Scot McKnight: Church: God with Us in Jesus

Timely food for thought.

An Advent Church knows who Jesus is.

The English teacher would tell the budding writer, “Get your book going with something that grabs the reader in the first sentence.” Unless you’re Matthew. He began with a sentence that grabs only the serious Bible student: “A record of the ancestors of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham” (Matt. 1:1, CEB). And the next set of lines is nothing but a list of names in Israel’s history, with the oddest choice of women to enliven the story, and this goes on for a whole page!

But for the serious Bible student, another message came through loud and clear: God’s way with Israel has been a story that has awaited some kind of chapter that would bring it all together.

And that story yearning for completion finds it in the birth of a little boy in the backwater of Israel, in Galilee, to two backwater people—Joseph and Mary—who are unknown to all but God and their families. God had decided that they are the way to bring this story to completion.

What is this completion? That the God who has been “with” Israel in many ways—in a smoking pot, in a cloud and a fire, in a tabernacle, and in a temple—has finally chosen to be with Israel in a single human being. Jesus is called “Immanuel,” God with us (Matt. 1:23).

Say it slowly now: God. With. Us.

Not quite, so say it like this: Jesus. Is. God. With. Us.

Advent is the day God pitched his tent to be with Israel. It is the day God became one of us. An Advent church knows Jesus is God with us.

Read it all.