Reflections on the Meaning of Christmas

My favorite part of the Christmas story is the birth of Jesus, because that is the moment God chose to come close, not just in power, but in vulnerability. When God sent Jesus into the world, He did not arrive as a conqueror. He arrived as a baby who needed to be held.

Jesus chose hunger, fatigue, rejection, and misunderstanding. He chose a body that could ache, a heart that could grieve, and a life that would ultimately be broken.

I used to think Jesus’s sacrifice began at the cross, but I have come to see that it began the moment He left heaven’s glory to enter a world under the weight of sin. Christmas is when Jesus began going all the way down into our weakness and pain so that we would never be alone in it again. His sacrifice did not start on Good Friday; it began in Bethlehem.

The Incarnation was a sacrifice, long before the nails. The moment God became human, He chose a lifelong descent into suffering, all because of His love for us.

To heal our separation from God, Jesus had to go where we were lost. We were far, so He came far. We were low, so He went low. We were dead in sin, so He entered death itself to raise us.

Jesus is not half God and half man. He is not divided or diluted. He is fully God and fully human, as I once heard described: “Jesus is the only 200% human.”

That means He genuinely feels hunger, fatigue, grief, fear, betrayal, and pain. He experiences rejection, injustice, loneliness, and death. He does not simply watch suffering from a distance. He inhabits it.

Because Jesus is sinless, His capacity to feel is not dulled or distorted by sin. Yet we experience pain through the numbness of a fallen world. It is as though we are wearing gloves. Those gloves dull our senses, weaken our compassion, and blunt our empathy by constant exposure to suffering and evil. That is why we so often respond to pain and suffering with words like, “I’ll pray for you,” while still feeling emotionally guarded or unsure how to enter another’s pain. Sin has ruined God’s original design for us, and we do not feel things as deeply as we were created to.

Jesus did not have that numbness. When He wept at Lazarus’ tomb, He felt the full weight of death and loss. When He sweated drops of blood in Gethsemane, He bore the crushing reality of sin with no emotional insulation. On the cross, Jesus cries out, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? I am poured out like water. My strength is dried up” (Psalm 22:1, 14, 15). This is not a muted human cry. It is fully human suffering, felt with uncontaminated capacity.

That means Jesus’ sorrow was sharper. His abandonment felt deeper. His anguish was more real than ours could ever be.

And yet, He chose it.

At the same time, Jesus also experiences peace in a way we cannot. Because He is without sin, His trust in the Father is complete. That is why He can sleep through a storm that terrifies seasoned fishermen. His soul rests where ours still struggles.

Because Jesus became fully human, He understands everything we experience. There is no place of suffering where He has not already been. He chose to experience our pain and sorrow so that we could know the depth of His love and that He is with us in every moment.

As you reflect on the wonder of Christmas, remember that Jesus didn’t just come to save us from a distance. He came all the way down, into a world marked by sin and sorrow, to show us that we are never alone.