Christmas and its Jewish origins

Christians typically say we were saved by Christ’s death. But the apostle Paul does not.

Not in the chapter where Paul speaks more about justification (the heart of salvation) than any other chapter in his epistles—Romans 5.

Instead, he says we were saved by Christ’s life: “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life” (5.10).

It was one thing to be reconciled to our enemy—God—by the shedding of blood, but quite another to be saved in order to share in eternal life. That took not Christ’s death but his life.

As Jonathan Edwards put it, Christ’s death got us out of hell, but his life gets us to heaven–which is that other dimension where we share in his eternal life.

Christ suffered the death that we should have suffered for our sins, and so enabled our reconciliation with the holy God who had been alienated from us because of our sins. But Christ’s perfect life merits the eternal life which all believers get to share now.

Which brings us to Christmas. It is the Christian feast that celebrates Christ’s life. Or more specifically, the beginning of his life outside the womb. More generally, it stands for his whole life as a human being on this earth.

How would that save us? The answer is found by going back to the first Adam.

Adam was told that he “must not eat of the tree of deciding-for-yourself-what-is-good-and-evil” (translating the Hebrew in Gen 2.17).

Because he and his wife disobeyed, they were kicked out of the garden, robbed of the chance to eat of the tree of life, which would have enabled them to share in eternal life.

But then the second Adam, who was the Jewish messiah Yeshua (Jesus in Hebrew), chose the other way—of obedience—not just once but through his whole life.

This perfect obedience merited eternal life. It enabled him—and all who were joined to him—to eat of the tree of life forever.

This is why Christ’s life—the life of the Second Adam–saves us. His humble obedience throughout his life earned what the first Adam’s life forfeited—the chance to eat eternally from the tree of life.

All we have to do is become one with the second Adam, and we do that by baptism and faith, and continuing in that faith until the end.

Christmas is our celebration of this cosmic event—when the eternal God took on human flesh to do for us what we failed to do in the first Adam.

So Christmas celebrates the Incarnation, which comes from the Latin in [in] and caro [flesh]: God in the flesh. It is the Incarnation that saves us, not the death of Christ per se.

That’s why it is fitting that we celebrate the death and resurrection of Christ at other times in the Christian year, not now. Christmas, on the other hand, is the time to remember his earthly life, his incarnation, for in one sense it is this which saves us by meriting eternal life for us.

It is also a good time to remember our Jewish heritage. Jews don’t believe that Jesus was God in the flesh, but the idea of incarnation is a Jewish idea.

Michael Wyschogrod, one of the greatest living Jewish thinkers, has written at length on what he says is the Jewish belief that God indwells his people Israel. This is an incarnation, God dwelling in the flesh of his people Israel.

Wyschogrod thinks Christmas is an example of idolatry (worshiping a man as God), but nevertheless acknowledges that it develops a Jewish concept. The Christian idea that God took on flesh as Jesus is simply “the intensification of that indwelling [of God in all of Israel] in one Jew” (Abraham’s Promise: Judaism and Jewish-Christian Relations, ed. R. Kendall Soulen , 178).

So Christmas is the indwelling of God not only in Israel but in the perfect Israelite.

This Advent and Christmas seasons, then, remember two things. First, Christmas reminds us that Christ’s life saves us by being the second Adam whose perfect obedience to Torah enables us to eat the fruit of the tree of life.

And second, remember that this idea of incarnation, in which the second person of the Trinity took on human flesh to be God dwelling among us, is a Jewish idea.

Let us give thanks to God for giving us the perfect Israelite, and for Israel who taught us incarnation.