Emmanuel, God with us

Merry Christmas!

This is a season when we have a heightened awareness of the supreme sacrifice God made in leaving His home to come to ours. It wasn't only His home he left, but even His claim to divinity.

"Christ Jesus... being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness" (Philippians 2:5-7).

When we read about Jesus' works while on Earth, we are often amazed, but we don't make a connection with ourselves. We think, Well of course He could do all those things - He was God. 

And yet...

Jesus did not do anything on Earth as God. He did not even "consider equality with God something to be grasped". Peter, one of Jesus' closest friends, said this: "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and... he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him" (Acts 10:38). Not because He was God, but because God was with Him.

Here is the connection: God is with us, too. Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father" (John 14:12). As Bill Johnson says, if Jesus did what He did as God, I stand in awe. But if He did what He did as man in right relationship with God, I am obligated to do the same.

This situation was played out by the first apostles. They did not change the world because they were great. They were mostly uneducated, common men. The only difference was that they had been with Jesus. The crowd did not believe because of their words, but because "the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message" (Acts 10:44) - because God was with them and backed their testimonies with power.

What I am saying is this... I, like many others, try to get things done in my own strength. I try to be a good teacher, daughter, sister, girlfriend, and friend. Try to earn enough money. Try to say the right words and pray the right prayers so that God will move. Try to relax, find peace. Try to change people, even. But if Jesus did nothing apart from the Father (John 5:19), if He Himself said, "by myself I can do nothing (John 5:30), how can I? And if He did everything He did as a man in right relationship with God, then my focus need not be on my works, but on my relationship with the One who makes all things possible.

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen." -Ephesians 3:20-21