Grace & Truth Chapel
131 Fardale Avenue ~ Mahwah, New Jersey
Phone 201-327-6226 ~ E-mail GTCinfo@gtchapel.org

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"God Was Here at Christmas" (posted December 14, 2019)

   God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.
   - 2 Corinthians 5:19

"God was in Christ." He Himself had drawn near, not merely now with some specific message, but in a Person and as a Person. It was God Himself who was here.

This is the wondrous meaning of Emmanuel, "God with us"-- not merely as omnipresent, filling heaven and earth and transcending all the bounds of His vast universe, but (amazing thought!) in the person of One who emptied himself and took a servant's form and was made in the likeness of men; of One who was perfect Man in the fullest sense of the word: spirit, soul, and body-- "the Man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5).

It is the center around which revolve all truths-- past, present, and future. Even the cross-- the amazing mystery of the sufferings of God incarnate, with all its blessed consequences for eternity, reaching out tot he eternal reconciliation of all things in earth and in heaven-- gains its significance from the great fact that "God was in Christ." Without incarnation, there could have been no cross.

This does not mean to suggest that there could possibly be any link with God by the incarnation merely. The very presence of God in the world only accentuated the awful fact of man's moral distance from Him.

Man was no nearer to God at Bethlehem than outside the garden of Eden. But God had drawn near to man with a purpose of love to remove the great barrier to true moral union.

Samuel Ridout



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