Friends: Jesus came into the world not only to reveal God’s plan of salvation, but to bring humanity into divine, loving communion with Him and each other. Blessings!  Bob

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Spirituality Column #996

December 16, 2025

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Unique Gifts, Part 3

By Bob Walters

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

Even AI – Artificial Intelligence – doesn’t get it.

I frequently rely on a Google or Bible app assist when searching for a specific Bible verse on a specific topic. It’s bad for business to screw up Bible citations.

In this Christmas series which rehearses George Bebawi’s “Uniqueness of Christ” teachings back in 2008, the first two installments recounted George’s six top reasons or features of the revealing – i.e., the revelation – of Christ. In other words, what God wanted humanity to know about His divine plan; that’s what Jesus revealed and delivered.

In these next two concluding installments, we’ll look at George’s top six reasons and features of our communion in Christ.  In other words, what God wants us to do about it.

To find verses to consider, this was my Google search prompt: “bible verse about God will send a savior to you.” Ironically, Google is in the process of putting itself out of business because of its new AI-assisted format.  Google made its billions throwing ads at people as they scrolled Google’s search results.  With AI, Google’s search results lead off with a short, AI-generated article that probably nine times out of ten – in my experience – eliminates need for further scrolling.  No scrolling, no ads, no revenue … no Google? We’ll see.

Anyway, here was Google’s AI response to my prompt:

“God promises and sends a Savior (Jesus) to deliver people from sin and oppression …” then helpfully cites Isaiah 9:6-7 (“Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace,” etc.) and Luke 2:11 (“a savior who is Christ the Lord). Then AI again: “Key verses highlight God’s plan … confirming Jesus as the promised Redeemer to save all who believe.” OK not bad, but nothing about God’s love or restoring our relationship with God.

You see, deliverance from “sin and oppression” misses God’s overall purpose: to restore our communion with Him, express His divine love, and provide our communion with each other.

George was a stickler for finding God’s ultimate purpose, which is to restore our divine relationship which we lost in the Garden of Eden. We say “Jesus came to forgive our sin.” Yes, that is true, and is the mechanism by which God accomplishes what He truly wants, communion with his Creation. That cannot happen unless we are justified in Christ, which we receive by our faith in Christ. Our redemption is much larger than only shedding our sins.

Forgiveness is a tremendous gift, of course.  But relationship – communion – is the actual goal.  Here are George’s first three thoughts on our communion in Christ:

1.    “By his death on the cross, Jesus abolished any possibility of any form of neutrality between good and evil.”

There is no neutrality when it comes to Jesus Christ: you’re in or you’re out. 

2.    “[Jesus] recapitulated the past in dying on the cross; the present in being the head of the church and the true friend of sinners, and the future by being our resurrection. This is the meaning of being called the Alpha and the Omega.”

         Jesus is the first and last, but also is the redeeming totality of our relationship with God.

3.    “Let us remember that our Lord is called by his first name, Jesus, but when he was anointed by the Holy Spirit, he was called “Christ” the “Anointed One,” which is his office as the leader of the new creation. Jesus received this office from God the Father to bring to us humans – and with us the whole cosmos – into full communion with God the Father.  He took our humanity and made it the recipient of his union with God the Father, because he is one with God the Father (John 10:30), he brought us in his person into this union.”

That reality – “full communion with God the Father” – is what George saw as Jesus’s ultimate purpose, both for humanity and the entire cosmos. We are thankful to be forgiven, but Christ came with the unique gift of a communion we – all of humanity – didn’t know existed.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) suggests you read George’s notes a couple of times.

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.