The God Who Understands

As we find ourselves in yet another nativity season, it is right for us to reflect on the many lessons from the biblical teaching about the incarnation of the eternal Son of God. We sometimes fail to reflect adequately on the fact that the message of Christmas is full of spiritual lessons for our souls. Whether they are found in the angelic annunciations, the songs of the nativity, the historical circumstances surrounding the birth of the Savior, or in the stark contrasts, these multifaceted lessons constantly surface in the biblical narrative.

Scripture highlights the fact that God loves His people. It was love that drew God from heaven to earth in the incarnation. In Christ, God becomes like us in order to dwell with us––and all because He has loved us. This is the wonder of the Immanuel promise (Is. 7:14).

Next, Scripture teaches us about the goodness and giving of God. The Bible highlights the circumstances surrounding the timing of the Savior’s birth in order to draw out the contrast between God’s gracious giving and man’s sinful selfishness (Luke 2:1–7). While men take, while God gives. This is one of the principle lessons we glean from the Christmas story.

Additionally, we discover that light has come into the world in the coming of Christ. He came to “give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death” (Luke 1:79). The Son of God––the light of the world––was knit together in the darkness of the virgin’s womb in order to die and dispel the darkness of the hearts of men.

The birth narratives of Christ teach us further about the sovereign and mysterious wisdom of God. Everything about the birth narratives of the Savior highlight the deep and transcendent mystery of the incarnating of the eternal Son of God. The Holy Spirit knitting the eternal Son a human nature in the womb of the virgin (Luke 1:35) where no eye could see and no ear could hear magnifies this aspect of the Christmas message.

There is the lesson of joy in a joyless world. The angel Gabriel noted this aspect of the incarnation when he told Mary, “You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord (Luke 1:14–15). This spiritual joy is immediately realized when the baby in Elizabeth’s womb leapt for joy at the greeting of Mary (Luke 1:44).

There is another significant lesson for us to glean from the nativity narratives in Scripture–-namely, that the God who is infinitely transcendent and wholly other would condescend to enter this created world and become a creation (without ceasing to be God) in order to enter into the full experience of life in this fallen world. In Christ, God is the God who experientially understands our sorrows and needs because he himself too the frailty of human flesh in a fallen world upon himself. Sinclair Ferguson has so wonderfully captured this, when he says,

“The Almighty God does not need to enter into our flesh simply in order to show us that He loves us. Demonstrations of His love surround us and the universe that He has made and the blessings He has given. We can be in no doubt whatsoever about His love. No, there is a far deeper reason that He does not abhor the virgins womb. It is that He takes our weakness. He takes our frailties at its very weakest and most frail point. Because God is determined to share our needs, to heal our deepest and darkest sorrows, to enter into our death, and even on the cross, to die that death for our salvation so that no one would ever be able to say to the Savior, ‘But You don’t understand my need.'”

Dorothy L. Sayers further summarized this in her famous statement about God identifying with His people in their suffering. She wrote,

“For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is— limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death—He had the honesty and the courage to take His own medicine. . . He has Himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair and death. When He was a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile.”

The eternal God incarnate knew what it was to be poor (2 Corinthians 8:9). He was born to a poor mother who didn’t even have enough to pay for the regular sacrifice for the dedication of her child that God required in the law (Luke 2:22–24). He was wrapped in swaddling cloths and laid in a manger (Luke 2:7). This would become the pattern of his life. He would grow up the son of a poor carpenter in a small and despised town. During his earthly ministry, he said, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” (Luke 9:58). He would ultimately die on the cross without anything or anyone to support Him. He knows what it is to be hated and rejected–even from birth. When Herod heard from the wisemen that they had seen Christ’s star in the east, he raged with Satanic hatred and sought to malevolently destroy him (Matt. 2:7–15). This too would be the consistent refrain of his life. Jesus was ridiculed by His brothers, despised and rejected by his own people, sentenced and executed by the worldly Romans, betrayed by Judas, denied by Peter, abandoned in His hour of trial by His disciples, tortured, attacked by Satan and demons, and, ultimately forsaken by God when bearing the sin of the world. Christ Jesus became like us and endured all these things without sin.

Whenever we are tempted to think that no one understands our sorrows, our fears, our needs, we should reflect on how the Son of God coming into the womb of the virgin Mary teaches us–that from the very beginning of the incarnation––God understands our frailties, weaknesses, and needs. Christmas means we can never say, “No one understands what I am going through.” The eternal Son of God knows exactly what you are going through, and takes it upon himself in order to suffer on the cross to take it all upon himself. Christmas means that there is an incarnate God who understands; therefore, we can go to Him in all of our frailties and weaknesses and know that He has entered into the same frailties and weaknesses in the humiliations that He endured for our redemption. He is the God who understands because He is the God who took His own medicine for our consolation.