Jesus: The Baby That Brings Silence
Pinch yourself. Yes, that’s right: as you’re reading this, please just humor me and pinch yourself. Feel that bit of sting. In stories, people will pinch themselves to prove they’re not dreaming, but I want you to pinch yourself to remember that you have a real human body.
What good is a human body exactly? Well, with your body you can enjoy God’s creation by seeing a beautiful snowfall with your eyes. With your body, you can use your hands to do work that shows love for someone else. And with your body, you can use your words to explain how good God has been to you as you share your testimony.
Every year as we celebrate the Incarnation of Jesus, I’m fascinated with the question of why God chose to use a human body for the rescue of the world. After all, when He chose to rescue Paul and Silas in the jail, He used an earthquake not a human body. When He rescued David from Goliath, He used a rock. He rescued Rahab with the miraculous protection of her home in a city wall. He rescued Israel from invading armies, one time with angels and another time with a mere rumor. So we see, God is quite accomplished at rescue plans, and He uses all kinds of instruments to save people from their trouble.
If God needed to use a human person, a flesh-and-blood person, then that person had to be born. That’s what Christmas celebrates: a baby with pinchable cheeks who was wrapped up and sleeping most of the time.
The night He was born here on earth, we (you, me, and all humans) were being accused before God. Someone, who is simply called the Accuser in the Bible, was standing in the throne room pointing out my faults – my pride, my tendency to anger, my laziness. They were also pointing out your faults. And these weren’t false accusations: they were all true. Every single one. In God’s universe, justice has to be paid.
What does a baby on earth do against the Accuser in the throne room of God? That baby grows up and lives a life doing all the good that we never did and avoiding all the wrong things we do. So while the Accuser accurately said, “He left a project undone in 8th grade, breaking his promise!” Jesus quietly did every project He committed to do. While the Accuser proclaimed, “She raised her voice in an outburst of anger toward her sister!” Jesus’s perfect patience endured the unfairness of siblings. He also resisted temptations His entire life, living as an example, so we would do good to others, would know how to suffer, and would know how to love our enemies.
A perfect human on earth doesn’t solve the problem of the accusations in heaven. The Accuser had nothing to say against Jesus. But just because I have a perfect example to follow doesn’t mean I’ll be able to follow them. So when the accuser points out my failings, he’s still right, and I’m still on the wrong side of justice. But the Perfect Human (because He was a human) was qualified to take the load of my fault. An earthquake or an angel couldn’t take the load of my errors, faults, mistakes, and evils, but a Perfect Human could.
When He, the Human Being who had never made one single error, took that responsibility, He had to accept the punishment. The accuser is right: everyone who fails to meet God’s universal standards deserves to die. So, in Jesus’s body lay the answer: the blood pumping through His veins. If He kept His body and blood safe, He could avoid discomfort, but then His healthy body wouldn’t be accepting the sentence of death for us. Instead of valuing His own safety in that body, the one born in Bethlehem, He accepted both the guilt and the punishment.
And with that, suddenly on that spring Friday night in Jerusalem 33 years after the silent night in Bethlehem, the Accuser was silenced — not because humans stopped sinning, but because the human heart of the only perfect man stopped beating; not because a drop of anointing oil fell from heaven, but because a drop of blood hit the ground outside Jerusalem.
On that following Sunday morning when Jesus met his friends again, they started to understand that He was truly indestructible! Those friends started to praise God and to explain what good He had done for them. They told it as real truth, honest hand-on-the-Bible testimony: the Accuser has failed. God cannot be defeated, not even by death. Humanity cannot be destroyed, not even by true accusations. For each of us who rely on Jesus against the Accuser instead of relying on our own actions, Jesus’s body became a doorway to friendship with God.
You see, Jesus’s body, born as a baby in Bethlehem and given for us in death in Jerusalem, doesn’t just solve a personal problem for us. The Accuser who would like to point out our faults can’t point to them any more because in that body, Jesus accepted the responsibility and absorbed the punishment. And we, the friends and worshipers of Jesus, share what He has done for us. We explain how His offer applies to other people too. That’s our testimony! And it’s powerful. Pinch yourself! It’s not a dream any more, and death has even less sting than the pinch.
Where is that Accuser now? Canceled. Like the blood that fell from the cross and splashed down onto the rocks, the Accuser has been thrown down and has no voice. Our words of truth about the good God has done for us and is doing for us cast the Accuser down. This story of a baby who grew up to give His life blood for His friends is so epic it even has its own Christmas carol. There, in the throne room of heaven where the Accuser once bellowed out the charges against us, they sing:
And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death…” Revelation 12:10-11 (ESV)
