Human history had been preparing for this moment.

From the covenant with Abraham, to the law given through Moses, to the promises spoken through the prophets, God was slowly revealing His plan. Salvation history was unfolding step by step, generation by generation. And then, in a quiet corner of the Roman Empire, something unimaginable happened.

A child was born. Not in a palace. Not surrounded by power. But in humility. The infinite God accepted the limits of human life, hunger, fatigue, sorrow, friendship, joy. He entered fully into our experience. So Christ assumed everything about our humanity in order to heal it. This is why the Incarnation matters so deeply. God did not come merely to teach us something.  He came to restore us.

In Mark’s Gospel it starts with the Greek word, Euangelion, which is the “Good News.” This sounds like a standard greeting or introduction of the time, but this….. this is a battle cry. In the Roman Empire, the victories of the Emperor, Caesar Augustus, were proclaimed throughout the Roman Empire as Euangelion! "Good news". Mark used a great headline to capture the attention of any first century reader, he was declaring that the real victory came from a manger in Bethlehem.

One of the most striking patterns throughout Scripture is how God consistently takes what the world expects and turns it on its head. The Lord of all lords, the King of kings, didn’t arrive in splendor or with an army. He came quietly, unexpectedly, from a humble town where the Shepard Boy, King David was also born 1,000 years earlier.

The Messiah entered the world not as a conquering hero, but as a baby, vulnerable and small.

Time and again, God shows that His ways are higher than ours: the first shall be last, the meek inherit the earth, and the one who serves is the greatest. In Christ, the world’s values are flipped: glory is found in humility, strength in weakness, and victory in surrender. This is the God we follow, a God who surprises, who defies expectations, and who invites us to see life in a new way.

Eventually, this baby will turn into a man and will be in front of The Roman governor Pontius Pilate, presented as a beaten man, crowned in mocking thorns, Pilate boasts to the crowd: “Behold the Man.” In Latin: Ecce Homo. Pilate presenting a man, humiliated and powerless. But in God’s providence the irony could not more poetic, as these words reveal a far deeper truth. Here stands the true man. The new Adam. The Man indeed.

When we look at Christ, we see not only who God is. We see who we were made to be. The Incarnation tells us three extraordinary things about God.

First, God is not distant. He desires closeness with His creation.

Second, our humanity has dignity. God considered it worthy enough to enter.

Third, our story matters. God stepped into human history because our salvation mattered to Him. As Robert Barron often emphasizes, Christianity is not primarily an idea or philosophy. It is an event: something God actually did in the world.

God became one of us