Have you ever shown up to a new friend’s house and knocked on the wrong door? The last time this happened to me, I didn’t have any idea that the door I was knocking on might have been the wrong door. I parked (in what turned out to be the wrong driveway), strode up to the door and knocked. A man I had never seen hesitantly opened the door and we both stared at each other quizzically. He probably thought the stranger in front of him was about to sell him something or convince him to sign a petition. Meanwhile, I couldn’t figure out why this stranger was opening my friend’s door. Several seconds of silence passed before I awkwardly asked if this was my friend’s home. He kindly let me know that I wasn’t at the right house so I turned around and shuffled back to my car where I realized that my friend’s house was one door down. Oops.
Unlike me, the Son of God didn’t accidentally knock on the wrong womb in the wrong stable in the wrong town when he took on flesh to dwell with us over two thousand years ago. And yet, the world turned him away like he was trying to get signatures for an unpopular ballot measure.
Worse still, those to whom Jesus came down for were those he created, loved, and had made a great sacrifice for. The great sacrifice of him giving up glory in heaven to endure the limitations and sufferings of this world would only be the beginning of the suffering that he would endure for those whom he loved.
John explains Jesus’s reception this way:
He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. [John 1:10-13]
Immanuel, God-with-us, was born not in a palace (as humble as even that would have been in comparison to the courts of heaven), not even in an inn (Luke tells us there was no room for him there), nor a home, but outdoors in a stable alongside livestock. This entrance would be how he would be treated the entirety of his life. The political leaders (such as Herod and Pilate) were threatened by him and sought to take his life. The religious leaders (such as the Pharisees and the Sadducees) saw him as a deceiver and tried to undermine him by tricking and trapping him. Even the populous, when he didn’t provide what they wanted him to provide (miracles, food, and political power), abandoned him.
In the Song of Songs, where we follow the story of an engaged couple’s love story, we witness the new husband coming for his wife. He knocks on her door while she is in bed and she rebuffs him because it seems like too much effort to get up:
I slept, but my heart was awake.
A sound! My beloved is knocking.
“Open to me, my sister, my love,
my dove, my perfect one,
for my head is wet with dew,
my locks with the drops of the night.”
I had put off my garment;
how could I put it on?
I had bathed my feet;
how could I soil them? [Song of Songs 5:2-3]
Her beloved leaves, she gets up, but it’s too late. He left. In the book of Revelation, we see echoes of this encounter point us to the fact that this is similar to Jesus’s relationship with us. Jesus says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me” (Rev. 3:20).
This Christmas we are reminded that the Son of God, the lover of our souls, is standing at the door and knocking. Will you let him in?
You may also appreciate:
Have You Given Me The Fountain, But Deny Me the Stream?
John 1, Part 1: A Long Time Ago, In A Galaxy Far, Far Away
John 1, Part 2: The Light That Overcomes
John 1, Part 3: Can I Get A Witness
John 1, Part 4: Will You Receive Him?
John 1, Part 5: I Hope Your Advent Is In Tents
John 1, Part 6: Glory Incarnate
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash