Christmas Playlistنموونە

God + man = Jesus (and really good news!)

Ready for a mental workout? Then read the lyrics of this classic Christmas carol—“Christ, by highest heaven adored/Christ, the everlasting Lord/late in time behold him come/offspring of a virgin’s womb/veiled in flesh the Godhead see/hail the incarnate Deity/pleased with us in flesh to dwell/Jesus, our Immanuel.” Could you explain that to a kindergartner? Let’s try.

Jesus is God. He’s “by highest heaven adored.” He’s “the everlasting Lord.” See Jesus, and you see “the Godhead,” a fancy name for God. He’s “Deity.” He’s “Immanuel,” a Hebrew name that means “God with us.” That’s five different ways of saying the same thing—Jesus is God.

And human. When the time had fully come, Jesus was the “offspring of a virgin’s womb,” a baby. He was “veiled in flesh,” meaning you could see that Jesus was God through the “veil” of his human body. Christ was “the incarnate Deity.” Carn- means “flesh or meat,” like a carnivore eats meat, so “the incarnate Deity” is God in human flesh. It pleased Jesus to become “flesh to dwell,” to be Immanuel, God with us. That’s four different ways of saying one thing—Jesus is man.

Or, as Paul put it in Philippians: “Christ Jesus . . . being in very nature God . . . being made in human likeness” (2:5-7). God should have run away from you, with all your baggage and drama and sin, but instead he ran toward you by taking on human flesh.

What great lyrics! What an even greater Lord!