Today, I wish to show that, contrary to the words of our favorite Christmas carol, Christ the Savior was never born in a manger, indeed, was never born at all (“before Abraham was, I am”—John 8:58).
Like that of Jesus, our bodies were all “made of a woman, made under the law” (Galatians 4:4). Like all of us, Jesus took upon Himself “the likeness of sinful flesh” (Romans 8:3) in order to free us from this “flesh and blood” existence which “cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1Corinthians 15:50).
But before He could “accomplish” that (Luke 9:31), He had to be “resurrected” into His Christ identity that is not born of a woman (see The Resurrection Body). He spent many years (until age 30) “increasing in wisdom” (Luke 2:52) before appearing on the public scene. He was immediately baptized “to fulfill all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15). In Romans 6 Paul gives us a picture of what baptism symbolizes; it is dying to sin and being raised (resurrected) to “newness of life” or “alive unto God.” It is a symbol of Jesus being “made sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (2Corinthians 5:21).
As soon as Jesus came up out of the water,
Mark 1:11 . . . there came a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
We hear this “voice from heaven” again on the Mount of Transfiguration uttering these same words with the additional words “Hear ye Him” (Matthew 17:5).
But before He is to speak those words that we must hear, Jesus the man must overcome His own humanity. This occurs when the Spirit leads Him immediately into the wilderness “to be tempted of the devil” (His own carnal mind) (Matthew 4:1) (see The Temptations of Jesus).
Because Jesus descended into the flesh and blood realm that man had created, He “took part of the same” (Hebrews 2:14) and “was in all points tempted like as we are” (Hebrews 4:15). He felt physical hunger (as do all humans) and was tempted to turn stones into bread to prove that he was the beloved son of God, as He had heard when baptized. He conquered his humanity by acknowledging that man, who is indeed the beloved son of God, must live by the Word of God which is the bread from heaven that the spirit man must eat of—the word spoken from inside.
His second temptation was to perform a miracle (jumping off the pinnacle of the temple, trusting God’s promise to keep him from harm) to exalt His humanity—to show how “spiritual” He was in His humanity. In this instance He overcame His humanity by refusing to “tempt” God by engaging in such foolishness.
The final temptation was to become a physical king in the physical realm of “this world,” meeting the physical needs and desires of the people —which would again exalt His humanity. He would do this by bowing down to (worshiping) his own humanity (carnal mind which suggests such self-exaltation), using His God-power to satisfy fleshly desires. Again He defeated His humanity and died to self by choosing to subject Himself to the will of God instead—which was that he take his own humanity and that of all mankind to the death.
By denying and dying to His human identity (the ego), Jesus was “resurrected” into His Christ identity and went forth in the knowledge that He as a man was not “good” (“Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God”—Mark 10:18) and that of Himself He could do nothing (John 5:30), that it was the Father within, not He as a man, that was doing the works (John 14:10). Most importantly, He now knew that He was one with His Father (John 10:30) and prayed that we would be resurrected from our human identity into our Christ identity and know that too (John 17).
It was on the cross that Jesus made this possible by taking His (and our) humanity to the death and raising us all with Him into our Christ identity by His resurrection from the dead—not as the Hebrew man Jesus but as the Christ, the life-giving Spirit that “went away” so that He could “come again” to live in each of us and guide us into all truth.
No man, not even John the Baptist, the greatest of all the prophets, had been able to escape the curse of the law (the ministration of death) until Jesus redeemed us from that curse by being made a curse for us.
Luke 7:28 For I say unto you, Among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist: but he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.
That is what Moses and Elijah were talking with Jesus about on the Mount of Transfiguration, about what He would “accomplish” by His “decease” at Jerusalem” (Luke 9:31), those things that the prophets and kings longed to see and hear but never could (Luke 10:24; Hebrews 11:39).
When Jesus said, “It is finished,” the work of bringing mankind back to his true identity as son of God living in the kingdom of heaven had been “accomplished.” In His “decease” as the “last Adam” (son of man; last human) we all died, and in His resurrection and ascension as the Christ we were all made alive:
1Corinthians 15:45 The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.
1Corinthians 15:22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
It is time we cease knowing Christ “after the flesh” (2Corinthians 5:16), thinking that it was the Christ who was born in a manger or who died on a cross so that God could forgive our sin. No, Christ was the life of Jesus just as He is your life. Christ is Spirit that could never be born and can never die. Christ took upon Himself our humanity and allowed that humanity (Jesus the son of man, made of a woman) to go to the death, taking the humanity of each of us also to the death, never to be resurrected.
It was the Christ, the Son of God (that can never die), that came out of the tomb of Jesus, the Christ that Mary and the disciples experienced on resurrection morning, the Christ who is the head of the body of which we are all members, the Christ who “came again” to take up His abode in each of us on the Day of Pentecost. Now He is Lord Jesus Christ:
Acts 2:36 Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made the same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.
And that is what He is referred to in the remainder of the New Testament. Never again do we hear any reference to the birth of the baby in a manger; never is His birthday celebrated. That was all brought in by the Roman Catholic Church who placed all the emphasis on the immaculate conception, the worship of both Mary and Jesus “after the flesh,” “transubstantiation” (the bread and wine becoming the literal flesh and blood of the man Jesus), and the crucifix (the flesh and blood body of Jesus hanging on a cross) as Christianity’s most sacred symbol.
Although Protestantism has abandoned many of the teachings and practices of Catholicism, it has adopted other ones where the emphasis is just as much on the physical (see Realm of Spirit).
Until we can make the distinction between Jesus, the son of man and Christ, the Son of God, we will never know ourselves and others the way we are known of God—as His beloved offspring in whom He is well pleased (see Born of Spirit and Living as Heirs of God). And we will never be able to love God and one another— which alone will enable us to walk as Jesus walked and do the works that He did as we fulfill His commandment to take the good news of the kingdom of God into all the world.