When God Sent God

18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”

There Is a God

Jesus teaches us that there is a God.

That God exists.

Jesus is absolutely saturated with his consciousness of God.

Everything he says relates to God.

Everything he does relates to God.

He is a God-entranced human being.

There are many reasons — good reasons — for believing in God. One of the best is that Jesus taught us that God exists and that he is the central reality in a life.

If someone says, “Why do you believe in God?” you can say,

“I believe in God because Jesus believed in God,

and all that I know of Jesus makes me

trust him more than I trust any philosopher or any scientist or any theologian or any friend I have ever known or read about.”

Jesus teaches us that the God who exists loves.

1 John 4:8 (ESV)

8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

One of the steps in coming to embrace something as true is a serious, focused consideration of what it is.

God’s motive for giving “His indescribable gift” of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 9:15) was that He loved the evil, sinful world of fallen humanity.

All humanity is utterly sinful,

completely lost,

and unable to save itself by any ceremony or effort.

there was nothing in man that attracted God’s love. Rather

He loved because He sovereignly determined to do so.[1]

Let that sink in.

God is without needs.

God inclines to meet needs. God is a giver. God is love.

Jesus tells us more specifically what he means by love in John 3:16.

“God so loved . . .” The “so” here doesn’t mean an amount of love, but a way of loving.

He doesn’t mean, God loved so much,

but God loved this way.

“God so loved” means “God thus loved.” How?

What is the way God loved?

He loved such “that he gave his only Son.”

And we know that this giving was a giving him up

to rejection and death.

John 1:11 (ESV)

11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.

Instead they killed him.

And Jesus said of all this, “I glorified you [Father] on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do” (John 17:4).

When the Father gave his only begotten Son, he gave him to die.

That’s the kind of love the Father has. It is a giving love. It gives his most precious treasure—his Son.

Meditate on that this Advent.

It was a very costly love.

A very powerful love.

A very rugged, painful love.

The meaning of Christmas is the celebration of this love. “God so loved . . .”

And wonder of wonders, God gives this costly love to an undeserving world of sinners, like us.

I must not move on too quickly - i must not soon pass over this - this reality of God’s love not only changes who I am but in every way how I live.

Piper, John. The Dawning of Indestructible Joy: Daily Readings for Advent (pp. 39-40). Crossway. Kindle Edition.

The wonder of Christmas is the amazing reality that the personal, infinite, eternal, holy Creator of the universe sent his Son into this tiny speck of human habitation called Earth to be condemned to death in my place. John Piper

Psalm 46:10 (ESV)

10 “Be still, and know that I am God.”

In other words, we have to pause and let staggering reality sink in.

This is a really good time, I think, to do this.

Illustration

You’ve spent most of the day preparing and now What do you do when your dinner guests seem delayed? Do we eat without them? Do we anxiously call and send repeated text messages? Ask for an update. Perhaps we cancel the meal and head off to bed>

Rarely do we do the one thing that we should keep doing, which is to keep looking.

The inability to patiently wait and trust the Lord’s timing has plagued his people from the very beginning. What did the Israelites do when Moses was delayed on Mt Sinai? They took matters into their own hands and made a golden calf to worship as a god.

What do we do when we don’t think that God is where he should be doing what we think he should be doing? We take matters into our own hands and become masters of our own destiny.

It’s a daily struggle to keep watching for God amid all the challenges and business of life.

Yet Advent is not a time to dwell on failures but to rejoice in the goodness and faithfulness of God.

We keep looking and we keep waiting and as we look and wait we are changed while looking for a day when God will finally set the world right.

Habakkuk says If that final day seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.

What reality do we need to let sink in today?

What are you doing while you wait?

something mindless/ distracting/ frivilous/ without real meaning

The God who sent God is a reality we didn’t create.

We don’t create him;

we don’t define him;

we don’t counsel,

help, enrich, or initiate anything with him.

He reveals himself.

Hebrews 1:1–2 (ESV)

1 Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.

We must be still and let this sink in.

The infinite, eternal, personal, holy Creator has existed as Father and Son and Holy Spirit from all eternity.

What could that possibly mean? It means that God has always had a Son. This is the kind of mystery that makes Christmas breathtaking.

God has a Son.

He has had a Son forever.

The Son never came into being.

He is not created.

There never was a time in the infinite eternity past when he did not exist.

The apostle John helps us as our mouths are agape with astonishment. He says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).

The Word was with God, and the Word was God. So God was with God. And the God who was with God — the Word — was the Son of God.

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

We mark this moment when God sent God into the world with a celebration called Christmas.

We have one day a year to be still and know that, from all eternity, God had a perfect image of himself — a perfect radiance of his glory, a perfect essence of his nature.

This God who was with God was the Word and was the Son.

And as Paul says in Galatians 4:4, when the time was full and perfect to accomplish all God’s eternal purposes for humanity, God sent God the Word, God the Son, to this tiny speck of human habitation called Earth, and the foundations of Christmas were laid.

Why God Sent God

1. “The Son of God appeared to destroy the works of the devil.” 1 John 3:8

The Son of God appeared to destroy the works of the devil. Therefore no one born of God commits sin.”

When people commit sin, it is a work of the devil.

The work of the devil is to tempt people to sin.

When they sin, his work is accomplished.

So what the Son of God came to destroy is not just the guilt of sin.

(which might enable us to stay like we are and go right on sinning into heaven) but actually sinning.

The Son of God came to destroy sinning.

The enemy on the rebel planet is sin. The force to be conquered on the Western Front is sin.

Christmas is God’s invasion of enemy territory to rescue a people from the devil and destroy the sin in their lives. [2]

The coming of the eternal Son of God into the world as the God-man, Jesus Christ, is a fact of history.

Thousands of people say they believe this fact but then live just like everybody else.

They have the same anxieties that good things will be lost

and the same frustrations that crummy things can’t be changed.

There is not much power in giving right answers on religious surveys about historical facts.

The coming of the Son of God into the world is so much more than a historical fact.

Jesus was a message of hope sent by God.

to teenagers and single parents and crabby husbands and sullen wives and overweight women and impotent men and disabled neighbors and people with same-sex attraction and preachers and lovers—and you.

And since the Son of God lived, died, rose, reigns, and is coming again,

God’s message through him is more than a historical fact. It is a Christmas gift from the living God's voice.

Christmas means that what is good and precious in your life need never be lost, and what is evil and undesirable in your life can be changed.

The fears that the few good things that make you happy are slipping through your fingers,

and the frustrations that the bad things you hate about yourself, or your situation can’t be changed—

these fears and these frustrations are what Christmas came to destroy.

It is God’s message of hope this Advent that what is good need never be lost and what is bad can be changed.

The Devil works to take the good and bring the bad. And Jesus came to destroy the works of the Devil.

Piper, John. The Dawning of Indestructible Joy: Daily Readings for Advent (pp. 37-38). Crossway. Kindle Edition.

Here’s the rest of the verse: “By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin” — and here it comes — “he condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans 8:3).

2. God sent God as the God-man, the flesh-God, to be condemned in his mortal flesh, and the one who condemned God was God.

Romans 8:3 (ESV)

3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh,

God condemned sin in the death of the God-man,

Jesus Christ. And Jesus didn’t have any sin.

Jesus was the one person in the world who didn’t deserve to be condemned. The rest of us did.

I have accumulated 60-some years of sins — thousands upon thousands of sins, any one of which is offensive enough against a holy God to plunge me into eternal ruin.

I don’t stand a chance to be acquitted before a God of justice. I am under condemnation, and justly so. The righteous law of God that I have broken hangs over my head like a curse.

What hope is there then for me?

In a relatively short time, I will stand before God to give an account of my life. So, what hope do I have? My hope is this:

“Be still and know the meaning of Christmas.”

God has done what the law, hanging over me like a curse, could not do.

The law can’t pay for my breaking the law.

So from all eternity, God planned to send God the Son,

the God-man, so that in his mortal flesh — without any sins of his own at all — he might bear the condemnation I deserve. “By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans 8:3).

Things Are Not as They Seem

We must learn this. Things are not what they seem. We need the Word of God to know what is really happening when we sin and feel guilty for it and experience a season of indignation from God.

We need to know what is happening when we are sick and on the brink of death.

And what we know is this: “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

When we fall we will rise. Our displeased Father loves us with almighty mercy and omnipotent assistance, and he will bring us out into the light.

And if we are sick and dying we know that even if it is the very judgment of God, it is to spare us condemnation with the world because he loves us with an omnipotent, death-dealing, death-defeating love.

There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Believe this. Take Christ as your Treasure and live in him. Glory in this truth and this Savior! Live this freedom!

Piper, J. (2014). Sermons from John Piper (2000–2014). Desiring God.

Or to paraphrase Paul in Galatians 3:13: “Christ became a curse for Rick Knarr .”

How Christmas Feels

What does Christmas feel like?

It feels like a man standing on the gallows with the rope around his neck, and the king’s son steps forward, takes the rope off my neck, puts it on his own, looks me in the eye, and — just before he drops to his own death in my place — says, “I love you.

I love you. Go show what I’m like now to the world.”

What does Christmas feel like?

It feels like a man drowning in the icy Atlantic after the sinking of the Titanic, desperate to be taken into a lifeboat but being refused. Why? There’s no room in the lifeboat. It’s full. And a man — the wealthiest, healthiest, most influential man on that ship — pulls me in as he jumps overboard to make room for me.

He looks up as I float away in safety and says, “I love you.”

What does Christmas feel like?

It feels like I’m in a courtroom where my life hangs in the balance. The prosecuting attorney is the unassailable law of God, and the defense attorney does not exist.

There is no defense. It is manifest to everyone in the courtroom that all evidence is against me, and the judge, the son of the king of the realm, brings down the gavel:

“Guilty.” I’m sentenced to execution and everlasting ruin. And as they leave the courtroom with me in bonds, the son-judge follows me out, pulls me aside, and says,

“I’m going to take your condemnation. You go now, and show the wonder of this moment to the world. I love you.”

What Christmas stands for is infinitely precious.

Come to Jesus Christ this Christmas. If you will embrace Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as your precious Savior, all that God is for you in Christ will be yours in him.

You will have no condemnation ever. And it will be a very merry Christmas.

Christmas Was Not Optional

All of this is because he was born. He was incarnate. He was the God-man.

No incarnation, no regeneration.

No faith. No justification.

No purification. No final glorification.

Christmas was not optional.

Ephesians 2:4–7 (ESV)

4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

And therefore being rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, while we were dead in trespasses, God sent his Son into the world to live without sin and die in our place. What a great love the Father has shown to us!

What a great obedience and sacrifice the Lord Jesus gave for us!

What a great awakening the Spirit has worked in us to bring us to faith and everlasting life! Amen.[3]

[1]MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2006). John 1–11 (p. 115). Moody Press. [2]Piper, J. (2007). Sermons from John Piper (1980–1989). Desiring God. [3]Piper, J. (2014). Sermons from John Piper (2000–2014). Desiring God.

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