the surface things that don’t have to?   Will you join me?