Greetings!
The great good news of Christmas, which we are eager to celebrate again, is that God is present with us in Jesus Christ.
Consider what John Leith wrote about this.
|
God in Christ
The great leap of Christian faith as the assertion that in Jesus Christ we are encountered by God himself. In Jesus Christ the divine presence is focused for us, and in the light of this revelation all other revelations of God are identified and understood. Christians are people for whom God is defined by Jesus Christ.
In popular piety we sometimes say that Jesus is like God, but this kind of piety always leads to Arianism [an ancient heresy that Jesus was human but not divine]. To say that Jesus is like God assumes that we already know who God is and therefore can judge whether Jesus is like God.
We also have the further problem of determining how much Jesus Christ is like God. If Jesus is like God, someone may come along who is more like God, and Jesus Christ becomes only one of many mediators of the divine presence.
The Christian claim is that this Jesus whom we know from his life among us is the embodiment of God himself, the focused presence of the living God. This is the faith that must be validated in our experience, as it enables us to deal with the facts of experience, as it puts the facts together in some coherent whole, and as it illumines and makes sense out of our common human experience.
John H. Leith, Basic Christian Doctrine, p. 135.
|
 Merry Christmas!Grace and Peace,
Dr. James C. Goodloe IV, Executive
Director
Foundation for Reformed Theology
4103 Monument Avenue
Richmond, Virginia 23230
Better Preaching, Teaching, and Pastoral Care
|
