Christmas reveals the redemptive-messianic side of the historical Jesus

In this photo provided by Vatican Media, a baby Jesus Christ statue is seen at the Christmas Eve Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica at The Vatican, Tuesday, Dec. 24, 2024. (Simone Risoluti/Vatican Media via AP)

An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:20-21).

Both Christians and Jews believe in the story of Adam and Eve. The odyssey of humankind went on and on, cruising its normal course until such time, such “favorable time,” when the Eternal Word, the Logos—according to Divine Revelation and Christian tradition—entered human history.

The Logos became one of us “and dwelt among us” (John 1:14).

For Christians, the Incarnation of the Son of God, otherwise known as Christ-Event, is a historical event with a fixed time and place, when Herod I was the great ruler of Judaea, and this singular event, the birth of the historical Christ, changed human history in a most dramatic fashion.

For the Jews and the Muslims, the historical Jesus was not the Messiah; prophet, yes, but not a savior.

Humanity cannot redeem itself.

The beauty of the story of the historical Jesus lies here: The Christ-Event is quite the opposite of the Promethean project of man saving himself by his own power. We cannot save ourselves, and the world cannot be saved from the outside either.

From humankind’s innate inclination to do [good and] evil springs all sorts of manmade disasters: wars and genocide, terrorist attacks, environmental degradation caused by human activity, large-scale industrial accidents, et cetera.

Outsiders can neither redeem us from this evil inclination nor solve all forms of pathos and chaos that flow from this innate inclination to sin.

Since no man can save himself from himself nor an outsider, non-human, can save man, a Savior was “born of a woman” (Galatians 4:4). This Savior assumed a human body and soul, which are absolutely the same as yours and mine, spoke Aramaic and Hebrew, and took upon himself the Jewish culture and (Old Testament) traditions.

Yeshu’a (ישוע) means “Yahweh saves.”

Christianity believes that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies, that the one and only Savior of the world was named Jesus. Jesus is a masculine given name derived from Iēsous (Ἰησοῦς), the Ancient Greek form of the Hebrew name Yeshu’a (ישוע), meaning “Yahweh saves” (cf. Matthew 1:21).

Both Christians and Jews teach that our first parents sinned and sinned grievously. Cain murdered his own brother, and henceforth our ancestors fell and fell crushingly (Genesis 4:1-16). But only the Christians believe that, although we are mostly inclined to sin like Adam, Cain, people during Noah’s time, and the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah, humanity has the absolute right to be preserved in order to give Jesus Christ the rarest chance to become a part of it.

Our world was deluged by massive floods during Noah’s time. It was punished but not entirely destroyed and forgotten. Why? Because our world deserves to continue to exist if only to offer the Incarnate Son of God the occasion to walk on it, to dwell in our midst, and to sanctify “the theater of human history.”

YHWH God is transcendent.

By transcendence, we mean the One who cannot be approached or seen in essence or being. God is simply beyond us. Remember the story of Moses and the burning bush (Exodus 3:1–15).

The Supra-temporal and transcendent God is the One who is beyond perception, the One who is independent of this world or material universe, and the total “Other” or “Supreme Being” when compared to us and other created beings.

Holy, holy, holy means beyond us and set apart, yet the invisible transcendent God crossed all barriers and became one of us and one with us.

From the Christian point of view, the transcendent and Supreme God, the Supra-temporal, is also immanent (inherent) primarily in Jesus Christ, the Logos of the Father. “In the beginning was the Logos […] and the Logos was God.”

“And the Logos was made flesh (John 1:14) so that humankind can see Him face-to-face, hear Him speak, be touched by Him, and be healed in body and soul. And He “dwelt amongst us” so that human weakness and sickness be healed and our burdens be lightened.

Jesus: The visible homoousious of the invisible transcendent God

The story of the historical Jesus, the Son of God and the Son of Mary, is the apex of the divine plan of salvation (Biblical history) and, simultaneously, the central figure of the secular human odyssey (world history).

It means that Jesus is the epiphany of the invisible and transcendent Triune God and, at the same time, the epiphany of man, where epiphany means “a perfect manifestation of God and man.” The historical Jesus—as the absolute image of God—has the being (homoousious in Greek) of the Godhead that makes him similar and equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

However, the historical Jesus is not only the perfect manifestation of the invisible and transcendent YHWH God but also the undamaged manifestation of man, the earthly homo sapiens. As the Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D. has declared so unmistakably:

“Perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity… truly God and truly man… one in being with the Father as to the divinity and one being with us as to the humanity, like unto us in all things but sin.

How can Jesus not be the epiphany of man in its plenitude, he who is homoousios (same being) with us, when after all, CHRISTMAS means “and the Logos was made flesh and dwelt amongst us” (John 1:14)?

 José Mario Bautista Maximiano is the lead convenor of the Love Our Pope Movement (LOPM) and author of the book “Church Reforms 3: The Synodal Legacy of Pope Francis” (Claretian, 2025). “Church Reforms 1” and “Church Reforms 2” are available in Lazada and Shopee. Email: [email protected]