photo © 2009 Alessandra Cimatti | more info (via: Wylio)


"...The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as this truth of the Incarnation.

This is the real stumbling block in Christianity.... It is from misbelief, or at least inadequate belief, about the Incarnation that difficulties at other points in the gospel story usually spring. But once the Incarnation is grasped as a reality, these other difficulties dissolve.

...If Jesus was the same person as the eternal Word...it is no wonder if fresh acts of creative power marked his coming into this world... It is not strange that he, the Author of life, should rise from the dead. If he was truly God the Son, it is much more startling that he should die than that he should rise again.

...Once we grant that Jesus was divine, it becomes unreasonable to find difficulty in any of this; it is all of a piece and hangs together completely. The Incarnation is in itself an unfathomable mystery, but it makes sense of everything else that the New Testament contains."

JI Packer in Knowing God