The most radical claim in history
From the Dashboard >
I recently read some social media posts by an account called “The Biblical Man” that, believe it or not, really got me thinking. As in, I thought about it after I put the phone down. I thought about it as I was driving to and from school yesterday. I thought about it when I zoned out a bit when my daughter was “showing me funny videos” on her phone before bed. And now I’m thinking about it again as I write this.
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It’s no secret that most “intellectuals” in our culture dismiss Christianity as hollow in reasoning and vacant of logic. And at the heart of their contempt is an insistence that the idea of God becoming human is illogical. But in my Christian discipleship, I’ve learned something crazy: that is exactly the point.
The scandal of the Gospel has never been that it’s too simple for the mind, it’s that it’s too offensive for human pride.
We’ve tamed the incarnation. Truly. We’ve made the most outrageously stunning event a “cute story.” We’ve turned the most radical claim in history into a sentimental Christmas card and plastic nativity scenes depicting a peaceful baby in a manger, surrounded by polite shepherds and glowing light. We’ve made it safe and respectable. But the reality was anything but.
The Infinite confined Himself to a womb. The Omnipotent entered the world in helpless dependence. The Omniscient learned to walk and speak. The Self-Sufficient nursed from His mother. This isn’t some poetic metaphor. It’s holy scandal.
Just stop and consider this stunning reversal:
“[Christ] who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing…” Philippians 2:6–8
The One who spoke galaxies into existence (Genesis 1:1) could not speak His first words. The One who holds all things together (Colossians 1:17) had to be held. The One who never slumbers nor sleeps (Psalm 121:4) grew so tired He slept through a storm.
The Muslims are adamant that is why they cannot accept Jesus as God’s Son. Allah would never stoop so low. I couldn’t agree with them more. That’s the stumbling block Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 1:23. To religious people like Muslims, a God who dies is blasphemy. To thinking people like modern campus philosophers, a God who becomes weak is absurdity.
But true power doesn’t avoid vulnerability. That’s insecurity, the hallmark of every tyrant. Every dictator and authoritarian in history built walls to keep people out. Every false god demanded priests and rituals to get close to them. But the real God wrapped our injured flesh around Him and stepped into our dust. The real God got dirt under His fingernails, splinters in His hands, and sore feet from long, rocky roads.
Israel wanted a Messiah to overthrow Rome with force and instead they got a man who wept at a friend’s grave. The Greeks wanted wisdom to unlock the universe and instead they got a man whose blood stained a Roman cross. And the real offense isn’t just that God became human, it’s how human He became.
He was born to an unwed teenage mother in an occupied country. Scandalous for a supposed “God.”
He was raised in Nazareth, the punchline of ancient jokes. Scandalous for a supposed “God.”
He worked with His hands, ate with tax collectors, touched lepers, and let a “sinful woman” wash His feet with tears. The religious elite called Him a drunk and a glutton. Why? Because it was all scandalous for a supposed “God.”
But that is our God. Not distant, but Emmanuel (God with us). The church often tries to make Him respectable, wrapped in stained glass and polite moral sayings. But the Jesus of the Gospels overturned tables, called leaders “whitewashed tombs,” and spoke so offensively that the crowds left Him.
And yet, the same voice that thundered judgment also whispered, “Come to me, all who are weary.”
The same hands that cleansed the Temple also touched the untouchable.
The same God who commanded storms into silence also wept with the grieving.
This is why I think He had to become human:
A God who won’t bleed for you can’t understand your bleeding.
A God who won’t suffer can’t enter your suffering.
A God who won’t die can’t defeat your death.
Every other religion keeps its deity clean. Christianity gives us a God who steps into the mess. That’s what Hebrews 4:15 means when the writer says Christ was “tempted in every way, just as we are – yet without sin.” As uncomfortable as this may make us, He knows the pull of lust, the sting of betrayal, the lure of revenge. He didn’t resist all those because He couldn’t sin, He resisted because He wouldn’t.
We want a God who looks like success. But He chose to look like failure. The Word became flesh that could be bruised, pierced, and killed.
We want a God who conquers by strength. He conquered by surrender. And understand, this was no accident. From Eden onward, the plan was that God Himself would become what we are so we could share in what He is.
C.S. Lewis said Jesus is either Lord, liar, or lunatic. There’s no middle ground. And that’s the decision in front of us: a distant God who demands you earn His love, or a God who comes so near you could spit in His face.
And He validated all of it, not symbolically, but physically when He rose from the grave. If He didn’t, Paul says we are to be pitied. But if He did, then death is crushed, sin is conquered, hell is robbed of its power, and we have a God who truly understands.
The God-Man mystery is not a puzzle to solve but a love story written in blood. I’ve bet my life it’s true and think you should too.
Beautifully said!
Also, what did "The Biblical Man" write on social media that inspired this?