When The Word of God Couldn't Speak

We as a creation despise being marginalized. We fight to maintain our voice and to keep our freedom of speech. We denounce censorship and promote freedom of expression. History has taught us the error of repression, and how people will inevitably rise up to assert their rights. 

 While it is noble to keep your voice, it may surprise us to think that God marginalized himself. This is seen particularly in that He the Word of God and Son of God limited his powered, “You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross. Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor and gave him the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:5-11). But I maintain our Lord Jesus Christ was far more marginalized. God who is all knowing and all powerful spent many months as a fetus unable to speak! Think about that! The God of the Universe who formed man from the dust (Genesis 2:7) was a blob of tissue with no mouth in Mary’s womb! Then He as baby couldn’t speak. The Word of God couldn’t speak! Think about that. We rant and rave when we feel our own voice drowned out, but God Himself chose to be silenced as we all are for the 1st month to 2yr of infancy!  

I do not believe like the Catholics that Christ made christogram with his fingers and spoke as a baby. This would have frightened people and our God is not spirit of fear, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7), and besides it would have drawn Herod’s already murderous intention to Him (Matthew 2:16-18). No, our Lord Jesus was as marginalized in speech as we are at that stage of life. The Creator felt the suffocating limits of being unable to form syllables and sentences. Christ knows what it means to be silenced, to be confined and unable to articulate needs and wants. He experienced this so that when we say, “you don’t know what it feels like to be silenced or to be unable to speak your views,” He can say, “Yes I do.” For our Savior suffered all things (Hebrews 4:15) and can relate to all we feel. 

Our Lord and Friend was put through everything though he never sinned (1 Peter 2:22). The one limit we tend to ignore is He the Word of God made flesh couldn’t speak for months to years! That God would allow himself to be so marginalized so that He could grow up and save us by His sacrifice! In fact, Christ had to learn to speak and read like us all, I imagine it was a fast learning curve due to these verses, “When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him.46 After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers.” (Luke 2:45-47), but nonetheless He had to study and learn like we all do despite all knowledge and wisdom being in Him (Colossians 2:2-3).  That the Creator and Savior would intentionally chose to experience such restrictions and be able to relate to our limits makes him the only (True) God who you can relate to and know sympathies with our weaknesses because He Himself became weak. Amen.