The Incarnation and the Holy Scriptures
Written by Dan McDonald
The Christian perspective set forth
in the New Testament sees the Old Testament as pointing towards Christ. One of
the first Old Testament passages pointing towards the Christ in the New
Testament is found in Genesis 3:15 where God’s judgment of the deceiving Serpent
is expressed “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your
offspring and hers; He will strike at your head, while you strike at his
heels.” (Genesis 3:15)[i] The
promised son of the woman striking the head of the serpent has been regarded in
most Christian traditions as the Old Testament’s first indication of Christ’s
coming. Centuries and millennia would pass before this promise would be
fulfilled. Is there any reason why such a fulfillment would take so long to be
fulfilled? Is there a reason for millennia long delay, or is God in His
sovereignty merely arbitrary in fulfilling His promises?
Perhaps we see something of a reason
for the delay in a short statement made by King David on his deathbed. It must
have been a painful time for those watching David die. I imagine like those in
the myths of Arthur watching Arthur die. There had been such hope when the king
was young. But then the faults of the king joined by court intrigue had led the
later days of his reign to lose their luster. He had been a good king, but his
sins had brought troubles upon the land. He could give thanks for one thing. He
had written words. He had written Psalms that would be sung in holy worship. He
remembered this one thing that God had done in his life and marveled on his
death bed saying “The spirit of the Lord spoke through me; his word was on my
tongue.” (II Samuel 23:2) I’m not sure we understand the extent of how marvelous
this reality was. The words of his Lord were on his tongue by the gift of the God’s
spirit.
It seems to me that David at least
saw dimly the astonishing truth he represented in his deathbed statement. The
word of the Lord was on his tongue even as he wrote Psalms expressing experiences
and thoughts he had within his life. Perhaps Psalm 139 expresses as well as any
how David’s experience of life translated to Psalm writing was simultaneously
the Spirit’s work of expressing the Lord’s word on David’s tongue. David was
truly expressing his own experiences in writing the Psalm but the Spirit was
operating in the words to give a dimension to David’s writing that exceeded
David’s experiences.
Consider Psalm 139:13-16 where David
writes “You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb, I praise
you, so wonderfully you made me; wonderful are your works! My very self you
knew; my bones were not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret,
fashioned as in the depths of the earth. Your eyes foresaw my actions; in your
book all are written down; my days were shaped, before one came to be.” (Psalm
139:13-16) This passage expresses first David’s own thankfulness for his life,
and for what God made of it. Who could have imagined that David would be taken
from shepherding sheep to being one of the kings of the nations? The
thankfulness for birth makes this a universal Psalm worthy of the worship of
all of God’s people. We have each had this mysterious and marvelous experience
of having our bodies, our bones, our muscles, blood vessels, and organs put
together in the womb. There is yet a peculiar way that this Psalm speaks of the
marvels of Christ’s holy incarnation. All his days were written in a book
before he was yet put together in his mother’s womb. He would study the
Scriptures and would come to see that while the religious leaders of his day
sought the Scriptures because they thought they had eternal life in them, he
had come to realize that amazingly they spoke of him. Jesus would thus say to
them “You search the Scriptures, because you think you have eternal life in
them, and they testify of me.” (John 5:39)
We can view the process of the
writing of the Hebrew Scriptures with a sense of how God brought together the
experiences of Jesus’ human ancestry to be participants in God’s preparation of
His own Word to guide the future son of the woman. Imperfect men and women were
given experiences, expressed thoughts, were confronted by angels and by God to
bring forth a written history of Israel that was shaped and guided by the
Spirit of God to be the word of the Lord expressed in Israel’s history to be
given to a son yet to come. The promise God made regarding the promised son was
being worked out in the form of careful preparation for his coming in the
fullness of time. His days, his challenges, his testing, his message was being
crafted and written in a book before his bones and flesh were sewn together in
his mother’s womb. He would take his place as an infant. He would have to learn
like all children learn to grow in stature both with God and with humanity.
What suitable curriculum would train this one who would be like us in human
weakness and yet would be God’s Son? David’s statement is the answer and we
know it to be. This Son must have the word of the Lord prepared to guide and
shape the Lord in his childhood. This one who with the Father and the Spirit is
with God and is God must have a curriculum shaped by the Holy Spirit and
capable of being used naturally by the Holy Spirit in training the Lord in
human flesh. It will not be enough for him to be nourished by mother’s milk,
meats, fruits, and vegetables. He must have as his bread and manna, the Word of
God.
There is beauty in how God prepared
his Son’s training by calling Israel to himself and using the flawed sages,
prophets, and song writers to be given in their histories and experiences and
thoughts the word of the Lord shaped by the Spirit of God. We can see how God’s
love for his son is knit together with his love for the world. God created the
entire world through his word and by his spirit that the world might be
redeemed by his Word becoming flesh in conjunction with the power of the Holy
Spirit. In preparing for his Son’s coming by giving the Word through His covenant
people Israel, God forged his love for humanity in and around his love for his
only son whom he was giving to the world due to his love for the world. The
marvelous reality being expressed in God’s love for his son in God’s love for
the world is barely recognizable except in the joy of the shared Eucharist
where the people of God are given the bread and wine of the body and blood of
Christ as their meat and drink. In the one who is God’s only begotten we are
made by God’s gift of him to the world, His beloved people.
All of this was written in a book
before Jesus’ bones had been yet woven together in Mary’s womb. The centuries and
millennia passed and it was now time. A young Israelite woman was addressed by
an angel. She was troubled but the message was a blessing as the angel said to
her “Hail favored one! The Lord is with you!” (Luke 1:28) She was told of how
she would give birth to the holy one of Israel. She listened carefully to the
angel’s announcement and replied “May it be done to me according to your word.”
(Luke 1:38) The word that had been on David’s tongue, and had now addressed
her, would take residence in her womb and already written in a book would take
shape in the coding of human DNA. He who had filled the highest places in
heaven would now dwell with the lowly and meek. What two places could be more
alike than the lofty realms of heaven and the places where the meek dwell?
Forever we would know of how God so loved His son and how in the loving of his
Son he loved the world. His love for his son was so immense and his love for
his created world so true that forever the two would be joined as He so loved
the world he gave it His only begotten Son.
Prophets and sages had sought to
understand such high and lofty mysteries as the righteousness of a Holy God, of
the judgments of the Divine, of predestination. In Mary’s womb all these
mysteries would be rewritten. Each of these unfathomable mysteries would from
this day and forever have added to their description “in Him.” You search the
Scriptures thinking that in them you will find eternal life, and it is they
which testify of Him. He was not slow in fulfilling his promises. He wove a
tapestry composed of the woof and warp of human and divine life sewn together
in a mother’s womb to be nourished by human milk and the Word of God, to live
and die a simple life in which the world and redeemed humanity was given second
birth. The Serpent would bruise his heel and the Son would crush the Serpent’s
head.
[i] In
most instances quotations from the Bible will be drawn from the New American
Bible, which is a Catholic translation of the Scriptures. My use of that
version is simply an attempt to be somewhat ecumenical as I am Protestant, but
hope to see our expressions of faith to be bridges of understanding by design
rather than walls of separation. Sometimes the translations will include
paraphrasing when changing something within a quotation reads better than the
quoted source without changing substance.
