isaiah from hebrews 2

Matthew 2:13–23 sits within Matthew’s infancy narrative (chapters 1–2), which serves as a theological introduction to Jesus’ identity and mission. Unlike Luke’s account, which emphasizes the humble bi...

Preaching Commentary Will the Real Jesus, Please Stand Up? Quite a few years have passed since I sat through a systematic theology class and had the professor pitch a variety of difficult to hit ba...

A Chinese Christian who heard me speak once asked me if I would write a tract about suffering for his fellow believers in the Orient. I told him I would think about it. But when I did, I realized that...

During spring 1981, one of my favorite persons at the time, Chicago mayor Jane Byrne, made the announcement that she and her husband were going to move into my old neighborhood: the Cabrini-Green hous...

And when she, birth-giver— her ordinary vision arrowed down between her legs, through pain and straw, to her son’s dark, slime-streaked hair, to his very skin, red with the struggle of being born—she ...

Imagine for a moment becoming a baby again. Imagine giving up language and muscle coordination. Imagine losing the ability to eat solid food and control your bladder. God as a fetus! Or imagine yourse...

I am sorry I ran from you. I am still running, running from that knowledge, that eye, that love from which there is no refuge. For you meant only love, and love, and I felt only fear, and pain. So onc...

It was our sorry case that caused the Word to come down, our transgression that called out His love for us, so that He made haste to help us and to appear among us.

Only with great care. For thousands, carols will be their only link with a church. At the same time, sentimentality is perhaps the single most dangerous feature of our Church and culture-and the senti...

To achieve the divine purpose of becoming the Savior, the divine glory needed to be veiled. Christ voluntarily, moment by moment, submitted to human limitations apart from sin. The humiliation was tem...

For our salvation, He put on a man and dwelt in him.

When he was a young boy, twelfth-century church leader Bernard of Clairvaux fell asleep outside a church while waiting to go in for a Christmas Eve service. In his sleep he had a dream, a kind of visi...

Why should I, who have been living from all eternity in the enjoyment of the Father’s love, go to cast myself into such a furnace for them that never can requite me for it? Why should I yield myself t...

I am watching a family of black-tailed squirrels. I should be working on a Christmas message but can’t focus. They seem set on entertaining me. They scamper amid the roots of the tree north of my offi...

Without the incarnation, Christianity isn’t even a very good story, and most sadly, it means nothing. “Be nice to one another” is not a message that can give my life meaning, assure me of love beyond ...

I learned about incarnation when I kept a salt-water aquarium. Management of a marine aquarium, I discovered, is no easy task. I had to run a portable chemical laboratory to monitor the nitrate levels...

Imagine a remote village in Africa. No modern Westerner has ever set foot there. The natives live off the land, using the same ancient methods and tools as their forefathers used for the last thousand...

Humble. Before Jesus, almost no pagan author had used “humble” as a compliment. Yet the events of Christmas point inescapably to what seems like an oxymoron: a humble God. The God who came to earth ca...

One thing we often do as human beings is take for granted how our physical presence can impact those around us. Do you remember how big your parents seemed when you were a kid? They were massive! Over...

We say we turn to our phones when we’re “bored.” And we often find ourselves bored because we have become accustomed to a constant feed of connection, information, and entertainment. We are forever el...