your cure
“And most certainly, the mystery of godliness is great: [Jesus] was manifested in the flesh…” — 1 Timothy 3:16 a
In addition to sections of Scripture that focus me in on the story of what God has done for us in Jesus, in the Incarnation, which is the source of all our Christmas revelry, I enjoy helpful books to support the same pursuit.
One such tome is Jonathan Gibson’s O Come, O Come, Emmanuel: A Liturgy for Daily Worship from Advent to Epiphany. It is filled with rich meditations on the Incarnation of Jesus for our salvation, and takes you through many Scriptures, Creeds, Confessions, Prayers, Quotations, and Songs from throughout the centuries of the Christian faith, all in an easy-to-follow daily format. I can’t recommend it highly enough!
A few mornings ago, as I made my way through the liturgy, I was stopped in my tracks by a single sentence. Isn’t it wondrous how just a few words can do that, when we slow down to let them have their due effect? Such was this one line from George Herbert, that hasn’t let go of me for days now —
“In the Messiah, two natures met to be your cure.”
Such is the reality of all that is bound up in Jesus that brings me to my knees in grateful, joyful worship. What greater gift might we receive this Christmas than the cure for all that ails us?
Jeremiah 31:33-34 “…this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days”— Yahweh’s declaration. “I will put my teaching within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will one teach his neighbor or his brother, saying, ‘Know Yahweh,’ for they will all know me, from the least to the greatest of them” — this is Yahweh’s declaration.
“For I will forgive their iniquity and never again remember their sin.”
In the Messiah, two natures — human and divine — met to be your cure, that your iniquities would be forgiven, and your sin would thus enter into the realm of the not-remembered, never to be held against you again.
Mark 2:15-17 While he was reclining at the table in Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who were following him. When the scribes who were Pharisees, saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
When Jesus heard this, he told them, “It is not those who are well who need a doctor, but those who are sick. I didn’t come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
In the Messiah, two natures met to be your cure, because he knew you weren’t righteous, and he knew you were sick in your sin, and he knew that you couldn’t do anything about that on your own. And so he came to be all that Jeremiah foretold, he came so that the Holy instruction could be written on your heart, he came so that you might be part of God’s people, he came that you might be healed of all your dis-ease in sin, and the misery of your iniquities, he came to bring you forgiveness and fulness and wholeness.
“In the Messiah, two natures met to be your cure.”
Hallelujah, all praise to Jesus, and Merry Christmas!
