Preparing for corporate worship: God became man (2)

The apostle John addressed in some of His writings in the New Testament a major problem for the church. Some false teachers were denying that God actually had become a man. He wrote the following in his second letter, verse 7: "For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist." The apostle had strong words for this teaching: It is that of the antichrist. The Bible tells us something quite different than these false teachers did: Jesus of Nazareth was, and is, fully God and fully man. As the church, we declare both His full deity and His full humanity. We will do so this Sunday as we consider the incarnation of God. We will do it as we read what Scripture tells us about His miraculous conception and birth. We will do it as we sing great songs about Him humbling Himself to come to earth and rescue His people. We will do it as we lift praise and thanksgiving to Him for becoming a man to be our Savior and Lord. We will do it as we listen to the preaching of God's Word from the gospel of Luke. We will do it with the recognition this is not just an alternative view of how to celebrate the season but it is at the center of not just Christianity but of history: God became a human being to save human beings.