Incarnation of Jesus Sermon Ideas

Reflections about the Incarnation of Jesus

The incarnation is literally the enfleshment of the eternal Son of God resulting, as the Apostles' Creed professes, from being "conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary." (See also Jesus Christ's humanity.)

Old Testament prophets predicted the coming of a special person to be a victorious king or a suffering servant—maybe both, but in any case one who would be "the anointed one," the Messiah, or in Greek, "the Christ." The Messiah would be the greatest of men, a twig growing out of the trunk of King David that would eventually dwarf David himself. Or else, as the prophets sometimes put it, the one to come would be a twig growing out of the Lord (Isaiah 4:2). The Messiah would be called "Mighty God" (Isaiah 9:6) or "God-with-us" (Isaiah 7:14). He would be the Lord himself suddenly coming to his temple (Malachi 3:1). In other words, the Messiah might be human, or he might be divine, but in either case he would save his people.

What few imagined is that the Messiah would be both human and divine. Nobody foresaw explicitly that God (or, more exactly, the eternal Son of God) would come in the flesh. By the time of Jesus's birth, most of his contemporaries were looking more for a man than for God, and more for a political champion than for a suffering servant. They wanted somebody who could get Rome off their back and Caesar out of their hair. They were looking for a man who could become their king.

What they got was their King who had become a man—the eternal Son of God incarnate, the Son of God now with a thumbprint and, for all we know, seasonal hay fever. Trying to describe the novelty of the incarnation, the New Testament writers borrowed from every source they could think of. They borrowed from wisdom literature and prophecy; they borrowed from history, poetry, and apocalypse. They strained to describe one who was simultaneously "the radiance of God's glory, the exact representation of his being" (Hebrews 1:3, NIV) and also a particular Jew, the son of Mary, a man who had not especially impressed the people he grew up with (Mark 6:1–6).

Working all sources, the inspired writers of scripture tell us that Jesus is the Son of Man, Lord, and Christ. He is word and wisdom. The second Adam. The end of the law. The light of the world. He is high priest and apostle. Fulfilling prophetic promises, he is King of kings, but also the suffering servant who was obedient all the way to death on a cross. He is the sacrificial lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, but also the good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep.

As these last examples show, Jesus's mission was to die. The shadow of the cross fell across his cradle. The only Son of God was born in Bethlehem in order to absorb the inevitable penalty of our sin. Of course he came to do more than that—much more. Scripture offers multiple reasons for his coming. He came "to destroy the works of the devil" (1 John 3:8). He came "to deal with sin" and to fulfill the law (Romans 8:3–4). He came "to seek out and to save the lost" (Luke 19:10). In his longest reach, he came "to gather up all things" or "to reconcile to himself all things" (Ephesians 1:10; Colossians 1:20). Scripture uses a riot of terms and images to describe the force of Jesus's work, but one way or another they all say that Jesus Christ came to put right what we human beings had put wrong by our sin. He came in order to be "the atoning sacrifice for our sins" (1 John 4:10) and "to give his life a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45).

Jesus's victorious resurrection and ascension round out the mission of the incarnation.

Over all the centuries, Christians have deeply felt the honor conferred by the incarnation. By choosing to assume our flesh, God has shared our lot and therefore dignified us. He is Emmanuel, God with us.