"God has no wife; God has no sex; God has no son," 
my Moslem friend said vehemently.
"But Mary was not God’s wife," I explained. 
"The Holy Spirit caused a virgin to conceive miraculously. 
Actually, God became man."
He replied: "God is the all-powerful and is supremely one. 
He cannot be three Gods like you Christians teach. 
He is one He is all-powerful. He could not he come mall."
So the logical mind of the Moslem reasons; 
it is unthinkable that God became man.

Only God could think up the incarnation. Man-made religions exalt men to the status of god; only the Bible teaches that God actually became man.

Picture God’s mission in the Old Testament as an hourglass lying on its side. It begins with all mankind and continually narrows to an ever more select people until it reaches a dead end. No man fulfilled God’s purpose. God himself had to break through the end of the glass and form a funnel that opened again on the other side to include all men. Jesus was God’s breakthrough. He fulfilled all the purpose of God that Israel had failed to fulfill by becoming the disciplined Son in the incarnation the Suffering Servant and High Priest in the crucifixion and the King of heaven and earth in the resurrection.

THE INCARNATION

You probably have heard about and sung about the baby Jesus for so long that it seems normal to think of God in human form. In contrast, the person from a non-Christian background is dumbfounded by it. No other religion has dared to state so bluntly and so categorically that God became man.-

To the Moslem it is absurd to think that the transcendent all-powerful God could, or would, limit himself to become man. To the Hindu the distinctiveness of the incarnation, as a once for-all coming of an only true God into actual history, is preposterous. The Buddhist cannot imagine God becoming man and living in the world where even to exist is evil. No wonder Jesus is the stone of stumbling to those who will not accept him as the revelation of God.

The following Scriptures give insight that may help you in answering the above questions: (1)1 Corinthians 2: 14; Hebrews 2:9; (2) Hebrews 4:15; (3) John 1:15-16; (4) Philippians 2:7; and (5)1 Timothy 1:15.

The uniqueness of the incarnation demands that every person in the world know about it. No man’s life is complete until he has a real-life encounter with the God who invaded history. No person who has accepted Christ as God’s Son should be satisfied until every man knows that God has visited earth to bring man into right relationship with his Creator. When God spoke at the beginning of time, the world was created, when God spoke by the Word in the incarnation, the new humanity was created. It cost God nothing to speak the world into existence, but it cost him his Son to create the new humanity. The incarnation is the good news that the kingdom of heaven has come in Christ.

In Philippians 2:7 the Greek word for "made himself of no reputation" (kenoo) means simply to empty, to make void, or of no effect. To be in the form of God means that he was no less God when he took the form of man. To be in the likeness of man means that he was no less man because he was God in the flesh. Jesus was not half God and half man but fully God and fully man.

We often focus on the divine signs at his birth and forget the humanness of it. We are amazed by the virgin birth; we rejoice in the angels’ singing; we are awed at the star’s appearing; we marvel at the Wise Men’s journey and gifts. But so often we fail to realize that he was born in a stable to a woman who conceived him before she was married. Perhaps Mary on that first Christmas night thought: Is it possible that this is really the Son of God? It’s been nine months since the angel spoke to me. Did I only dream it? If this is truly the Messiah, why are we in a stable? Why was no one here to help me give birth? Where is God?

"He is in your lap . . . as much as he is in heaven." How overwhelming the thought that the God who created all the universe limited himself to a human form, approximately eighteen inches long and weighing approximately seven pounds! No wonder other religions find it difficult to believe in the incarnation!

When the Bible used the graphic metaphor "he emptied himself," it expressed the completeness of Christ’s self-renunciation. Much debate has centered on what it meant for Christ to empty himself. Whatever it meant, we cannot ignore the evidence of the New Testament that Jesus laid aside his advantages as God to face life as man. His identification and solidarity with man were complete.

Jesus had to grow in wisdom and in physical stature (Luke 2:52); he had to learn obedience (Heb. 5:8); he was actually hungry, thirsty, and tired; he experienced the emotions of anger and compassion; he endured pain; he had to live on the faith that he was the Son of God and constantly resort to the place of prayer to receive knowledge and wisdom from the Father. Yes, Jesus was really man.

Almost as startling as the incarnation was Jesus’ becoming a servant. He served man in the most menial ways. He fulfilled the Intentions of the Father as stated in the servant passages of Isaiah. The most graphic picture of his servant role was imprinted on the mind of man forever when Jesus took the towel and washed his disciples’ feet. God, who became man, now stooped to serve man that man might catch the vision of serving.

During our first term of missionary service in Indonesia, we began Baptist work in Bogor, Java, and my secretary was a Moslem. Each Saturday I would read to her the sermon I had composed in Indonesian to see if it was grammatically correct and understandable. Often it was not the language but the concepts that were difficult for her to understand. One day I remarked off-handedly, "I love God."

She responded: "How do you love God ? I don’t love God."

"I love God because he first loved me. Why don’t you love God?"

"I am afraid of him," she said. "I’m afraid of him because of my sins."

"I love God because he sent his Son to save me. If I didn’t love him, I would not be in Indonesia," I replied.

"But I can’t feel love toward him. How can I love him? We have no penjelmaan."

"I am so glad you used that word penjelmaan," I answered. "That is the Indonesian word for incarnation. Oh, . . . now I understand why you can’t love God. If God had not become incarnate in Jesus Christ, we could not love him either. But since God first loved us and sent his Son, it is easy to love him in return."

THE CRUCIFIXION

The self-emptying of Christ climaxed with Gethsemane and Golgotha. Philippians 2:8 moves directly from Christ’s incarnation to his crucifixion: "Being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." Because he was the Suffering Servant, Jesus fulfilled the divine promise in Isaiah’s prophecy. The cross was unavoidable.

The crucifixion did not catch the Father or the Son by surprise. God did not have to change his plans suddenly. Jesus, the Lamb of God, was slain before the foundation of the world (Rev. 13:8). Since he came to earth for that purpose, he resolutely directed his steps toward Calvary.

In Gethsemane the horror of death pressed upon him. As usual his only resource was the Father. He tried to enlist Peter, James, and John to pray for him, but they left him to face temptation alone. The battle of Gethsemane raged. Jesus wanted only to please the Father; but he sought a way to do it other than bearing the sin of mankind and facing death for every man.

For Jesus, the prospect of death was horrible because he fully knew its implications. Those who laugh at death, or stoically bear it, simply do not understand it. The physical anguish of crucifixion was only the beginning. Jesus faced death as the God-man. Can you imagine what it meant for the Life to die, for the Light to be enveloped in death’s blackness, for him who knew no sin to become sin for man, for him who had never known separation from the Father to feel the aloneness of the forsaken? No wonder he said, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death" (Matt. 26:38).

The battle that had raged during the wilderness temptation reached fever pitch. Satan had left him "for a season" but had assaulted him at every opportunity thereafter.

Satan entered into Peter only a short while before Gethsemane. A few moments after he had confessed that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God, Peter rebuked Jesus for saying he was going to suffer and die. Jesus had to say to Peter, "Get thee behind me, Satan" (Matt. 16:23). Satan stopped short of nothing to prevent Jesus from saving man. Satan assaulted the humanity of Jesus in Gethsemane to tempt him to draw back from his impending sacrifice. The human and divine wills clashed. "Being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground" (Luke 22:44).

Jesus was not role-playing. The battle was real. Yet Jesus so completely surrendered to the Father that the struggle centered on knowing the Father’s will. Jesus’ will, always submissive to the Father’s, overcame both the physical reality and Satanic demonic presence when he uttered, "Not my will, but shine, be done" (Luke 22:42). Jesus won the war of the ages at that moment! He arose with a confidence that never wavered in the face of soldiers, suffering, and death. For him, to know the Father’s will was to do it. He became "obedient unto death, even the death of the cross" (Phil. 2:8).

Jesus fulfilled the priestly role by his intercessory prayers and by his death. He positioned himself between sinful man and the holy God as an intercessor. Jesus "in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death . . . learned he obedience by the things which he suffered" (Heb. 5:7-8). In so doing, he became the author of salvation. The Father recognized him as High Priest after the order of Melchizedek.

Jesus, as Priest, represented man to God as well as God to man. His divinity qualified him to represent God; his humanity qualified him to represent man. By means of his death Jesus became the advocate for all men who would come to God through him.

Jesus gladly accepted the role that Israel had rejected-Priest and Suffering Servant. What a nation had refused to do and what a tribe of Levites had failed to accomplish, Jesus fulfilled. In doing so, he opened the door for every believer to become a priest.

Jesus’ death was an act of atonement which in the Old Testament meant the covering of sin through God’s own provision. On the basis of the atonement, Jesus reconciled man to God (2 Cor. 5:14 to 6:2).

Jesus’ death not only affected man’s feeling about God, it paid for man’s sin in an objective, historical sense. Communion between God and man was made possible through it (Heb. 9:12, 26-28; 10:10; 1 Tim. 2:4-5).

By his death Jesus satisfied the Father, subdued Satan, and reconciled man to God. Forgiveness was made available to those who believe in Christ as Savior on the basis of his sacrifice.

Since Christ died for the world, every man has a right to choose salvation. Man may choose not to respond to Christ’s offer; but if he is not given a chance to respond, we have sinned against him. We must beseech man to be reconciled to God.

After I had talked with my secretary about the incarnation, I told her that Christ died for her.

"But he didn’t die for me," she replied; "he died for Christians. "

"No," I said, "he died for you. He died for everyone."

"But we do not accept him."

"Nevertheless, he died for you anyway. What a pity that you don’t receive him."

"But we didn’t want him to die for us," she said in exasperation.

"He still wanted to die for you because he knew that your sins could never be forgiven unless he paid the price for them on the cross. On what basis do you believe you have forgiveness?"

"I’m not sure," she replied. "We just ask God for it and do good."

"That is good," I replied, "but God cannot forgive you until there is an objective basis for that forgiveness. Someone must die for your sins. The only basis he accepts is the one that he has provided in Jesus. The Bible says, ‘Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved’ (Acts 4:12)."

"But why did he have to die?"

"Because there was no other way for a person to be saved. If there had been any other way, Jesus would not have died. The night before the crucifixion he asked the Father if there were any other way, but there wasn’t. Jesus said, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me’ (John 14:6)."

As the second Adam, Jesus restored what the first Adam lost. There are only two reasons men are lost: one, they have never adequately heard the message of salvation, or, two, they have rejected God’s offer of reconciliation in Christ. We cannot do much about the second reason, but it is our obligation to eliminate the first reason.

After Satan’s bold plan of eliminating Christ had failed, he tried a sneak attack to convince man that the redemptive acts of Christ are not necessary for salvation. Since he could not stop Christ, Satan attempts to convince men that there are other ways of salvation outside of Christ.

Paradoxically, just at the time we are trying to take the gospel to everyone in the world by the end of the century, the philosophy of the world has crept into the life-stream of our membership and sapped our spiritual strength. Thought patterns growing out of universalism, humanism, and secularism have robbed many Christians of the verve and audacity to proclaim Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord to every person. This insidious, worldly philosophy is daily heard in expressions such as, "Other nationalities have their own religions; don’t disturb them!" or, "Who are we to tell them that they are wrong if they don’t accept Christ as the only way?" or, "We haven’t done so well ourselves; we should clean up our own back doorstep before we go to other nations to tell them how to live." When we cease to believe that Jesus is the only way of salvation, we disqualify ourselves for God’s mission.

Our task as priests is not to offer a sacrifice for sin but to proclaim the sacrifice that Jesus has made. Our priestly role is to make the cross real to people at the crossroads of their lives.

THE RESURRECTION

If a reporter had interviewed Satan while Jesus was being buried, the interview might have sounded something like this.

"Excuse me for taking you away from your celebration, but I’d like to ask you a few questions. How do you feel about the present situation now that Jesus is dead?"

"I’m glad to tell you this is the greatest victory that I’ve ever had!"

"Why do you say that?"

"Don’t you know who Jesus was? You notice I said ‘was’! Ha! Ha! He was God getting into the act. Jesus came to battle us on man’s terms and to recapture man from us. I don’t mind telling you now that we have had a hard time the past thirty-three years."

"It seems that Jesus would have been at your mercy since he came as a man."

"It may seem that way, but he was different from other men. Everything we tried failed. When he was born, it took me so long to marshal my forces to kill him that he escaped. Every effort I made in the following years failed, too. But it was these fast three years that we really had a battle."

"What was different about these three years?"

"Jesus went on the offensive. I thought I had him stopped at the beginning of his ministry when I tempted him in the wilderness, but he wouldn’t break. Then I tried to expose him before his time by having my demons identify him as the Son of the most high God. Later I instigated an Opposition front by using the religious leaders to bait him and to discredit him. Somehow he always slipped out of my trap. I even infiltrated his disciples. In fact, that is how I finally won. One of them betrayed him to the religious leaders. I knew I had him last night when he begged His Father to let him out.’

"So you were behind his capture?"

"Right. I had him killed. Just in time, too. He was leading a group of people to crown him king and set up a heavenly kingdom on earth."

"So you’re satisfied that it’s all over?"

"Of course. God’s Son is dead. His disciples are in disarray. Jesus’ ministry has been discredited. Most important, God is discredited."

"Won’t God do something else?"

"No, that is the beautiful part. You see, God limited himself in the beginning to what man could do. Jesus represented mankind. But he died. God even turned away from him. Didn’t you hear Jesus cry out just before he died, ‘My God, my God, why best thou forsaken me?’ At the very last he admitted I had won when he said, ‘It is finished.' If God’s own Son could not defeat me, there is no hope for man. Tell the world: ‘Satan has won; the war is over. I am now lord of the earth?’ Excuse me, they want me back at the party. This is my inauguration."

If you did not know prophecy and Jesus’ own predictions, it might appear that Satan had won the battle. But God’s counteroffensive, the resurrection, gained the victory. Jesus did not succumb to death; he plundered it! He was not conquered by death; he conquered death.

The physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus firmly established God’s invasion of history. The empty tomb and his appearances to the believers authenticated it. Jesus actually ate, was handled and transformed believers. Jesus’ resurrection body was more than his physical body. He walked through locked doors, disappeared, and appeared at will; but he was the same Jesus whom the disciples had seen, heard, and handled.

When Jesus emerged from the tomb, a new age broke on the world. Mankind had a new king. Jesus revealed through the resurrection that he had gained all authority in heaven and in earth (Matt. 28:18). He ruled over sin, death, and every created power. He had reconciled the world to God (2 Cor. 5:18-19;Col. 1:20)

Jesus’ resurrection proved that the evil forces of Satan had been conquered throughout the cosmos. In his death and resurrection, Jesus "spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them" (Col. 2:15).

No longer is there any doubt who will win the conflict of the kingdoms. The decisive battle has been won over Satan. You might say that Satan continues to defeat Christians and to retard kingdom progress, but the outcome is no longer in doubt. Perhaps we could compare it to a decisive play in a ball game. The game may not be over, but it is obvious who the winner will be. D-day occurred in the battle between God and Satan when Jesus died and rose from the dead.

Man had rejected God’s direct ruling over him in the Old Testament times, but God had worked through the covenant made at Sinai and through the covenant made with David to once again become Lord and King (Phil. 2:9-11; Eph. 1:20-21).

The greatest creative act of all time was the resurrection of Jesus. Its power is manifested most clearly in the new birth (2 Cor. 5:17). The resurrection revealed the nature of God. His love, power, presence, and purpose took on added meaning. Jesus shed his self-imposed limitations and revealed his eternal nature. The resurrection became the touchstone of the gospel. Prior to the resurrection the gospel was not preached to the nations because the good news had not all come to pass. The resurrection brought new meaning to the incarnation and death of Christ. Now the whole gospel could be preached and was preached by the first-century Christians, revealing that God had brought salvation to man in Jesus Christ.

When Paul tried to illustrate to the Ephesians how much power was available to them, he did not use a tornado, or an earthquake, or a volcano. Had the hydrogen bomb already been invented, he would not have used it as an example of power. All such illustrations of power are destructive. Paul illustrated creative power when he prayed that the Ephesians’ eyes might be opened to know "What is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead" (Eph. 1:19-20).

As ruler of this age, God has "raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come" (Eph. 1:20-21).

Hallelujah! We live in the new age!

The resurrection ushered in the last days. We live between the resurrection and the return of Christ. During these times the gospel is to be preached to all nations. Jesus said, "This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come" (Matt. 24.14)

The resurrection cut across all national and racial lines to present us with a universal, spiritual, omnipotent, and omnipresent Christ. Christ transcended his historical framework. People of all nations identify with him and claim him as their own. The resurrection forced Christianity to break with Judaism. Christ could not be contained by one race. The resurrection of Christ demands worldwide proclamation that "Jesus is Lord!"

Jesus gave the Great Commission on the basis of his resurrection. The resurrection was the condition for world missions. It made Jesus the supreme authority in the missionary enterprise. He had wrested the whole world, both visible and invisible, from the grip of all other powers. Therefore, God’s people are sent forth in the triumphant name of the Lord Jesus Christ!

On five occasions after the resurrection, Jesus commanded his followers to be his witnesses. Each command was stated differently but embodied the same purpose.

We who have heard the gospel all our lives may not realize what good news it is. The incarnation tells the masses that God cares; the crucifixion proclaims forgiveness of sin; the resurrection shouts that the victory has been won over sin, death, and Satan.

Compare the good news of the gospel with the belief of my Buddhist friend in Indonesia whose greatest hope is to be absorbed into Nirvana, where his individual personality will no longer exist. Or compare it to my Hindu friend’s hope for a better reincarnation next time, and the time after that, and so forth, until she can escape life, the evil "wheel of existence." Or compare it to my Moslem friend who hopes that God will forgive him and allow him into heaven but has no assurance. Or compare it to my animistic friend who long ago lost sight of the "high God" and is content to placate the spirits that inhabit the trees, the rocks, and the cemeteries. The gospel is God’s good news. Deep in the heart of every man who hears it is a desire to believe it even when his religious traditions and sins bind him.

A sixty-five-year-old man heard about the Baptist church in the nearby village of Wonosekar, Java. His interests drew him to the service. He was amazed when the preacher read a holy book in his mother tongue, Javanese. He was astounded at the message of the gospel. Not long afterward, he embraced Christ as his Savior and said, "This is what I’ve been longing for and hoping for all my life."

The Christ-event divides history into two parts--B.C. and A.D. Too many people today live on the other side of Christ. They have never heard the gospel. For them it is still B.C.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Conner, W. T. The Cross in the New Testament. Nashville: Broadman Press, 1944.

Flew, Newton. Jesus and His Church. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1938.

Forsyth, P. T. The Work of Christ. London: Independent Press, Ltd., 1938

Kepler, Thomas. The Meaning and Mystery of the Resurrection. New York: Association Press, 1963.

Stagg, Frank. The Doctrine of Christ. Nashville: Convention Press, 1984.