Who Is This Child?

Book excerpt: The child in Bethlehem would grow up to be a friend of sinners, not a friend of Rome. He would spend his life with the ordinary and the unimpressive. He would pay deep attention to lepers and cripples, to the blind and the beggar, to prostitutes and fishermen, to women and children. He would announce the availability of a kingdom different from Herod’s. A kingdom where blessings—full value and worth with God—was now conferred on the poor in spirit and the meek and the persecuted. People would not understand all this meant. According to pastor and bestselling author John Ortberg in Who Is This Child, we still do not. But a revolution was starting, a slow, quiet, movement that began at the bottom of society and would undermine the pretensions of the Herods. It was a movement that was largely underground, like a cave around Bethlehem, where a dangerous baby was born and hidden from a king. Strange reversal. Men who wore purple robes and glittering crowns and gaudy titles began to look ridiculous. And yet the figure of the child born in a manger only grew in stature. Adapted from John Ortberg’s book, Who Is This Man?