To you a Savior

"To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord."—Luke 2:11

For those of you who know me, this shouldn’t surprise you:  I’ve always liked Karl Barth’s writing on the incarnation.  To me Barth grasps the saving significance of the incarnate life of Jesus Christ.  Salvation was wrought in the incarnate life of the mediator—the Word made flesh who dwelt among us.

Of Jesus this must be said.  For the work of Jesus is the work of the Savior.  And the saving work which brings deliverance and life consists materially in the fact that He gives Himself.  We may not and must not understand by the title Savior only the death in which he consummates the self-devotion of His life, but His whole existence.  He is the Savior, and is born as such, in the fact that He is for the many, for the World. (Church Dogmatics III/2, 61)