One of the emphases of Christmas is the reminder that Jesus coming into the world meant that God had come to dwell with man. Isaiah 7:14, predicting the birth of Jesus, says ‘the Lord himself will give you a sign: See, the virgin will conceive, have a son, and name him Immanuel.’ Matthew, quoting this verse and not wanting us to be without understanding, adds ‘which is translated “God is with us.”’ John, in the opening of his gospel, tells us ‘The Word [Jesus Christ] became flesh and dwelt among us.’
Matthew’s emphasis in his gospel is often on the fulfilment of scripture. Writing to a predominantly Jewish audience, he wants us to see that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah and, in doing so, points to the scriptures that predicted his coming and shows how Jesus fulfils them. John also wants us to see that Jesus is the Messiah, but is particularly concerned with the deity of Christ (cf. John 20:31). He, therefore, has a particular focus on how Jesus is God incarnate. But both Matthew and John point to the fact that Jesus coming means God is truly with us both in fulfilment of scripture and pointing to Jesus’ divinity. Reading these passages again at Christmas time, we are reminded that God came to earth, in the person of Jesus Christ, to fix the broken relationship between God and man and address the chasm between us caused by our sin.
My purpose here isn’t to dwell on that amazing fact. Rather, I wanted to think about one consequence of this. Namely, if Jesus came to be with God’s people, we can hardly refuse to be with God’s people ourselves.
One of the good things that Western Christianity has emphasised is the need for personal conversion. Rather than simply assuming because of our family, culture or country that we are Christian by default, the Western church has been very clear that unless a man is born again he will not inherit the kingdom of God. Scripture, and happily the church in West, has (at least in recent centuries) been very clear on this. Personal conversion matters.
That clear-sightedness concerning personal conversion has largely come from our cultural individualism. We are (happily) primed to see the need for personal conversion because our culture is tuned towards individualism. Whatever the faults of our individualistic Western culture may be, it has at least made it helpfully quite obvious to us that God saves individuals. Particular Redemption means that Jesus died for specific people, knows who are his and therefore the elect will come to faith and conversion is evidently personal.
One of the less happy by-products of our cultural individualism is that, whilst we do tend to see the necessity for personal conversion, we then struggle to see the necessity of corporate Christianity. All things of the Christian life are tailored around me, my desires, my needs and whatever I think serves my walk with Jesus. Church becomes less about communal worship and the service of others and more about me and my personal relationship with God.
The songs we sing exist so I can express my personal thanks to God and even how I express myself – whether hands in the air or dancing around or what have you – have little to do with anyone else in the room. Indeed, anyone suggesting such things might be self-serving or distracting for others is seen as an affront. Don’t tell me how I worship my God and don’t inhibit my doing whatever serves my personal worship as I judge it! Communion – which is necessarily communal, received in community and marks out the “communion of the saints” – becomes ultimately about me receiving something for my own sake. It had nothing to do with anyone else and rests entirely on me and my personal relationship with Jesus. Some even expect to be able to receive communion on such terms whilst standing apart from membership of the local church altogether. After all, what has my relationship with Jesus got to do with them?
It is my contention that none of that is appropriate and the reality of Jesus being our Immanuel underscores it. Jesus came specifically to dwell with his people. He came to be amongst us in the mess and sin of the world in order that the world might be saved through him. When Saul was busy rounding up and imprisoning the early Christians, Jesus appeared to him and said ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ What Saul was doing to the Church he was doing to Jesus. Jesus and his church are that intimately linked. How we treat his people is how we treat him. Similarly, if we treat God’s people differently to the way Jesus treats them, it is not really Jesus that we are following at all.
And how did Jesus treat his people? He came to dwell with us. He came to be among us. He came to be with us. If Jesus is really Immanuel – God with us – how can it ever be appropriate for his people to say we won’t be with them too? If the way we treat God’s people is how we treat Jesus, what does it say when we do not want to join with his people in membership, when we think our worship has nothing to do with them, when we think the church is more of an inconvenience to us in our personal walk with Jesus? Jesus came to be with his people – we celebrate as such at Christmas – so it is a sorry sign of our personal walk with him if, unlike him, we have no interest in being with his people.
John puts it in stark terms in his first letter. Positively, he puts it this way in the opening verses:
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. 2 The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. 3 We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 4 We write this to make our joy complete.
Look at what John says here. Jesus came into the world and the Apostles have seen him and been with him. But here’s the key thing, the Apostles proclaim what they have seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. It is not all about their personal relationship with Jesus, but they proclaim Christ so that they may have fellowship with others. That fellowship is only found with the Father through his son, but their joy will not be complete until they can have fellowship with other believers. Jesus came to bring fellowship, not just between man and God, but between man and man!
More negatively, later in his letter, John writes ‘Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.’ Just as Jesus said to Saul, how we treat God’s people is how we are treating God himself. Taken together, Jesus came so that we might have fellowship together in him but if we hate our brothers and sister – if we do not want fellowship with them – then we do not really want fellowship with Jesus either because he came to be with them, to dwell among them and to adopt them into his family.
If we really understand the reality of Jesus as our Immanuel – God coming to be with us while we were his enemies so that he might save us, have fellowship with us and call us brothers and sister – we would have a much higher regard for God’s people. If we want to be like our master, who came to be with his people, we have no grounds to refuse to be with his people. If Jesus came to his people while we were his enemies, we have little grounds to argue that we can’t be around God’s people because they have hurt us. They hurt Jesus far more and yet he came to be with his people, they dealt with him more severely and yet he served them and loved them to the end. Jesus came to dwell with his people and, as we remember Jesus came to be God with us this Christmas, what credible grounds have we really got for not being with his people too?