Incarnation (3)

In this final post on the Incarnation, I want to suggest that the authority of the Incarnation must be accepted!  Already, I can hear some ask: "You want to suggest, and then you speak of compulsion?!"  I guess that that is correct.  Of course, those words may be interpreted somewhat differently!  Let me explain!

We are thinking here of where the real crunch comes; where the rubber hits the road; the crux of the matter.  It is not that mankind can reasonably reject the idea of God revealing Himself; but that mankind does not like the revelation that God made in the Persona (not a typo - see the chapter on "Trinity" in my book - Great Words of the Faith) of Jesus the Christ.  Writing to some early Messianic Jews - Jews who accepted Yeshua ha Mashiach (Jesus the Messiah) - the anonymous writer states that "In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days He has spoken to us by a Son, Whom He appointed the heir of all things, through Whom also He created the world." (Hebrews 1:1). 

"He has spoken"!   This means that mankind has to deal with two facts.  The first of these concerns the ignorance that the Christ dispels; the second with the obedience that the Christ demands.  This is what I meant by that statement above.  It's not that anyone is obliged to accept the authority of the Incarnation, but that those who accept the Incarnation find that there is an authority that they must accept!

It was three years ago that I quoted some words of King George V from his first Christmas broadcast to the Nation and the Empire (1932).   However, I don't know in which year it was that he spoke to the children of the Empire, commencing with the words: "Boys and girls, the king is speaking to you."  In the Christ, Almighty God is speaking, and speaking to each and every one of us.  We really ought to listen!

And now, the full text of the poem that George V quoted:

"I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year -
'Give me a light, that I may tread safely into the unknown.'

And he replied,
'Go into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God.
That shall be to you better than a light, and safer than a known way!'

So I went forth and, finding the hand of God,
Trod gladly into the night.
He led me towards the hills,
And the breaking of day in the lone east.

So heart be still!
What need our human life to know if God hath comprehension?
In all the dizzy strife of things, both high and low, God hideth his intention."

Minnie Louise Harkins (1875-1957)

A happy, and peaceful, 2015 to one and all!