A young woman singing pop tunes on a Christmas special peppered her patter with “Sweet Baby Jesus!” The audience snickered. Even the singer commented on the irony, as she was Jewish.
While I might have wanted to discuss whether this was taking the Lord’s name in vain, she seemed to like the phrase. She commented on newborn Jesus on a haybed and how tender the whole scene must have been. She seemed proud that Jesus and Mary were Jews, but she didn’t take it any further than that. She was content to leave Jesus sweet and as a baby.
Bill and Gloria Gaither carried it further in their most famous hymn. About the time their son, Benji, was to be born, Bill was depressed over illness and personal opposition they faced in ministry. Gloria was overwhelmed by the tumult of the late 1960’s with war and assassinations and riots. “What will our baby face?” she asked.
Always one to put a pen to her feelings, her fear was gradually overcome by joy as Gloria wrote:
“How sweet to hold a newborn baby,
And feel the pride and joy he brings;
But greater still the calm assurance:
This child can face uncertain days
because He Lives!”
This is the song’s second verse, although it was written first. We don’t sing it as often as the popular first verse (“God sent His Son, they called Him Jesus…”), but it is this verse that ties the resurrection to the incarnation.
“Resurrection” is the tune name Bill Gaither gave to the song. That’s the point: the resurrection asserting itself and giving meaning to life, again and again—because He lives. But, for me, that second verse with its natal focus raises another vital question: What’s the point of the resurrection without the incarnation?
The incarnation has tripped up people since the time of Athanasius in the early 300s. Then, as now, people were taking sides for the deity or humanity of Jesus. Athanasius argued for both. Jesus must be God to take on the cosmic conquest of sin and death. But if he is not also fully human, all the dramatic events of the New Testament come unstrung.
The pre-incarnate second person of the Trinity could do anything—except die. So, he took on himself a body. He wouldn’t have done his mission without it. Without a body, he would not die in our place, he would not offer a sacrifice of blood, he would not surrender sinless perfection to appease the wrath due sinners, he would not be raised from the dead.
Why is incarnation an issue today? Because the sweet Baby in the manger leads to the cross and the empty tomb.
“This is the real stumbling block in Christianity,” writes Stephen Kneale. “It is here that Jews, Muslims, Unitarians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and many of those who feel the difficulties concerning the virgin birth, the miracles, the atonement, and the resurrection have come to grief.”
Kneale pastors today in Glotwick, England, with nearly 90% Muslim population. He faces into doubts and disagreements over the incarnation of Jesus all the time. In his world, as in ours, people of all beliefs and no beliefs struggle with the idea that Jesus is both God and human, and neither at the expense of the other.
Their question in theological terms would be, Why should Jesus bother to take on flesh, as John asserts in 1:14, to dwell among us?
The writer of Hebrews might respond, not only to be with us, but to be one of us. “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery” (Heb. 2:14-15).
He did it to get the job done.
“For we were the purpose of his embodiment, and for our salvation he so loved human beings as to come to be and appear in a human body,” Athanasius wrote of an issue he might have thought settled by his definitive work “On the Incarnation” in 330.
“It is from misbelief, or at least inadequate belief, about the Incarnation that difficulties at other points in the gospel story usually spring,” Kneale wrote 1,700 years later. “But once the Incarnation is grasped as a reality, these other difficulties dissolve.”
In other words, if we take on the mystery of the incarnation, the other mysteries solve themselves: Jesus’ crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and return. For lack of a more tactful summation, these are bodily functions for a Savior. They require a body.
Perhaps the incarnation should serve as the postmodern starting point for our gospel witness. While “the Incarnation is in itself an unfathomable mystery,” Kneale wrote, “…it makes sense of everything else that the New Testament contains.” Including our salvation.
That’s sweet, Baby Jesus.
─Eric Reed is editor of IBSA media.