Many people gladly celebrate the birth of Christ at Christmas, only to ignore, shun, and reject Him the rest of the year. They don’t mind celebrating the birth of a baby, but they don’t want to hear about the Lord of lords. They sing of His nativity but brazenly reject His authority. They adore Him as an infant but will not pay homage to Him as the God-man. They can tolerate the trappings of Christmas—a manger, shepherds, wise men, and Joseph and Mary—but they cannot bear the advent of God in human flesh. Consequently the world ignores the core of all Christmas truth. And instead of honouring Jesus at Christmas, they are actually mocking Him.
The enemy must love the world’s Christmas celebration. He must revel in the blatant sin and blasphemy and rejection of Christ—all by people who suppose
they are celebrating His birth! He must glory in the way people inoculate themselves against the truth of Christ by commemorating His birth with lip service while ignoring the point of it all—that Jesus is almighty God.
Christmas is not about the Savior’s infancy; it is about His deity. The humble birth of Jesus Christ was never intended to be a façade to conceal the reality that God was being born into the world. But the modern world’s Christmas does just that. And consequently for the greater part of humanity, Christmas has no legitimate meaning at all.
I don’t suppose anyone can ever fathom what it means for God to be born in a manger. We will never comprehend why He who was infinitely rich would become poor, assume a human nature, and enter into a world He knew would reject Him and kill Him. Nor can anyone explain how God could become a baby. Yet He did. Without forsaking His divine nature or diminishing His deity in any sense, He was born as a tiny infant.
People often ask me if I think Jesus cried, or if He needed the normal care and feeding one would give any other baby. Of course He did. He was fully human, with all the needs and emotions that are common to every human.
Yet He was also fully God—all wise and all powerful. How can both things be true? I don’t know. But the Bible clearly teaches that it is so. In some sense, Jesus voluntarily suspended the full application of His divine attributes. He didn’t give up being God but He willingly gave up the independent use of the privileges and powers that were His as God (Phil 2:5-8). He chose to subjugate His will to His Father’s will (John 5:30; 6:38). Through all that He remained fully God.
—John MacArthur (adapted)