The single most important event in all history is the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. Without it we have no hope—there is no answer for our sin. It was here that God became man. He became the God/man giving up none of His deity as He put on humanity. Jesus has always been God, but in the Incarnation He made an irrevocable decision to personally identify with humanity forever. Jesus has always been God and from that moment on will always be man. That is the deep, mysterious beauty of the Incarnation.
As human beings, we were created in His image, and at the Incarnation, He took on ours—choosing to endure our limitations—our weaknesses—our humanity so that He might give us limitless life, eternal life, and power. In the Incarnation, Jesus Christ—God of very God—honored humanity by becoming a man. Think about that for a moment—Jesus became flesh and pitched His tent with us (John 1:14). He took on the form of a bondservant (Phil.2:7) being made like a man.
When the power of the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary and Divinity joined humanity in that single conceptional cell in her womb—God honored humanity with an overwhelming honor. God united with us not based on what we could do for Him, but rather on what He would do for us. He took worthless flesh and bone soiled by sin’s dark stain and made is priceless.
The value of any object in the marketplace is based on what someone will pay for it. Price is affixed by supply and demand. Sinless perfection was the demand none of us could pay. Therefore the supply to fill the demand was practically slim and none—that is until the God/man Jesus Christ stepped onto the world’s stage through the womb of a young virgin at a stable in Bethlehem.
Throughout His life, Jesus showed us honor by fully identifying with our frailties and limitations. He truly became one of us. He knew hunger and thirst, physical weakness, and emotional rejection. He knew love and endured envy and hate. His existence fully spanned the human experience—except that He committed no sin.
And in His death, Jesus imprinted humanity with an infinite price tag of honor. How much are you worth right now? Not much you might be thinking. I beg to differ. On the cross a spiritual transaction was made that redeemed you from the slave market of sin, whose eternal destination was damnation in hell. In that cosmic transaction, God exchanged His Son for you—His value for yours.
How much are you worth? If you can calculate the value of the Son to the Father, you will begin to understand the price God was willing to pay for you. Now…I’m not sure about you, but to me that value is best described by the word honor. If God was willing to honor you and me that much, surely we can learn to recognize the value we have to each other. Truly, my friend, this is where genuine honor begins.