How can anyone believe that a human being was God?

How could a mere man down here simultaneously be God up there?

The whole idea sounds farfetched, even bizarre, doesn’t it? The rational mind tends to reject such thinking. Some have written it off as wild conjecture.

Yet the doctrine of the incarnation has been an essential mark of historic Christianity from its beginning. Actually, even before its beginning.

In 700 B.C. the prophet Isaiah thundered: “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel.”

“Immanuel” in Hebrew means “God with us.”

An atheist was once asked, “What would it take for you to believe?” He said, “Well, if your so-called God would stop by my house some day next week and introduce himself, that might work.”

He has already done that, sir. God has already come among us, walked through our neighborhoods, and visited with us. Not many comprehended (John 1:10-11).

But is that so unexpected, really?

C.S. Lewis once questioned how a person could know his Creator any more than Hamlet could know Shakespeare. Then it occurred to him that Shakespeare could easily have written himself into the play, thereby introducing himself to Hamlet. Suddenly it occurred to him: that is precisely what God has done in the incarnation.

But isn’t this an illogical doctrine?

Physicists tell us that light has both wave and particlelike features. How can that be? Isn’t it a contradiction to say that light is both matter and energy? “No,” they say. “It is a paradox. We cannot rationally conceive how it is possible. But because the evidence is incontrovertible, we strongly assert that it is true.”

Similarly, Christians, without fully comprehending just how it can be, affirm that in Jesus Christ, God became man. Paradoxical. But not contradictory.

There is one more important point to make about the incarnation.

This doctrine is not just some cold, sterile textbook thing to those of us who affirm it. It communicates to us the very heart of God. It identifies his character. It is a story of incredible love.

Richard Wurmbrand was persecuted and tortured in a Romanian prison for his faith. He relates this true account:

“There was in that prison a cell reserved only for the dying. I am the only one who has survived that cell. I was in that room for over three years.

“To my right side was a pastor by the name of Iscu. He had been so badly beaten and tortured that he lay dying. He was so quiet.

“On my left side was the Communist who had tortured Iscu to the brink of death. The government had arrested their own comrade and tortured him. Now he, too, was near death. During the night, he would awaken, ‘Please, pastor, say a prayer for me. I have committed such crimes, I cannot die.’

“What I witnessed next was a scene from heaven. The agonizing pastor called two other prisoners to help him and, leaning on them, he very slowly passed my bed and sat down on the bedside of his torturer.

“Iscu caressed his torturer on his head! I will never forget the scene. This was the man who had so beaten Iscu that now he waited for death, and Iscu caressed him. He said, ‘I have forgiven you with all of my heart and I love you. If I who am only a sinner can love and forgive you, more so can Jesus who is the Son of God and who is love incarnate. … He wishes to forgive you much more than you wish to be forgiven. You just repent.’

“In that prison setting where there was no place for intimacy, I overheard this torturer confess all of his murders to the tortured one. Then they prayed together and embraced each other. Slowly, slowly, the pastor was helped to his deathbed. They both died the same night.

“It was Christmas Eve, but not a Christmas Eve at which you celebrate One who was born 2,000 years ago, far away in Bethlehem. Jesus had been born that very evening in the heart of a criminal.

“In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” (1 John 4:10-11, New American Standard Bible)

The Rev. Daryl E. Witmer is founder and director of the AIIA Institute, a national apologetics ministry, and associate pastor of the Monson Community Church. He may be reached at AIIAInstitute@aol.com or through the Web site aiia.christiananswers.net. Voices is a weekly commentary by Maine people who explore issues affecting spirituality and religious life.