Day 4: Glorious Manifestation
Then Jesus cried out, “Whoever believes in Me does not believe in Me only, but in the One who sent Me. The one who looks at Me is seeing the One who sent Me. I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in Me should stay in darkness” (John 12:44-46).
God of all ages, in the birth of Christ Your boundless love for your people shattered the power of darkness. Be born in us with that same love and light, that our song may blend with all the choirs of heaven and earth to the glory of Your holy name. Amen.
– Revised Common Lectionary
Christ took the nature of a creature, not only because the creature’s great love to Him desired familiar communion with Him, more familiar than His infinite distance would allow, but also because His great love to us caused Him to desire familiar communion with us. So He came down to us, and united Himself to our nature.
The infinite love which there is from everlasting between the Father and the Son is the highest excellency and peculiar glory of the Deity. God saw it therefore [appropriate] that there should be some bright and glorious manifestation made of [it] to the creatures, which is done in the incarnation and death of the Son of God. Hereby was most clearly manifested to men and angels the distinction of the persons of the Trinity.
The infinite love of the Father to the Son is thereby manifested, in that for His sake He would forgive an infinite debt, would be reconciled with and receive into His favor and to His enjoyment those that had rebelled against Him and injured His infinite majesty... and Christ showed His infinite love to the Father in His infinitely abasing himself for the vindicating of His authority and the honor of His majesty.
When God had a mind to save men, Christ infinitely laid out Himself that the honor of God’s majesty might be safe and that God’s glory might be advanced.
— Jonathan Edwards
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