Friends: Here are three more notes from George Bebawi’s teaching, “The Uniqueness of Christ.” Jesus is unique, and revealed God’s unique plan of salvation. Blessings, Bob

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Labels: Christmas 2025, George Bebawi, John 1:14, relationship, revelation, uniqueness of Christ

Spirituality Column #995

December 9, 2025

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Unique Gifts, Part 2

By Bob Walters

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth …” – John 1:14

We are into our 20^th year of writing this weekly blog / column. Most years have included a Christmas series, and many entries in those series have discussed George Bebawi’s awesome Christian scholarship and general revulsion of modern Christmas practice.

George was a unique character, indeed. A globally recognized expert on patristics (the early Church fathers) and the Eastern church, a multi-lingual Bible translator, Coptic priest, and Cambridge divinity lecturer, George married May Rifka in Carmel, Indiana, in April 2004. He moved here and became a unique, local treasure of Bible study, church history, wit, and doctrinal challenge and brilliance.

Just as this church on this corner disagrees with that church on that corner about some aspect of salvation theology, communion practice, or which Bible translation is best, George was a cross between a lightning rod and a mega-power radio tower. He was steeped in a Christian life that began in Judaism, found faith in Jesus as a teen, went into Orthodox priesthood, nearly became a monk, earned a Cambridge PhD, and ultimately landed as an exceptionally grounded and Bible-savvy evangelical teacher.

Which is to say, George discerned uniqueness in the living, biblical, personal, relational Jesus with a depth few in the Christian West encounter or imagine.  That’s why this Christmas we’re looking at George’s teaching, “The Uniqueness of Christ.”

Here are three more of George’s points on the revelation of Jesus.

4.  Jesus represents God to humanity and humanity to God, setting the goal of this unique relationship as a fellowship and as a union of the Holy with broken sinners, the Almighty with the weak, the True lover of humanity with those who cannot love, the Reconciler with those who are slaves to hatred, and above all, Life with those who are captives of death.

Often lost in contemporary Christianity is the divine purity of God’s forgiveness, grace, and love restoring our relationship with our Creator. Instead, we impute our worldly, market-economy culture and dynamic into a purchase agreement in Jesus’s perfect sacrifice. George believed we are loved, not bought. Freed, not bound.

5.  Jesus Christ is the only founder of a religion who shares his life with those who follow Him.

In George’s “Uniqueness” notes, he lists 37 Greek words the Apostle Paul used / invented in the Bible to describe our life, death, work, suffering, growth, reign, etc., with Christ. All 37 words start with “syn” – the Greek prefix that means “with.” The human and the divine are interwoven, and Jesus remains alive with us and with the Father.

6.  By being the fulfillment of old prophesies, Jesus did not come to destroy the past but made the past essential to understanding the present.  This is not applied only to His incarnation but also to sharing His life with sinners.

George constantly made the point that the New Testament is the conclusion of the story that remains unfinished in the Old Testament. OT prophesies point to Jesus, relationship, and salvation, but only Jesus is both the means to, and the goal of, God’s redemptive plan for humanity: temporal understanding and eternal relationship.

God’s Word became human flesh. That’s a gift no one thought to ask for.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) will continue the next two weeks with George’s thoughts about our living communion with Christ. For my past writings about George, search George Bebawi at our blog, CommonChristianity.blogspot.com.