How Did God Become a Man?

How did God become a man? That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of CORE Christianity. Hi, it's Bill Meyer, along with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and this is the radio program where we answer your questions about the Bible and the Christian life every day.

And what an apropos question to ask at this time of year. CORE, that's 1-833-843-2673. You can also post your question on one of our social media sites, and of course, always email us anytime at questionsatcorechristianity.com. First up, let's go to Brian calling in from California. Brian, what's your question for Adriel?

Yes, thank you. I just wanted to call in after listening the other day with regard to an answer on Christmas, which caused me to go and kind of research it all. And I found, you know, that it was somewhat controversial on how it changed through the histories and the centuries from the pilgrims and different church eras and certain acceptances and non-acceptances. And then finally, it has come down to being the 25th of December, and yet in the Bible, it said the pastors or the shepherds were out in the pasture watching their sheep. And, you know, there's a comment that maybe in the middle of winter, they wouldn't have been in that type of situation. But that's kind of irrelevant as it really boiled down to all the changes and then finally settling on Christmas. And I guess my bottom line point is, like Christmas and Easter, when we wrap our Christian beliefs around pagan holidays, my feeling has always been that we tend to lose the power of our message to the world because it is so blended with the world. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Brian. Excellent question and obviously totally appropriate to ask this question around this time of the year, and there has been, as you already noted, some debate. How did we land on December 25th? The part of it was, you know, people concluding based on Luke's gospel that the shepherds were out in springtime. There was this tradition that essentially, based on, I think, I could be wrong here, but I think it had to do with the time of year, who was the priest at X time. There was basically where Christians concluded that the Annunciation and Mary, you know, conceiving the Son of God, that happened in March, March 25th.

Well, you count nine months from there when the baby would be born and you get, I mean, the perfect nine months, right, and you get December 25th. And so that began to be the feast or the time when some Christians celebrated the birth of Christ, the birth of God the Son into the world, taking flesh from the womb of the Virgin Mary. I don't think, and I've said this on the broadcast before, that you have any clear command in scripture to celebrate, you know, special festivals surrounding the birth of our Lord Jesus or his resurrection from the dead apart from the resurrection that celebrated every Sunday on the Lord's day. I mean, that's really the day that we gather around as Christians, and yet the church historically did also commemorate some of these important times in redemptive history. That was more of a later development. I mean, some of them were really early, like the resurrection or like the birth of Christ, but other things that, you know, are celebrated today, like Pentecost and Advent, for example, that season leading up to Christmas, or Lent. These were typically things that were later developments in the history of the church. Now, are they bad?

Does that make them bad? I don't think so. We have a resource over at corechristianity.com, which you might have heard of. I think it's five reasons why Christmas isn't a pagan holiday, and I think that'll shed light on some more of the history and be an encouragement to you. But I also sympathize with your concern that if we take our message and we wrap it up in the stuff of the world in order to try to win people, well, yeah, you can really water it down, and that has happened. It can happen through, you know, these holidays.

It can also happen just with the church trying to be too much like the world, losing the essence of what God calls us to in worship and in service to him, seeking to please man rather than to please God. And so, Brian, I sympathize with that concern, and may God help all of us throughout the entire year, but especially this time of the year, to keep our eyes fixed on God, on sound doctrine, on rightly worshiping him, and on serving him, especially in this time, by loving him with all of our hearts and loving our neighbor as ourselves. And may God give us mercy for when we fall short of those things as we so often do. And so, God bless you and Merry Christmas.

Thanks so much, Brian. Appreciate you listening to CORE Christianity. By the way, that resource that Adriel mentioned is called Five Reasons Christmas is Not a Pagan Holiday.

You can find that at corechristianity.com forward slash offers. And I think we've mentioned before, Adriel, that probably the biggest concern right now is the secularization, the commercialization of Christmas. Yeah, and that's just that's just the thing, right? And so, I mean, on the one hand, it's not something that we're commanded to do as Christians. You can't, you know, you can't condemn someone for not celebrating Christmas and not getting a Christmas tree.

That's just not, that's not in the Bible. But on the other hand, so many people, you know, they want to sprinkle a little bit of God or Jesus into their lives. But it's really mostly about the consumerism and the, you know, buying stuff.

And that's where I think we have an opportunity. I like to use this season just as a minister, as a pastor, to try to point people to Christ and the Gospel. And this is a time of the year when a lot of people who ordinarily don't go to church are willing to go to a Christmas Eve service. Same with Easter, right? We'll go, it's Easter. And rather than just say, oh, well, you know, we don't celebrate that because we're Christians, I think it's an opportunity for us as believers to say, hey, let's point people to the significance and the importance of the fact that God the Son was born into this world for our redemption, for our salvation. Let's, let's herald that message. And let's, let's capitalize on some of this openness that we're seeing around this time of the year.

You know, and it's really exciting. I've seen some research on if you will just invite a non-Christian friend or relative, work associate, to come to a Christmas Eve service with you, chances are many of them will say yes. And yet how many of us kind of shy away from that invite, huh?

Yeah. And you know, it's, it's a small thing that we can do to hopefully expose people to the Gospel and Christian community. And so I'm glad that you brought that up, Bill, and maybe some of our listeners right now are encouraged to think about that person in their life that they go to work with or, you know, know at the gym or wherever, and, and to say to them, hey, would you, would you join me for our Christmas Eve service or our Christmas day service, or, you know, we'd love to have you with us.

And I think that'd be a wonderful thing. You're listening to Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Just a reminder, you can call us anytime 24 hours a day and leave your question for Adriel on our voicemail system. Here's the number. It's 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. Let's go to Matthew calling in from Texas. Matthew, what's your question for Adriel?

Hello, Pastor Adriel. My question is, why did the disciples get rebuked for wanting to call fire down from heaven when that's what Elijah did? Hey, Matthew, thanks for that question. So looking at Luke chapter 9, beginning in verse 51. When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem, and he sent messengers ahead of him who went and entered a village of the Samaritans to make preparations for him. Which is interesting to note there. So it's the Samaritan village, and you know based on other passages of scripture, thinking of John 4 for example, that the Samaritans and the Jews don't get along.

There's tension, there's beef there, and so they're not viewed entirely positively. And so he entered a village of the Samaritans to make preparations for him. Verse 53, but the people did not receive him because his face was set toward Jerusalem. And so they reject him. And when his disciples James and John saw it, they said, Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them? But he turned and rebuked them, and they went on to another village.

And so the answer clearly is no, I don't want you to do that. And I think we've probably all been in the shoes of the disciples there where, you know, somebody does something to offend us about our faith, or to, you know, they speak negatively of Jesus, or they reject him. And of course so many in the world do reject Jesus, and we think, Lord, you know, should we let him have it?

Are you going to let him have it? Look at these people who are sinning against you, who are disrespecting your word. Do you want us to call down fire upon them? And we have to note, again, Jesus doesn't commend them. He doesn't say, man, your zeal is so great, I'm so glad you're passionate about the, you know, my honor.

He rebukes them. In other words, what they did was wrong. Now you ask, well, in the Old Testament, Elijah, you know, he did this, so what gives? We have to recognize that this is a different point in redemptive history.

We're not talking about the same scene or the same context, and context always is really important. Jesus coming to seek and save the lost, and of course he said in the Sermon on the Mount, you have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I say to you, verse 44 of Matthew chapter 5, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven, for he makes his son to rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. In other words, God is still going to keep raining his goodness on the Samaritans. Yes, they've rejected Jesus, but there is still the hope of repentance, and so judgment is coming, brothers and sisters, one day. One day the fire is going to rain down and Christ is going to return as the judge of heaven and earth, the living and the dead, and there will be no more opportunity for repentance, and so today is the day of salvation, and I think in part the reason that Jesus rebuked his disciples there is because they didn't grasp that.

They were calling down for the judgment now, and Jesus says, no, no, God is long-suffering, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance, and who knows, maybe many of those Samaritans who rejected him there after his resurrection from the dead did come to repentance, and of course we hope that that is the case, and I wouldn't doubt it at all, and so I think that's why you have a big difference there, a big distinction, Matthew. Appreciate your question, and God bless. We've also got to be careful with our social media because we often want to call down fire and brimstone on those that we disagree with, although somebody's posting something that maybe politically bugs us.

We need to really be cautious. The burning coals we want to heap on people's heads are the ones that Paul talked about in the book of Romans, in Romans chapter 12, a really interesting passage. Towards the end of the chapter, Romans chapter 12, he says verse 14, bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse them. Okay, rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep, live in harmony with one another, do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight, repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all, if possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him.

If he is thirsty, give him something to drink, for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Now those burning coals, I don't think is fire and brim, you know, it's like you'd be good to them and God is gonna, you know, God is gonna hit him real hard. The focus there, I think, is that conviction that they would come under, that burning coal on their conscience that's smoldering as you respond, not evil for evil, but as you show kindness and mercy, as you pray for those who mistreat you and who speak against your faith. And so God give us the fortitude and the wisdom and the strength and the grace to respond in a godly manner towards those who persecute us, not, you know, just saying, oh whatever, I don't care, but showing the love of Christ and calling people to repentance and not, as you said, Bill, just, you know, letting him have it on social media or worse, you know, in person, that kind of a thing.

Really well said. This is CORE Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. If you have a question about the Bible or the Christian life doctrine or theology or something happening in your church life, you can always either email us at questions at corechristianity.com or leave us a voicemail at 833-THE-CORE.

Let's go to Joyce calling in from Missouri. Joyce, what's your question for Adriel? Hi Pastor, I have a question. I'm leaving a church right now who believes in speaking in tongues, and I've had a little bit of a problem with it myself because of what I'm reading in the Bible, and they use the scripture of 1 Corinthians 13 verse 1, where Paul speaks of, he speaks with the tongue of men and of angels, and I was curious of what your take is on that scripture.

Okay, I'm going to answer that question, I'm going to answer that question, but I just want to ask you a quick follow-up, Joyce. Does this church also teach that every Christian is supposed to speak in tongues? That, you know, everybody who really is a believer has the ability or opportunity to speak in tongues if they're filled with the Holy Spirit? I'm not sure what they believe as far as that goes. Everyone should, but they, just about everyone in the church does.

Oh, okay. So you might feel left out if you're not speaking in tongues. Well, I grew up in a Pentecostal home, and that was kind of like the only way you knew that a person was saved and filled with the Holy Spirit was when you spoke in tongues. So it was something I battled with for most of my life, because reading the Bible, I'm understanding it differently with the help of others who are more knowledgeable than I am.

Yeah. On the Word. Well, happy to talk about this with you, and just want to encourage you, keep taking into the Scriptures, how wonderful that as you're reading the Scriptures, I mean, it's like Luke in the book of Acts talked about the Bereans in Acts 17, right, searching the Scriptures, wanting to test the things that they were hearing from the apostles, but I think for each of us, you know, we don't want to have an overly critical spirit with regard to our church or pastor, certainly not, but we do in humility want to search the Scriptures and say, okay, does this line up with what the Word of God teaches? And pastors should be open.

100 percent. If you're a minister of the Word of God, you better be ready to answer questions about God's Word and about your teaching, because you want to be faithful to the Scriptures, and it is an opportunity for sharpening as well. And so with regard to this, you said, you know, in 1 Corinthians chapter 13 verse 1, Paul talks about the tongues of angels, and in some churches they say, well, that's what we speak in tongues, but they're not human languages, they're angelic languages. That's why they don't really sound like a human language, maybe it's, you know, it's an angel's language, and so I don't think that you can actually defend that from what Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 13 verse 1, because I think there he's speaking hyperbolically, and that's really clear from the context, right? He says, if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but don't have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith, again, he's speaking hyperbolically, so as to remove mountains, but I don't have love, I am nothing. He's saying, look, you can have these amazing shows of spiritual gifts, you can speak in the language of the cherubim, you can have all prophetic powers, you can have so much faith, Paul says, you know, miraculous faith, that you can move mountains with your prayers. If I give away all that I have and if I deliver up my body to be burned, I die a martyr's death, I just give it all away and I lay down my life for Jesus, quote unquote, but don't have love, he says, I gain nothing.

And then he gives us those beautiful descriptions of love, love is patient and kind, love does not envy or boast, it is not arrogant. You know, going back to something you said, Joyce, it's really tragic when churches say, the real sign that you're saved, that you're filled with the Holy Spirit, is that you speak in tongues, the tongues of angels. Paul is saying just the opposite, he's saying, look, you can actually have all that, you can have all these miraculous gifts and the ability to do these things, but if you don't have the fruit of the Holy Spirit, there's a real problem. Love, I think, is the ultimate mark or sign of the Christian, and so it's not speaking in tongues, it's the fruit of the Holy Spirit being cultivated in our lives, and even that fruit is not what saves us, that's not what justifies us, because we don't produce it like we should.

We don't, none of it, I mean, we're getting a couple of grapes out here and there, I mean, we're all struggling. We're all struggling, and God help us, but we're saved, justified by faith. You know, our sins are forgiven, our slate wiped clean, and so Paul is speaking hyperbolically there, meaning he's not saying you literally are speaking in the tongues of angels, that's why nobody understands you, and it's clear from Acts chapter 2 and even later in 1 Corinthians chapter 14 that the tongues that people were speaking in were intelligible languages, they were real languages that these individuals had never learned, and the other thing that he focuses on, and this is something to watch out for in church, is he lets the Corinthians know how this should be done within the context of the worshiping assembly, he says, look, it's really not helpful for everybody to just be speaking in tongues and nobody knows who's saying what or what's being said. If somebody's going to speak in tongues, pray that there's an interpreter too, and unfortunately, you know, in a lot of churches, at least that claim to operate in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, they're not operating in them in the way that the apostle Paul talked about here in 1 Corinthians chapter 14, where you're given such clear instructions, this isn't, look, if everybody's speaking in tongues, people can't, people won't be able to say amen at what you say because they have no idea what you're saying, how are they going to say amen at your giving of thanks unless there's an interpreter there? In the church, he says, I would rather speak just a few words in a known language than, you know, a million words in some tongue that nobody knew because everything that we should seek to do within the context of the worshiping assembly should be for the benefit and good of the other.

It's not about me. It's not my opportunity to, you know, display how flawlessly I speak in the language of seraphim, you know, and cherubim, so that everybody can look at me and be like, wow, look at how holy that person is, that guy is. No, even the gifts that God gives to us are for the good of our brother or sister in the church, for the mutual upbuilding and edification. And so spend some time, Joyce says, I love that you're studying the scripture, spend some time in 1 Corinthians 12 through 14 asking these questions, and it's fair to ask these questions to the leadership in your church too, what they think, how they make sense of these passages. And we want to be in churches where we are striving to edify one another and where all things, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 14, towards the end, all things are done decently and in order. And there's a focus on the pure preaching of the word of God, proclaiming Christ and all his benefits to us, grounding us in in scripture and applying it to our lives. That's what you want, somebody who's going to go through the text of scripture, verse by verse, right, preaching the Bible. That's what we need to grow in our faith. Admit it, it may not be as exciting as people doing backflips and speaking in tongues and, you know, miracles every Sunday.

I got questions about that, but ordinarily it's how we grow as Christians, under the word and by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Thank you so much, Joyce. You're listening to Quora Christianity with Pastor Adrian Sanchez.

Let's go to a voicemail that came in from one of our listeners. This is from Jason. My question is about the Trinity. Now, I hear that Jesus is the Son of God, but some people say that he is God made flesh, you know, through the Immaculate Conception. Can you explain that to me?

Thank you. Yeah, the great mystery of the incarnation, and how do we explain that? Well, I love this question, and it is indeed a mystery, and so I think, you know, human words fall short of being able to capture the reality of what happened, but it did indeed happen that God the Son, the second person of the Holy Trinity, assumed flesh from the womb of the Virgin Mary.

True humanity came for us and for our salvation in our place, God and man, the incarnation. Sometimes this is referred to as the hypostatic union, the union of the two natures in one person, one divine person. Now, a text to go to, if there is any text in the Bible that explains this, we could say maybe Luke chapter 1 verse 35, the angel answered her, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called Holy, the Son of God.

Now, that word overshadow there is really interesting. It's used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint, in Exodus chapter 40 verse 35, where the presence of God overshadowed the tabernacle. In other words, Luke is suggesting here that Mary's womb is a new kind of tabernacle. And who lives in the tabernacle? God himself lived there. And so Jesus assumes, God the Son assumes humanity from the womb of the Virgin Mary.

He tabernacled among us, as John says in John chapter 1, and we beheld his glory. Praise God for Christmas. Hey, God bless. Thanks for listening to Core Christianity. To request your copy of today's special offer, go to CoreChristianity.com forward slash radio, or you can call us at 1-833-843-2673. That's 833-THE-CORE. When you contact us, let us know how we can be praying for you. And be sure to join us next time as we explore the truth of God's word together.