December, 1939
456
TH E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
The Connections of Christ s Cradle
By ROBERT G. LEE* Memphis, Tennessee
oelebrated in Scripture as the great mystery, the astonishing wonder of the whole world. “Great is the mystery of godli ness: God was manifest in the flesh” (1 Tim. 3:16). “And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and be came obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Phil. 2:8). “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh” (Rom. 8:3). “For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he be came poor, that ye through his pov erty might be rich” (2 Cor. 8:9). He put off the crown of glory to put on the crown of thorns. II. Christ’s Cradle Was God’s Con nection with Man’s Life in This World. In the light and glow and beauty of the Christmas time, teeming as it does with upperworld disclosures, ravishing the heart of childhood, giving rapture to the visions of age, we find the glori ous and startling assertion of Paul: “For God , . . hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Truly God, the high and lofty God who inhabiteth eternity, who holds this world in the hand of His omnipotence and beneath the eye of His omniscience, came near to humanity that morning when men saw the light of His glory in the face of that Bethlehem Babe, who was God’s will, God’s thought, God’s pur pose swathed in mortality. For this Babe, whose every muscle was a pulley divinely swung, was the Light—God seen. This Babe, with no language but a cry, was the Word— God heard. This Babe, whose life in carnated God’s heart, was the Life— God felt. “The Word was God.” “God was in Christ.” “I and my Father are one.” As Deity, He was God, having all the attributes of God, including holi ness and freedom from sin. In His in carnation (John 1:14), as God mani fested in the flesh (1 Tim. 3:16), He was also free from sin because of His virgin birth by the Holy Spirit. In this double freedom from sin, He identified Himself with our fallen race, partook of bur common humanity. “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.”
"Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given” (Isa. 9:6). ' I • HIS prediction, most clear in ap plication, most glorious in con- tent, most consolatory in design, most gracious in purpose, points us to the time when the Son of God assumed our nature—entered this world in cir cumstances of deepest humiliation. His manger cradle testifies that the fullness of time has arrived, that the prophecies are accomplished, that the promises are fulfilled, that “the Desire of all nations,” that He who has “a name . . . above every name”—a name which is “as oint ment poured forth”—is come. The cradle in Bethlehem’s bam had significant connections, and of these connections of Christ’s cradle we speak now. I. Christ’s Cradle Was Connected with God Before All Worlds, Jesus, the image of the invisible God, Himself said: “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). And in prayer to His Father, He gave this testimony: “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was” (John 17:5). “For thou lovedst me be fore the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). The writer of the Book of Hebrews says, “God . , . hath . . . spoken unto us by his Son . . . by whom also he made the worlds” (Heb. 1:2). And we read: “For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things” (Col. 1:16, 17). Moyer shows the connection of Christ’s cradle with God before all worlds when he writes that the Christ who, in time, rested on the bosom of His mother with out a father, rested in eternity on the bosom of the heavenly Father without a mother. I t is not just poetry or rhetoric when we say that when the Lord of power determined to forsake His royal chariot and to alight on this earth, He disrobed Himself first. He gave to the clouds His bow! He gave to the sky His azure mantle! He gave to the stars His jew els! He gave to the sun His bright ness! And, receiving instead of these the strange homespun clothes of One who had not where to lay His head, He *Pastor, Bellavue Baptist Church
"Emmanuel . . . God with Us" was “made flesh,” “made of a woman,” “made under the law.” His incarnation meant, and means, that the pre-existent Christ was embodied in human flesh, demonstrated in human life, exemplified in human action, crystalized in human form. John said: “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3). And we express the same truth when we say that that baby embodiment of heaven’s Creator was the dimple-handed infantile disguise of Him who planted the flower-bowers of Paradise and flushed the face of the first morning that looked down upon its bloom. Yes, that holy Child, “every ringlet in whose hair may be taken as a symbol of the curling and shining line of some plane tary orbit gilding the far-away dark ness of eternity,” in obedience to the wisdom which hides within that brow, was the Saviour in miniature, in whom, already, without restriction of essence or suppression of functions, “dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” How wonderful that the .Lord of glory was so abased and humbled for us— the vile and sinful progeny of Adam! To think that Christ should strip Him self of His robes and roles of glory to clothe Himself with the mean garment of our flesh! This act is everywhere
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