In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
The Incarnation of the Word of God is what the world has (and always has had) great difficulty accepting, because the Incarnation means the putting on of humanity by the Son of God. All sorts of people, somehow, cannot swallow the fact that God would empty Himself in this way. Such people cannot bear to face the fact that God took flesh, that Jesus Christ truly is the Son of God, that this Child who was born in a manger is the Love of God incarnate. They invent all sorts of other theories about who He is in order to satisfy their intellect. They try to reduce Him to some sort of philosopher, or social “nice guy”, or an avant-garde activist of some sort. However, that He would be simply the Love of God incarnate, come to earth to restore communion between us and God the Father, is beyond them. All the substitution theories by the way, all those other theories that people have come up with in their desire to make Christ more “palatable”, do not work, logically speaking.
The only way reconciliation could be achieved between us and God the Father was by the Incarnation, just as it happened. You and I, 2,000 years later, are singing the same hymns, more or less, and reading the same Gospel stories as Christians have been doing all this time. We have been encountering personally the same Lord Jesus Christ that the Apostle Paul encountered, and by whose love he lived : the same Lord Jesus Christ that all the apostles encountered, and in whose love they lived and died. It is the same Lord Jesus Christ that Christians have been encountering personally all along. My favourite old man that I love to quote from my childhood, Ole Olson, always used to say over and over again, quoting from the Epistle to the Hebrews : “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). That is how it is, exactly. He is the same Lord Jesus Christ, whom we all are encountering, in whatever time we live, and wherever in the world we live, and in whatever culture we live. It is the one Lord Jesus Christ whom we are encountering, in whose love we live, and in whose love we die.
It is very important for us to keep this in mind especially now, at this time of the year, because remembering it now might help us to remember it during the rest of the year. Being an Orthodox Christian is not an intellectual exercise. To be an Orthodox Christian does not require a degree in philosophy. To be an Orthodox Christian requires love enough to do as the Mother of God did, and always has been doing : that is, to say “Yes” to His love. We have to live in accordance with His love.
In order to live in accordance with His love, our hearts have to be in communion with Jesus Christ. We have to be talking with Him regularly. We have to be refreshing in our hearts our experience of Him by reading the Gospels regularly and the Epistles, too (and that is not to exclude the Old Testament, because it is all bound up together). We cannot have the New Testament without the Old Testament : it is all one. Jesus Christ sums everything up. The whole Old Testament prepared for Him. As we were hearing, prophecies were fulfilled in the movements of Joseph and his family in accordance with the Scriptures. No-one would have known what to expect, nor been able to understand the events when they occurred if the way of the Lord had not been prepared.
Even though our Lord came as promised, He did not come as various people had decided He must come. In their minds they turned Him into a political figure, not a Child in a manger in a cave in Bethlehem, the lowest of the low, apparently. They expected Him, as did the three Wise Men, to be born a king in a palace. However, He was not. The Lord is always dealing with us in paradoxes. Our hearts have to be attuned to Him so that we can recognise Him in our hearts.
As they have been my whole life, many people these days are frantic about the Second Coming and the Antichrist, and so forth. Fear, fear, fear. Fear is the primary instrument of the devil. Fear is not the characteristic of people who love the Lord. In fact, the Apostle John said : “Perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). If we truly are Christians, if our hearts are attuned to the Lord, and we are living in Him, our lives would be marked by lack of fear. Whenever the Antichrist may or may not show up as a person, we, in our hearts, have to be able to know the difference. According to the Scriptures, we will not know the difference by how things appear, by glitzy activities. We will not know the difference by all sorts of fancy argumentation. Like the apostles on the road to Emmaus, it will be because our hearts burn within us, and witness to the love of Jesus Christ that we will be able to tell the difference between the true and the false Christ. It requires a communion of love in our hearts.
This communion of love is accompanied by tell-tale signs. Warmth, joy, peace, stability, goodness, kindness, gentleness accompanied by firmness are all indications that Jesus Christ is present. It is for us to nurture our hearts through continual exposure to the Scriptures, and daily prayerful communication with the Lord. Then we will have real hope of being able to recognise our Saviour at the Last Coming, and, just as importantly, to recognise Him at work in other people around us and in the creation.
May the Grace of the Holy Spirit enable our hearts to have such longing for our Saviour’s presence, that we will every day without hesitation turn to Him in everything and, with love, glorify the all-holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.