Born in a Manger

Luke 2:12 And this will be the sign to you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.

It is an astounding notion that when the God of the universe chose to join Himself to the human race, He first presented Himself to mankind as an infant lying in a manger. In His majesty, God has dwelt alone in unapproachable light (1 Timothy 6:16), but consider the message proclaimed to us by this view of God as a newborn baby lying in a manger. How simple, how approachable, and how available God has become!

In the incarnation of Christ, God was finally able to open to mankind the way to the tree of life, which had been closed to man since the time of Adam’s transgression (Genesis 3:22-24). The tree of life has reappeared in the New Testament as “a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” (Luke 2:12). The tree of life intrinsically represents God making Himself available to man as life and portrays God’s intention of working Himself into us through our partaking of Him (Lee, L-S Genesis 213-226). Thus, if Adam had eaten of the tree of life, he would have received the eternal life (Genesis 3:22), the life of God, and would thereby have been enabled to express God with His image and represent God with His dominion (Genesis 1:26). Instead, 4000 years later, indeed, in the fullness of the time (Galatians 4:4-5), God came to mankind in a most significant setting—in a manger, a feeding trough! Now, whosoever opens his mouth and calls upon the name of the Lord is richly nourished with Christ (Romans 10:12) and drinks from the wells of salvation (Isaiah 12:3-4).

But Jesus’ own words to us were quite simple: “He who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me” (John 6:57)

Today we can find an abundance of books telling us how to be holy, how to live the Christian life, and so on. But Jesus’ own words to us were quite simple: “He who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me” (John 6:57). In saying “He who eats Me,” He was referring not to His physical flesh, for as He explained, “the flesh profits nothing” (John 6:63). Rather, He explained that “it is the Spirit that gives life” (John 6:63), an announcement to His disciples that He would soon be crucified and then be resurrected in a new form, as the life-giving Spirit (1 Corinthians 15:45)—a form in which He could be dispensed into man as true food. As a result of this “eating,” this spiritual partaking of Christ, we are filled with Him, thereby eventually matching Him to be His counterpart. By eating Christ, by receiving Him and partaking of Him as the Spirit, we are regenerated (John 3:5), sanctified (1 Peter 1:2), renewed (Titus 3:5), transformed (2 Corinthians 3:18), and glorified (Colossians 1:27). This is God’s full salvation. The believers in Christ, that is, those who receive Him (John 1:12-13), grow unto such a full salvation by continually tasting that the Lord is good (1 Peter 2:2-3).

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