Derek: 00:01

Jesus answered, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. John fourteen six. He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth. Isaiah fifty three nine and first Peter two twenty two.

Derek: 00:21

Truth is a topic that has been on my mind a lot this year as the world seems to be careening towards an epistemological precipice, driven closer and closer to the edge by a world filled with lies, propaganda, polarization, and relativism. In a world of such grand illusions, I take comfort in knowing that I serve a God who doesn't merely utilize truth when it's convenient, but a God who is truth always. Yet as we draw closer to our celebration of the Christ's incarnation, I'm left with a bad taste in my mouth in regard to truth because in some ways, the incarnation seems disingenuous. Does Jesus really embody truth? I mean, literally, does he embody it?

Derek: 01:07

Because the way Christian thinking often goes, it seems like in the taking on of a human body, the God man actually masked the truth. Jesus is divine, glorious, holy, magnificent, and all other good and amazing terms you can think of because Jesus is God. But when the word became flesh, it seems like his divinity and his glory were actually being concealed. Doesn't that make the incarnation just an embodied lie? Even if we'd never say such a thing, that's how we Christians usually think of the incarnation.

Derek: 01:43

Jesus is 100% God. Sure thing. But in the incarnation, the God part of Jesus was wrapped and concealed by human flesh. The truth was masked. When we see Jesus then, what we actually see is just a simple man.

Derek: 01:58

We have to infer or deduce beyond his human guys that holy and magnificent God is there somewhere. Don't get me wrong. As a Christian, I don't think Jesus' divinity is all that difficult to deduce. As evidence, we could point to any number of divine miracles that he did, turning water into wine, healing a man with paralysis, giving sight to the blind, and rising from the dead. The divinity definitely revealed itself sometimes.

Derek: 02:27

Yet in the lengthy span of thirty three years, revealed divinity comprised an extremely small portion of Jesus' life. The vast majority of his life was devoid of miraculous healings, storm calmings, water walkings, exorcisms, or transfigurations. Most of Jesus' life was just plain human. The mundane almost always concealed the glorious power and manifestation of God. Yet I know that God is truth.

Derek: 02:55

So the more I thought about the incarnation, the less comfortable I became with our popular conception of Jesus as a masked divinity. Didn't Jesus, only three verses after declaring himself the truth, tell his disciples that anyone who has seen me has seen the father? If you have eyes to see, you can't ever look at Jesus and see primarily humanity. Jesus's divinity doesn't only sometimes breakthrough as we typically think of it as doing when we see astonishing feats of miraculous power or in transfiguring glory. No.

Derek: 03:28

His divinity is always present. Jesus doesn't cloak a divinity which sometimes breaks through. Jesus doesn't cloak divinity at all. He's cloaked with it. Rattling our misconception around in my brain for a while, I've concluded that our problem in thinking about the incarnation is a bit Marcionite.

Derek: 03:49

Marcion was an early heretic who compared Jesus to the Old Testament depictions of God and said, these two gods can't be the same guy. The God of the Old Testament declared God's presence in burning bushes, pillars of fire, booming voices. The God of the Old Testament was vindictive, unmerciful, and punitive. But in the New Testament, we see something much different. Jesus presented himself as meek and mild, as loving and forgiving.

Derek: 04:16

These are two different gods. Of course, we Christians would denounce Marcion and say that we don't believe such a thing. Yet while we declare that the God of the Old and New Testaments are the same, why is it that when we see Jesus, we so rarely see the father he claimed to show us? We may intellectually disdain Marcionism. We may theologically agree that God and Jesus are one, But our eyes are so often tricked by an optical illusion, which can't help but see Marcionism play out in the way that we view Jesus, no matter how much we may verbally deny such a heresy.

Derek: 04:51

What if Jesus was right, though? What if he actually showed us the father? I mean, not just sometimes, like when he cast out demons or did miraculous healings. What if Jesus didn't mask divinity, but was rather encompassed by it all the time. If Jesus showed us not a Marcionite God, but a loving father, could we have eyes to see a father who clothed his naked and fearful children in the garden?

Derek: 05:17

Could we see a father who wept over the blood of Abel while showing mercy to the very one who murdered him? If Jesus showed us the father, might we have eyes to better see a mother hen seeking to gather her chicks as the father withheld judgment for centuries on Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in hopes that there might be repentance? If Jesus showed us the father, might we be able to look back and see God as a tender nursing mother, like it shows us in numbers eleven twelve? If Jesus showed us the father, could we develop years to hear God, not only in the booming voice from Sinai, but in the still small voice on Horeb? If Jesus didn't actually cloak divinity, but was rather cloaked with it, might we not only see God the father omnipresent in the New Testament, but Jesus the son omnipresent in the old?

Derek: 06:09

Once again, I think that our problem is we have a misconception of glory. When we think glorious, we think powerful, glowing appearance, booming voice. We think of a glory so immense it's a consuming fire. I mean, isn't that how the Old Testament depicts God? Just take a look at second Samuel 22.

Derek: 06:29

From the radiance of his presence, blazing coals were ignited. The Lord thundered from heaven. The most high made his voice heard. Look at that. Radiance.

Derek: 06:41

Blazing coals. Ignited. Thundered. Who could deny that this is what glory and power look like? Now the author of Hebrews reframes glory for us when he says that the sun is the radiance of God's glory and the exact expression of his nature.

Derek: 06:58

Philippians two also shows us more clearly how the glory of the God man played out. Jesus is God by nature, and to represent God to humanity, he took on the form of a servant. And first John four also expounds on this concept. The beginning of the chapter talks about the incarnation of Jesus, who has come from God. Immediately following the discussion of the incarnation, the author tells us that love also comes from God, and love is how God's sons and daughters are recognized.

Derek: 07:28

Love and service are the nature and glory of God exhibited. They have divine origins. As we come to the incarnation of the Christ this Christmas season then, it is important for us to jettison our Marcionite tendencies. Jesus is not God concealed by a fleshly body. No.

Derek: 07:48

He is a human infused with and encompassed by divinity. Every word Jesus spoke was filled with resounding love. Every touch Jesus gave was a consuming fire that began to destroy the natural evil of illness, which has pervaded our world, or the moral evil of sin, which has pervaded our hearts. There's absolutely nothing that Jesus did, which was devoid of love. First John four tells us that such is the composition of the divine, and is probably why Jesus told us that the mark of his incarnational spirit living in us is determined by our love for one another.

Derek: 08:21

We know that the divine lives within us by the presence of love. God is love. Love comes from God. Jesus comes from God. Jesus is love.

Derek: 08:32

Jesus and the father are one. And in seeing Jesus, we see the father, and we know him. The incarnation of Jesus then rings true. God did not conceal himself when he took on humanity, but rather revealed to us both his truest self and our truest selves. In Jesus, the second Adam, we were shown both what the father is truly like and what true humanity is called to be.

Derek: 08:56

A human who, like an arrow, flies true towards its mark, will hit the target of embodied love. Jesus then did not mask the divine when he took on human flesh. No. In his unrelenting, unwavering, unending love, he unmasked the divine and revealed it in the clearest and most tangible way possible in embodied love. In the Christ, we find the source and sustainer of love, the truest truth that our universe holds.

Derek: 09:26

And in uncovering and submitting to this truth, we are set free. As we prepare our hearts and minds for the incarnation, know that when you think of a poor helpless babe lying in a manger, you are seeing not a humanity which conceals a secret we have to wait decades to catch glimpses of on the cross or millennia to see come to fruition in glory and power. Not at all. In the babe, we see the purest form of truth and love. In the babe, we see pure divinity.

Derek: 09:59

For in seeing self sacrificial, unconditional love, we are not merely peering into the face of a helpless human babe, but into the face of our divine father, unmasked and revealed in all his power and glory.