Emanuel, God With Us - by Gina Duffey

I'm not trying to teach anyone anything, I am sharing what I believe. You do not have to agree with me and if you don't, it's totally okay.

I don't perfectly understand it all, but this one thing I know. God did not send his little boy to die for us...at least not in the sense that it is commonly taught. God came himself to save us.

We have such a hard time understanding how God and Jesus could possibly be the same, considering Jesus prayed to the Father, and called him Father, and so on. The way I understand it is that... it is God in human form that is the son. When he came as a man he chose to live as a man, so was a son with a father. God the Son, God the Father.

Explained another way...

God is a spirit.

This spirit has a voice.

This voice is the Word of God.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

The Word of God is Jesus.

This is why it says in John that the Word was in the beginning with God and was God, and everything was made by him. The spirit is God. The word (voice) is God. There was no "body" that was God. Yet.

God overshadowed Mary and caused her to conceive of his spirit. That was his very own spirit he placed in her womb. That's why Jesus was fully human yet fully God.

It's hard to wrap my finite mind around an infinite act. But I can't refuse to believe it because I can't wrap my brain around it. I also can't grasp how God "spoke" the sun and moon and planets into existence. But I believe it.

God gave me a picture years ago... If you take an empty bucket to the beach and scoop out some water from the ocean and set it on the shore, is the water in the bucket still the ocean? Does the ocean cease to exist? IF water could talk, could the water in the bucket speak to the water in the ocean? Do you get the picture? One day, when it is all over, God will be all in all. (Pour the bucket of water back into the ocean?)

God did not cease to be fully God even when he placed his spirit in a human body.

John 8

56 Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad. 57 Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? 58 Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.

Jesus could not have made this statement if his existence didn't begin until he was conceived in Mary's womb. His human body may not have existed before then but his spirit certainly did as it was the one and the same spirit of God.

Jesus repeatedly stated that he and the Father were one. Many say that means "of the same in spirit" but I think it means the same exact spirit. There are not two spirits of God, or three, there is only one. Jesus is Emanuel, God with us. He is the voice of God, the speech of God, the Word of God...talking to us in person.

This is what I believe, but I still pray that as I grow in faith and grace that he will continue to shed more light on who he is. I trust him to keep me in his way.