"this baby is Immanuel, God with us. He is not just some divine ambassador. He is God: God in the flesh. But if so, what an unexpected God! He does things that God really ought not do. We all know perfectly well that God belongs on a throne, not in an animal’s feeding trough. But he seems not to be aware of such protocols.
So unsettling is his identity that we’d far rather declare that he is not really God, after all. He simply upsets too much of how we know God ought to be. We’d prefer a more English God, a God polite enough to realise that he should never break into our history and disturb our understanding of how things are. Yes, a God who, bluntly, makes not a lot of difference.
But what is it about his identity that so upsets things? Quite simply, it is that when we see the incarnate Christ we see a very specific person. We do not see a system of thought or a religious principle, but a man – a man who personally is God, salvation, truth and life. And that entirely alters the very shape of Christianity: conversion here cannot then at root be about exchanging one set of beliefs, practices or perspectives for another, but abandoning other loves for love of this person."
Mike Reeves, Smothering Baby Jesus