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Jim's PERSPECTIVEDecember 23, 2014Christ in you, the hope of Glory, the hope of Glory, Christ in you, He comes on, He comes to, He comes in, He comes through, and He comes always making all things new, inspiration, Incarnation 2. “When the Holy Spirit comes, he comes in you, through you, and as you.” That is how the late, great United Methodist Evangelist Tommy Tyson put it. “Christ in you, the hope of Glory,” is how Paul puts it in Colossians. “Emmanuel” (or, ‘God with us.’ Matthew 1:23) is how Isaiah puts it in the Old Testament. When I read the New Testament, it seems that the central message, over and over again, is the Incarnation, the idea that God comes to live in us. Incarnation 2, in my understanding, is a “mini” version of what God does in Christ. What He does in Jesus, Jesus does in us, at least on a limited basis. In Jesus “dwells the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” Not so with us. However, as the writer of Hebrews states, “He is not ashamed to call us brethren (and, jokingly, I like to add, “sistren”).” That God came to live in humans demonstrates that he obviously is not uncomfortable with the idea of the eternal taking up residence in the temporal, nor embarrassed, as Spirit, having to dwell in flesh. “Flesh” is “sarx” in Greek and “carne” in Latin, as in carnivorous. We who live in the West take for granted the idea of Incarnation and how repugnant it is for many who do not come from our side of the world. Years ago I had the privilege of meeting and knowing Dr. Willie N. Heggoy, a preacher in the United Methodist Church from Norway. After he was ordained 1935 under the “Missionary Rule” of the annual conference he went to Algeria. He was there at the same time as the Germans under Rommel during World War II. Willy served on the mission field from Kabylia (north of Algeria) to India, where he made 18 trips and founded the Jon Pioneer Mission in memory of his youngest son. I met him and his beautiful wife, Harriet, in 1979 when, through the “wisdom” of the powers-that-be in the Virginia conference, he ended up being sent to serve a church in a transitional neighborhood in Lynchburg. But it was a God-thing that Dr. Heggoy was there because if he had not been sent there I never would have experienced the blessing of being in his presence. It was not because he had taught at St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City and at Boston University that I thought he was one of the smartest--and greatest—men I’ve ever known. Some years later he came to preach for me down in Buckingham County. He began by quoting John 3:16 in several languages, beginning with his native Norwegian, moving through German and a few other European and Indian dialects, and finally in English. He didn’t just know John 3:16; he spoke the actual languages in which he quoted the verse. That was impressive. But I was most impacted by what he shared with me at his dinner table in Lynchburg when he spoke of what it was like to preach in India. Apparently Willy did quite a bit of street preaching there. He said that people loved to listen to what anyone had to say about God, and that a good-size crowd would assemble in a very short time. They would listen until one started preaching Jesus as “the Word made Flesh.” Dr. Heggoy said that a near-riot would ensue. People would grab their ears and tug on them to show their discomfort. They would make discordant noises to drown out the “offensive” message. Evidently the idea of a perfect, transcendent God inhabiting the likes of sinful flesh was too much for them to bear. That God would do such a thing was unthinkable. This is also a Gnostic idea, and one that has been around for ages. Yet this is the central message of the Gospel. That Jesus was sent by God not only as an emissary of peace of love, or as a model and example for one to follow, or even as an atoning sacrifice for sin. He was sent to die in order to be resurrected and return in the form of His Holy Spirit to indwell believers. That is, I believe, what happened at Pentecost, and the “tongues” spoken there by those who did not know what they were saying signified this reality. Incidentally, the “tongues” mentioned in Acts 2 was not gibberish. They were actual languages. In speaking of this mystery Jesus puts it this way in John, chapter 16: It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter (he This, to me, is what the Incarnation is about: the One who comes to forgive, to heal, to love, to woo us into loving Him and our brothers and sisters, and above all, as J. Rufus Moseley used to say, to love us into “fruit-bearing union” with Him. And another part of the leading/teaching aspect of the Incarnate God is, as John says, to convince us of the nature of sin, the nature of righteousness, and the nature of judgment. Only the Spirit of God Incarnate can convince us that we are fallen and broken and that we need a savior; only the Spirit of God Incarnate can show us that righteousness is “that which is used according to the purpose for which it is created”; only the Spirit of God can reveal that judgment is the withdrawing of His guiding and shielding hand and the resultant experiencing of the consequences of our own decisions to do what we want and what we think best because of our own stubborn, willful, and sinful determination to do things our own way and according to our own wisdom Through the Incarnated Christ in us, we are led into all truth (John 16:13)—the truth about the nature of this world, the truth about ourselves and those around us. Through the Incarnated Christ we “walk in the light, as he is in the light” (1 John 1:7). That is because he is “the light that lights (enlightens) every man and woman coming into the world,” as John says in the ninth verse of the gospel prologue. The Incarnation, as I have said before, is far-and-away the very best part of Christmas: He rules the world with truth and grace, and makes the nations prove
- Jim Radford |
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©2013 Jim Radford. All rights reserved. Unauthorized duplication prohibited.
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