There are motivational posters highlighting vulnerability. For the most part, they feature words, like “Vulnerability is a strength, not a weakness,” but few have pictures. There is one with a fluffy baby plover and the juxtaposed caption, “Vulnerability makes me powerful.” Another, inexplicably, features towering mountains, some of the least vulnerable of earth’s landforms. 

When I picture vulnerability, I remember what I saw in a hospital: a row of sleeping baby boys prepped for circumcision. A minute later, those vulnerable babies were screaming. God became such a baby boy, who—when he was eight days old—faced the knife for us.  

Another picture that comes to mind when I think of vulnerability is a woman I met in New York City. She was having a seizure in a stinking puddle on the side of a street in Harlem. When I approached her, she grabbed me with bleeding, trembling hands and pleaded, “Don’t leave me.” Imagine a saying beneath this picture of vulnerability: “Embrace homelessness. Go for broke.” God became a man who was vulnerable—born in a barn, homeless as an adult—so he could bring us home to God.  

Imagine a motivational poster urging us to accept our vulnerability to terrorists. That’s what Jesus did. For our sake, he became vulnerable to the terrorist Herod, who killed all the baby boys in Bethlehem. 

Imagine a poster with a picture of Judas betraying Christ to those who would conspire for his torture and murder with the caption, “Vulnerability: Choose friends who will betray you in your moment of despair.” Or a picture of the Cross with Jesus naked, thirsty, bleeding, and forsaken. “Vulnerability: Choose pain. Love without limit.” The God-man willingly made himself vulnerable to the most fearsome force in the universe—the wrath of a holy God—so those who willingly yoke themselves with him will never face that wrath.

Because I am vulnerable, I am in love with the God who became vulnerable. No other religion has anything to compare with our God who became vulnerable for us.

If, however, we only had a God who became vulnerable, we would still be without hope. The shining Christmas hope is that we have a God who became vulnerable and defeated everything that makes us vulnerable—especially sin and death.  

Christmas hope doesn’t stop there. At Christmas, we celebrate a God who has the might and mercy to create a world where we will never again be vulnerable. Of him and the world he is preparing, Isaiah wrote:

Righteousness will be his belt
and faithfulness the sash around his waist.

The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them.
The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea.

This Christmas, may you worship the wonder of a God who became vulnerable.