“The incarnation compels our praise, not our foolish and self-serving notions of its replication. There is one incarnation under God. God’s Son, Jesus Christ, is the only incarnate One. He submitted to the Father and took on human flesh. To honor God in worship and in mission is to celebrate and proclaim this Beloved, incarnate Son.”

With Christmas season upon us again, familiar angelic songs about the birth of Jesus fill homes, churches, and in some regions, still even the malls. The Son of God was born in Bethlehem. God took on human flesh and became one with us by becoming one of us. An incomprehensible yet glorious fact, the enfleshment of the Son of God baffles brains, stirs hearts, and secures the redemption of sinners!

As mediators of the great announcement, the angelic messengers of God joined ranks and filled the skies with a swelling chorus. “Good news of great joy” (Luke 2:10) gave reason for such a song. God become flesh and dwelled among men, for the saving of sinners in whose flesh the Savior has now come!

Having anticipated the Messiah’s arrival for centuries, the people of God joined the angelic hosts in newfound praise. Simeon’s sanctified song lyricizes the redemptive Abundance wrapped up in swaddling cloths:

“Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace,
according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation
that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.”
(Luke 2:29-32)

These words of worship unveil the new age of prophetic and apostolic testimony. The remainder of the New Testament celebrates the historical fact and the eternal meaning of Christ’s incarnation. The Messiah was now here in the flesh!

Paul captures the splendid news with gripping pithiness: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal. 4:4–5). Incarnation, redemption and adoption. The short statement runs long—eternally and lovingly long—in meaning. The staggering implications extend in inverse proportionality to the verbal brevity.

God determined to redeem sinners. He determined to adopt a family for himself. He determined to carry out this saving plan at the perfect time by his own perfect orchestration of history. Planned by him and carried out by him, redemption was a Personal commitment and a Personal investment with a Personal and gracious purpose.

As the sent and enfleshed Son of God elucidates, redemption is not the work of man but of God. Redemption requires divine intention and intervention. Redemption attains by God’s purpose, his timing, and only in his own Beloved Son.

Nothing random and nothing wasted. Nothing detached and nothing philosophical. Nothing less than insuperable kindness from the heart and by the hand of the Almighty.

And nothing repeated or repeatable. One God. One Son. One incarnation.

Yet despite its singularity, the once-for-all, non-repeatable character of the incarnation has in recent years suffered challenges—for reasons that might initially appear innocuous.

The Itch to “Incarnate”

In 1995, Paul Hiebert and Eloise Heibert Meneses wrote a book entitled Incarnational Ministry. In short, these authors argue, “The incarnational approach to ministry means that we must meet people where they are, not where we are.” 2 Such language sounds convincing, even biblical. After all, what could be more compelling than being like Jesus to others? Doesn’t Scripture call us to emulate Jesus, to “incarnate”?

Impassioned incarnational ministry advocates warn the disciples of Christ about their evangelistic responsibilities: “You may be the only Jesus they ever see. Jesus incarnated. So should you.” Without meeting people where they are, proponents contend, missions becomes a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal in the ears of the unbeliever. Incarnational ministry provides the key to relevance.

Evangelicals, especially those involved in youth ministry stateside and those engaged in world missions, found in the incarnation a powerful paradigm for relational and cultural connection. Study people and culture—know them, become as much as is possible like them.3 To reach them, we must become like them. Resistance to the gospel may stem more from our cultural cluelessness than from spiritual rebellion.

With self-advancing creativity and cultural sensitivity as the new norms, no wonder the incarnational ministry paradigm caught the evangelical world by storm. This fury has, in many circles, hardly waned. Converging features in the evangelical and missiological worlds fuel a relentless pursuit of relevance, engagement, incarnation. With eyes upon meeting diversity and cultural disparities in each ministry context, success possesses a recalibrated (and always recalibrating) measuring stick.

With this new incarnational motif, sociology now found ostensible biblical justification and the key to ministry success found a new home: how well can I understand, relate to, and become like the people/culture where I serve. Ministry occurs when I incarnate. Missional relevance depends upon my fruitful impersonating of the incarnation.

Go Ye Therefore and . . . Incarnate?

Lost on many is that by turning the incarnation into a model of ministry, we forfeit the real import of the incarnation itself.4 The emulation interpretation or application of the incarnation robs it of its integrity. Turning the incarnation into our task rather than a redemptively critical, divinely accomplished act effectively disembodies the incarnation!

Let me explain further.

Paul’s words in Galatians 4 properly focus upon a single incarnation event. According to Scripture—from Simeon to Paul, the incarnation is an act carried out by the God of heaven, once for all. It is non-repeatable for theological and historical reasons. God never directs his people to recapitulate the incarnation!

After all, how could that which is flesh become more flesh? The incarnation involves God becoming man. The move is from heaven to earth, from divine to human, from heavenly glory to earthly humiliation. It is no mere horizontal acclimatization, as if the Son of God moved from Toronto to Texas or Tupolo to Tanzania. Incarnate translation is not merely cross-cultural. Almighty God in heaven personally intrudes into time and space.

Incarnation, in fact, occasions a move of colossal, trans-spherical proportions: the appropriation of human flesh by the Eternal Son of God! As the work of God, it cannot be repeated by man. As the redemptive work of God, it need not be repeated at all. Ever!

Therefore, the incarnation was an historical event, which offers no pattern, no metaphor, and no mere motivational plea. Christ’s condescension in his incarnation accomplished a once-for-all divine act on the stage of history.