Matthew 1:23, quoting from the prophet Isaiah: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means, ‘God with us’.”

God didn’t advertise His love and presence for us by billboards in the sky. Instead, he came down and lived among us in the person of Jesus. And let me take you back to that story of Peter coming to visit me after he had been a jerk (see “God With Us: Part Two”). I think it’s a helpful analogy, but there’s one huge difference. God came to live among us, but not because God had done something wrong and needed to apologize in person. God came to live among us in spite of the fact that we had done something wrong in deciding to live our lives without God. The simple fact of God becoming human is very good news for us, because it means that God has taken the intimate, inefficient, impractical route of spending time with real people in order to demonstrate his love, and in spite of the fact that real people have not loved God.

The gospels abound with stories of Jesus with people. He spends time with all sorts of people—old men and little children, prostitutes and thieves, religious leaders, fishermen, businessmen, mothers, fathers, daughters and sons. He talks to outcasts without feeling embarrassed. He talks to rich men with compassion and without succumbing to the allure of wealth. He challenges people. He protects people. He heals people from sickness, blindness, disease and death. Everywhere he goes he interacts in a way that displays a profound love for individual human beings of every type. In so doing, he shows us a God who loves individuals deeply, be they “bad” or “good,” rich or poor, male or female, religious or not.

In other words, God can and does love each and every one of us, no matter what we’ve done, no matter who we are.

But Jesus wasn’t just God with us. He was also a human being who gives us a picture of what it looks like to live with God. Jesus, as God in the flesh, is exactly who a human being ought to be. He has never thought badly about another person, never talked behind a friend’s back, never cheated on a test, never lied to get his way. He has never disobeyed his parents, never had too much to drink, never taken revenge. He has always been generous, loving, truthful, gentle, compassionate, prayerful, joyful, fun, and welcoming.

In the Gospels, the Biblical stories about Jesus’ life, we see a real human being. Jesus sleeps when he feels tired. Jesus goes to parties. He has serious conversations. He cries when his friend dies. He gets angry. And he seems to have a connection to God that is different than anyone else and more natural. He calls God Father, and he talks to him honestly. His life is whole, complete, put together in a way that makes us almost jealous because it isn’t like our own.

Which brings us back to the problem we face as human beings. There are two things that separate us from life with God. One, the ontological divide. But that’s God’s problem, and Jesus has dealt with it. God figured out how to communicate with us, and he did it through becoming one of us. Good enough. Our second problem is that Biblical word, sin. When we choose life without God, we effectively cut ourselves off from the possibility of living with God. We look at Jesus’ life, and we say, “That could never be me.”

But the good news is that Jesus came as more than an impossible demonstration of what it looks like to live with God. Jesus also came in order to overcome our life without God.