Morning and Evening: Daily Readings
by C. H. Spurgeon
Tuesday Morning, December 21
Yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant.
2 Samuel 23:5
This covenant is divine in its origin. He hath made with me an everlasting covenant. Oh that great word He ! Stop, my soul. God, the everlasting Father, has positively made a covenant with thee; yes, that God who spake the world into existence by a word; he, stooping from his majesty, takes hold of thy hand and makes a covenant with thee. Is it not a deed, the stupendous condescension of which might ravish our hearts for ever if we could really understand it? HE hath made with me a covenant. A king has not made a covenant with me--that were somewhat; but the Prince of the kings of the earth, Shaddai, the Lord All-sufficient, the Jehovah of ages, the everlasting Elohim, He hath made with me an everlasting covenant. But notice, it is particular in its application. Yet hath he made with me an everlasting covenant. Here lies the sweetness of it to each believer. It is nought for me that he made peace for the world; I want to know whether he made peace for me! It is little that he hath made a covenant, I want to know whether he has made a covenant with me. Blessed is the assurance that he hath made a covenant with me! If God the Holy Ghost gives me assurance of this, then his salvation is mine, his heart is mine, he himself is mine--he is my God.
This covenant is everlasting in its duration. An everlasting covenant means a covenant which had no beginning, and which shall never, never end. How sweet amidst all the uncertainties of life, to know that the foundation of the Lord standeth sure, and to have God's own promise, My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips. Like dying David, I will sing of this, even though my house be not so with God as my heart desireth.
Evening, December 21
I clothed thee also with broidered work, and shod thee with badgers' skin, and I girded thee about with fine linen, and I covered thee with silk.
Ezekiel 16:10
See with what matchless generosity the Lord provides for his people's apparel. They are so arrayed that the divine skill is seen producing an unrivalled broidered work, in which every attribute takes its part and every divine beauty is revealed. No art like the art displayed in our salvation, no cunning workmanship like that beheld in the righteousness of the saints. Justification has engrossed learned pens in all ages of the church, and will be the theme of admiration in eternity. God has indeed curiously wrought it. With all this elaboration there is mingled utility and durability, comparable to our being shod with badgers' skins. The animal here meant is unknown, but its skin covered the tabernacle, and formed one of the finest and strongest leathers known. The righteousness which is of God by faith endureth for ever, and he who is shod with this divine preparation will tread the desert safely, and may even set his foot upon the lion and the adder. Purity and dignity of our holy vesture are brought out in the fine linen. When the Lord sanctifies his people, they are clad as priests in pure white; not the snow itself excels them; they are in the eyes of men and angels fair to look upon, and even in the Lord's eyes they are without spot. Meanwhile the royal apparel is delicate and rich as silk. No expense is spared, no beauty withheld, no daintiness denied.
What, then? Is there no inference from this? Surely there is gratitude to be felt and joy to be expressed. Come, my heart, refuse not thy evening hallelujah! Tune thy pipes! Touch thy chords!
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O Come, Let Us Adore the God-man
A preacher once said that Christmas is often a time when people buy presents with money they don't have for people they hardly know who will then take the gifts back for a cash refund. But Christians know, 
even those who don't celebrate Christmas as a holiday (like the Puritans of old), that what should be the reason to celebrate on both December 25, and any day of the year, is the fact that "the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us" (John 1:14). "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners," said the apostle Paul (1 Timothy 1:15), and on the cross, He accomplished the redemption of His people.
But as we think about the entrance of Christ into this world, questions surface about how Jesus could be both God and man. Perhaps two statements will help us to begin thinking through the relationship between the humanity and the divinity of Christ.1
"Jesus has always been God."
In John 1:1, Jesus is referred to as "the Word," and the opening verse of John says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John says that Jesus was present "in the beginning," specifically that He "was." The tense of the verb for "was" shows that Jesus did not come into being "in the beginning," He already was! Another way of saying it would be, "In the beginning, the Word continually was," meaning he was already there. Jesus existed before the beginning; He is eternal.
John concludes, "the Word was God," which means Jesus is God, and since he was there "In the beginning," He has always been God. Therefore, in relationship to His humanity, it is correct to say that there was a time when Jesus was God and not man, but there never was a time when Jesus was man but not God; Jesus had existed forever as God before he became a man. This refutes the idea (found among Jehovah's Witnesses, for example) that Jesus was a created being.
"In becoming a man, Jesus remained God."
In the Incarnation, subtraction didn't happen—Jesus did not lose some of His deity in order to become a man. In the Incarnation, division didn't happen—Jesus did not become a combination of man and God (50% man and 50% God, or 60-40, or 70-30). In the Incarnation, addition happened—Jesus became what He had never been, man, without ceasing to be what He had always been, God. He didn't turn into a man, He became a man while remaining God, "For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form" (Colossians 2:9).
Theologian J.I. Packer remarks, "(Jesus) was not God minus some elements of His deity, but God plus all that He had made His own by taking manhood to Himself."2 The baby born to the virgin Mary was not simply half-man, half-God. He wasn't even just "God with skin on," not really man even though He appeared to be a man. Christ is now two natures united in one person forever. His deity was not humanized, nor his humanity deified; He is fully God, and fully man, and each nature remains distinct, yet Jesus is only one person.
Jesus did choose to limit His deity on occasion, but this doesn't nullify His divine nature. It simply shows that not only is Jesus God, but Jesus is man, thus He is the God-man. Packer is right, "The mystery of the Incarnation is unfathomable. We cannot explain it; we can only formulate it."3
A Practical Implication:
If Jesus was not fully God but just a mere creature like us, then he could not bear the wrath of God against the sins of His people. If Jesus was just a good man dying upon a cross as an example of love, then ultimately He was just one guy dying for one man named Barabbas (cf. Matthew 27:26).
But when we say that Jesus was not just a man, but He was the God-man, then the cross becomes an act whereby God demonstrates His love for sinners, because the God-man truly atoned for the sins of any who will repent and put their faith in Him. He had to be God, because only God could accomplish such a feat, and He had to be man, because only a man could pay the penalty for the sins of men.
O come, let us adore Him, Jesus Christ the God-man.
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1For the following, I am indebted to the first biblical preacher I ever listened to, Alistair Begg, and my systematic theology professor from seminary, Bruce Ware. I'm confident I will be quoting these gentlemen, but without even knowing where to put the quotation marks.
2 Knowing God, (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1973), 57.
3 58.
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