Of all the world’s religions, only Christianity proclaims that God has become embodied as a human being.
Of all the founders of the world’s great religious traditions, only Jesus Christ claims to be God.
Only the historic Christian faith proclaims that to encounter Jesus Christ is to directly and personally encounter God himself.
Indeed at the very heart of historic Christianity is a truly astounding—one may say dangerous—truth-claim. This central article of the Christian faith is the incarnation: God became man in Jesus of Nazareth. This truth is a distinctive feature of the Christian faith, for it is unique to Christianity to discover a God who not only takes the initiative in becoming flesh but also does so in order to redeem sinful human beings.
One radical, or, as Samples states, “dangerous” implication (among others) of this teaching is that God would humiliate himself by condescending to the level of humanity with all its frailties, weaknesses, and temptations. For many religions, the image of the Almighty God being born like every other human child seems so objectionable that it is blasphemous.
For the Christian, however, this act of the infinite Son of God forever uniting himself to a human nature (body, soul, and spirit) is the most profound sacrificial and costly expression of divine love in history.
Samples, Kenneth R. 7 Truths That Changed the World: Discovering Christianity’s Most Dangerous Ideas.
