God is not prissy. God is not proud. “Immanuel” means God repairs the ruin of the world by humbling himself. The high One shows just how high he is by taking the lowest seat. Sometimes the Lord comes in glory—in a fiery cloud on Sinai, in a pillar of fire in the wilderness, surrounded by blazing angelic chariots and horsemen. Not when he comes as Immanuel. When he comes to be with us, he doesn’t enter the world in a blaze of light, astride a winged stallion. He comes inauspiciously, in weakness and dependence. “Immanuel” means God is with us in our very flesh. He doesn’t recoil even from becoming one of us. He doesn’t despise Mary’s uterus. He doesn’t refuse to become a man, or to live a human life, or to die a human death. Immanuel is the God who became baby and dwelt among us. He lived and suffered all we live and suffer. He knows creation, he knows humanity, from the inside. Immanuel reveals the breathtaking humility of God....
...He’s with us in our sin and brokenness, in our joys and triumphs, in our failures and sorrows. Nothing we can do can make him recoil or leave. He won’t be God at all if it means being God-without-us. He’s determined to be God only as God-with-us. No matter what it takes or what it costs, he’ll stay with us. He will go to hell and back—he has gone to hell and back—to be Immanuel.
That’s what God is like. (Read it all!)
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