This is the first of 3 studies about the incarnation – the word that describes the first coming of Jesus Christ. Incarnation means the act of coming into flesh. We can work that out when we break down the basic Latin root words that incarnation is made up of:
In = into carn = flesh or body –ation on the end of a word, turns an act into a word that names the action. (E.g. educate turns into education.) Incarnate turns into incarnation and it describes the act of something, or in this case someone, coming into flesh. God came into flesh – human flesh.
Incarnation is the word used to mean the coming of God into human flesh. This is what happened at the conception and birth of Jesus. And this is what we are studying. We are not studying Christmas. You won’t find Christmas - as you experience it - in the Bible. Much of what we know as Christmas is actually a contradiction of what the Bible teaches. The only slight connection between Christmas as we experience it (i.e. trees, decorations, Santa, presents, holidays, big meals) and the coming of God in a human life, is that some of the facts about Christ’s birth have been muddled up with a commercial and cultural tradition. These studies focus on what the Bible emphasises as the most important feature of the birth of Jesus: God coming into his world in human flesh and blood.
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