On this Christmas day, I think it would be good to reflect for just a moment on the Incarnation. God became man and took on human flesh. This is a great theological  Malcolm Muggeridge wrote this to describe the importance of the birth of Christ.

“Thanks to the great mercy and marvel of the Incarnation, the cosmic scene is resolved into a human drama. A human drama in which God reached down to relate Himself to man and man reaches up to relate himself to God. Time looks into eternity and eternity into time, making now always and always now. Everything is transformed by this sublime drama of the Incarnation, God’s special parable for man in a fallen world.”

God reached down to us by sending the second person of the Trinity to earth to  become part of the human drama and human dilemma. God stepped out of eternity into time to become part of the human community. What an incredible act of love and mercy.

C.S. Lewis explains that God had to come down that He might lift us up. “In the  Christian story God descends to reascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity. . . But he goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him.”

God did not just come to dwell among us and comfort us. He came that He might raise us up through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Although we  celebrate the birth of Christ today, we also look to the death and resurrection of Christ that we celebrate at Easter. Romans 5:8 proclaims: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” 1 Peter 2:24 says that Christ “bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness: by whose stripes you were healed.”

On this Christmas day, we should pause to reflect on why Christ came to earth and what He did for us on the cross.