HIS NAME WAS GOD. HIS NAME WAS MAN.

Dung and deity. Smelly shepherds and a Savior. The Son of God not delivered on earth’s doorway in some heavenly chariot but rather, like you and I, from a mother’s womb. The Son of man and the Son of God all bound up in one magnificent moment.

Now it goes without saying that we Christians are comfortable with heavenly angels announcing His birth, and Wisemen coming from afar. But the carpenter Jesus plying his trade just off the main road to Jerusalem in a little town called Nazareth, this we downplay. It is not that we do not mention His humanity, but we do go to great lengths to emphasize His divinity and downgrade His earthly side. Push into the background the fact that He was muscle, bone and sinew, as well as God. And that when He died upon the cross, He bled real blood and His nerves screamed like yours and mine would scream. And when He died, it was as horrible a death as every crucifixion was meant to be.

But when we do this, allow ourselves to down play His own description of Himself, the Son of Man, we do God a great disservice. And we do ourselves a great disservice. And worst of all, we miss the point that Jesus understands us because He was like us. We must not run away from this fact, the ultimate reality of who this Jesus was. That He was God...emphasis on God, and that He was man...emphasis on man. For, indeed, He was both. Otherwise, it is all meaningless. If He did not truly suffer, then the cross is pointless. If He did not truly die as men do and then rise from the dead, our talk of the tomb and resurrection is as nothing. If He did not feel the pain of rejection and become depressed by it, as do we when we are rejected, then what is it all about?

We must remember He came from heavenly highways to the dusty roads of Bethlehem. From a place of love and light to be tempted by the king of darkness. Straight from a place of no sin to a place where sin daily wears a crown.


"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. " John 1:1-7