Christmas tells us something staggering about God.
Human glory is measured by ascent. It is all about climbing higher, achieving more, reaching the top. We admire those who stand on summits. Mt. Everest climbers are celebrated for making the ascent, not the descent.
But to understand Christmas, we have to flip that logic. Think not of Mt. Everest rising 29,029 feet above sea level, but of the Marianas Trench plunging 36,070 feet below it. If Mt. Everest were placed in the Marianas Trench, its peak would still sit more than a mile underwater. That is the language Christmas requires. It is not about ascent: It is all about descent.
Now imagine a person standing on Mt. Everest’s summit, then descending all the way to sea level, and then continuing down into the black crushing pressure of the Marianas Trench—a 65,000-foot plunge. The change in environment would be unthinkable: from sunlight and thin air to total darkness and 15,000 pounds of pressure per square inch. What would move someone to make such a descent? What purpose could justify it?
This is the gospel’s claim: God made that kind of descent for us.
John writes, “In the beginning was the Word … and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:1, 14).
The eternal Son of God, the One who created all things and dwells in unapproachable light, took on flesh. Incarnation means “into flesh.” Clothed in skin, bone, fatigue, hunger, emotion, he looked ordinary. Isaiah said there was “no beauty that we should desire Him” (Isaiah 53:2). Jesus laughed, wept, made friends, faced betrayal, and even had to learn to walk. God entered our world as one of us.
And his descent was not only into humanity, but into humility.
Paul writes that Jesus “made Himself nothing … taking the form of a servant … becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:5–8).
He set aside his rights, not his deity, and took the lowest place. From glory to a manger. From a throne to poverty. From angelic worship to human rejection. He became a servant so that he could save servants.
Christmas not only reveals God’s heart; it exposes ours. If God had to come down to us, it means we could never climb our way up to him. We are too broken to save ourselves. The Incarnation says, “You need rescue, and you are loved enough to be rescued.” We are more sinful than we imagined, yet more loved than we dared hope.
This is why Christianity is not about what we do for God but about what Jesus has done for us. He lived without sin, died in our place, rose again, and is now exalted. God has given him “the name above every name,” and one day every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
So remember the one thing Christmas insists we never forget: It is all about Jesus.
His Kingdom is unlike any other. In his Kingdom, the way up is down. He descended from the heights of heaven to the depths of our world so that we might share his life. That humility, that love, is the ethos of his people. We serve because he served. We love because he first loved us.
Christmas is the celebration of the God who went from the highest glory to the lowest place—for us. His love steadies us in storms, assures us of his good purposes, and guarantees that nothing, not even death, can separate us from him.
