In January 1990, an old man in pajamas sitting on the edge of his bed was interviewed for a television broadcast in Romania. He was the noted philosopher, Petre Sutea. What did he think of the recent revolution, he was asked.

"What revolution?" was his rhetorical reply. Thinking perhaps that his age or his hearing had prevented his understanding the question, the interviewer gently rehearsed the events of the previous month, in which the Ceaucescu regime had been toppled. Sutea replied, "That was no revolution! There has been only one revolution in the history of mankind, the Incarnation of our Lord and God and Savior, Jesus Christ!"

What is it about the Incarnation that would enable a Christian to make such a boast? What does it mean, that God would take flesh and dwell among us? What does it say about both God and man? What does it say, to you and to me, right now?

By the beginning of the third millennium of the Christian era, the belief that Jesus is Lord has affected the entire globe in one way or another. Even the atheists and agnostics of our day cannot pen a letter or date a check without making reference to the Incarnation, whether they know it or not. Yet, unless our own lives are being turned upside down by the Incarnation of the Son of God, unless the revolution which is God coming in the flesh takes hold of our very being personally, we face the next year, and the year after that, ad infinitum, with no hope, no purpose, no meaning to our lives, and nothing to celebrate at all.

"Jesus is Lord." What does it mean to believe it? What does it mean to live it? What does it mean to celebrate this revolution on a personal level, that is, on the level of our souls and bodies?

"You shall call His name Jesus," said the angel of the Lord to Joseph in a dream, "for He will save His people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21).

Now this was done, St. Matthew tells us, to fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy that a virgin would be with child and that she would bring forth a Son, and that His name would be called "Immanuel: God with us." Indeed, the very name "Jesus," the Greek form of the Hebrew "Joshua," means "Yahweh saves," or "Yahweh is my salvation." The name given to the one who led Israel out of the wilderness and into the Promised Land is the same name given to God in the flesh, for He would save His people from their sins.

Yet this second Joshua is no mere prophet or emissary from God. He is God Himself, come to save mankind. For while God used the first Joshua to save His people, God Himself as the second Joshua has come to save, for the angel said, "He will save His people." He is not the instrument of salvation, as was the first Joshua; He is Salvation. He is the Word made flesh, dwelling among us, full of grace and truth. "All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men" (John 1:3, 4). "But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name" (John 1:12).

To believe that Jesus is Lord, then, is to confess that He is God. To believe anything else is to believe something less; and if Jesus is something less than God, no salvation is possible. Prophets and seers may predict; rabbis may teach. Only God can save. Our belief that Jesus saves means precisely that He is God.

To call upon the name - to believe in the name - of Jesus as Lord is to accept the fact that He has come to save mankind from sin, so that we might become the sons of God, having a relationship with God and becoming "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4). Jesus did not come merely to grant sinful human beings a new status, a "saved" status. Rather, as St. Athanasius wrote, "God became man, that man might become god." Thus, the forgiveness of sins opens a relationship with God in which we change: we become more like God.

St. John wrote, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. (1 John 1:8). God sees us already as sinners. Indeed, "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). Yet the lordship of Jesus Christ cannot become real in our lives until we begin to see ourselves as God sees us. We are frail, impotent, blind, lost, unable to save ourselves. Confession of sin before God is a statement of simple truth, but it takes the humility of the Publican to confess it. Without such humility, no soul can be saved.

If adoption as the sons of God, that is, salvation, is to have any meaning, we have to take seriously the sinfulness which precludes our sonship. That is, no matter how good we try to be, our "goodness" is insufficient. Or as the Apostle Paul put it, "For the good that I will to do, I do not do" (Romans 7:19). We are creatures. We are limited. We have fallen short. Our mortality is real and we will die.

To call Jesus Lord, we must confess our sins and begin to see ourselves as God sees us already.

Continued Next Month...

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