Flesh

Bringing the Incarnation Down to Earth

Hugh Halter

• Publisher: David C Cook
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780781409971
• eBook ISBN: 9781434707505
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Christ's Body, Human Flesh If we're honest, no one really cares about theology unless it reveals a gut-level view of God's presence. According to pastor and ministry leader Hugh Halter, only the incarnational power of Jesus satisfies what we truly crave, and once we taste it, we're never the same. God understands how hard it is to be human, and the incarnation—God with us—enables us to be fully alive. With refreshing, raw candor, Flesh reveals the faith we all long to experience—one based on the power of Christ in the daily grind of work, home, school, and life. For anyone burned out, disenchanted, or seeking a fresh honest-to-God encounter, Flesh will invigorate your faith.

REPUTATION

True story. It was 1:00 a.m. I was doing what I normally do at that time—sleeping next to Cheryl in our upstairs bedroom. Suddenly breaking through my REM sleep was the faint but growing sound of two men talking in our hallway, right outside the open door. Still slightly dazed, I reached over and tapped Cheryl and said, “Can you go see what they want?” Then as soon as I realized the ridiculousness of my less-than-Braveheart-like response, I staggered toward the voices.

Unconcerned about what I was wearing (not much) or the fact that I was heading toward two men in the dark with only my bad breath as a weapon, I confronted the intruders.

“Hugh … don’t shoot; it’s Chris and Matt.”

As Cheryl joined us in the hallway, Chris continued, “Sorry about breaking into your house, but apparently Alli [my older daughter, who had just gone off to college] is in trouble. She’s stuck in a cornfield and doesn’t know where she is, and she’s freaking out. She called McKenna [my younger daughter, whom I’m not going to let go to college!], and McKenna is now freaking out and called us so we could come tell you!”

Cheryl and I were now wide awake! I was trying to stay calm, but my daddy instincts were kicking into DEFCON 1 as my mind flooded with images of Freddy Krueger from high school horror flicks wielding his switchblade scissor fingers, chasing my screaming, disoriented daughter through a corn maze!

Fortunately, the real story wasn’t nearly as dramatic as we thought, and a day later, while Chris and I were riding in my truck, I asked, “Why did you guys sneak in through the garage? Why didn’t you just ring the doorbell? Your entry could have gotten you killed!”

Chris scrunched his lips together, got a confused look on his face, and said, “I don’t know. Good question.”

The Wrong Way to Enter

Whether it’s how a guy offers a ring to his future wife, how a French chef delicately plates an expensive dish, or how a fly fisherman softly lofts a hand-tied caddis fly into a Montana stream, presentation is everything. This next section—“Reputation”—will help us see the brilliant way Jesus entered humanity and lived among people. Jesus may have had some enemies, but the people on the street loved Him. He was the perfect human, a native in the best sense. He built a reputation by how He worked a job, partied with the locals, opened up everyone’s homes, and busted through religious and social barriers. He fought for things people cared about and was the most holy but least judgmental person the world had ever seen. A true iconoclast, or “image breaker.” As such, His life was much more than a few years lived before the cross. His life is a model for how we can live now.

These next few chapters should help you develop the good “street cred” He had. You will find that your normal, mundane life is perfectly suited to bring glory to God and get people talking.

Incarnation should always lead to a great reputation.

5

Baby/Boy/Bloke

Becoming Human

I love to people watch. I travel almost every week, so I am blessed to spend countless hours in airports and airplanes. My favorite pastime is to observe the daily patterns of the creatures called humans. One thing I’ve noticed is that if people think they are being watched, they generally make sure to appear presentable. They will straighten their postures, mind their manners, and try to keep their emotions in check. On the descent, women usually take out their makeup bags to reapply, parents who are obviously getting angry at their misbehaving children strain to keep their voices down, and lovebirds refrain from going overboard with their public displays of affection.

But when humans forget they are being watched, you get a totally different picture.

The angry parent sometimes loses it in the middle of the airport and, with veins popping out and teeth clenched, will grab a two-year-old by one arm, swinging the minihuman around like a tetherball, and then scream, “DangitJoeyknockitoff!” The same woman who a second before was putting on lipstick in the waiting area sometimes ends up sitting next to me on the plane and within ten minutes is fast asleep, head flopping around, jaw relaxed, a four-inch string of drool stretching out of her wide-open mouth. When humans do what is natural, they pick their noses and their teeth and look at their reflections in a window as if none of the forty other people around are watching them admire themselves. Humanity is hilarious!

As we consider incarnational life, I thought it would be fun to take a chapter to talk about being … a human being. We’ll get to us in a moment, but the jaw-dropper is that God became one of us! We love to view Jesus’s short-term mission to earth like we might picture a famous athlete shaking hands with the lowly fans or a medieval king leaving his ornate throne to enjoy a brief appearance on the streets with the peasants. But we resist acknowledging that Jesus was actually one of us and that taking on flesh meant that He actually became a real human.

People have always struggled with this because we can’t understand how a divine being so perfect can take on the form of us humans, who are always so imperfect. We also have a hard time trying to figure out what we should be since He came to be like us. Should we try to be more godlike? Should we totally deny our humanness or play it down, act more religious? Or what? It is an awkward dance. Some people have said that Jesus became like us so that we can become like Him, and although it may sound nice, it really isn’t why He came. He had no intention of trying to get us to be like God, or to be perfect, or to be less human. He actually came to teach us how a true human is to live. And this one shift in understanding will set you free from some false and harmful beliefs that have locked up the church and its people for eons. We’ll unpack this a little, but here’s the nugget: God doesn’t want you to deny your humanity, nor does He want you to try to be more godlike. He came to show you how to live fully human in the way that He did and in a way that you will truly love. But for you to get this, you have to let Jesus be truly human too.

Watching Jesus

Can you picture Jesus smashing His finger, biting His lip, dropping to one knee, and wincing in painful laughter? Can you see Him waking up in the morning, heading to the facilities (likely an olive tree), and looking around to make sure no one was watching? Can you imagine Jesus with gas after a bad meal of hummus and sardines? Reflect on Him freezing cold, huddling next to His brothers or mother to try to stay warm. It’s easy to picture Him as a baby, but what about as an awkward teenager with raging hormones? What about a twenty-eight-year-old virgin who was maybe one of the last single men in his small village? Can you see Him working long days with His father, going home exhausted, falling asleep, and then waking with a sore neck and swollen fingers?

If not, it will be hard to relate to Him and even harder to live like Him. If you see Him only as God, you may worship Him or study Him, but you will miss the joy of emulating Him.

Jesus was born; He messed His pants; He grew up, hit puberty, got sick, puked, got tired, woke up disoriented, sneezed, scratched his armpits; and yes, Jesus pooped. He got hungry and thirsty and hurt Himself while playing and working. As He grew, He was curious about life and spiritual matters and was always asking questions. His voice, body, and personality all changed. We know that during His ministry, He got sad, angry, frustrated, and fearful. He laughed, He cried, He fought temptation of every kind, and He experienced physical death. In His birth, He was vulnerable. In His boyhood, He was playful and inquisitive. And as a full-grown manly man, He was the guy next door, a real rustic hombre. He gets the awkwardness of not living like God, so we can relax, put away our goofy attempts to be more godly, and reconsider being truly human.

Godliness Is Not about Trying to Be God

I know what you’re thinking: Hugh, but we humans have no shot at making our humanness like that of Jesus. Aren’t we totally depraved, desperately wicked, and far from God, as Scripture says? And if this is so, shouldn’t we try to become less human and a bit more spiritual, a bit more godly? Well, not exactly. Second Timothy 3:5 helps us understand this dilemma. Regarding people who were professing faith, standing up for God and the church, and living religiously, Paul said, “They have a form of godliness but deny the power thereof” (author’s paraphrase). Jesus taught the same thing when He referred to the uber-religious Pharisees, calling them whitewashed sepulchres and saying that while they looked okay on the outside, they were full of death on the inside (Matt. 23:27). Jesus was teaching that godliness is not about trying to hide our humanness and appear more like God. That always comes off smelling like inauthenticity and reeks of hypocrisy—and neither God nor the observing world buys it. Worse, it doesn’t work anyway. Trying to be godly is like trying to be a pro athlete with Parkinson’s disease or trying to be as gorgeous as a model in GQ magazine when you look like Hugh Halter. It simply doesn’t work. Have you ever tried to make it just one day without an angry or lustful thought, selfish act, or second of worry? If you’re like me, you may make it only a few hours at best.

And then each Sunday we feel bad, beg for forgiveness, and start the brutal dance of failure all over again. And if we do that long enough, we settle into this “form of godliness” that has no real power. When we deny our humanity and try to become more clean, or more pure, or more sanctified, we end up on the wrong end of that word. The word instead becomes sanctimonious, and it means we hide our true human struggle and become self-righteous, smug, holier-than-thou, pious, pompous, and a few other lovely terms that describe humans trying to appear more godly than people around them.

For instance, many Christians base their personal sanctification scorecard on whether they had a devotional time that day, avoided swearing, and went to church. But while they may feel great about their “walk with God,” they have not loved their neighbors as much as they love themselves, they haven’t cared for or even looked to take care of the needs of the sick or the poor, and there’s been no focus or intention toward unbelievers in their lives. They may feel clean or pure or godly, but by their lives, they completely deny the power of God. On the other hand, there are many other people who swear and sometimes don’t get their devotional time in but who wake up and spend their entire day doing the very works of God in the world. They throw parties for their friends, they take a few hours and help with practical needs, or they spend time with people whom most of the world would never touch. Which do you think Jesus prefers?

In Matthew 3:7, John the Baptist called a spade a spade and called the spiritually elite a basket of snakes. These people put the focus of their lives on outward cleansing all the time, waiting for the Messiah to come back, as many self-righteous Christians do today. John then called them and anyone within earshot to “bear fruit in keeping with repentance” (v. 8 ESV). In other words, stop worrying about your outward spiritual appearance. Stop micromanaging the old scorecard that the religious elite have put before you in the past. Stop trying to manage your sins.

Bottom line, Jesus’s payment on the cross for your sin made you holy, righteous, and sanctified. He did it all. You don’t get to claim any of it, but you do get to humbly work with God to display His work in your life. First Thessalonians 5:23 says, “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Yes, it is God’s desire that you gro...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Foreword
• Introduction: A Tattoo into the World
• INCARNATION
• REPUTATION
• CONVERSATION
• CONFRONTATION
• TRANSFORMATION
• SKIN DEEP
• Extras