Exhortation

It’s often said that the ancients couldn’t conceive of the incarnation because they couldn’t conceive of the infinite inhabiting the finite. The real problem was more fundamental: The ancients couldn’t conceive of anything truly infinite.

An infinite thing has no boundaries; without boundaries, a thing is shapeless; shapeless things cannot be defined as things at all, and so don’t really exist. For the ancients, infinity was an all-consuming blob of terrifying nothing. “Nothing infinite can exist,” Aristotle said.

Christians know God is infinite, and we know it not in spite of the incarnation but because of the incarnation. A finite God would be confined to his divinity. Because the Son is infinite, He can invade flesh; because the Spirit is infinite, He can dwell richly in your heart. Christmas is not a refutation of God’s infinity; it’s the proof.

There is no boundary God cannot cross, no wall that can keep Him out: Not your weaknesses, not your sins, not your hard heart, not your past history, not even your tiny capacity to know and love God. By the Spirit, God can stretch you until you become big enough to receive Him in all His fullness, stretch you to receive the infinite gift of the Son in the manger.