Did Jesus really come to save THAT guy?

Christmas. Touchy feely, warm and fuzzy. It’s got that, but it’s also got stuff that sticks in my craw.  

I’m quite ready to affirm that the Incarnation – the coming to flesh of the Deity – which is Christmas, speaks to the Atonement – the way salvation happens in the plan and purpose of God.

Atonement theories, all with their place in Scripture – Christus victor, Ransom, and the venerable, legal, and theologically exquisite substitutionary included – speak to salvific effect on generic human beings.

But Jesus saves the real thing, in the flesh. The real, ‘while-yet-a-sinner’ me. And the real, yuck you who I know and have affection for, nonetheless.

But THAT guy?! I don’t even want to know him. What I know, I can build a case against all day long: he’s the swine before whom I am not to cast my pearls.

Don’t go and give me the end of times, left to the Lord and then revealed without my handy assistance goat or sheep. You don’t know this guy. He’s THAT guy!

I don’t know him either. Jesus knows him. Jesus came to save him, like he came to save me. God, the Father Almighty, willed that none should perish, including THAT guy.

I really am called to get to know him. Called to hear him. Called to care. Called to love. And leave the other stuff to between he and God.

If the case of THAT guy pans out that way, then what does it mean to my day-to-day care for everyday human beings I meet and connect with?

Wait a minute…I don’t feed on relationship for minute-to-minute energy. I’m not wired that way. In general, that wears me out rather than filling me up.

And I don’t get to kid myself that this means I can relate to others generically, as members of the species, and even as objects which I bestow service upon.

It means I am called to know and share with and care for. In some ways, I am called to share myself, and not just transact my human interaction.

Loving at arms-length just doesn’t meet the ‘smell test’ of Christlikeness. I’m not there, loving as Jesus loves, but it’s not something I can avoid as a habit and a pattern.

Jesus came to save THAT guy, so it more than likely means I’m called to know and love THAT guy.

Doesn’t feel as warm and feely to me, but it is Christmas by the gift of God and the heart of my Lord.

It can make all the difference in what my Christmas spirit and people connection looks like.